Categories
Funny

Man Commits Sucide After Sex with Hen

From the awesome Reuters news service (an obvious website to be checking out every so often):

A 50-year-old Zambian man has hanged himself after his wife found him having sex with a hen, police said Friday.

The woman caught him in the act when she rushed into their house to investigate a noise.

“He attempted to kill her but she managed to escape,” a police spokesman said.

It goes on to say:

The hen was slaughtered after the incident.

Source: Reuters

It becomes really creepy when people start having sex with species that aren’t even mammals.

Thanks to Reuters for always making the news interesting to read.

Categories
Tech (General)

It’s time for an international standard on Instant Messaging

Well, actually it’s well past time. Instant Messaging has all the earmarks to be the communications of the future, and it royally stinks.

Problems today:

  • Networks don’t communicate together, hence locking users in (MSN, AIM, Yahoo!)
  • Phones don’t Text Message (same as IM essentially) across networks. Barely from net to phone.
  • Each has proprietary ‘extras’ (file transfer method, voice chat, web cam, pictures, etc). Far from standardized.

I think it’s time for the IETF to write up an official recommendation for Instant Messaging.

Here’s my wish list:

  • UTF8 encoding for all messages
  • XML messages. Adds capabilities to easily integrate with other systems (since XML is the way of the future). Stylesheets define how it appears.
  • MathML support – for those wanting to get geeky.
  • SVG Graphics – why not? Slim, clean, XML. This could be used for multiple things: Emoticons πŸ™‚ for example could be sent via SVG. Things like whiteboard (which allow you to draw and have the other party see what you draw) could be done in SVG.
  • Of course, an open standard, like Email. Cross platform, many clients, no licensing restrictions. So everyone can enjoy it.

With this, there’s a lot of flexibility. Using XML as a message format, rather than HTML, allows for a stylesheet to render it pretty. A person with a vision impairment could have a product read the XML directly. You could honor a stylesheet provided by the person you are talking too, download them online, or create your own. Big text? Small text? Color contrast? All in your control. And with SVG emoticons, they can resize appropriately without losing quality. Phones can resize as necessary thanks to custom stylesheets.

It’s a real shame it hasn’t happened yet. There’s no great IM clients. The protocols all have their limitations (AOL stinks behind firewalls, Yahoo’s got minimal users, MSN is spam ridden). All the current systems stink. Their clients are even worse. AOL’s adware, MSN’s buggy client (and terrible Mac client), Yahoo’s terribly slow development.

Look at all the IRC clients available. So many, each with their own features, toys, ehancements. All working together.

Yes, I do hate IM’s as of today. But imagine what could be done? It could be as universal as email. Secure, fast, flexible framework. But instead, we’ve got garbage to date.

The time for standards in IM is now. It’s only going to get more proprietary from here on out. And lock users into their networks.

Oh… spam prevention built into the protocol would be nice. Lets avoid another Email like spam attack.

Just my $0.02

Categories
In The News

Hello Slashdotters

Well, I finally got one in.

Welcome, enjoy your stay.

Categories
Blog

Blog changes

I’ve been thinking of changing how this blog works a bit. Let me know what you think.

Adding More categories:

Right now the categories list is:

  • Accettura Media
  • Apple
  • Funny
  • Hardware
  • In The News
  • MacVillage.net
  • Mozilla
  • Personal
  • Programming
  • Software
  • Tech (General)
  • Yankees

I think I’m going to add:

  • Open Source
  • Networking
  • Internet
  • Spam
  • Space
  • Web Development (different from my Accettura Media, MacVillage, Programming, and Software)
  • Blog (for blog related stuff)
  • Politics
  • Photos

Perhaps:

  • Academic (could just stay part of personal)

Obviously this change involves resorting and filing my old posts. But that shouldn’t take to much time.

Photos
Now that I have a camera phone, perhaps every so often if I see something interesting, I’ll post photo’s? Hmm, not sure about that, but we shall see. I can integrate Gallery, with Movable Type pretty good if I want. That could serve as a nice infrastructure.

