General

Me: Damn, this is pretty harsh: “Since 1274, and the Ubi Periculum rule, cardinals are fed one meal a day during the election, and only bread and water if they haven’t decided after 5 days. They are held in complete seclusion and the recent Universi Dominici Gregis regulation forbids access to newspapers, radio or television. ”

Daniel: “Yeah. But hell, it’s kinda like Survivor: if you can outlast the other contestants in this new car, you win the car. Only this time, it’s a bigger hat.”

Oh, imagine that: a Wired magazine reporter, Michelle Delio, makes shit up instead of using real sources.

Considering the track record of another Wired journalist, Danit Lidor, I’m so terribly shocked.

I’m too lazy to post any new content, so here’s a rant I wrote regarding the state of broadcast radio:

What we’re seeing now is the continued twitchings of the rotting corpse that is Broadcast Radio. The Beast was live in the 70s, tumorous in the 80s, and died in the 90s. Once the FCC allowed single corporate entities to own more than a small number of radio stations, the way was made clear for the ethnic cleansing of the radio waves by ClearChannel and other media orporations.

Here’s an interesting hack:

Use your phonecam to take pictures of the business-hours signs at your favorite restaurants or other shops, so that you’ll never have to wonder if they’re open at 4AM on Sunday morning again.

Newsmap is a super-cool news headline aggregator. Take a look.

Austrumi is a handly little Linux-based rescue disk that I’ve recently used to recover lost passwords on a Windows XP laptop.

Here’s another essay on the previously-linked Shirt Fu.

For those of you still suffering in the pits of WinXP-Hell, you can install Flyakite and make your PC look almost like it’s running OSX.

(This app is rather like looking at penises from a distance, but not actually touching them with your face. You’re not quite gay, but you’re very envious of homosexuals.)

I’ve installed it on my WinXP SP2 machine, and have had no problems so far, other than one of the default fonts being pretty ugly [Lucida Console? Wha?]. If you decide to use it, you must turn off System Restore first.

While I was in line at Microcenter tonight, I witnessed just how bad at security most people are.

Microcenter cashiers pump you for information. It’s a given. They ask for as much info as you’ll give them. There was a pretty twenty-something girl in line in front of me (I was buying Half-Life 2, of course). The cashier asked her for her address, and the girl answered. The cashier then called her by her last name, and asked her for her phone number, which the girl glady gave. Finally, the girl gave out her email address.

This makes me want to do laundry.