Spam Subject Line of The Day

Free Pics Of amateur Lesbians G...

Maybe I am a little behind the times, but I am not really up to speed on the eligibility requirements for amateur or professional standing in terms of your sexuality. Does “amateur” indicate that you’ve not taken money for practicing your sexuality and hence can practice your sexuality in the Olympics?

Or am I a professional heterosexual now that I have entered into a long-term contract? Aside from Vermont, Lesbians cannot turn professional, ever, so I am not sure matrimony or other long-term commitment makes you a pro.

Also, can someone illuminate me on the NCAA eligibility requirements? Can students get a scholarship for school-sponsored sexuality? I am sure there are lots of high school students who would like to spend their four or more years of secondary education working on their skills.

Am I reading too much into this topic and this spam subject line? Perhaps. But look on the bright side. In a couple of days, I will start getting the 733t G00gle Hitz for “Lesbian pics.” If only I could work in the words “Barely-legal” and “teen” into the post…..

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Leave the Metaphors to the Professionals, Son

A post on TechRepublic.com, entitled “Job seekers beware: These five myths may derail your search efforts“, purportedly gives five myths about Internet job searching. But who can comprehend what the gestalt of the article when trying to reconcile the rapidly flashing discordant metaphors that almost sent me into an epileptic fit?

Let’s hit some of them in rapid succession:

  • Myth one: The Internet is a Mecca for finding jobs.
    The holiest city of Islam, to which Muslims should make one pilgrimmage in their lifetimes if they can.

  • Internet job boards can become a Delta Triangle for resumes to disappear into….
    Delta Triangle? Do you mean Devil’s Triangle, a superset of the Bermuda Triangle, into which nothing has mysteriously disappeared recently?

  • Debbie Harper, a veteran executive IT recruiter at Harper Hewes, Inc., likened posting your resume online to posting it on a sandwich board that reads “I need a job” and walking up and down Fifth Avenue with it hoisted over your shoulder.
    But you don’t hoist a sandwich board over your shoulder like a picket sign….you wear it over your torso.

  • soft skills—like communication—are also important.
    These “soft” skills seem to be too hard for many people in IT, including the employed ones.

Wow, that’s enough to leave a man comatose from metaphor overdose, except that those metaphors break down quicker than a high mileage 1983 Mustang GT you buy used.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Microsoft BBBOOOOBBBBBB!

Sorry. I never saw it, but I remember the nature of Microsoft’s failed user-friendly construct, Bob. My darling Heather said that I was the second person to mention Bob to her recently(her formerly blue-haired boss was first). This Seattle Weekly story, which I saw on /., is the third source which confirms the fool thing actually existed.

Honestly, honey, Microsoft, back around Windows 95, had this little animated character that showed you everything you wanted to know about your home computer. Think of Clippy running whenever you turned the computer on.

Heck’s pecs, I had the Little Computer People Discovery Kit on my Commodore 64. Bradley, my little computer person, looked like Bob. In 1987.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Paranoia Would Have Paid Off

Techdirt is linking to a story about a guy who installed keylogger software on Kinko’s computers in Manhattan for years. He grabbed many, many sets of usernames and passwords and accounts before being caught.

How did he get caught?

A guy who used a remote access program called GoToMyPC to log into his home personal computer from Kinko’s. Several days later, as this poor sap was sitting at his home PC, he was startled to see the mouse cursor moving on its own and looking through his computer, and then the computer made a new bank account with the mark’s info, much to the mark’s surprise.

The mark logged into his home PC from Kinko’s! Class, how many security rules has this mark broken?

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Democrat Lawmakers Underestimate Consequences of Music Swapping

Drudge links to a story about the new bill in Congress that will hang music swappers with a jail term for swapping tunes online.

It’s hard to argue with their math:

The Conyers-Berman bill would operate under the assumption that each copyrighted work made available through a computer network was copied by others at least 10 times for a total retail value of $2,500. That would bump the activity from a misdemeanor to a felony, carrying a sentence of up to five years in jail.

Because songs are obviously worth $250 each.

