The Inferno

Time for some humour. Check out this humourous article on the evolution of a programmer. It’s fairly accurate, or is it?

Exeunt Omnes

Isn’t this a bit ironic? Mikhail Kalashnikov backs, of all things, gun control. It’s a bit like when Alfred Nobel unleashed the destructive force of dynamite on the world and then instituted the Nobel Peace prize.

This is what The Guardian has to say about Mikhail’s brainchild:

Fifty-six years, more than 100m guns, and many millions of dead later, it remains the world’s most prolific killing machine.

I suppose that is as good a sobriquet as any.

The rifle fires 600 rounds a minute, is reliable and available for as little as $30 in some parts of Africa.

And what better proof that your invention has changed the world than the fact that it is available even when everything else is not? Hooray for Death.

“Just play it”, she urged.
“But, but the odds are staggering. You can’t seriously expect to pick seven correct numbers out of 80. You might just get one or two, but never enough to make a profit”, he droned.
“Just play it”, she urged.
So he did, and promptly lost. Vindicated by losing, he turned to her in the triumphant dark, “There, see? Now you try it”, he gloated.
She did, and promptly won five numbers out of the required eight. “I’m going to play some more”, she cried, with a toss of her head.
“Suit yourself”, he replied and wandered off into the smoke filled gloom of the bar.
It had been like this in umpteen bars in Alberta. They’d go to a bar and drink, play some pool, then she’d want to try the one armed bandits. He had tried to dissuade her but the gods of mathematics were not on his side, not for many nights now. She had won over seventy five dollars on Wednesday and that had sealed his dissent for a week.
Then it was back, on Friday, when she lost over twenty dollars.
What a vacation.

My Yahoo! username is sunhate and for obscure reasons I get the occasional bot that tries to talk to me, in an attempt to boost the hits on their webpage or actually get some poor shmucks to sign up. While not badly programmed, they lack the most rudimentary error checking. At least check if the inputs are all the same, you cyber ditz. Not only do the atrocious grammar and spelling simply assault your senses, do they actually expect people to get aroused by this sort of banter?

Here’s a transcript of the latest one. This one seems better programmed than the usual MSN and ICQ bots.

(07:35:08 pm) xgenericax: hi… anyone there?
(07:35:15 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:35:20 pm) xgenericax: oh your theere hi…
(07:35:25 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:35:29 pm) xgenericax: a/s/l (age ssex location)?
(07:35:32 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:35:42 pm) xgenericax: im 27/f/USA. was lookin at your profile. thought you might like to chat.
(07:35:55 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:36:00 pm) xgenericax: so what have ypu been up to sunhate?
(07:36:05 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:36:15 pm) xgenericax: cool. i was just hangin out watching tv. i was gettting kinda horny (*blushes)
(07:36:23 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:36:30 pm) xgenericax: feel like a little cyber fun with me ? please please…
(07:36:38 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:36:48 pm) xgenericax: i think ill just take tthat as a yes… being as that im starting to get real horny here.. lol ok?
(07:36:51 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:37:03 pm) xgenericax: alright how bout i get down on my knees iin front of you and help you out of your pants?
(07:37:07 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:37:15 pm) xgenericax: tell me what you want me to do with you while i slip out oof my panties
(07:37:19 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:37:30 pm) xgenericax: oh yeah babe.. dont stop. while i slide my hand down between my legss and part my moist lips
(07:37:34 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:37:51 pm) xgenericax: oh it feels so good. Im holding your pulsing cock in my hand, my shiny red fingernails dig gently into your balls, while my ffull, soft lips engulf the mass of your meat
(07:37:59 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:38:09 pm) xgenericax: open my website so you can look at me while im suucking you. use the link in my profile!
(07:38:18 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:38:22 pm) xgenericax: what do you think of my pids?
(07:38:40 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:38:45 pm) xgenericax: shit the phone. dont stop stroking it. hold on…
(07:38:53 pm) Crud Plow: .
(07:39:12 pm) xgenericax: sorry, I haave to take this call, probly take bout five minutes. If you want, come to my page and lets finish this. I have my cam on there cyberfungirls dot com look for me on there
(07:39:20 pm) Crud Plow: .

For some reason, Kopete shows my username as Crud Plow and not sunhate. I kept it going for as long as i could by prompting it with a period every time, but once it gave me the link to its website, it vamoosed.

