Stupid Ways to Die Throughout the Ages

There are many ways to die. Not many of them are noble, but if you're famous or die in an especially ignobly way, then that's just kind of embarrassing. But don't worry about it, if you ever make this list you'll be dead, so you won't care.

DRM Sucks

Requirements Definition Can Be Fun

An un-named friend at an un-named company recently wrote this amusing little snippet, describing the challenge of defining & testing an anti-virus solution for a customer that doesn't know what they really want:

So I'll have the facts on paper for you by Monday, but in the meantime, we've been given a task akin to "What kind of bicycle would you recommend?" without getting to ask simple questions like: "Are you going to be racing?", "Will you be going off-road?", and "Do you have a fat ass?"

I thought it was funny. I'm sure everybody has had a customer like this...

Clueless Part III: Windows Vista

One of the podcast that I listen to regularly, Security Now, ran an analysis of the security & licencing requirement of Windows Vista. One security researcher called the Vista Content Protection specification called it "the longest suicide note in history". Highlights include checking itself every 30 milliseconds, to make sure nobody has put a voltmeter on the motherboard in order to crack the high-definition content. Apparently it would make your computer behave like an "un-medicated paranoid", flushing & restarting any & all major sub-systems unpredictably.

Also, not content with just pissing the owners off, peripheral manufacturers (like your sound or video cards) would have to be licenced, provide the same level of protection, and could have their licencing yanked at any time if their security isn't good enough -- whatever "good enough" means. This would also increase their cost & reduce their reliability & power.

This is whether you want to use your computer as a high-definition media platform, which I don't.

Go ahead and listen to the podcast. They explain it in a way that everybody can understand and get something out of it.

I think my next machine is going to be a Mac laptop.

Clueless Part II: Clueless Judge Plus Lying Expert Witness

So just in case you thought clueless judges could never affect you, consider the case of a substitute teacher who is facing 40 years in jail because of the combined efforts of a negligent school administration, clueless investigator, lying and/or stupid "expert" witness, and clueless judge.

Clueless Part I: Best Headline Ever

“Judge Tries to Unring Bell Hanging Around Neck of Horse Already Out of Barn Being Carried on Ship That Has Sailed.”

Best headline ever, associated with this court case associated in part having to do with the side effects of psychotic drugs, and a judge who thinks that somehow he controls the intertube web thingee. Maybe two are related -- the drugs and the judge that is?