And our lawmakers have uncovered, in a series of hearings, the real consequences of file swapping:

In a series of hearings on Capitol Hill last spring, lawmakers condemned online song swapping and expressed concern the networks could spread computer viruses, create government security risks and allow children access to pornography.

Good going, fellows, you have determined some of the contemporary bugaboos you can arbitrarily associate with with an issue to score extra Politicopoints. But I fear you’ve missed other grim consequences of file swapping:

  • Peer-to-peer file swapping has been proven to cause cancer in laboratory animals.
  • Peer-to-peer music swapping leads to increased manufacture and use of methamphetamine.
  • Peer-to-peer music swapping causes obesity because users no longer have to walk around a music store.
  • Peer-to-peer music swapping uses negative campaign ads against earnest incumbents.
  • Peer-to-peer music swapping contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer.
  • Software like Kazaa and Napster contributes to traffic accidents and SUV rollovers.

So undoubtedly, it is important to make this behavior a Federal felony so states cannot show some restraint in prosectution. It’s very important to take away music swappers’ rights to own firearms and vote, because when they come out five years of hard time for the eleventh download of Metallica’s “St. Anger”, they’re going to be upset, and we don’t want them to have any recourse against their legislator.

So it is important to obscure the true impact of music swapping, which is it has limited economic impact on a small industry with these “reasons.”

If this bill fails on its own, remember you can attach it as an amendment to the next Congress Supports Mothers bill. Because what fool congressperson would vote against Mom?

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Shareware’s Triumphant Return

A CNN article describes how shareware is making a comeback. Well, duh!

The shareware distribution model makes a lot of sense. Smaller applications, many of which are home grown at first, have lower development, marketing, and distribution costs, and the author of the software can pass the savings on. Best of all, you get stripped down versions to evaluate at your leisure for free and for an unlimited time.

It’s hard not to appreciate it. Hey, I have been a fan of shareware for over a decade. I still have the original Duke Nukem and Cosmo’s Great Adventure loaded on my Windows 2000 box, running in all their two dimensional scrolling glories. Not only do they it run as well on my Athlon 1000+ as on my 286-10, but the replayabilty remains. Todd Replogle, where have you gone?

Hopefully not off somewhere to write the interchangeable first person shooters, like Duke Nukem 3D. I hope you retired off of your old Apogee earnings before sinking to that level.

(Link seen on /..)

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Long Live Mozilla and the Re-Ascendent <blink> Tag!

I cannot help but recommend that you download the Mozilla Web browser. Not only does pop-under ad blocking come free (and very accurately!), but it accurately renders the oft-maligned <blink> tag. To illustrate, you only need to view today’s posts in Mozilla, or go to Lambert Field, the official Web site of the St. Louis airport and the place I first noticed the suhweet blinking.

Party like it’s 1995!

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Point: James DeLong, TechCentralStation.com

James DeLong, in his piece on Tech Central Station, describes the way some peer-to-peer pirates are scrambling for rationalizations now that the Apple Music Store has made individual tracks available cheaply. Seems Apple went and spoilt their excuse that they didn’t want to pay $16 for a CD when they only want one track.

Hey, you freaking bloodsuckers, help yourselves to a couple apples or sodas in the supermarket. Maybe drive off in that Hummer you have been admiring, too, while you’re at it. Your whole raison d’etre is:

From each according to his ability, to you according to your desire.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Counterpoint: Some Cosmopolitan Open-Source Pinhead

Once, to get my dander up, The Artist Formerly Known As The Guy With Blue Hair provided me this bit of commentary, which he found in some XML source to an introduction to Python (which apparently is not “(A*A) + (B*B) = (C*C)”):

As I write this, the year is 2000, and the Internet is a battleground of intellectual property disputes. Some people would like you to believe that, without proper financial incentives, music, literature, and computer software would disappear. After all, who would make music if they can’t make money on it? Who would write? Who would program?

I know the answer. The answer is that musicians will make music, not because they can make money, but because musicians are the people who can’t not make music. Writers will write because they can’t not write. I’ve been programming for 16 years, writing free software for 8. I can’t imagine not doing this. If you can imagine yourself not doing what you’re doing, do something else. Do whatever it is that you can’t not do.

