Last night, my wife and I went for a stroll, hoping to walk to that place where we have a wonderful view of the valleys and the stars.
But when we arrived there, turns out that they had started some construction work -more new houses! yay!- so the only way to access the end of the road is to go through the gate the fire department leaves there to prevent cars from blocking access.
Well, no biggie. Let’s open the gate…
That’s when my wife tells me that someone was approaching with their dog.
That dude yells quite abruptly: “You got any dog there?”. Well, no, we don’t, and that’s what I tell him.
He then opens the gate and walks his poodle through it, to the end of the road. Cool, let’s do that too since it’s the original plan.
The guys turns around and starts literally screaming at us: “What are you doing? Do NOT follow me in here!”
I guess I must have looked quite retarded, staring at him with a dumbfounded look on my face.
Since I’m that slow, the guy then feels the need to scream some more, that he wants to be alone with his dog, that’s why he walks her at night, we can wait for them to be gone and then we can steal whatever we want.
Of course, being the smart-witted fellow everyone around me has learnt to love and look up to, I retort: “Hey asswipe, I think you need to apologize now”.
The guy replies: “I’m sorry”.
Well, OK, I think; But Mary feels that it’s her turn to give him a piece of her mind. I push her away rather quickly, thinking that I’m happy that I didn’t get myself in some kind of situation where I end up having a long chat with a police officer.

Anyway, the similarities with a forum/irc troll are striking:
1. A troll shows up when you’ve been around for a while, which makes him a ‘newbie’
2. The troll opens his mouth right away, no need to analyze the current topic, which makes him a ‘n00b’
3. You bet your sweet bum that the troll is going to say something stupid, which makes him a troll
4. Not to mention throw accusations all around, which makes you want to kick him out
5. The troll is not in control of the situation at all -or his dog in this case.
6. And even your good members end up getting in a silly flame war with trolls -here: Mary.
7. If you play their game, you may end up being in trouble with the moderators yourself!

You draw your own conclusions, of course.

Thirteen years ago, LSI Logic filed for – and it was granted! – a patent on linked lists. I found out about this on Digg.
I wanted to be sure, so I read and re-read the text of their submission, and no matter how you slice it, that’s multiply-linked lists and nothing else.

This patent, unlike another linked-list-related patent, does not add anything to the concept.

OK, so what’s the big deal? Oh, nothing, apparently the patent system has been broken for quite some time now. But that’s not even what I wanted to talk about here. A real silly patent? Mac Donald’s trying to get the sandwich patented! Take a look: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=26183&in_page_id=34

Today, the LA Times is running a piece on how poorly customers’ transition is being handled: loss of channels, dead internet connection, hateful customer service…

What really takes the cake is yet another dangerous use of bad analogies:
“I would urge customers to consider this like remodeling the kitchen”, (Time Warner spokeswoman) Rockenwagner said.

Of course, a more accurate analogy would be:
“Consider this like sitting quietly in your home, when suddenly a group of contractors comes into your house and, without a word, starts tearing your kitchen down. You’ve never talked to these people, your kitchen was perfectly nice and did not need any remodeling. But it’s ok, quit complaining. You’re getting a new kitchen! It may even be as good as the old one…”

My friend Tom Chappell and I had a short yet interesting conversation on the topic of imitation cheese food.
Tom’s point being that this is a baffling notion. Cheese food is not cheese, at least not to someone who knows about cheese, therefore what constitutes the imitation of an imitation?

I took a look here but unfortunately ended up being even more confused.

My current analysis is that this product’s level of quality must be on par with French singers doing covers of bad American songs.

It now seems that, with their usual level of concern with security, Diebold saved a few pennies by using standard one-key-fits-hundreds-of-minibars-and-file-cabinets keys. Take a look.

I got a letter a month ago from my Worker’s Comp company warning me that one laptop had been stolen and to contact the credit bureaus right away to get a “lock” placed on all future transactions.

What are we supposed to do when we learn that the Census Bureau lost our information, only x 600? Panic?

This one comes to us directly from Something Awful.

I wonder if HS is going to make these mandatory?

When I first heard of Senator Clinton’s “not germane” amendment, I’ll admit, I thought of some n-th “porkish” rider.
Turns out, Senate Leaders were bothered by the prospect of giving some change money to sick rescue workers.

In the meantime, of course, they’re still giving themselves raises…

Scientists in England have gathered definitive evidence that a kind of cancer in dogs is contagious — a peculiar exception to the age-old medical wisdom that you can’t “catch” cancer.

Although no human cancer is known to spread naturally from person to person, the finding of such a disease in dogs — and emerging evidence that a different contagious cancer is spreading among marsupials in Tasmania — is a reminder, scientists said, that under the rules of evolution, DNA will try anything to perpetuate itself.

Read the WP article for more. Question: how come other cancers do not behave the same way? No-one knows…