A page for randomness

Internet ‘96
In 1996, the Internet Archive began archiving the web for a service called the Wayback Machine. They’ve now archived 55 billion web pages. That’s enough web pages that if you were to print them all out using your roommate’s printer while he was at class and tape them end-to-end, you could reach the moon and back 28 trillion times.

I decided to peruse the Wayback Machine’s earliest archives to see what the internet looked like in 1996, when I was 14 and evidently had much less free time than I do now. Much to my chagrin, few websites from these early years have been successfully archived, and many of the best preserved ones were created by fast food and soft drink corporations because they were some of the earliest adapters of the internet. They viewed the medium as a chance for inexpensive advertising and invested dozens upon dozens of dollars into it. The results are tremendously humiliating.

In their defense, the technology was different in 1996. Although Internet Explorer 3.0 could run Java applets and inline media, Netscape Navigator could not, and in any case nobody felt comfortable doing anything more complicated than making a few animated GIFs. Additionally, very few web designers had even the most rudimentary of aesthetic sensibilities, and nearly half of them were clinically retarded. The internet in 1996 looks like it had been created in its entirety by a panel of 13-year-olds with Geocities accounts who had about half an hour to spare each night before bedtime.

To prove my case, I took some screenshots after cordially adjusting my monitor resolution to 1024*768. I tried 1996’s recommended 800*600, but at that resolution a single word took up my entire field of vision. If you would like to visit these archived websites yourself, please click on the screenshots. In some cases you can then navigate parts of the website exactly as one would have in 1996, but do not do this. There is nothing interesting to find and you would do well to avoid prolonged exposure to this heinous baby of an internet. In fact, I can’t in good conscience even recommend you read this article.

Christ Kills Two, Injures Seven In Abortion-Clinic Attack | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
Jesus Christ, son of God and noted pro-life activist, killed two and critically wounded seven others when He opened fire in the waiting room of a Huntsville abortion clinic Tuesday.

Security guards at the Women’s Medical Clinic of Huntsville were able to disarm the Messiah before He could reload His weapon, a secondhand Glock 9mm pistol that authorities said He purchased legally at a Jackson, MS, sporting-goods store. “Abortion is a sin,” said Christ as He was led away in handcuffs. “It is an abomination in the eyes of Me.” Witnesses said the attack, which took the lives of Dr. Nelson Woodring, 51, and clinic nurse Danielle Costa, 29, came from “out of nowhere.”"He walked up to the admissions desk and asked if He could see Dr. Woodring,” receptionist Iris Reid said. “The next thing I knew, He was shouting Biblical verses and opening fire on everything moving.”

“It was horrible,” said injured clinic nurse Jessica Combs, recovering at a local hospital with bullet wounds to the leg and abdomen. “He put his hands over Dr. Woodring’s head and told him He forgave him for his sins, and then He shot him right in the face.” Huntsville police officials are not certain how the Messiah was able to bypass clinic guards and proceed undetected past security cameras and into the clinic waiting room, where He produced the gun from its hiding place in the folds of His robe. Federal investigators are similarly baffled, saying that the heavily armed Christ had moved in “mysterious ways.”

Speaking to reporters from His holding cell, Christ, 33, said He had “no regrets” about what He had done.

“As I said in John 16:21, every life is precious,” Christ said. “This means every life, not just those who have already been born. My father, the Lord, feels the same way I do. In Jeremiah 1:5, He said unto the prophet Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart.’ The unborn fetus is a sacred, living creation of my Father in Heaven and should be treated as such.”

Added Christ: “What if the Virgin Mary had decided to abort me? Certainly she must have been tempted to do so. After all, it wasn’t even her decision to conceive me in the first place. But in the end, she made the right decision, bringing her pregnancy to term and giving the world a Savior. Blessed is she among women.” According to legal experts, if convicted, Christ could face the death penalty.

Russian rocket destroys 18 satellites | The Register
A Russian rocket carrying 18 satellites crashed on launch in Kazakhstan late Wednesday.