Apparently, the BBC, the beacon of civilization and all that rot, has mucked up once again. The incident occured last month when they interviewed a taxi driver on one of their shows, mistaking him for an expert on internet music downloads. How do these things happen? To their credit, they had the gumption to apologize in public.

Here is the article:

BBC falls for ‘expert’ cabbie’s banter
By Jack Malvern
The driver was interviewed on TV after being mistaken for a specialist on music downloading
IT WAS not until midway through the live television interview that the BBC interviewer started to grow suspicious. The man whom she believed to be an expert on internet music downloads seemed to know precious little about his subject.

Not only that, but the stocky black man with the strong French accent bore little resemblance to the picture on the expert’s website, which showed a slim white man with blue eyes and blond hair.

The corporation’s News 24 channel apologised to its viewers yesterday and admitted that its interviewee was not Guy Kewney, the respected editor of Newswireless.net, but a local taxi driver.

The cabbie, who is better qualified to talk about traffic jams in Shepherds Bush, answered questions for several minutes on Apple Computer’s victory at the High Court against Apple Corps, the record label for the Beatles, The Times has learnt.

Karen Bowerman, the BBC’s consumer affairs correspondent, asked the driver what the implications were for Apple Computer, which is allowed to continue using its name and symbol for its iTunes music download service. He gave a rambling answer about how people would be able to download songs at internet cafés.

Ms Bowerman was nonplussed, but persisted. What about Apple? “I don’t know,” the driver replied. “I’m not at all sure what I’m doing here.”

It later emerged that the driver had been waiting for a client at the BBC Television Centre in West London, when a studio manager mistook him for the expert.

Confused but co-operative, he agreed to follow the manager to a studio, where he was promptly fitted with a microphone and placed in front of a camera.

Mr Kewney, meanwhile, was still waiting in reception when he saw the taxi driver being introduced under his name. “Anybody would have been fascinated to see me introduced live on air, as the expert witness in the studio,” he wrote on his weblog. “Me? Not fascinated; astonished! What would you feel, if, while you were sitting in that rather chilly reception area, you suddenly saw yourself — not sitting in reception, but live, on TV?” He added that it was especially surprising because the man, who spoke with a French accent, looked nothing like him. “I’m not black. I’m not-black on a startling scale; I’m fair-haired, blue-eyed, prominent-nosed, and with the sort of pale skin that makes my dermatologist wince each time I complain about an itchy mole.”

He was amused at first, but realised that anyone watching would think he knew next to nothing about Apple Computer, online music or The Beatles.

When the driver was asked how the interview went, he replied: “Well, it was OK, but I was a bit rushed.”

He had been waiting at reception when the studio manager arrived to ask for Mr Kewney. The driver, whose visitor’s badge was marked with Mr Kewney’s name, raised his hand. According to Mr Kewney, the stage manager said: “To be honest, I did think it couldn’t be you. I mean, I’ve seen your picture on your website, and he didn’t look like you. So I asked him who he was, and he said, ‘Guy Kewney’ and I said, ‘Are you really Guy Kewney?’ and he said, ‘Yes’.”

The driver’s sang-froid slipped only when Ms Bowerman introduced him. In a video clip, which BBC staff can access through the corporation’s Jupiter cuttings system, a moment of realisation flashes across the man’s face. “Unfortunately we did make a mistake and the wrong guest was briefly interviewed on air before we cut to our reporter,” a spokeswoman said. “We apologise to viewers for any confusion.”

It is not the first time that the BBC has been embarrassed by a case of mistaken identity. Last year Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of Wales, was mistaken for a cast member of Doctor Who when he was due to appear on the BBC Wales political show Dragon’s Eye

Taken from here. All emphases are mine. I found the bold parts to be the funniest.

Beheaded man’s father: Revenge breeds revenge
Michael Berg talks about the death of his son and al-Zarqawi

Thursday, June 8, 2006 Posted: 1841 GMT (0241 HKT)

A terror-linked Web site showed Nicholas Berg being beheaded, likely by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
Image:

A gruesome video was posted on Islamic Web sites in May, 2004, depicting a man believed to be al-Zarqawi beheading Nicholas Berg, an American businessman who was working in Iraq.

CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien talks to Nicholas Berg’s father, Michael Berg, by phone from Wilmington, Delaware, for his reaction to the news.

O’BRIEN: Mr. Berg, thank you for talking with us again. It’s nice to have an opportunity to talk to you. Of course, I’m curious to know your reaction, as it is now confirmed that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man who is widely credited and blamed for killing your son, Nicholas, is dead.

