This post has been retracted. It discussed this overreaching Supreme Court ruling by doing precisely what the court ruled a felony: I made a link that claimed to point to the kind of content I don’t want to be associated with this site in search engine indexes, but in fact it pointed to www.google.com. I guess you had to be there.
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Overreaching law upheld |
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Written by on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 11:20 am (EDT) Tagged as: current-events idiots internets politics |
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Happy Birthday © Happy Birthday Nazis (or is it?) |
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Written by on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 10:47 am (EDT) Tagged as: idiots links politics |
I’m sure you’ve heard that the Happy Birthday song is protected under copyright by the Happy Birthday Nazis, who actively seek compensation whenever the song is used in a movie or on TV.
As it turns out, their copyright claim has never been challenged in court and it may in fact be invalid. Now we just need someone to challenge it.
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Statement of integrity |
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Written by on Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 8:54 am (EST) Tagged as: my-psyche politics website |
Recently Penny Arcade made a very funny comic about gifts they receive from PR firms, a topic which Joel Spolsky discussed about a year ago. This seems like a good time to publicly state my gifts policy here at vacant-nebula. I’ll now shift to the editorial “we” so that I we sound more important.
We, at vacant-nebula.com, like stuff. Especially free stuff. We will accept any gift, be it money or merchandise. We particularly like high technical devices, such as anything that could be found in Best Buy.
Unlike many other blogs, we do not consider ourselves journalists, and as such we are not bound by any code of journalistic ethics. In particular, this means that we do feel an obligation to disclose the source of any gifts, or even the fact that a gift was given. We are even willing to praise products that we don’t really like, as long as this means we might get free stuff we do like in the future.
In short, we are preemptively selling out, even though no one is buying yet. So send us stuff we want and we’ll tell people it’s great. We won’t write any holier-than-thou blog posts about how we’re too good to accept free stuff. If you would like to send us gifts, but you are unsure what products we would like, just drop us an e-mail and we’ll be glad to work something out.
PS- if anyone knows a Microsoft PR rep who has an Xbox 360 they are just dying to bribe a blogger with, send them here.
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Save the earth with better CSS! |
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Written by on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 7:57 pm (EST) Tagged as: awesome charts-and-graphs politics public-service-announcements |
A few weeks ago I received an e-mail with the following at the end of the message:
Please don’t print this message unless you really need to. Our forests will thank you by providing the oxygen your children will need to survive.
What a brilliant idea! All that paper that I’ve been using to print e-mail messages really adds up and hurts the environment. And to think I’d never thought of it until I saw this message.
But then I got to thinking: why stop there? Maybe I should stop printing out webpages too. I don’t know about you, but I used to print out the entire Wikipedia on the second Tuesday of every month. You just never know when the whole site will go down, or when some vandal will vandalize your favorite page with obscene vandalisms. When that happens, it’s good to have a hard copy to turn to. I used to think this was a victimless habit, since I would print it from work. (No way I can afford five hundred reams of paper per month!) But now I see that there is a victim.
The Earth
From this day forward, I pledge that I will no longer print out the Wikipedia or any of the other Internets. I estimate that this will save seventy-four thousand, six hundred acres of rain forest per year. (My office only buys paper made from endangered rain forest trees.)
But I am just one person. What if someone else wants to print out websites? Is there anything I can do to stop him or her? Well, if I am the administrator of a website I can. And so can you!
Just create a new file, named save_the_earth.css. In that file, just put this little snippet of code:
* { display:none !important; }
Save that file somewhere on your site. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you put it in the root of your website. Now, in the HTML for every page on your site, just put this somewhere in the <head> tag:
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/save_the_earth.css" media="print" />
Voila! Now whenever someone tries to print out a page on your website, they’ll get something like this:
Go ahead and do a print preview on this particular website. You’ll see that I am not lying!
Unfortunately, the header and footer will still be printed on each page due to a browser “feature.” Since this can harm so many trees, I consider it a major bug, but none of the browser manufacturers agree with me. Yet. But until this bug is fixed, at least there will be minimal ink wasted. And no matter how much data is on the webpage being printed, it will all fit onto one page. That’s pretty neat!
And the best part about all this is that it is 100% standards-compliant. In addition, it has been tested on all major browsers, without any workarounds. Now that is something web developers can really get excited about!
