The Blog of Harald

Debugging problems with an executive’s RSA token:

“1285E8 & More Highly Specialized Support”:http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/1285E8–More-Highly-Specialized-Support.aspx

(via “The Daily WTF”:http://thedailywtf.com/)

An “elite hacker” appears on the CodeSmith online community, asking for free activation keys. Check out the keys the community gives him to try…

Need serial key – CodeSmith Community.

Tomorrow is the first day of “nerdigras”:http://nedbatchelder.com/blog/200903/square_root_of_christmas.html ; let the festivities begin!

(I wonder what the pancake-equivalent is? :-)

http://biggeekdaddy.com/miscvideos/everythingsamazing.html

It’s true. We live in amazing times, and everyone is as grumpy as ever!

Hackers broke into an electronic sign near Austin, TX to warn travellers about the zombie apocalypse! woo hoo!

“http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/hackers-break-into-electronic.html”:http://techblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2009/01/hackers-break-into-electronic.html

The girl speaks from the back seat:

bq. Is that one of those geek songs? Rock the Taskbar?

The cartoon network managed to “rick-roll the Macy’s parade”:http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/11/just-in-case-yo.html

(via Wil Wheaton).

As a friend wrote, “I never expected to see anyone but a white male elected President of the United States in my lifetime”:http://cielf.livejournal.com/301745.html. (That post is friend-locked, so only some of you can see it, sorry).

On the other hand, I still don’t expect to see the Toronto Maple Leafs win the Stanley Cup in my lifetime. And until last week, I would have given better odds on the Leafs… :-)

“Evidence-based Medicine”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence-based_medicine sounds like a good thing, until you realize that sometimes collecting the data required causes more problems than it solves. These guys took this argument to an extreme:

“Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials”:http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7429/1459?ijkey=425457f110f8db584617b87a1eace92eaa39ff02

bq. Conclusions As with many interventions intended to prevent ill health, the effectiveness of parachutes has not been subjected to rigorous evaluation by using randomised controlled trials. Advocates of evidence based medicine have criticised the adoption of interventions evaluated by using only observational data. We think that everyone might benefit if the most radical protagonists of evidence based medicine organised and participated in a double blind, randomised, placebo controlled, crossover trial of the parachute.

I’m sure they’ll get _lots_ of volunteers for the study… :-)

bq. …it’s too early for men to blame their inability to commit on a single gene, although Lucas guesses it’s an excuse that’s “certainly going to be used.”

“A study of Swedish twin brothers found that differences in a gene modulating the hormone vasopressin were strongly tied to how well each man fared in marriage.”:http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/healthday/2008/09/01/bonding-gene-could-help-men-stay-married.html

(via “Diane Duane”:http://www.dianeduane.com/outofambit/)

The Weakest Link

I thought I had posted this photo a long time ago, but I can’t find it now, so here it is again. (It came up on Fairly Oddparents this morning).

I first saw this on “Bruce Scheier’s security weblog”:http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/the_weakest_lin.html.

(As it turns out, I had uploaded it to Gallery, but still never linked it here. Must have been distracted. Damned kids, get off my lawn! :-)

Daddy: “Why is ‘bealzebub’ written on our whiteboard?”
The Girl: “I don’t know. Does it have his phone number?”

In reference to several recent movies, including Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull:

bq. “Suspension of disbelief does not mean ‘by the neck, until dead'”

(lifted from “Tanya’s weblog”:http://andpuff.livejournal.com/153360.html comments…)

you’ve all heard of “lolcats”:http://icanhascheezburger.com/ by now, right? Well here are new, never before captured photos of “lolgrues”:http://www.eblong.com/zarf/lolgrues/ in teh wild…

(well, I laughed… :-)

A completely over-the-top review of a Bic pen:

Amazon.co.uk: M. Williams “Matt Wil…’s review of Bic Crystal ballpoint pen, medium point, b…

Some of the comments on this review are equally hilarious:

bq. I often use pencils to write notes on paper, but have been thinking about changing to a pen. Is this pen a good starting point for a novice?

and so on…

From Bruce Schneier’s security weblog:

bq. Here’s a “clip”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig from an Australian TV programme called “The Chaser”. A Trojan Horse (full of appropriately attired soldiers) finds its way past security everywhere except the Turkish consulate.

bq. At least they remember their history.

“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig

Star Trek meets “Steampunk”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk.

“http://slumbering.lungfish.com/?p=417”:http://slumbering.lungfish.com/?p=417

If I knew more about 19th century Science Fiction I could use this as a campaign seed… :-)

Now all of the women I know can “pee standing up like a man”:http://www.whizbiz.com.au/ …

What _will_ they think of next?

(In all seriousness, I can see a use for this; many public washrooms are truly disgusting places that _I_ wouldn’t want to park my buttocks in…)

Why the treasure ships from the Americas were allowed to skip Customs: no one inspects the Spanish acquisition!

(Shamelessly stolen from “olletho”:http://olletho.livejournal.com/381557.html)

As seen in the Pachelbels Canon – CollegeHumor video, it really is everywhere.

Maybe you have to be a bit of a music geek, but I laughed myself silly over this one…