The Null Device
2004/2/6
This is somewhat old, but this site was down when everyone else blogged it. Anyway, a compedium of contemporary folk wisdom:
Yeah, I know Sid Vicious wore a lock on a chain around his neck just like that. But the first time you try and pogo with that thing on it's gonna chip a tooth, Road Warrior.
Sure, she's good-lookin'. She's also crazy. Crazy as a shithouse rat. Run for your life.
The Renaissance Faire may not be the source of all your problems, but it sure as shit isn't helping any.
Dungeons and Dragons never goes away. Girls will still sense that shit 20 years later.
Some random odd news stories: church organists behaving badly, sneaking in ornately disguised fragments of secular tunes (such as theme music from Blackadder and Monty Python songs, which, it must be said, sounds very C. of E.) in between hymns. Meanwhile, some mysterious vandals planted ash saplings in 100 gardens in Kent in the dead of night. And when the current Miss Peru arrived at the Gabonese Presidential palace, the splendidly named President Omar Bongo, apparently thought her visit had a different purpose in mind:
She said after arriving at Gabonese President Omar Bongo's palace "he pressed a button and some sliding doors opened, revealing a large bed."
(I was just thinking; "Omar Bongo" would be a good pseudonym to use if one was recording an album of bachelor-pad lounge exotica.) (via Found)
Port knocking is a way of letting a computer accept connections to a port (such as ssh) without leaving it open (and vulnerable to attackers). The port is typically firewalled off from the internet; however, if the firewall receives a sequence of connection attempts to a specific sequence of ports, which is kept secret, it relaxes the firewall rules enough to allow the IP address in question to connect to the protected port. (via Slashdot)
Bizarre musical juxtapositions of today: Li'l Gn'R, the "first ever Guns n' Roses kids tribute band", and Jewdriver, an all-Jewish band playing tribute to neo-Nazi "white power" band Skrewdriver (and apparently fronted by one "Aryan Sharon"). (Unfortunately, though, the Jewdriver site isn't Mozilla-friendly, and all the links are covered up by a gig flyer in an IFRAME.) (via Rocknerd and cnwb, respectively)
Just in time for Valentine's Day: virtual girlfriends for sale on eBay; i.e., for a fee, someone will pretend to be your absentee girlfriend, and hopefully make you look and/or feel like less of a pathetic loser. (Because, as everybody knows: having a girlfriend/boyfriend is essential to being a valid human being.) (via TechDirt)
A woman in Tennessee (a US state known for its cosmopolitan outlook and love of diversity) has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of 80 million Americans over the Janet Jackson incident. The lawsuit, which names Jackson, Justin Timberlake, MTV, Viacom and CBS as defendents, claims that Jackson's exposure of her breast, and "other lewd and sexually explicit conduct" caused viewers to "suffer outrage, anger, embarrassment and serious injury", and demanded compensatory and punitive damages. The exact figure wasn't specified, but it could be in the order of billions; the lawsuit notes that punitive damages should not exceed the gross revenues of all defendants for the past three years.
It's a hard lesson, but let it serve as a warning to anybody else seeking to terrorise decent God-fearing American families and children with naked televised breasts. Now, back to your steady diet of morally wholesome televised violent murders.