Hoaxing Bambi

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The jury’s still out on this one, but I’d be willing to bet that the Hunting for Bambi ‘business’ (in which men dress up in camo, grab paintball guns, and go running through the woods ‘hunting’ naked women) is nothing more than an elaborate spoof. While most media reports have been long on hype and short on investigation, the Urban Legends Reference Pages are extremely skeptical.

We’re still investigating, but we’d be quite surprised if this scheme was hatched as anything but an attempt to sell videos. (After all, \$19.99 tapes and DVDs, and not \$10,000 hunts, are the product advertised on the site’s opening page.) Our estimation is that the whole “hunt” concept was a phony promotional dog-and-pony show staged for credulous reporters, but now that Hunting for Bambi has attracted plenty of free publicity from the media, they’re attempting to make the concept work for real.

The skyline is back

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One minor change to the site design here — I moved my shot of the Seattle skyline that I use over at The Long Letter to this weblog also. Even when that’s the only change, replacing that garish green with the black and white skyline gives a very different feel to the page. I like it. It’s a return to the cool blue/grey combination that I keep returning to.

Bright neon lime green just wasn’t “me”, anyway. ;)

Squirrel Monkeys

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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.

Two more

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Two more quick links worth browsing, then I think I’m done with politics for the evening — there’s only so much bile I can choke back in one sitting, after all.

Incidentally, both of these come from Len, who I’ve been finding a lot of good stuff through lately. I seriously considered putting him in my recommended links post the other night — the only reason I didn’t is that he’s a bit more Dean-centric (not that there’s anything wrong with that!), while the three I chose are more wide-ranging. He’s still definitely worth checking on a regular basis.

Anyway. Two stories: first up, one about what Prairie deemed the “Passing Judgement on Poor Women With Bastard Children Act“. Secondly, more of Bush’s prior supporters are realizing that, to quote some old famous dead guy, “something smells rotten in Denmark…“.