WTF?

1. This caught me off guard…

2. I was following a link from a Slashdot post that pointed to the Q&A section of Roger Ebert’s website, where he answers critics who felt his 3.5 star rating for Star Wars Episode III didn’t mesh with the review itself. Whilst distracted, I tripped across this:

Q. Is George Lucas a knowing Economic Terrorist? Lucas KNEW that by releasing the last “Star Wars” movie what effect it would have on the United States Economy. The movie was released on a working day. Lucas could have well waited to release his movie on Saturday or even Sunday. The effect was a $627 million loss in American Productivity.

The box-office take was $158.5 million. That leaves a $468.5 cost to the U.S. Economy. But that’s not the end of the loss. Each day, Lucas is losing $1.5 million to pirates — a capital cost to his investors of $6 million in four days and climbing. The loss could and should have been avoided by release on a Saturday or Sunday, and Simultaneous Distribution to Television, Sales and Rentals. The question becomes, would George Lucas really damage the economy to make a point of his hate for the Republican Party and President George Bush?

D.L. Graham, San Diego

3. What the fuck? I always thought Republicans, quite like Australian Liberal Party voters, are for most part sane, if mildly delusional, people. Except for the religious right, who are, for most part, fucktards. But this dude needs some serious therapy, “delusional” barely covers it! And I love that he capitalised “American Productivity”.

4. (I won’t point out the numerous glaring holes, like that the movie was released simultaneously worldwide, so if there was a significant impact on “American Productivity™”, there would be a corresponding impact on any country that Star Wars has made an impact, making Lucas an “Anachistic Economic Terrorist™” who hates all governments in all nations, rather than the USA. But I can’t imagine D.L. Graham from San Diego can find an atlas, much less a country outside the US.)

5. Ebert’s reply, however, was gold:

A. And what happened to Padme’s pants?

How fast can you whip it out?

Belt Buckle Knife dude

1. Hehe. Hehe. Muahahahaha! He takes it so seriously. This dude has built a knife that sits on your belt buckle, that he claims (and proves with the video) that he can whip it out faster than you. Watch:

How fast can you whip it out?

2. I’m actually lost for words. The video and the dialog and every about it so bad but at the same time I’m totally reaching for the credit card. I dunno if I can get it into the country, but I bloody well want one! Not that I wear a belt, or need a knife, but the mechanism does look damn cool. Even if he doesn’t. Read more here.

Birthdays

1. Happy birthday to me, for a few days ago… huzzar!

2. The Woman bought me a Nikon SB 600 external flash for my birthday (those who know me will realise that that was not exactly the case), which makes a nice addition to my Nikon D70 (getting warmer?). So very awesome is this flash, it’s fast fast fast recycling time and the Automatic Balanced Fill in Flash is crazy good. And, as I discovered, it supports Nikon’s Automatic Wireless Flash system doobie where one master unit can control three groups of flashes wirelessly within a 10m radius. Usually, one needs to have the more expensive SB 800 flash to act as the master controller, but, it seems my D70’s built in flash can also act as the master flash, so now I have a very portable second light source whenever I need it! Huzzar! The SB 800 has more control features (it can control almost all the settings for each of the three groups of flashes) but, hey, when I win lotto I’ll go get one. Sooooo cool.

3. Speaking of photos, I’ve updated the photo blog with some new photos, about time really. Been busy, and more than a little lazy of late, haven’t been out and about with the camera at all. But yesterday we had a proper storm for the first time in ages (i.e. it rained for more than 2 minutes) which was kinda excitin’. Seriously, 10 years ago May in Sydney involved rain, cloudy patches followed by a howling thunderstorm. I used to have to put back my birthday parties to June so as to not have it rain out. Anyone who still thinks the climate hasn’t changed is a fucking idiot.

Tiger

1. Yes, I will give in to the inevitable, as if I could shut up over a new version of OS X.

2. I like it… mostly.

3. To be perfectly honest, the first thing I thought when my computer booted up was, gee, it looks just like Panther. Which is a good thing, because I quite like Panther and I don’t want to have to re-learn how to use the OS with every new version. That said, I just don’t understand why they changed some of those little things around. Like menu items. In Panther you have a bunch of single buttons for various functions, but strangely in Tiger some of those items are grouped together without the option of breaking them apart. Like the Address Bar / Google Search box in Safari. I use Sogudi which basically replaces the Google Search box by letting me enter search terms straight into the Address Bar, and I liked having the bar take the length of the window, but now I can’t do that any more, for absolutly no reason at all. It’s the same with Mail, the Reply / Reply All / Forward buttons are all grouped with no other options, leaving me with a group of three in a swarm of single buttons that, quite frankly, looks shite. And there doesn’t seem to be any reason for it.

4. Speaking of Mail, I don’t actually mind the way it looks. That’s not what all the cool kids are saying, but I do like having the Mailbox panel built into the window as opposed to the drawer, although it shits me that I can’t move the panel to the right hand side where my old Mailbox drawer used to be. It also looks suspiciously like the iTunes layout — would iTunes 5.0 look like Mail 2.0? If it does, you heard it here first.

5. (If it doesn’t, you’ll conveniently forget, and that last paragraph will disappear.)

6. And herein lies the biggest problem I (and others) have with Tiger — complete lack of visual consistancy with menu and toolbar buttons. Mail looks one way, Finder looks another, iTunes looks different again… it’s as if Apple has now decided to play Fashion designer rather than computer company. I don’t want to see things change just for the sake of it, I want to know it will make me more productive. And if you’re gonna change something, change it for everything! It doesn’t happen often, but things like this make me long for the old Mac OS GUI, where Apple’s own Human Interface Guidelines were taken seriously.

7. More to come.

muhahahaha!

1. It’s so funny it should be a hoax, but stupid enough to be true!

Elch: You’re a real computer expert
bitchchecker: shut up i hack you
Elch: ok, i’m quiet, hope you don’t show us how good a hacker you are ^^
bitchchecker: tell me your network number man then you’re dead
Elch: Eh, it’s 129.0.0.1
Elch: or maybe 127.0.0.1
Elch: yes exactly that’s it: 127.0.0.1 I’m waiting for you great attack
bitchchecker: in five minutes your hard drive is deleted
bitchchecker: elch you idiout your hard drive g: is deleted
Elch: yes, there’s nothing i can do about it
bitchchecker: and in 20 seconds f: is gone
bitchchecker: and d: is at 45% you idiot lolololol
bitchchecker: your d: is gone
bitchchecker: elch man you’re so stupid never give your ip on the internet
bitchchecker: i’m already at c: 30 percent
* bitchchecker (~java@euirc-9ff3c180.dip.t-dialin.net) Quit (Ping timeout#)