'Til All Are One

The unholy com­bin­a­tion of work and study have devoured me over the past month.

One point of men­tion is an inter­view I had with James Purser for Open Source On The Air. Hav­ing never been inter­viewed before, I was rather nervous. I was also wait­ing to be accep­ted or declined as an Ubuntu Mem­ber at the Com­munity Coun­cil meet­ing, which only increased my anxi­ety. It also didn’t help that it was past 10pm, and I was suf­fer­ing from a lack of sleep. If I sound dopey, please keep those points in mind. With that dis­claimer announced, I think I con­duc­ted myself quite well.

In other news, I’m glad to hear that my nom­in­a­tion of Elk­buntu for the Linux Aus­tralia People’s Choice Com­munity Mem­ber of the Year Award (wow, that’s a mouth­ful!) was heeded. Con­grat­u­la­tions, Melissa! I am look­ing for­ward to drink­ing that beer!

Link of the day: Paris Hilton vomits while singing

Are you aware of the con­di­tion known as Ser­vice Sup­port Ter­min­a­tion Trauma (SSTT)? View this Nov­ell Pub­lic Ser­vice Announce­ment to find out more.

Just some enter­tain­ing links:

• Is this evid­ence that Google has lost its way?
• Cre­ate your own ninja mes­sage, and more
• The greatest error mes­sage of all time?
• What not to do in a server room
• The Daily WTF
• Quote Data­base
• The Bas­tard Oper­ator from Hell (BOFH)

I wrote this in response to a Slash­dot art­icle about the Win­dows spy­ware pro­gramme Gator:

PRESS RELEASE: MICROSOFT INNOVATES IN NEW VERSION OF INTERNET EXPLORER

Store all your pass­words, fin­an­cial data and other per­sonal inform­a­tion on a cent­ral server! Never again will you have to remem­ber a pass­word or PIN, since you can con­veni­ently access all your data from a Microsoft server*! Microsoft have made it so easy for you by upload­ing all your data auto­mat­ic­ally, no ques­tions asked! In addi­tion, we use our pat­en­ted Mal­ware™ advanced arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to ana­lyse your move­ments online and offer ser­vices tailored just for you! To make this as pleas­ant an exper­i­ence as pos­sible, we even share your data with third parties so that you are only offered ser­vices that suit your interests.

“Microsoft has always strived to deliver the best value for money in the industry,” repor­ted Tom Rort of The Gart­ner Group. “Microsoft products pay off big time for me! I’d give this release a rat­ing of five dollar-​​signs,” said Mary Swindle of The Aber­deen Group.

Once again, Microsoft has shown its com­mit­ment to look­ing out for the best interests of its customers.

* cost of retrieval is $US9.99 per trans­ac­tion, and since Microsoft already have your fin­an­cial data, we con­veni­ently deduct the money from your bank account auto­mat­ic­ally.

Another Jack­ass copycat injured

” AN 18-​​year-​​old was in crit­ical con­di­tion after jump­ing from a five-​​storey build­ing in an appar­ent imit­a­tion of a stunt from the tele­vi­sion show Jack­ass.

” The youth was attempt­ing to jump into a pool from the roof of a con­domin­ium when he missed, shat­ter­ing both legs, police said. ”

Man Advert­ises ‘Son for Sale’ on Inter­net

There are some things you just don’t joke about. Like selling your son over the Inter­net. A father in Scot­land did just that: “Hyper­act­ive kid for sale, good at vacu­um­ing, not great at wash­ing dishes because he’s too short. Guar­an­teed to annoy,” the ad read. The father only wanted eight bucks for the 5-​​year-​​old. A Web surfer in Canada noticed the ad and con­tac­ted Scot­tish author­it­ies. The father/​seller said that he pos­ted the ad about two years ago as a joke then for­got about it until police came knock­ing. He’s been told to remove the ad. Besides, his son, now 7, is tall enough to wash the dishes.

For sale: One annoy­ing tw*t of a girl­friend

In a sim­ilar vein to the pre­vi­ous link…

US hos­pital searches for Klin­gon inter­preter

” A REPORT ON CNN claimed that a US hos­pital is frantic­ally search­ing for someone flu­ent in Klin­gon.

” The hos­pital, in Mult­nomah County, needs an inter­preter for men­tally ill patients who appar­ently won’t speak any other lan­guage. ”

It looks like this since has been called off, and it turns out that the ori­ginal story was blown out of pro­por­tion.

Black People Love Us!

Warn­ing: not for the satirically-​​impaired

Rugby team fined for lack of black play­ers

” South Africa’s Golden Lions Rugby Union (GLRU) have been fined R30,000 (2,400 pounds) after they were found guilty of not field­ing enough black play­ers in their team. ”

Unfor­tu­nately, this one isn’t satir­ical at all.

Haha, made you look!

” Rumors of their demise were greatly exag­ger­ated, one could say, when CNN acci­dent­ally made pub­licly avail­able obit­u­ar­ies of sev­eral inter­na­tional fig­ures who are in fact still among the liv­ing. ”

Read the art­icle at CNN and see the obit­u­ar­ies at The Smoking Gun.