Geekery

Whatever I’m geeking out about at the time.

Squirrel Monkeys

by

Two pieces of news broke in one day yesterday.

Item one: “Microsoft acknowledged a critical vulnerability Wednesday in nearly all versions of its flagship Windows operating system software…[which] could allow hackers to seize control of a victim’s Windows computer over the Internet, stealing data, deleting files or eavesdropping on e-mails.”

Item two: “The Homeland Security Department has chosen Microsoft Corp. as its preferred supplier of desktop computer and server software, according to a statement issued late Tuesday. …perhaps most important to Homeland Security’s mission to get agencies communicating more easily, Microsoft will provide the standard e-mail software for the entire department.”

I loved Jeffrey Zeldman’s summary:

Let’s see what the government might have chosen in its effort to protect American lives from ruthless, technologically sophisticated terrorists:

UNIX, Linux
Inexpensive or free.
Requires some user knowledge.
Practically invulnerable to attack.
Mac OS
Costs money.
Easy to use.
Practically invulnerable to attack.
Windows
Costs money.
Easy to use.
Can be hacked by a squirrel monkey, thus is wide open to attack.
Produced by a company the Department of Justice found guilty of criminally abusing its monopoly power — a finding that is supposed to result in punishment, not in fat contracts bankrolled by taxpayers.

To the bureaucratic mind, the choice was obvious.

Sounds safe and secure to me.

Pashazade / Effendi / Felaheen

by

Something else for my reading list, courtesy of Thousand Faced Moon, who I found by wandering through TypePad’s list of recently updated TypePad blogs:

I’m impatiently waiting for Simon & Schuster to get off their butts and publish Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s Felaheen in the States. You’d think a science fiction series set in the Near East would be pretty darn topical these days, but the second book in the sequence, Effendi was only published here by Simon & Schuster in February. Bastards. Fortunately Ziesing gives me my fix when I need it.

Metallica smokes too much crack

by

I couldn’t make something this bizarre up.

Metallica are taking legal action against independant Canadian rock band Unfaith over what they feel is unsanctioned usage of two chords the band has been using since 1982 : E and F.

“People are going to get on our case again for this, but try to see it from our point of view just once,” stated Metallica’s Lars Ulrich. “We’re not saying we own those two chords, individually — that would be ridiculous. We’re just saying that in that specific order, people have grown to associate E, F with our music.”

Metallica filed a trademark infringement suit against the indie group at the US district court for central California on Monday. According to the drummer, the continued use of the two chords causes “confusion, deception and mistake in the minds of the public”.

Think this is a joke? Here’s the official press release from Metallica’s site.

I hope this is a joke, a spoof, or some stupid publicity stunt. Whatever it ends up being, as far as I’m concerned, Metallica has just officially crossed over into the “too dumb to be food” category.

(via jc)

[UPDATE]{.underline}
D was just kind enough to inform me that, indeed, this is a hoax. It’s rare that I get taken in by hoaxes — good job!

Keith Richards + Pepe Le Pew = Jack Sparrow?

by

Okay, I have to see Pirates of the Caribbean now!

[Johnny Depp’s character Jack Sparrow] wears a red bandana and black eye makeup. His hair is beaded and he has three braids dangling from his chin. And his teeth are gold. Depp loved the idea of giving this 18th-century buccaneer a Rastafarian look. But he says the main inspiration for this character was Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards with a bit of everybody’s favourite cartoon skunk, Pepe Le Pew, thrown in for good measure.

“I was trying to figure the pirates of the 18th century and what it was all about. Initially you think money and all that. But I think it also had much more to do with freedom and to be out there moving forward. I sort of thought that pirates would be the rock ‘n’ roll stars of the 18th century. The greatest rock ‘n’ roll star of all time, the coolest rock ‘n’ roll star of all time, is Keith Richards — hands down. And Keith is very — I mean, you spend time with him and he’s very much a pirate.”

But when it came to conveying Jack Sparrow’s romantic nature, Depp immediately thought of Pepe Le Pew.

\”What I love about Pepe Le Pew is that this guy is absolutely convinced that he’s a great lady’s man. And he’s a skunk! You’re watching those cartoons and this guy falls deeply in love with this cat, and the cat clearly despises him.

“But Pepe Le Pew takes it that she’s playing hard to get — that she’s shy, poor thing. I loved that character’s blindness — no matter what the actual reality is, this guy sees only what he wants to see.”

