Under a Gibbous Moon

Holy hell!

No, seriously, this has gone to far, setting up for Christmas over five and a half months early. We are rapidly moving to the point where we’ll be seeing Christmas decorations all year round. Is this the world that we want our children to grow up in? A world where the Jingle Bell Rock is as inescapable as death and taxes?

I say no!

Now I do read Boing Boing, they have some interesting stuff from time to time. One thing, though, that I dislike is that the site’s founder, Cory Doctorow, seems to be batshit insane. He regularly makes position statements and then backs them up with evidence that either makes no sense or contradicts him.

Case in point. Apparently some lady stops to lecture kids on the benefit of selling their product instead of giving it away. Is she a douchebag if this actually happened, sure, they’re kids. Then Doctorow goes off on some weird tangent about companies taking stuff and then selling it. As evidence he says:

Sounds about right — companies take over our public aquifers and sell us the water they pump out of them; telcos get our rights of way for their infrastructure, then insist that they be able to tier their pricing without regard to the public interest.

A little bizarre. Most companies have to pay leases to the government to tap those aquifers. Even if they don’t, he’s free to drill his own well and even give it away if he wants, see how much money it’ll cost him to drill the hole, lay the pipes, pump the water and then maintain the whole damn system.

Then he complains about the phone company laying wires on his property. Once again, apparently this infrastructure is magically free in his world and apparently he’s hoping the phone fairy will come along and connect his calls.

It’s called TINSTAAFL (There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch), Cory. I learned it in high school econ.

A IBM 350 hard disk from 1956.

I can’t find a weight on it, but it looks at least as much as a fridge. The twenty-nine inch platters spun at a blistering 1,200 rpm and it held a whole 5 MB. Makes the 5.25 floppies look efficient.

Hat Tip: BoingBoing

Is building this stroller.

There’s nothing like dominating the playground in your very own AT-AT.

I can’t wait to hear the reason for this one.

A man is putting up signs along the highway when a naked woman pulls up next to him and steals his car. So he takes her car and chases her. The police get involved and chase her into a field where she ditches the car. A foot chase ensues but is ended when she steals one of the squad cars…

A second car chase begins and ends when the woman misses a turn hits a berm and goes flying some fifty feet through the air. Durable and naked, she flees the totaled car starting the second foot chase, which involved crawling through barbed wire, and was only ended when the police tazed her.

Oh yes they call her…