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Work, and its consequences
Long, long... LONG work day today. My only break was brought on by a hour-and-change power outage. Hyooge contracts to review, one giant lease poorly edited and derived from some "contracts 'R' us" book, some emergency "can you do this" stuff, calls way before, and way after hours, and so on ( Read more... ) -
The Machine is Us/ing Us [anthro/computer security]
Professor Michael Wesch, a techno-savvy anthropologist (the best kind!), makes a phenomenal presentation (I borrowed his title for this post) on:- the implications of what seem like small web security issues
- on the dramatically changing landscape of ideas, creativity, and, ultimately, people
- ...and makes some superb points on how we will need to be ( Read more... )
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Scientists: February declared no longer a month
Scientists Revise Definition of "Month"
First full meeting of Annular Scientists in centuries changes meaning of month
February downgraded to "calendrical object"
At its first meeting in centuries, the Global Association of Annular Scientists (GAAS) tackled the rocky subject of what actually constitutes a "month". The month represents a long- ( Read more... ) -
Observation on smart people, with an example from smart fandom
Why is it that the same people who are willing to accept their own areas as difficult, structured disciplines are so often unwilling to extend that point of view to the disciplines of others?- Physicists arguing sociology with people who've actually done studies on millions.
- Archaeologists arguing statistics with mathematics chairs in same.
- ( Read more... )
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Profound
Just as you think I'm becoming profound,
I become ridiculous.
Isn't that profound?
If ever I find the quiet in myself,
I will profoundly express myself,
By shutting the fuck up. -
Facepalm: When automated news sites go wrong...
Big news today with the arrests of seven in Miami as part of a year-long anti-terror sting operation. Not sure personally that these losers ever posed a real threat, but at least the feds were actively looking for dangerous wingnutsHowever, the media do seem to screw up breaking news in the most creative ways in their effort to get it online first ( Read more... ) -
Duty to meet with equal force?
Recently, the Arizona Sun ran a story about the pending trial of a man who shot and killed an alleged attacker. Give it a read - it's short and plaintext. I'll wait ( Read more... ) -
Testing contingency plans... too expensive!?
"If the risk or cost of testing failover is too high, the risk of actual failure is too high.”
That has become a catchphrase of mine. It made me wonder:
"If the risk or cost of testing a contingency plan is too high, the risk presented by actual disaster is too high.”
These may not be equivalent in value or accuracy. Discuss? -
Useful service to see if you're behind a transparent DNS proxy
This useful tidbit came across from Pawel Rogocz on the djbdns mailing list today.
If you don't know what actual host is really doing your DNS lookups - or you suspect that, despite having your DNS resolver set to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, some network trick is going on, and some other host is actually doing the lookups... you can look up whoami.ultradns. ( Read more... )