Wednesday, 3 April 2013

Virtual machines

They're still (re-)discovering the superiority of big systems and virtualization that we had back in the 60's with CP67. Latest incarnation is running VMs on IBM's RISC technology. It's like watching each new generation make "ooh" and "aah" sounds over 60's vintage vehicles at every car show. One can only dream of how much further advanced the whole world might be now if it hadn't abandoned far-superior mainframes and chased after that cheap harlot known as Unix.




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Wednesday, 27 March 2013

The war on freedom

It's just as good as lost. Our masters have lulled us into a groggy state and have clobbered us with the club of oppression. We've reached the end of the line in a long struggle for personal freedom, privacy, liberty, security and human rights. We are now headed in reverse. It's anyone's guess how far back our overlords will take us.

I just read an article in The National Post concerning whether police in Canada have the right to order communications companies to forward text messages sent between their customers to police without a warrant. The  Supreme Court is expected to rule on this question today (March 27, 2013). In this same article, I discovered that police in Ontario have already won the right to peruse a person's cell phone (without a warrant) if it is not password-protected or not locked against unauthorized use.

This has infuriated me. Of all the preposterous reasons one can come up with to usurp our privacy, this is one of the most inane. It's the equivalent of saying that if you forget to lock your back door, police are free to enter and snoop around at will. Just because one doesn't fortify his private property doesn't mean he relinquishes all rights to that property. If you inadvertently leave your car door unlocked, can police legally search it? The argument is ridiculous.

Post article


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Busty women get bigger tips

That may come as no surprise, but someone actually researched it. They did a scientific study as if  there were some other possibility.


There are a whole range of benefits that come with attractiveness, few of which are interesting, but I happened to stumble onto one. The observers of the following study published statistics on just how much attractiveness played a part in their observations. They found that when it came to hitchhiking females, female drivers were unfazed by breast size and offered a lift at a fairly steady rate. However, only 15% of men pulled over for a woman sporting an A-cup, while nearly 25% were enticed enough to give a ride to a woman with a C-cup. The numbers for a B-cup were only marginally higher than those for an A-cup. I guess the implication is that if breasts aren't large enough to cause a man to possibly do permanent damage to his neck from jerking his head to the side to gawk, they have no magic.

Don't complain to me about sexism--I'm only the messenger.

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Tuesday, 26 March 2013

Ripped from the headlines


Mom picking up son charged with drunk driving also charged with drunk driving

INNISFIL, Ont. — Police say a mother who came to pick up her son after he was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving found herself charged with the same offence.
Police say it started when an officer pulled over a speeding vehicle in Innisfil, Ont., just before 1 a.m. Sunday.
Investigators say the driver, a 27-year-old Newmarket, Ont., man, failed a roadside screening test and was taken to a police station north of Toronto, where he was charged with impaired driving.
Police say when his 53-year-old mother came to retrieve him a few hours later, the same officer smelled alcohol and made her take a breathalyzer test.
They say she failed the test and has been charged with impaired driving.
Both have had their vehicles impounded and licences suspended for 90 days. They are due in court next month.
Now, that's a candidate for mom-of-the-year honours. Even though she was drunk as a skunk, when the call came in that her little boy needed her, she set aside the real possibility of great personal injury to herself and others for the convenience of her idiot child.



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