But here’s the part where I need your help!
I need the help of you, the reader. I’m only one guy, but there are a lot of trees out there to save. Sure, I’ve saved the trees required to print this website, but we need more websites to do this. It’s so easy, anyone can do it! So spread the word to any and all you know. Tell them, “By allowing users to print, you are allowing them to destroy the earth!” Write your Congressmen and/or Congresswomen. Tell them, “We need to do something about earth-hating eco-terrorists like Google and Wikipedia! Please pass a law requiring them to prevent users from printing their webpages!” If we all work together, we just might be able to save this planet before we run out of trees!
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Jenna Fischer (Pam of The Office) explains the writers’ strike |
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Written by on Thursday, November 8, 2007 at 9:38 am (EST) Tagged as: current-events economics links politics the-office tv |
If you’re like me you knew there was a writers’ strike but didn’t really understand what it was about. It finally made sense to me after reading about it on Jenna Fischer’s blog and watching the YouTube video she links to, which shows Greg Daniels, Ryan, Kelly, Mose, and Toby on the picket line (they are all writers on the show).
The gist of it is that contracts were written in a time before the Internet and before TV shows were sold on DVD. So when someone watches a show on NBC.com, for example, the network considers that promotional material and gets to keep nearly all the ad revenue (whereas the writers/actors get paid whenever a show is rerun on TV). Similarly, the networks keep nearly all the proceeds of DVD sales. Ten years from now, digital downloads and DVDs could very likely be the main ways people watch television shows, and it’s not exactly fair that the networks get to keep all that cash for themselves.
And if that’s wrong, then I guess I still don’t understand it after all.
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What really happened on Nine-Eleven |
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Written by on Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 8:24 am (EDT) Tagged as: looking-back politics school thoughts |
It is said that anyone who was alive when President Kennedy was assassinated still remembers where they were when they heard the news. I think it is safe to say that my generation will have the same experience when remembering the events that unfolded six years ago today. What follows is my account of that day.
It started out as a normal day a few weeks into my sophomore year of college at NC State. Garrison and I set out bright and early from 508C Sullivan Hall to Daniels for our 8:05-9:20 Discrete Math course, where we met up with Jason and Nate. After being bored out of our minds for an hour and fifteen minutes, the four of us headed over to The Atrium for breakfast. I think I had Chik-fil-a that morning.
We sat down to eat as a nearby TV projected CNN images at us, but there was no audio. If there was a crisis you couldn’t tell it from looking around. There were no groups of people standing around staring at televisions screens. I, too, wasn’t very concerned. At this point only the first plane had hit, and I was unaware of just how wide the building was. This led me to underestimate the size of the hole: it just looked to me like some kind of small propeller plane had crashed into the building (remember that there was no video of the first plane hitting the building for several days). I thought it was an unusual event which probably claimed the life of the pilot, who was probably the only person in the plane. I wondered if the people inside had time to get out of the way or if any of them were injured, and why someone would be dumb enough to fly a plane so low in the middle of Manhattan. I concluded to myself that it must have been a poorly planned stunt by a thrill-seeker. The idea that this was no accident had not yet crossed my mind.
Since there were only thirty minutes between classes, I had to practically inhale my food, leaving me with little time to ponder the events on TV. I quickly headed off to Winston for my 9:50-11:05 Philosophy course. I overheard a few people talking before class about how a plane had hit the World Trade Center, but I didn’t hear anyone say that a second plane had hit yet or that it was a terrorist act. Still thinking that it was a small plane, I wrote this off as your typical overreaction to unusual but ultimately insignificant news.
After class I walked back to the dorm room, and when I came in Garrison said “the towers are gone.” “What?!” “The World Trade Center towers. They’re both completely gone.” I think I sat down and watched the news for a while, trying to comprehend how it could have possibly happened. The towers had always been there. How could they have both been destroyed in the hour and a half since I had seen one tiny hole in one of the towers? After a few more minutes of Fox News it became abundantly clear that this was more than an accident made by some idiot in a small plane; this was a deliberate act by several idiots in two very large planes.