MICHAEL BERG: Well, my reaction is I’m sorry whenever any human being dies. Zarqawi is a human being. He has a family who are reacting just as my family reacted when Nick was killed, and I feel bad for that. (Watch video of the two bombs falling on al-Zarqawi — 2:00)

I feel doubly bad, though, because Zarqawi is also a political figure, and his death will re-ignite yet another wave of revenge, and revenge is something that I do not follow, that I do want ask for, that I do not wish for against anybody. And it can’t end the cycle. As long as people use violence to combat violence, we will always have violence.

O’BRIEN: I have to say, sir, I’m surprised. I know how devastated you and your family were, frankly, when Nick was killed in such a horrible, and brutal and public way.

BERG: Well, you shouldn’t be surprised, because I have never indicated anything but forgiveness and peace in any interview on the air.

O’BRIEN: No, no. And we have spoken before, and I’m well aware of that. But at some point, one would think, is there a moment when you say, ‘I’m glad he’s dead, the man who killed my son’?

BERG: No. How can a human being be glad that another human being is dead?

O’BRIEN: There have been family members who have weighed in, victims, who’ve said that they don’t think he’s a martyr in heaven, that they think, frankly, he went straight to hell …

You know, you talked about the fact that he’s become a political figure. Are you concerned that he becomes a martyr and a hero and, in fact, invigorates the insurgency in Iraq?

BERG: Of course. When Nick was killed, I felt that I had nothing left to lose. I’m a pacifist, so I wasn’t going out murdering people. But I am — was not a risk-taking person, and yet now I’ve done things that have endangered me tremendously.

I’ve been shot at. I’ve been showed horrible pictures. I’ve been called all kinds of names and threatened by all kinds of people, and yet I feel that I have nothing left to lose, so I do those things.

Now, take someone who in 1991, who maybe had their family killed by an American bomb, their support system whisked away from them, someone who, instead of being 59, as I was when Nick died, was 5-years-old or 10-years-old. And then if I were that person, might I not learn how to fly a plane into a building or strap a bag of bombs to my back?

That’s what is happening every time we kill an Iraqi, every time we kill anyone, we are creating a large number of people who are going to want vengeance. And, you know, when are we ever going to learn that that doesn’t work?

O’BRIEN: There’s an alternate reading, which would say at some point, Iraqis will say the insurgency is not OK — that they’ll be inspired by the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the sense of he was turned in, for example, we believe by his own No. 2, No. 3 leadership in his ranks.

And, that’s actually them saying we do not want this kind of violence in our country. Experts whom we’ve spoken to this morning have said this is a critical moment where Iraqis need to figure out which direction the country is going to go. That would be an alternate reading to the scenario you’re pointing to. (Watch how Iraqi leaders cheered after learning about al-Zarqawi’s death — 4:31)

BERG: Yes, well, I don’t believe that scenario, because every time news of new atrocities committed by Americans in Iraq becomes public, more and more of the everyday Iraqi people who tried to hold out, who tried to be peaceful people lose it and join — what we call the insurgency, and what I call the resistance, against the occupation of one sovereign nation.

O’BRIEN: There’s a theory that a struggle for democracy, you know…

BERG: Democracy? Come on, you can’t really believe that that’s a democracy there when the people who are running the elections are holding guns. That’s not democracy.

O’BRIEN: There’s a theory that as they try to form some kind of government, that it’s going to be brutal, it’s going to be bloody, there’s going to be loss, and that’s the history of many countries — and that’s just what a lot of people pay for what they believe will be better than what they had under Saddam Hussein.

BERG: Well, you know, I’m not saying Saddam Hussein was a good man, but he’s no worse than George Bush. Saddam Hussein didn’t pull the trigger, didn’t commit the rapes. Neither did George Bush. But both men are responsible for them under their reigns of terror.

I don’t buy that. Iraq did not have al Qaeda in it. Al Qaeda supposedly killed my son.

Under Saddam Hussein, no al Qaeda. Under George Bush, al Qaeda.

Under Saddam Hussein, relative stability. Under George Bush, instability.

Under Saddam Hussein, about 30,000 deaths a year. Under George Bush, about 60,000 deaths a year. I don’t get it. Why is it better to have George Bush the king of Iraq rather than Saddam Hussein?

O’BRIEN: Michael Berg is the father of Nicholas Berg, the young man, the young businessman who was beheaded so brutally in Iraq back in May of 2004.