Mission contollers reported the rocket’s engines shut down 86 seconds into the flight. The Russian-built Dnepr vehicle - a converted ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) - then piled into the ground 25km away. There were no injuries.

All of the 18 satellites on board were destroyed in the crash. International customers included Italy and the US, and Belarus’ first foray into space since the break up of the Soviet Union. Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko had travelled to the Kazakh steppes to witness the launch, Reuters reports.

Igor Panarin, spokesman for the Russian space agency Roskosmos said: “A special emergency team has been formed to probe into the causes of the failed launch,” Itar-Tass news agency reports.

“According to preliminary findings, problems in the first stage of the booster rocket in the 74th second of the flight was the main reason,” he added.

Last October, a Russian launch plunged the European Space Agency’s €135m Cryosat climate project into the Arctic Sea

Seems you didn’t need that Slim Jim or National Enquirer after all | NetworkWorld.com Community
The law of unintended consequences is taking a chomp out of grocery chain profits as more stores transition from human clerks to self-service checkout technology, thus reducing the time shoppers spend in line and under the temptation of impulse items.

That’s the upshot of research being released tomorrow by IHL Consulting Group in Franklin, Tenn., which provides market analysis to the retail industry and its IT vendors. According to IHL, consumers report buying junk food, supermarket tabloids and the like 45% less frequently while scanning their own purchases than when checking out the old-fashioned way.

“Retailers are being forced to rethink their merchandising at the front end as they deploy self-checkout systems,” says IHL President Greg Buzek in a press release. “The impulse displays have not caught up to this new technology. By definition these are impulse items – thus they must engage the senses. Retailers such as Meijer and Kroger have adjusted by offering items such as rotisserie chickens and fresh baked breads to rely more on the sense of smell to drive sales rather than simply visuals when trapped in a staffed lane.”

The scandal rags may have to use bigger headline type or adjust their ratios of celebrity to alien-abduction news (that’s not in the report; just my free advice).

Shoppers logged $111 billion worth of self-checkout purchases last year, an increase of 35 percent over 2004, according to IHL. Fewer than a fifth of consumers report using self-checkout every time it’s available, while 29 percent say they do so only when the staffed lines look daunting.

The biggest gripe? That’s predictable: 55% say it’s when something goes screwy and they have to wait for a human being to come over and fix it.

One thing everyone should be able to agree on is that self-checkout is only going to become more commonplace. Buzek saw the adoption of this technology expanding two years ago when we spoke just after IBM bought self-checkout vendor Productivity Solutions.

“That’s going to be a big jump to this market because IBM is the [point-of-sale] vendor for about 75% of the top 20 front-lane checkout retailers,” Buzek told me at that time. “Now that they own the self-checkout platform, they’re going to be able to integrate stuff in a much more cost-effective way, thus bringing down the cost and increasing the payback” for retailers.

Selling fewer candy bars isn’t likely to upset the whole apple cart.

Ten Clues You Don’t Want To Bid - eBay - eBay Mistakes to Avoid
As you become familiar with eBay you’ll soon get a feel for which auction listings are shady and should be avoided, almost a sixth sense that many longtime eBayers develop.

Naturally, you should always begin by checking a seller’s feedback profile before bidding. Until you develop that additional sixth sense, however, here are ten signs beyond mere bad feedback that should be seen as red flags when you’re considering a bid.

1. Very low Buy It Now price. Especially when the item is a very desirable computing or consumer electronics item, a Buy It Now price for a brand new item that is significantly below fair market value should set off alarms. Even on eBay, there is no way to get a brand new $5,000 plasma TV for $1,800.

2. Items that don’t exist. Don’t bid on any auction for a big-name manufactured item that doesn’t exist in any store, because in all likelihood it doesn’t exist in the seller’s inventory, either, or if it does, it’s illegal.
This includes items like DVDs of films that aren’t out on DVD yet or things like “never relased” computer systems with processors many times faster than those for sale from major manufacturers.

3. Unorthodox or untraceable payment methods. PayPal is the gold standard for online payments at eBay, and when PayPal isn’t available, money orders do just fine. Steer very clear of sellers who request untraceable wire transfers or bank account information for “e-checks.”

