Category Archives: Stupidity

Doesn’t anyone test anything anymore?

I snapped a picture of my Pac Man t-shirt using my Motorola MPx220 cell phone in its “self portrait” mode: where the viewfinder is echoed onto the screen that is on the outside of the flip phone. Thinking about it for a second, I had a moment’s inspiration and took another picture.

Reversed photos

This error apparently only occurs in the mode where you use the phone when closed, but for God’s sake man. Doesn’t anyone test these things at all?

Addendum: Oh, the phone doesn’t seem to have any way to flip the image left and right either.

Man Charged With Stealing Wi-Fi Signal

This story of a Florida man arrested for using an open WiFi router has been making the rounds, and I’ve been holding off on posting about it because on the face of it, it seems completely absurd.

And yet, if I were charged with a third-degree felony, I might take it more seriously.

Articles like this one go on and on about how unsecured wireless networks can be used by all sorts of criminals and pedophiles. All of that is probably true, but they can also be used by people like you and me to check our email, get our latest baseball scores, or check our blogs for new comments. Because WiFi is so useful, many people set up access points without passwords as a courtesy: to build a better wireless community. On such systems, nobody needs authorization: they just use DHCP to request a new IP and the gateway information , et voila!

This guy was using a wifi connection from the street. As far as anyone can tell, he wasn’t sending email threats, or engaging in trafficking of kiddy porn, or doing anything at all. He was just using a WiFi connection that someone (either through carelessness or largess) left open and accessible to passers by. If anyone is guilty of anything, it would probably be the homeowner who is breaking his customer usage agreement by providing passers by with free internet.

Honestly, just how stupid have we become? Don’t our police have anything better to do? If this guy really objected to having a guy use his WiFi, why not just add a password? The guy would almost certainly take it as a hint that he shouldn’t use the connection and would move on.

Pathetic.

No Intelligence in Intelligent Design

Periodically Slashdot runs a story to punch the creation versus evolution button. I must admit, it’s one of my hot button topics. I’d could rant substantially about it, but instead I’ll just ask that you read the comments and see how many of its proponents seem to be unable to spell the word “intelligent”.

A brief list:

  • intelegant
  • intellegent
  • integgegant

They also can’t seem to spell the word “atheist”, or apply it correctly.

I don’t want to join any club that would have me as a member…

I’ve supported the notion that I think that the world is a much better place when people can communicate with one another. It’s one of the reasons that I blog.

Sometimes, this is a hard philosophy to live with. Creationist knuckledragger Ken Ham has apparently figured out how to use WordPress and podcast.

Sigh.

I have to console myself with the notion that some will at least listen to him and realize what a collosal dumbass he is.

Poison Your Kids with Fast Food and Stupidity!

Dinosaur PlacematsApparently a fast food chain in Tennessee has decided to use material from Kent Hovind (aka Doctor Dino) to adorn the placemats they hand out to kids in an attempt to “educate” them about dinosaurs. It’s a pity really, because Dr. Dino doesn’t actually know anything about dinosaurs. Or rather, virtually everything he does know would seem to be wrong. Try checking out the front the front and the back.

Scientist’s have theorized that the T-rex could probably breathe fire.

If you could get near him, you could very easily pull off the arm of the T-Rex, He would die because he would bleed to death.

I think the stupidity is significantly enhanced by the ransom-note typography as well.

The Long Slow Ride To Cancellation

Lisa has some comments for the writers on CSI, so I thought I’d pile on with a couple of my own:

  • The original CSI still has the best characters of any of the shows, but they are slipping. Early episodes actually presented them as secondary plot elements, not merely props to advance the plotline. Get back to character development to serve as a stable backdrop. Oh, and CSI: Miami and CSI: NY? Try getting some characters.
  • Mobsters? Boring. Hookers in trouble? Boring. Jealous spouse? Boring. Work on some better angles. The stories of humanity are incredibly varied. Find some of them.
  • Stop using technology as magic. There aren’t magical databases of every shoe ever made. You can’t pull images of license plates from a single bad frame of video taken a quarter of a mile away.
  • Realize that mostly CSI is a show for nerds. Appeal to the nerd sensibility and be smart first, and titilating second.

Tale of our times…

New instant messaging phone for your son Free
Ability to have him ignore your calls when you call him Free
Ability for him to call you and remind you that he needs some money Free
What happens when he starts talking to a new girl and spends ten 24 hour days on the phone $560 in overage charges

For when you absolutely need to let your son yap about nothing for $25/hour: T-Mobile.

Science & Technology at Scientific American.com: Okay, We Give Up

I’ll admit it: I love to argue about evolution and creationism. Actually, it’s not so much an argument, as no real rational argument in favor of creationism can be made. It’s really more of a desire to hitch creationism to the bumper of my car, and drag it through the mud. Call it a personal failing if you like.

This explains why I find Scientific American’s April editorial amusing; perhaps more amusing than any of you will find it.

In retrospect, this mag-azine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

Heh. Sarcasm. Have to love it.

News Flash: Listeners Hate Commercials

Courtesy of I Love Radio.org, read this remarkable study: News Flash: Listeners Hate Commercials. How surprising, that people resent being pummelled by twenty or more minutes of advertising every hour.

Whenever I listen to real radio, it isn’t boredom that kills me (I’m only wounded by boredom) but just the irritation of having any kind of coherent thought broken up by worries about taxes, my deodorant, or whether my windows need replacing. Not to mention that any real news that might actually come accross the airwaves does so in the form of predigested pablum, neither appetizing nor nourishing.

It’s a step in the right direction, but you guys don’t just have to remove the interruptions: you have to improve the meal.

We offer free next day shipping!

I just completed ordering a product from a website which claimed “free next day delivery!”. “Golly”, I think to myself. “It will be nice to have this gadget sooner rather than later.” I eagerly click, and imagine the box being here on Friday.

Just got the confirmation email. The item (mind you, not built to order or anything) is scheduled to ship on Feb 9, and should be delivered on Feb 10. Next Thursday. Sigh.

I imagine that I could use a similar tactic to write my own operating system in a single day. Expect delivery sometime in 2030.

Addendum: Allright, I’m too grumpy. Checking their status again reveals that they have shipped it today! Woohoo! Tomorrow!

MSNBC – Judge nixes evolution textbook stickers

MSNBC – Judge nixes evolution textbook stickers

A federal judge Thursday ordered a suburban Atlanta school system to remove stickers from its high school biology textbooks that call evolution “a theory, not a fact,” saying the disclaimers are an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

The complete decision is here. The Judge claimed that the stickers failed the second and third parts of the so-called “Lemon Test”: in particular that’s primary purpose was to advance religion and that it created excessive entanglements between government and religion. Worth reading.

If you need some more stickers, print ’em up for yourself.