What Grinds My Gears: I’ve probably made this rant before, but I really really hate cell phone service providers’ help they provide when you lose your phone. In other words, NO HELP. A friend recently lost his cell phone and it irked me since the T-Mobile was giving him the same bullshit they gave me. Once again, I could never see WHY they wouldn’t help us track the phone or help the law enforcement track down the thief? What more easier way is there when a thief is carrying a tracking device!?!?! There should be a list of all reported stolen phones and when someone tries to make a call from that phone, it’ll try to locate the person through triangulation and notify the nearest police department to that area (which is easily doable since 911 works on a cell phone). Another service easily providable is any call made from that phone no matter what # was dialed (besides emergency #s like 911) will be forwarded to 1 particular # which the own can set. I mean in the event where the owner loses the phone and the person who found the phone wants to return it, he’d probably try to call someone on that list and ask if they knew who owned this #. By being able to forward all calls to say your home line, you won’t have to worry about long distance charges and you can be certain if they try to make a call, it’ll be forwarded to you. Another extremely stupid idea is that when you lose your phone is that they recommend that you suspend your account to prevent the thief from putting charges on your bill. However if you’re under contract, suspending your account VIOLATES the contract and you’re forced to pay the cancellation fee. Which really only leaves you instead of suspending the account to immediately purchase a new phone and swap it onto the current plan. I’ve asked before if it was okay to suspend the account, but continue paying for the service until I could get a new phone. They apologize and said they couldn’t do that. OH MY GOSH! I’m willing to pay for a service which I WILL NOT BE USING, but instead they make it harder on the customer and force them to either get a new phone immediate or suspend the service and pay the cancellation fee.
So I was in my manager’s office today talking about commitments and scheduling what I’ll be doing for the next few months. While I was sitting there, I had a pen and notepad jotting down important information. While I was sitting there, I left the pen uncapped and it was resting on my leg. Before I knew it, I had a big ink spot on my pants. It was at least 1″ by 1″ in size. So immediately after the meeting, I went to the restroom and tried to get it off. There was so much ink that it had already seeped through and gotten to my leg. I took paper towel after paper towel and tried to soak all the ink out. You should’ve see the amount of ink i was soaking out. However, as this soaking process continued, it didn’t look like the ink was getting any lighter, but instead the spot was getting bigger. These were some nice pants I recently got too!
Finally, the ink got lighter and lighter, but by now it was the size of 5″ by 7″. I also used soap/detergent to help it. I’ve gotta say, I did quite a good job. The ink is hardly noticable now, and hopefully when I wash it, it’ll be completely removed.
Random Crap:
Got the following conversation from /. I thought the last comment was quite insightful.
“Microsoft set up a clean computer and then infected it.”
So they switched it on and connected it to the net?
You moderators may think that’s funny, but there’s more than a grain of truth in there. The current estimate by the ISC’s DShield [dshield.org] for how long it takes for a random computer to get infected after it’s connected to the Internet is 26 minutes.
Think about that for a moment… and then ask yourself why we actually take this for granted instead of suing Microsoft into oblivion. Would a car company get away with cars breaking down on real-life roads an average 26 minutes after they’re purchased? The thought is totally ridiculous, yet we accept the same from Microsoft. Why?
I’d be amazed if it lasted 30 seconds.
When you get right down to it, cars are shitty in reliability compared to software. Off the top of my head, here are some major problems my car has, at least when looked at from a software standpoint:
1) My car is very venurable to break ins. You can smash a window, jimmy the locks and so on. It’s easy, requries no knowledge to do.
2) My car doesn’t deal with faulty input. If I set it in neutral and floor it, the engine will overheat and seize up. There’s no system to deal with faulty operation like that.
3) My car has problems with user error. If I drive it in to a wall on accident, it’ll stop functioning. Same if a user of another car makes a mistake and hits it.
Worse yet, the manufacturer will not fix ANY of these faults, even for a price. Even worse they KNEW about ALL of them when they sold the car.
Now compare that to software where we expect that it be essentially faultless and when a fault is found, that it be fixed quickly and for free.
Something tells me that if someone put a brick through your window, it would be them that you wanted busted, not the maker of your car. Yet if someone hacks your OS, you are mad at the OS maker, not that hacker.
How Zombies Work (from /.). An interesting piece on zombies and what makes them tick and how the 1st zombie story started.
The Worst Jobs in Science (from /.). The top 10 worst jobs in science are:
- Orangutan-Pee Collector
- NASA Ballerina
- Do-Gooder
- Semen Washer
- Volcanologist
- Nuclear-Weapons Scientist
- Extremophile Excavator
- Kansas Biology Teacher
- Manure Inspector
- Human Lab Rat
Pico Pico (from artemyst) – reminds me of Potato from AIR
Wok The Fuck? – Pho (from artemyst) – A hilarious flash video teaching you how to make the traditional beef noodle soup (pho) with comments from Phuc Dat Bich (a vietnam immigrant). Link updated with the one ohfuee provided.
Video in the News: Bees Battle “Hornets From Hell” (from deadlock) – A interesting video of the fight between hornets and bees. Hornets are very scary looking…
Suicide Mistaken for Halloween Decoration – The apparent suicide of a woman found hanging from a tree went unreported for hours because passers-by thought the body was a Halloween decoration, authorities said.
Man Finds 56-Pound Mushroom in Missouri – The mushroom Ty Whitmore found on a relative’s farm near the northwest Missouri community of Maysville this week tipped the scales at 56 pounds — and that was only part of it. I wanna see the mushroom!
Lenovo ThinkPad X41 Tablet unreview – an interesting review on the sexy ThinkPad X41. *drools* ONLY 2.75lbs!!!
Victoria’s Secret – Fantasy Bra (NOT WORK SAFE) (from artemyst) – $12.5 million for a bra…
Wis. Bridge Begins Raining $20 Bills – It was a clear morning in Green Bay — and then it began raining money. Traffic came to a halt on the congested bridge Wednesday after $20 bills from a money bag that had been accidentally dropped from an armored truck began blowing around and down to the Fox River banks below. … Police Capt. Greg Urban called on people who picked up the money to be “honest and ethical” and turn it over to police. “Technically, it’s the crime of theft, not finders keepers,” he said. I like the finders keepers rule better. ;p
Rome bans goldfish bowls – The newspaper reported that round bowls caused fish to go blind. No one at Rome council was available to confirm this was why they were banned. Many fish experts say round bowls provide insufficient oxygen for fish. Interesting on how round fish bowls will cause them to go blind. Anyone know exactly why?
Foiled! – when someone is paranoid that the government or big brother is watching, tin foiling everything is the way to go!
VeriSign, ICANN settle lawsuit over Site Finder – Remember those stupid Site Finder websites when you accidentally typed in the incorrect url. Apparently all those were owned by Verisign. I can’t believe it was them! But then again, who else would have better data than them in knowing which domains were ping incorrectly more often than not?
You do know that each GSM phone has an IMI number? If you report it stolen they can lock this number world wide and the phone becomes useless to the thief. Sure, you won’t catch him, but at least he won’t have a lot of fun with the phone either.