4. “Untested” items from sellers that only seem to sell “untested” items. More often than not in such cases, “untested” is just another way of saying “broke.” Beware that even if this seller is an honest liquidator who really doesn’t know if it works, you still only have a 50/50 chance of receiving a working item.

5. “Almost the real thing” items. Watch item descriptions for rip-off games like “SUIT not BY ARMANI, EXQUISITE!” and “GENUINE INK like EPSON BRAND!” and check descriptions closely for phrases like “GENUINE COMPATIBLE MANUFACTURER’S PART.” Whether the word is “not,” “like,” or “compatible,” what it really means is “FAKE.”

6. Astronomical shipping. Too often new buyers are taken in by the $0.01 Star Wars DVD… only to find that shipping will be charged at $99.99. Even if you get the DVD, you’ve overpaid by a serious amount, and let’s face it, do you really want to take a chance doing business with a seller like this at all?

7. “Contact me before you bid” listings. When you do contact sellers that put this key phrase in their description, they’ll tell you that you can buy direct from them, bypassing eBay. Then they’ll take your money and disappear, and eBay won’t have any record of the transaction, so you won’t even be able to leave negative feedback.

8. Out-of-place items. Think twice if a seller you’ve bought vegetable seeds from in the past has suddenly transitioned to selling brand new high-end camcorders. This if often a sign that the seller account has been compromised or hacked by someone who will take your money and deliver nothing at all.

9. Contradictory information in listing. Did that 250 gigabyte hard drive become an 80 gigabyte hard drive after you clicked on the item to see its listing, or did the 36 inch color TV become a 20 inch set lower down the page? Don’t automatically assume you’ll get the better of the deal, because most of the time you won’t.

10. Seller-absent listing. When you see a listing that seems completely generic, as though a features list were copied straight from a book and the photo was taken straight from the box, and there’s no additional information to let you know anything about the seller, think twice before you bid. This often indicates that there is no actual item for sale, and that this seller actually did copy the description from a book and the photo from another website, and is now trying to sell an item that he or she doesn’t actually have.

Though it’s always tempting to want to see eBay as an entirely safe place for fun trading and great deals, if you keep an eye out you’ll see a surprising number of listings that fall under these criteria. Just be careful to avoid them as you evaluate potential buys and you’ll go a long way toward making your eBay experience a better one.

Daily Show: Daily Show Explains Net Neutrality

“The point is that with net neutrality all internet packets - whether they come from a big company or a single citizen - are treated in the exact same way.”

“So what’s the debate? That actually seems quite fair.”

“Yes, almost too fair. It’s as if the richer companies get no advantage at all.”

An excellent skewering of Net Neutrality by John Hodgson Hodgman and The Daily Show. We wanted to pull this man’s spinal column out of his urethra when he did those smug, execrable Mac vs. PC ads, but he’s redeemed himself in our eyes now.

Things Not Generally Known
Hmmm. Reading this now I can see I must have been having a Bad Hair Day at the time Some of these points are, it has to be said, rather fatuous. You certainly should not attach equal importance to everything you read here. There were a couple of topics that I wanted to discuss seriously, 1 and 9, and I wondered if I could think up enough other topics to make a ‘list’. You’ll see I was scraping the barrel with some of them!

But it is interesting, is it not, that societies count things differently from time to time? Why should we have four tastes and then five; nine colours in the rainbow and then seven (or six)? And on body senses, are there five, or six, or more?. New Scientist magazine ran an article a couple of years ago, which detailed 21 distinct body senses. And several myths and counter-myths about lightning rods are commonly heard, although I still manage to forget the ‘real’ answer myself, despite having it pointed out to me several times over the years.

OK… I’ll shuffle these topics around into some sort of order, with the bar-room arguments and fatuous comments at the bottom.