So if anyone has an opinion, now is the time. This will happen sometime soon I guess.

Categories
Spam

Comcast and Spam

I’ve got to admit I like this idea. Comcast has what might be a very good solution.

A great little bit here in CNET’s wonderful article.

Based on my conversations last week, Comcast’s network engineers would like to be more aggressive. But the marketing department shot down a ban on port 25 because of its circa $58 million price tag–so high partially because some subscribers would have to be told how to reconfigure their mail programs to point at Comcast’s servers, and each phone call to the help desk costs $9.

Instead, Comcast’s engineers plan to try the innovative approach of identifying the zombie PCs and surreptitiously sending the subscriber’s cable modem a new configuration routine that prevents outbound connections on port 25. Zombie-infected users won’t even notice, the thinking goes, because most people use Comcast’s mail servers for outgoing e-mail. Anyone wrongfully blocked can call and complain.

A few things I found interesting were the $9 help desk calls. As well as the great solution.

Personally, I think the best solution would be to simply shut those users down until they solve the problem. By encouraging people to keep patches on their computer up to date, it will prevent things like viruses and other garbage from wasting bandwidth. That would benefit everyone even more. Simply terminate all outbound access to all but local comcast servers (mail, www). The user gets an email, and forwarded to a page explaining why they lost outbound connectivity. When the issue is rectified, they can re-enable their account by contacting tech support.

The simple prevention of course is if you run windows, to use windows update once a month, and a virus scanner. For those who don’t, they will get a crash course if they want to connect to the network.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m sick of viruses clogging my inbox. And we all know they clog bandwidth on the network as well. That’s capacity that should be used for downloading legitimate data.

Categories
Funny

Childless couple told to try sex

I got to admit. I almost find it amazing that people like this are being told how to have children. If your that out of touch with instinct, how is a helpless infant going to survive? These people may not know they need to feed that child. If they are missing this instinct, what else may not be obvious to them?

“…were simply unaware, after eight years of marriage, of the physical requirements necessary to procreate.”

I’m also quite curious how you can suppress your instincts that long. Thankfully the human race didn’t rely on them to exist. If they were Adam and Eve, we wouldn’t be on this earth. If your going to be the last person on earth, and can have someone to help you repopulate the planet… don’t pick these people!

If it wasn’t for my horse, I would have never made it through that year of college
Lewis Black

That holds the record for the must insanely stupid thing prior to this article.

Just amazing. But then again, this could debunk the theory that sex is instinctual. I’m sure psychologists will be all over them for the next few years.

Some people are so amazingly numb in the head, it’s just plain sad. Any dumber, and they could become president of the United States.

Categories
Mozilla

Bugzilla Beauty

Is it just me, or does RedHat’s Bugzilla Install put Mozilla’s to shame? The theme is real nice and easy on the eyes. Really, really like it.

Hopefully Mozilla’s next bugzilla upgrade will include some theming. Would be real nice.

It’s just great looking. Really really like it.

Categories
Funny

FU FCC

This is the best thing I’ve heard in ages:

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

So true, so true. And F**** you Bush, F*** you Cheney, F*** Asscrot, F*** you FCC.

πŸ˜€

Categories
Personal

Where am I? This blog is empty

I’ve started working for the summer, hence it’s been a strange/busy week, and very silent here.

Things will pick up, it’s starting to get quite interesting around here. Very interesting. [evil laugh /]

Busy is a good thing I guess.

Categories
Programming

Robert’s Book Club: PHP Books

Well what PHP books do you recommend for someone who wants to enhance already pretty solid understanding of the language? I’ve got a rather good level of experience, but want some reference, and good tips on getting better (there’s always room to improve).

MySQL, Second Edition

Programming PHP

PHP Cookbook

Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL

Advanced PHP Programming

I can’t decide, they all look pretty interesting. Anyone read any of these? Good? Bad? Recommend another?

This ain’t no Opera’s Book Club. πŸ˜‰