Depp considers Pepe Le Pew the sort of character who was able “to run between the raindrops.” And that, he says, is how he envisaged Jack Sparrow.

(from Pirate’s Gold, via Anita)

The Passion

by

Dad sent me a link a few minutes ago to this story on BeliefNet about a new film from Mel Gibson depicting the last days of Christ, which looks to be causing a bit of controversy.

But then, don’t all films about Christ cause controversy — especially before they’re released, when nobody can actually make an informed decision about any aspect of the film? Ugh. But anyway. The uproar at this point seems to be that Gibson has endeavored to create a brutally accurate depiction of the beatings and torture that Jesus went through.

Gibson, who has not yet found a studio to release the film, is a devout Catholic and was determined to show fully the torture and painful death of Jesus.

The creator of the bloody film about William Wallace, Braveheart, has not scrimped on the gore: scene after scene in the trailer, on numerous movie websites, feature a battered and bruised Jesus staggering through the streets of Jerusalem covered in blood.

The film, which cost 15 million pounds and is solely in Aramaic and Latin, has caused controversy in the US, even before a single image has been released.

First off — the film is “solely in Aramaic and Latin”? Wow. That, in itself, is pretty impressive.

The trailer itself (which I’ve mirrored on djwudi.com) looks quite interesting — and not nearly worth the controversy that it’s generating, given the subject matter at hand. I find it amazing and somewhat ridiculous that movie after movie comes out with incredible amounts of blood and gore, with nary a comment (Gibson’s own Braveheart won a multitude of awards, and it had some of the most violent battles I’d seen on screen), yet when someone dares to show the crucifixion without prettying it up, people get all up in arms.

Now, if the movie comes out and turns out to be theologically reprehensible, then people might have something to complain about. However, I doubt that that’s going to be the case, given Gibson’s well-documented devout Catholic views. It remains to be seen whether it will be groundbreaking in any way aside from not flinching away from the abuse that Jesus took, but I don’t think that Gibson is suddenly going to turn blasphemer.

For a good look at what Jesus had to endure, take a look at this article from the Blue Letter Bible site, “Medical Aspects of the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ“. I used to have this article (or one very similar to it) on my computer, and it’s a fascinating document.

Lastly, one caveat about the trailer that I did notice, and bothers me a little bit if Gibson was going for accuracy in his portrayal of the crucifixion. Jesus is shown being nailed to the cross through his palms. While this is a very popular depiction, it’s very medically unsound. From the above linked article (emphasis mine):

The patibulum was put on the ground and the victim laid upon it. Nails, about 7 inches long and with a diameter of 1 cm (roughly 3/8 of an inch) were driven in the wrists. The points would go into the vicinity of the median nerve, causing shocks of pain to radiate through the arms. It was possible to place the nails between the bones so that no fractures (or broken bones) occurred. Studies have shown that nails were probably driven through the small bones of the wrist, since nails in the palms of the hand would not support the weight of a body. In ancient terminology, the wrist was considered to be part of the hand.

Ah, well. The movie’s due to be released next Easter, so we’re not likely to find out much more about how good it actually is until then. Aside from the one gaffe of the placement of the nails, though, it definitely looks interesting, and I’m looking forward to finding out more about it.

Plain text in Apple's Mail program

by

For some reason, Apple doesn’t include a preference to default to plain text in Mail, the bundled e-mail application. The preference is there, though, just not in the interface.

Quit Mail, then type this into the command line:

defaults write com.apple.mail PreferPlainText -bool TRUE

(via MacOSXHints)

Tablet PCs

by

I just had someone ask me what I thought about TabletPCs. Honestly, I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to them. I have, though, been a fairly regular reader of Robert Scoble‘s for a while now, and he’s big into the TabletPC thing, so I just pointed them to his site. Too bad Radio doesn’t categorize, though — he’s mentioned TabletPCs so many times in so many different contexts, that it’s difficult to narrow down any single post about the various pros and cons of TabletPCs. The first two I came up with were both from last December. I’m sure that Robert himself could come up with better links, but those were a good start.

Pings?

by

Why is it that when using a desktop blogging client (I’ve noticed this behavior in three so far: Userspace, Kung-Log, and NetNewsWire), pings don’t seem to be sent when a post is published? The URLs to be pinged are saved with the post, but the actual ping doesn’t seem to take place. Is this a limitation of the XML-RPC implementation, or is it possibly a bug within TypePad (cringes, and looks around wildly for the gods of the NDA to strike me dead)?