* 1 Spacecraft heat up on re-entry because of the friction of the atmosphere
* 9 Foucault’s Pendulum appears to rotate because the earth rotates underneath it

* 4 There are five body senses
* 5 There are four tastes
* 8 There are seven colours in the rainbow

* 2 Everest is the highest mountain in the world
* 3 Pressure cookers force steam into the food, cooking it quicker
* 6 A lightning conductor works by safely conducting the lightning to ground
* 7 Things expand as they get hotter

Induction Heating
Induction cookers, furnaces, stoves and all that jazz are now widely used. You put your metal saucepan on top of an innocent looking glass plate and it magically heats your food with no flame and almost no waste heat.

They are able to heat certain metals up to their melting points, and that is very hot, obviously…

How they work? Well…

Brain Gym !
Exercise of the brain is as important as exercise of the muscles. As we grow older, it’s important that we keep mentally alert. The saying: “If you don’t use it, you will lose it” also applies to the brain.

Below is a very private way to gage your loss or non-loss of intelligence. So take the following test presented here and determine if you are losing it or are still a MENSA candidate. OK, relax, clear your mind and . . . begin.

1. What do you put in a toaster?

The answer is bread. If you said “toast”, then give up now and go do something else. Try not to hurt yourself. If you said, “bread”, go to question 2.

2. Say “silk” five times. Now spell “silk”. What do cows drink?

Answer: Cows drink water. If you said “milk”, please do not attempt the next question. Your brain is obviously overstressed and may even overheat. It may be that you need to content yourself with reading something more appropriate such as “Children’s World”. If you said, “water” then proceed to question three.

3. If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a greenhouse made from?

Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass. If you said “green bricks”, what the heck are you still doing here reading these questions? If you said “glass”, then go on to question four.

4. Twenty years ago, a plane is flying at 20,000 feet over Germany. If you will recall, Germany at the time was politically divided into West Germany and East Germany. Anyway, during the flight, TWO of the engines fail. The pilot, realizing that the last remaining engine is also failing, decides on a crash landing procedure. Unfortunately the engine fails before he has time and the plane crashes smack in the middle of “no man’s land” between East Germany and West Germany. Where would you bury the survivors - East Germany or West Germany or in “no man’s land”?

Answer: You don’t, of course, bury survivors. If you said ANYTHING else, you are a real dunce and you must NEVER try to rescue anyone from a plane crash. Your efforts would not be appreciated. If you said, “Don’t bury the survivors” then proceed to the next question.

5. If the hour hand on a clock moves 1/60th of a degree every minute then how many degrees will the hour hand move in one hour?

Answer: One degree. If you said “360 degrees” or anything other than “one degree”, you are to be congratulated on getting this far, but you are obviously out of your league. Turn your pencil in and exit the room. Everyone else proceed to the final question.

6. Without using a calculator - You are driving a bus from London to Milford Haven in Wales. In London, 17 people get on the bus. In Reading, six people get off the bus and nine people get on. In Swindon, two people get off and four get on. In Cardiff, 11 people get off and 16 people get on. In Swansea, three people get off and five people get on. In Carmathen, six people get off and three get on. You then arrive at Milford Haven. What was the name of the bus driver?

Answer: Oh, for heaven sake! It was YOU, Read the first line!!!

Howstuffworks “How Power Grids Work”
Electrical power is a little bit like the air you breathe: You don’t really think about it until it is missing. Power is just “there,” meeting your every need, constantly. It is only during a power failure, when you walk into a dark room and instinctively hit the useless light switch, that you realize how important power is in your daily life. You use it for heating, cooling, cooking, refrigeration, light, sound, computation, entertainment… Without it, life can get somewhat cumbersome.

Power travels from the power plant to your house through an amazing system called the power distribution grid.

Improve MPG: The Factors Affecting Fuel Efficiency - Article - OmniNerd
I own a 2006 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. This vehicle is actually an upgrade from my previous 2004 Jeep Wrangler Sport that did not have any air conditioning or cruise control.1 After spending a year in the desert heat of Iraq, I vowed to myself that if it were in my control, then never again would I go without air conditioning.2 So, I figured if I was going to burn gas up in my 4×4, I may as well burn it up a little more comfortably.