To which I responded, vigorously:

Truly written from the perspective of an enlightened software developer whose day job is probably some $80,000 a year or more IT position.

I’m sure the garage band lyricist and songwriter checking this guy out at the 7-11 would differ, or the writer who has to teach three sections of undergrad English while he writes nearly-free (paid in contributor’s copies) for unread literary magazines.

I assume by “appreciate” you DID mean “get your dander up.”

Sure, writers and artists will always create; however, it would be nice to get some sort of market value for it, and not get screwed over by cosmopolitan open-source pinheads.

Hey, buddy, it’s 2003, and the deflated IT industry’s droopled all over the floor. How’s that free software working out for you now?

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Another Luddite Heard From

Larry Blasko from AP has got a really nice piece in the Washington Post describing one of the best computer backup media ever: paper.

I have worked on computers too long, both physically (A+ certified, donchaknow?) and on the software side to trust anything to the vagaries of technology. I mean, some of the coolest short stories I ever wrote are safe enough, I think, on 5.25″ floppies that fit into a Commodore 1571 disk drive. But that’s no good if I cannot get to them.

Until I am struck blind, though, I can read and retype paper copies. In case you’re wondering how many copies I have of the most important document I have created in the last year (my novel manuscript John Donnelly’s Gold), the answer is ten, and many are stored off site.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Tester’s Creed

At work, I do a little testing, and I just wanted to let you schnucking developers know where we testers stand:

Here is the ultimatum of our camp: what can be smashed, must be smashed; whatever survives a blow has value, whatever flies to smithereens is rubbish; in any case, smash right and left, it will and can do no harm.
(Dmitry I. Pisarev)

That Russian nihilist guy most certainly described ad hoc testing!

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

One Man, Alone, With A Compiler and A Dream

Oh, and lest I forget, UltraEdit rocks!

One guy has written this supreme text editor and has refined it over a number of years. And it works. No exception boxes, no blue screens, just text with formatting elements in a different color.

Thanks, Ian D. Mead. You’re an inspiration to us all, except you don’t own your own fighter jet or 20,000 square foot house on a Pacific bluff. Here’s my $35, though; buy yourself a case of Guinness Draught.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Techies Salaries Might Fall To Earth In Twenty Years

Doom, doom! they say. CNet News is reporting that United States technical workers are standing in line for the welfare cheese handouts at local churches and have begun selling their collections of new or leased exotic sports cars to keep in their eat-out-six-nights-a-week habits. No, wait. Actually, CNet is reporting that tech salaries are not rising as fast as they used to, they are, or maybe they’re really falling. Technical workers should be worried!

All right, first of all, I am not looking up at sour grapes here. Although I am not a real techie–a developer or admin of some sort–I am, even as a hanger-on to the IT industry, earning annually at 31 more than what my father earned at 45 after years of hard labor. So pardon me while I interject into the common IT thought a spot of perspective from here in the Midwest.

The median household income in these United States is $42,228 according to the U.S. Census Bureau. All of you techies out there, compare and contrast this figure with what you take home in a year, and remember that this is the household income. Many households have two people working, sometimes more than one job each, to come up with their household income.

Not many Americans buy houses in fashionable neighborhoods at 25 or spend time each morning deciding whether to drive the Porsche or the Miata to work on any given day. An unfortunate number cannot have a spouse stay home with the kids. For some, McDonalds is eating out.

Now, I don’t mean to harsh your mellow employment, and I don’t want to attack tech workers or the economists who service them. I would prefer a little less hysterics in the media coverage of the economic sector and employment therein. Don’t panic, enjoy the high income while it’s there, but understand the economics of the situation will even themselves out. The pay goes up when the workers are scarce, and then suddenly everyone wants to do that job, and the pay stabilizes or comes down. Take what the field offers, but don’t expect it’s entitled to you.

And thank your lucky stars that you don’t work a job where your arms can get ripped off by an unforgiving amalgamation of steel and someone else’s ingenuity if your attention wanders, or a job that will make you walk slowly and slightly stooped after thirty years of toting and bending and lifting. For $10 an hour. For the rest of your life.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories