Dako

Just got a call from Point to Point destinations saying I’ve won a weekend at Vegas!!! Sweet! Then a little voice in my head suggested I Google them and this came up:

My wife and I attended a POINT TO POINT DESTINATIONS presentation on April 13th, 2008. After the presentation, we decided not to go with the high pressure sale. The lady who came to deliver our free prize was rude and slammed the free gift voucher to Vegas on out table. Anyhow, we filled in the gift voucher and send it to Odenza and they are wanting USD 328.70 to be made payable to Odenza Marketing Group!?!
This is called bait and switch.
I recommend people don’t waste their time.

*Click*

Holy cow. You see a violent crime in progress. You hide and call 911. An alarm goes off on your phone. The perpetrators are alerted to your presence.

What kind of an idiot would design something like this?

http://www.kvue.com/news/local/stories/110907kvueverizonalarm-bm.1f46e16ee.html

“Al Queda may target the 2008 elections. To keep America safe I’m canceling the elections and staying in power to fight the terrorists.” - President G.W.Bush

This could be the scariest sentence yet from Bush, lets hope it doesn’t come true!

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/11/20/townsend-attack-election/

From the WTF department comes this double WTF:

“The Saudi Justice Ministry Tuesday issued a “clarification” of a court’s handling of a rape case and the increased punishment — including 200 lashes –meted out to the victim.”

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/20/saudi.rape.victim/index.html

Hard to believe …

The Japanese are hunting whales again. The fleet set sail to hunt for Humpbacks. I have no idea why as whale meats has a very strong sour taste … and I know not many people in Japan eat it. I hope their fleet sinks!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071118/ap_on_re_as/japan_hunting_humpbacks

Impeach George W. Bush over the treatment of prisoners in Guant

I just read how the Mozilla CEO, Mitchell Baker, gets $500k in salary, WTF?

So much spam on this site!

Try to trap the cat!

Trap the cat

It turns out that getting a patch merged into the Linux kernel is more about who you know than the quality of your code. Con Kolivas had his well tested and functioning Staircase Deadline Scheduler (SD) passed over for merging into the Linux kernel for the relatively new and still buggy Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS). CFS turns out to be a quick n dirty reimplementation of SD.

The reason for this lunacy is attribution. The current scheduler is attributed to Igno Molnar. He very much doesn’t want to lose this attribution so he quickly implemented a SD knockoff (CFS), and even though its still full of bugs has used his political influence to have it merged into the Linux Kernel instead of SD.

Check out the Kernel Trap article.

I just installed the new Google Desktop for Linux! Unfortunately it crashes. I managed to attach to the process and get a strace of the segfault.

time(NULL) = 1183065194
time(NULL) = 1183065194
fcntl64(6, F_SETLK64, {type=F_RDLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=1073741824, len=1}, 0xbf95cc34) = 0
fcntl64(6, F_SETLK64, {type=F_RDLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=1073741826, len=510}, 0xbf95cc34) = 0
fcntl64(6, F_SETLK64, {type=F_UNLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=1073741824, len=1}, 0xbf95cc34) = 0
access(”/opt/google/desktop/resource/resource_bundle-journal”, F_OK) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
fstat64(6, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=573440, …}) = 0
pread64(6, “BtreeTrindexV02\0\20\0\1\1\0@ \0\0\fB\0\0\0\0″…, 4096, 0) = 4096
pread64(6, “\1\0\0\0\1\r\376\0\0\0\0G\r\376\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0″…, 4096, 4096) = 4096
pread64(6, “\1\t\265\0\35\1\270\0\0\0\0C\3\272\4:\4\217\4\313\4\353″…, 4096, 286720) = 4096
pread64(6, “\t\0\0\0-\4a\0\10]\10\211\10\313\10\352\t(\tI\tx\t\213″…, 4096, 475136) = 4096
fcntl64(6, F_SETLK64, {type=F_UNLCK, whence=SEEK_SET, start=0, len=0}, 0xbf95cd14) = 0
— SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) @ 0 (0) —
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, ~[ILL ABRT BUS FPE SEGV RTMIN RT_1], ~[INT QUIT ILL TRAP BUS FPE KILL USR2 PIPE CHLD STOP WINCH SYS RT_1 RT_2 RT_6 RT_7 RT_11 RT_14 RT_15 RT_17 RT_18 RT_20 RT_21 RT_22 RT_23 RT_24 RT_25 RT_26 RT_27 RT_29 RT_30 RT_31], = 0
rt_sigaction(SIGSEGV, {SIG_DFL}, NULL, = 0
open(”/home/dako/.google/desktop/metrics/crash/27f566f6-81b8-0423-524abddc-081db076.dmp”, O_WRONLY|O_CREAT|O_TRUNC, 0666) = 11
clone(child_stack=0xb7562fe4, flags=CLONE_VM|CLONE_FS|CLONE_FILES|CLONE_UNTRACED) = 11328
waitpid(11328, NULL, __WALL) = 11328
open(”/proc/11295/task”, O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE|O_DIRECTORY) = 12
fstat64(12, {st_mode=S_IFDIR|0555, st_size=0, …}) = 0
fcntl64(12, F_SETFD, FD_CLOEXEC) = 0
getdents(12, /* 5 entries */, 1024) = 92
ptrace(PTRACE_DETACH, 11295, 0, SIG_0) = -1 ESRCH (No such process)
close(12) = 0
ftruncate(11, 25112) = 0
close(11) = 0
write(2, “Process crashed, minidump file i”…, 117) = 117
futex(0×8367e80, FUTEX_WAKE, 1) = 0
— SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) @ 0 (0) —
Process 11295 detached