Unlimited2006

However, there is nothing comfortable about rising gas prices. All jokes aside about Jeep Wranglers having the aerodynamics of a rolling post office box or a brick on wheels, I decided to figure out the most fuel efficient way to drive my car to save a little money. Granted, I could have traded in my old Wrangler for a more fuel efficient SUV like the Liberty CRD or the new hybrids, but none of those vehicles compare to the Wrangler when it comes to off-road performance. So, like it or not, I needed to figure out some new driving habits.

For increasing fuel efficiency, there are three basic courses of action. First, driving style affects fuel efficiency. Many people will cite “rules of thumb,” but most cannot back these claims up with evidence. To learn the truth about how driving style impacts fuel efficiency, I conducted road tests with a computer hooked into my engine’s OBDII interface. The second way to improve fuel efficiency is to modify the way an engine performs. Modifications can take many forms, so I browsed the Internet to find the most common and analyzed the fact and fiction behind their influence on fuel economy. Lastly, the very fuel that goes into an engine plays a role in fuel efficiency. With all the talk of alternative fuels these days, I wanted to know what they are, whether they work in my engine and how they compare to regular gasoline. Ultimately, I take all the cards relating to fuel efficiency and lay them on the table for scrutiny.

SYDNEY, Australia (Reuters) ­­ Oil surged back toward record highs above
$78 on Monday after a weekend of worsening conflict between Israel and
Hezbollah guerrillas, leaving traders nervous the violence could escalate and
spread across the oil­producing Middle East.

How-to Download Videos from Websites Like Google Video, YouTube, MySpace, and Others | Gil’s Method
This simple tutorial will show you how to download videos from the internet (MySpace, YouTube, Google Video, etc) and save them to your computer. The reason you have to go through this process to download the videos is due to the fact that content providers (YouTube, Google Video, and others) use special formats that do not allow playback in traditional media players (i.e. Windows Media Player, Itunes, and others); as such this method allows you to save the downloaded video files to a universal .avi file that you can play back on any media player. As always comments/suggestions are welcome.

Jim Hoagland - Bush’s Nuclear Energy - washingtonpost.com
If presidential willpower could end eras, the generation-old fear of nuclear energy born in the catastrophes of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl would be headed for history’s ash heap. The one thing that George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin firmly agreed on in St. Petersburg yesterday was the need for a new nuclear world order.

New nuclear plants will help to reduce global warming, prevent energy shortages and — most urgently — curb atomic arsenals from being covertly acquired by rogue countries. That is the vision the American and Russian presidents have developed and which they hinted at in a joint statement after their bilateral summit.

Humor of getting married
#CASE 1
Getting married is like going to a restaurant with friends. You order what you want, then when you see what the other fellow has, you wish you had ordered that.

#CASE 2
At the cocktail party, one woman said to another, “Aren’t you wearing your wedding ring on the wrong finger??” The other replied, “Yes, I am. I married the wrong man.”

#CASE 3
Before a man is married, he is incomplete. Then when he is married, he is finished.

#CASE 4
Marriage is an institution in which a man losses his bachelor’s degree and the woman gets her master’s status.

#CASE 5
A little boy asked his father, “Daddy, how much does it cost to get
married??” And the father replied, “I don’t know son, I’m still paying for it.”

#CASE 6
Young son : “Is it true, Dad, I heard that in some parts of Africa, a man doesn’t know his wife until he marries her?”
Dad : “That happens in most countries son.”

#CASE 7
Then there was a man who said, “I never knew what real happiness was until I got married, and then it was too late.”

#CASE 8
A happy marriage is a matter of give and take; the husband gives and the wife takes

#CASE 9
When a newly married man looks happy, we know why. But when a ten-year married man looks happy, we wonder why. Affair?

#CASE 10
Married life is very frustrating. In the first year of marriage, the man speaks and the woman listens. In the second year, the woman speaks and the man listens. In the third year, they both speak and the neighbors listen.

#CASE 11
After a quarrel, a wife said to her husband, “You know, I was a fool when I married you.” And the Husband replied, “Yes, dear, but I was in love and didn’t notice it.”