I don’t remember much of what happened for the rest of the day. I peeled myself away from the news long enough to take a shower, and for some reason I distinctly remember trying to make sense of it all in while I was in there. I guess that happens when there’s no computer or TV to distract you. Later that day, our 2:35-3:50 Linear Algebra class was cancelled (as were all classes). The next time the class met—just two days later—the professor made a way way way too soon 9/11 joke. To help illustrate something about vector math he had drawn an airplane on the board, in front of which he proceeded to draw a tall building and cackle. Amazingly, Garrison, Jason, Nate, and I were about the only ones in the room who didn’t laugh.
everything is gonna be alright, be strong believe
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Choose your words carefully at the airport |
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Written by on Thursday, May 31, 2007 at 12:36 pm (EDT) Tagged as: current-events links politics |
I heard this on the radio this morning and had to share. Director Mike Figgis (who directed Leaving Las Vegas) was going through security at LAX, when he was asked the reason for his visit. “I’m here to shoot a pilot.”
It’s not clear if he was making a dumb joke, or if he just wasn’t thinking (I’m inclined to believe the latter). You can read more here, if you’d like.
You’re not a pilot: I know every pilot in the world!
Update: as Peter pointed out, this story is almost entirely fictional. Oh well, it sounded plausible.
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What really goes on in Congress |
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Written by on Tuesday, April 24, 2007 at 12:53 pm (EDT) Tagged as: politics video-games |
A new senator from Iowa, eager to make America a better place to live, is shocked to find out that everyone on Capital Hill is bored out of their minds, and no one pays attention to anything!
Well, I paraphrased a little. He was embarrassed when some kids came to see how our nation’s laws were made, and found out it involves many games of Solitaire. The most interesting (shocking? sad?) part is a quote at the end of the article:
Senate Minority Leader Mary Lundby, R-Marion, a 21-year Statehouse veteran and occasional video gamer, shrugged off Heckroth’s advice.
“Freshmen are always shocked by what goes on. Next year he won’t even mention it. He’ll probably be playing games,” Lundby said.
I guess this is what a 90% incumbency rate will do.
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Prison cell confessions |
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Written by on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 4:00 pm (EST) Tagged as: links my-psyche politics |
Does it make me a terrible person if I feel almost no sympathy for this guy, who was sent to prison for getting three DUI’s, getting raped in prison? (SFW, unless the words “rape” or “sodomy” get flagged by a filter or something. In which case, I guess this page is NSFW). I know it’s not how I should feel, as a Christian or as a civilized person or as a nice guy or for whatever reason. But I mean, really, three DUI’s? That should carry at least the same prison sentence as attempted murder, since that’s pretty much what it is. Anyone who’s been to middle school has heard what goes on in prisons. If this guy were imprisoned for something basically victimless, I would feel bad. If he were falsely convicted of something, I would feel bad. And sure, I don’t think it’s good that this happens in prisons. But as for feeling sorry for this guy? He is where he is as a result of his own actions and choices, and if he did not have an idea of what he was in for that is more than just ignorance. The Human Rights Watch should have used someone else’s letter to make me feel sympathy. In fact, the only part of that whole article that really made me feel sympathetic was the statement that he probably has AIDS now.
Go directly to jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
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N-word etiquette? |
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Written by on Monday, January 22, 2007 at 1:03 pm (EST) Tagged as: idiots kids-these-days lazyweb politics |
What does etiquette dictate that one do when someone uses the n-word in conversation? When we were at the police station recently, the other couple there was present when the guys were brought in, and they mentioned to us more than once that the guys were a bunch of “stupid niggers.” Another time a coworker (at another job) was talking about when he was in the Marines going after some “sand niggers.” It surprises me that some people still think and talk this way, so I don’t know how to react. I imagine most people wouldn’t say anything but would feel extremely uneasy.. At least, that’s how I what I did. Is there a more appropriate reaction?
Jim: What did you just call me?
Huck Griffin: I thought that was your name.
Jim: That is our word! You have no right to use it!
Huck Griffin: Hey hey hey, I’m cool, I’m cool, no problem!
...
Huck Griffin: So, could you pass me the oar, n-word Jim?
Jim: Thank you.
--The Family Guy
May 23, 4:12 pm
I don’t know which is worse: your felonious link, or the fact that it shows up as a ‘visited’ link in my web browser.
May 23, 5:59 pm
I think that might make you an accomplice.