Argh! After playing behind a very slow threesome (comprised of a father, son, and a friend) for several holes watching a huge gap appear ahead of them I finally worked up the courage to ask them to speed it up a little. The problem was they weren’t hitting balls, they were standing around talking. So I walked over to the son who was supposed to be shooting but instead talking to his friend. “Excuse me, there are several people waiting behind you. I was wondering if you might be able to pick up the pace a little … you know .. play a little faster?”

“Of course not! Golf is a game of patience! You’ll just have to wait!” came the reply from the son.

I tried to explain to the son that golf is not a game of patience, golf is about keep up with the pace of play. I pointed out that the expected play time per hole was on the scorecard and they were taking much longer than the expected time. The son looked very confused.

At this point the father came over and started repeating the “patience” line. That explained where the son got it from. I repeated my points about “pace of play” but it didn’t faze the father either. I then suggested that we pass by them a hole. That didn’t seem to be compatible with the patience bit.

After a bit of back and forth the argument heated up (how could it not) and finally the father insisted that we go ahead of them! Great!

I stepped up to the tee box with the father, son and friend less than 10 feet behind me glaring away. O boy! This is going to be a pressure shot! I took a deep breath and cranked out one of the best drives in my life! Yeahooo! Eat it patience boys!

Some links about pace of play and ettiquette:

http://golf.about.com/od/golfetiquette/ht/paceofplay.htm

http://www.popeofslope.com/paceofplay/index.html

http://www.usga.org/playing/etiquette/etiquette.html

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05188/534184.stm

United States has to be the best country in the world.
Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.

This poor woman eventually died. Too bad the staff isn’t joining her.

Lets get something straight: if you own a vehicle with an automatic transmission, you ain’t shit. Automatics are for people who can’t drive. If you own an automatic … what can I say? Sucks to be you.

Now get off the goddam road!

I got sick.  On someone’s suggestion, I tried Cold F/X.  It didn’t do anything for me.   Apparently Cold F/X is some special extract of ginseng + herbs??  I guess that the placebo effect doesn’t work on me.

After reading posts like this one I wanted to buy some CFLs to replace the incandescent in my house so I could reap the power savings they provide. I headed over to the local hardware store and picked up a box of 8 23W-ers and put them in my basket. Yup, I’m going to save a tree and all that! I glanced over at the ugly old incandescent section and sneered at the minimalistic cardboard sleeves that protected the ancient technology inside. A small tungsten filament, a metal base, and a glass globe filled with argon/nitrogen. No wonder incandescent sucked so much (power) — they were just too simple.

My gaze returned to my basket and started undressing the new light bulbs. Instead of a simple globe there was a long beautiful spiral of glass. A plastic base extended out from the bulb where the metal base screwed into the receptacle with some kind of circuit board inside. Technology baby! And to top it off, these bulbs came in a sturdy looking plastic suitcase. Wait a minute … spiral of glass … circuit board … plastic base … suitcase??! How is this supposed to be better for the environment?

The incandescent light bulb is the pinnacle of simplicity. The product has been refined such that it is nothing more than a glass globe filled with argon/nitrogen, a filament and a metal base for mounting and electrical conductivity. It ships in a plain cardboard sleeve. All these pieces are easily recyclable.

Contrast the CFL which starts with a shaped (usually spiral) glass tube and a metal screw base, similar to an incandescent. There is also a plastic base which houses a circuit board. The circuit board contains several components. Inside the glass tube is mercury vapor (a heavy metal which is a serious contaminant). Due to the mercury in the tube, and the fact that the tube is less robust than a globe, CFLs need stronger, more robust packaging than incandescent, hence the plastic suitcase they come in.

Plastics do not recycle as well as metal, glass and paper. Circuit boards do not recycle well. If a CFL breaks, there is a localized mercury contamination. Due to the mercury, CFLs need special recycling.

I can’t find any data on the relative lifetime costs between CFL and incandescent. Maybe that is because there isn’t any benefit.

Finally there is aesthetics. Incandescent light is a point source light. CFL is diffused light. Incandescent make things look sharp and provide good contrast. Edges of shadows are well defined. CFL makes things look dull, provide poorer contrast, and shadow edges are fuzzy. The light coming from CFL is fugly. It’s not ugly, it’s fugly. There, I’ve said it. CFL light is fugly.

I hope everybody who is pushing CFL on us dies of Mercury poisoning. It would be a fitting end.