#CASE 12
A man inserted an ‘ad’ in the classified : “Wife wanted”. The next day, he received hundreds letters. They all said the same thing “You can have mine.”

#CASE 13
When a man opens the door of his car for his wife, you can be sure of one thing: either the car is new or his wife is new.

Wired 14.07: START
To decode da Vinci, you need a firm grasp of art. To learn from Archimedes, you need to get your hands on something a bit more sophisticated. Like a synchrotron that accelerates electrons to nearly the speed of light to produce x-rays. At least, that’s what scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center are using to reveal works by the ancient Greek mathematician that are hidden in 1,000-year-old parchment.

MySpace Kills Internet Tube Song
After hearing Sen. Ted Stevens’ now infamous description of the internet as a “series of tubes,” Andrew Raff sang the senator’s words over a folksy ditty and anonymously posted it to MySpace.com, where about 2,500 people listened to the tune, thanks to a link from one of the net’s top blogs.

On Tuesday, MySpace canceled the TedStevensFanClub account, telling Raff that the social-networking site, now owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., had received a “credible complaint of your violation of the MySpace Terms of Services.”

White House trims ‘06 deficit forecast to $296 bln - MarketWatch
A surge in tax receipts will trim the size of the federal deficit in the current year, the White House said Tuesday — a development that President Bush says vindicates his fiscal policies and bolsters the case for making his first-term tax cuts permanent.
“Some in Washington said we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting deficits. Today’s numbers show that was a false choice,” Bush said in a speech.
The White House Office of Management and Budget, in its mid-year budget review, said the federal deficit would likely to fall to $296 billion, or 2.3% of gross domestic product, in fiscal 2006. That’s a modest improvement from the $318 billion shortfall seen in fiscal 2005.
It’s a more dramatic drop from the White House’s initial February estimate of a $423 billion deficit, which would have been a record in dollar terms. Critics at the time decried the projection as a highball figure designed to ensure that the actual budget gap would look better by comparison.
OMB Director Rob Portman denied that the White House had fudged the earlier figure. The White House, in its February forecast and in Tuesday’s report, relies on figures supplied by the Treasury Department’s Office of Tax Analysis, he said.

The Story of Mike the Headless Chicken
September 10th, 1945 finds a strapping (but tender) five and a half month old Wyandotte rooster pecking through the dust of Fruita, Colorado. The unsuspecting bird had never looked so delicious as he did that, now famous, day. Clara Olsen was planning on featuring the plump chicken in the evening meal. Husband Lloyd Olsen was sent out, on a very routine mission, to prepare the designated fryer for the pan. Nothing about this task turned out to be routine.

Beginner’s Guide to SSI (server side includes)

Beginner’s Guide to SSI (server side includes)

Don’t worry, SSI doesn’t require a rocket-science degree to understand and use. It is, however, a highly useful feature that lets you do incredibly time saving tasks such as include the contents of an external file across multiple pages on your site, or access and display server specific information such as the current server time, visitor’s IP address, etc. In this tutorial I’ll introduce new comers to the wonderful world of SSI! SSI is short for Server Side Includes, by the way.
Does my server support SSI?

The first thing that needs to be settled is whether your server supports SSI and have it enabled. SSI is a Linux/Apache specific feature, so if you’re on a Windows server for example, you’ll need to look for the Windows equivalent of SSI (sorry, not a Window’s guy). To test if your server supports SSI then, you can run a simple test, by inserting the below code inside a webpage, and saving the page with a .shtml extension (the most common extension configured to parse SSI by default):

test.shtml source:

<!–#echo var=”DATE_LOCAL” –>

When you run test.shtml in your browser, you should see the current date plus time of your server displayed:

Friday, 11-Jan-2008 23:15:06 EST

If not, you can either ask your web host about SSI support for your account, or try and manually enable SSI, by reading “Enabling SSI on my server.”

With that said, lets explore some nifty abilities of SSI now.

