Crashed Pips - Computers, politics, emetic trash

Friday, July 18, 2008

News round-up for week commencing 14 July 2008

Here’s this week’s weekly news round-up, and we begin with a continuation of Crackergate from last week. The Republican National Convention, which will be held in the Xcel Center, across the road from the Science Museum of Minnesota, has stepped up security, including the ludicrous step of getting the Science Museum to close to the public. Do they expect mutant scientists to emerge from the museum with octopus armies and test-tube cannons? If so, then Jeremy Clarkson’s claim that, in some parts of America, some people must have started mating with vegetables might well turn out to be true.

In technology news, E3 was this week, and there’s been the typical fest of corporate cock-waving that usually takes place at these conferences. There was an unfortunate incident where the soul singer Duffy was asked by confused journalists about the company strategy and corporate characteristics of a company whose product she was promoting - whoops…

In the world of chip-making, AMD has found a ten-pound note on the road, and has decided to spend it making more Phenoms (the high-end triple- and quad-core processors) and launching a new mobile platform to compete with the Centrino. It’s called the Turion X2 64 Ultra, and I can’t really think what else to say. And AMD wonder why they’re making losses. Intel, on the other hand, is doing quite well with profits up 25%.

Borgsoft hasn’t been doing too well either.

In the metablogosphere, WordPress 2.6 has been  released. It includes a host of new features, such as the fixing of several bugs in the admin panel, and a new version control feature called Post Revisions.

In politics, it turns out the MoD has lost over 100 USB flash disks, some of which had sensitive data on them. This is getting quite silly now. And the Government has claimed it hasn’t made a decision yet on whether or not it will change its own borrowing rules. Overall, a bit of a fiasco, then.

In other news, the latest edition of Simon’s Cat has appeared online, having been premiered on The Culture Show on BBC Two on Tuesday. Keeping in with this theme, some lolcats have wormed their way into this site lately, so I shall now go hunting for them and put them somewhere else.



Saturday, June 28, 2008

Conservapedia.org is parked!

Filed under: Internet — Tags: , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 23:56

Go on. Try it now. It redirects to andyschafly.com (its crackpot creator’s website) which, according to the page, is ‘parked free courtesy of EasyDomain.com’.

“YES!!! There is a God! My faith in humanity has been restored!”

UPDATE: Dammit… I forgot that Crappedia’s main address is conservapedia.com, not .org. DAMN!

UPDATED AGAIN: One has to admire the Consercrapedian’s stupidity: this from the main page on the Henley “bye-election”:

Socialism is crumbling in Britain. On Thursday, the ruling Labour Party candidate came fifth in a parliamentary bye-election - beaten even by the Green Party and the neo-Nazi British National Party (the Conservative Party candidate was a resounding victor). [3]



Saturday, April 19, 2008

Expelled: What a load of old [censored]

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 02:01

I have been unable to see the Ben Stein movie Expelled. Yet. If I do, it’ll be as a comedy film, and I would plan to immediately microwave the disk and (probably) burn the DVD player as well. Then burn all my clothes and take an antiseptic bath.

Put simply, it’s Bible Belt phoney Christianity in a package that ceased to be trendy as soon as Busted separated. I can’t be bothered to write any more about it because it is undeserving of my time, but I strongly recommend Expelled Exposed, a Web site debunking the outrageous and insulting claims made in the film, which include:

  • Darwin was an atheist. (No he wasn’t, he was an agnostic.)
  • Hitler was a Darwinist. (He CLAIMED to have been Christian, but was almost certainly self-worshipping, considering himself to be a demigod.)
  • Intelligent design research is being ignored or repressed by mainstream science. (What ID research?)
  • Darwin was racist, and his book The Descent of Man indicates that he was racist. (Oh no he wasn’t: the text is cleverly misquoted to give this impression.)
  • Evolution is a hoax. (It’s not.)
  • So there. (Feck off.)



Tuesday, January 8, 2008

During the election campaign, Conservapedia speaks even more tosh than usual

Filed under: Politics, The News, US election 2008 — Tags: , , , — Jonathan Rothwell @ 17:33

Whilst point-scoring is common in election campaigns, I am even more appalled by Conservapedia’s attempts to disparage the Democratic candidates, in particular Hillary Clinton. While I’m no supporter of Ms Clinton (my support is behind Barack Obama) I would rather have her than a Republican, or Ron Paul. It’s worse than the last time I looked at Conservapedia: however, when the population of America is in a politically-charged mode, not much can stop them.

Here is a quote from the ‘News’ section of its main page:

“‘We had 300 people outside, literally freezing to death,’ Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton marveled on Tuesday before a crowd in Iowa City. (No deaths were reported, in fact.)”

And I think I’m picky… this takes pedantry for pedantry’s sake to a whole new level. What utter rubbish they are talking. Incidentally, the link they provide links to… wait for it… a blog. Yes, that’s right. A blog. In particular, a blog attacking the incorrect use of the word ‘literally’. Hardly a reputable news source, then. (In case you’re interested, here’s the original article.)

The good news for Mike Huckabee in New Hampshire is that his appearances with Chuck Norris are drawing crowds. The bad news is they are chanting “We want Chuck!”.

A non-story approaching Daily Mail standards. Anyway, I’d rather have Chuck Norris as president than Mike Huckleberry.

The amount of rubbish they’ve written, both about the election and almost everything else, is unbelievable. I can see so many factual errors and simple lies on the page that I can’t read it any more because of the red ink I’ve plastered onto my screen.



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