The Drake Equation
Estimate the possible number of communicating civilizations within our galaxy

google20848jm.jpg (JPEG Image, 557×450 pixels)

Opposing Digital Rights Mismanagement - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)
In 1989, in a very different world, I wrote the first version of the GNU General Public License, a license that gives computer users freedom. The GNU GPL, of all the free software licenses, is the one that most fully embodies the values and aims of the free software movement, by ensuring the four fundamental freedoms for every user. These are freedoms to 0) run the program as you wish; 1) study the source code and change it to do what you wish; 2) make and distribute copies, when you wish; 3) and distribute modified versions, when you wish.

Any license that grants these freedoms is a free software license. The GNU GPL goes further: it protects these freedoms for all users of all versions of the program by forbidding middlemen from stripping them off. Most components of the GNU/Linux operating system, including the Linux component that was made free software in 1992, are licensed under GPL version 2, released in 1991. Now, with legal advice from Professor Eben Moglen, I am designing version 3 of the GNU GPL.

The Laws of Computing
The Laws of Computing….. First law - The Computer is always right. Lemma one - Programmers are occasionally right. Second law - The amount of time needed to debug a program is inversely proprotional to the time allotted for debugging. Corollary - Programs never work the first time unless there is virtually unlimited time to complete the program. Third law - Any programmer can find 90% of his bugs simply by explaining his program to an uninterested observer. Corollary - The uninterested observer may be sleeping, dead, nonhuman, or, in extreme cases, nonexistant. Fourth law - The most difficult or nearly impossible programming problems appear obvious or extremely simple to anyone with little or no knowledge of programming. Corollary - Those problems most easily solved by a programmer appear to be overwhelmingly complicated and marvelous to the layman. Fifth law - Computers are never more intelligent than their programmers. Corollary - Most computers are incredibly stupid. Sixth law - The rarest bugs in any operating system or major programming effort will always show up in a demonstration of its use to prospective users or customers. Corollary - These bugs usually cannot be reproduced and therfore cannot be located. Lemma one - Customers will never purchase programs which appear to be riddled with bugs as verified by demonstration. Paradox - Most programs are unfit for sale.

Superman (1978 film) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Superman (also known as Superman: The Movie) is a 1978 superhero film based on the fictional DC Comics character Superman created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. Richard Donner directed the film, which stars Christopher Reeve as Superman, as well as Gene Hackman, Margot Kidder, Marlon Brando (who was given top-billed credit), Ned Beatty, Valerie Perrine, Glenn Ford and Jackie Cooper. The film depicts the origin story of the character from being infant Kal-El of Krypton, to his teenage days in Smallville. In addition he takes up the secret identity of mild mannered reporter Clark Kent in Metropolis, and falling in love with Lois Lane. To make conflicts even more is the villainous Lex Luthor, who sets a dire plot that will ultimately face consequences for Superman

The film was initially conceived as far back as 1973 by Alexander Salkind, his son Ilya and fellow partner Pierre Spengler. The project went through various directors (most notably Guy Hamilton) and scripts by Mario Puzo, David Newman with wife Leslie, and Robert Benton before given the directorial job to Richard Donner, who brought in Tom Mankiewicz for further rewrite work. Locations during the shoot included Shepperton Studios, Canada, New York City and New Mexico. Due to the film’s excessive budget, tensions rose between Donner and the Salkinds, to which it was decided to finish filming Superman while Superman II was already 80% finished. This would eventually give birth to Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut.

Superman was released to positive reviews and a box office success. Some critics found analogies similar to Jesus, which Mankiewicz claims were set purposely as he himself finds the character to be a symbol of Christ. It was this film that sparked and inspired the birth of modern comic book movies with its use of high-budget special effects in comparison to the low-budget films, serials and TV series’ that had been produced before.

Neowin.net - Burn DVDs slowly, warns Microsoft
Microsoft is advising Vista beta testers to burn their downloaded ISOs as slowly as 1X or 2X to avoid corrupted media. It says that its failure telemetry data is showing that three quarters of failed Vista installations are due to dodgy DVD-Rs. Of course, the really interesting thing here is not that Vista installations are failing due to recording problems, but that for the first time, we have some widescale data on the problem of lack of optical media reliability.