Hello? Hello?! Is this Pockiston?

Sure its juvenile.  But it’s pretty damn funny.  Via IMAO

If the politicians at the UN and other countries are having absolute hissy fits about something, you know you must, as a free person, view this movie.  Fitna the Movie: Geert Wilders’ film about the Quran (English) is back at LiveLeak.com.

Thanks to Ghost of the flea for pointing out it’s back…

Look at this product announcement.

Wireshark: Wireshark 1.0 Released

I’m proud to announce the release of Wireshark 1.0. This is the culmination of nearly ten years of hard work by a team of brilliant and talented developers. It is an honor to be able to work with these people.
On behalf of the development team, I would like to thank Wireshark’s user community for all of your enthusiasm and support over the years. Wireshark development will continue, and we have lots of great features to offer in the coming years.

Ummm it took a bunch of pot smoking commie hippies open source developers only 10 years to get to the first non-beta release of the software!  I kid a bit, because Wireshark and Ethereal before it is great software.  But it should have been set to version 1.0 about 9 years ago.

You go to a friends house and you take a 12 pack of beer with you. At the end of the night you’ve only drank 8 beers and there are 4 left; do you take the remaining beers home or leave them?

Anyone have the right answer?

Found on craigslist

To the little blue pill!

The potency enhancing drug Viagra has been on the market for 10 years. In 1998, pharmaceutical company Pfizer introduced the erection drug that was to change millions of lives at a stroke. A solution to erectile dysfunction had been found, and the taboo surrounding impotence was largely a thing of the past.

Viagra Was Approved Ten Years Ago: Birthday

Over at Blue Star Chronicles

Lillian Asplund was born in southern Sweden. Her father was a laborer who had dreams of moving the family to California so he could build a better future for his family as part of the American dream. He copied what California had to offer his family from a brochure, apparently so he could tell his wife about it. The family planned the move to America. Ms. Asplund’s father bought third class tickets for himself, his wife, his four sons and his daughter on the maiden voyage of the state of the art ship, Titanic.

Lillian Asplund never talked about her trip from Sweden to America. She never talked about the night the Titanic sank taking with it her father and three older brothers. She, her mother and her baby brother were the only ones in that family to survive that night. When Ms. Asplund died at age 99 years of age, she was the last survivor of the Titanic who had memories of it. Only one other survivor remains, but he was a baby at the time. After her death, family members found a shoe box in which she had kept her memories from the night that defined the rest of her life. The contents of that shoe box are some of the rarest historical artifacts from the Titanic and are going up for auction soon.

It’s pretty amazing that there is still new news coming out about this doomed ship.

Lots of people don’t like history.  History is easy: imagine yourself there.  Imagine yourself as someone on that boat as it went under.  Suddenly history is a lot more interesting.

Yeah, everyone knows now about the update.

Of course, this blog is so old, my db prefixes are ‘b2′ and not ‘wp’… Sorry, most of you won’t get that.  Those that do should get a chuckle…

“Dad! Mom, Dad, this is Larry Kroger. The boy who molested me last month. We have to get married.” - Clorette, Animal House

“I hate Illinois Nazis!” - Jake, The Blues Brothers

“Badgers? Badgers? We don’t need no stinking badgers.” - Raul Hernandez, UHF

“We’re gonna press on, and we’re gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse. ” - Clark, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

“Husbands should be like Kleenex: soft, strong, and disposable” - Mrs. White, Clue

“I’m so rich; I wish I had a dime for every dime I have.” - Arthur, Arthur

“Excuse me while I whip this out…” - Bart, Blazing Saddles

“Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.” - George Newman, UHF

“Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?” - Clarence Oveur, Airplane!

“She’s gone! Oh my God, she used me. I was used. I was used! Cool!” - Jim, American Pie

“Now, she should be good-looking, but we’re willing to trade looks for a certain… morally casual attitude.” - Boon, Animal House

“God damn it, Mr. Lamarr sir, you use your tongue purdier than a twenny dollar whore!” - Taggart, Blazing Saddles

via The LLama Butchers

“No one wants to see Iraq war movies. No matter what we put out there in terms of great cast or trailers, people were completely turned off. It’s a function of the marketplace not being ready to address this conflict in a dramatic way because the war itself is something that’s unresolved yet. It’s a shame because it’s a good movie that’s just ahead of its time.”

Just like all the folks who think the economy is in the toilet only because the media tells them so, Hollywood still can’t stop listening to themselves.

Wake up, do a great war flick just like was done in WWII and watch the profits roll in.  Unless you’re more interested in mind control of what you see as “Simpleton Middle America” than in making a few quick bucks.

I’m bored, so here’s the list of cars I’ve owned:

• 1978 Cadillac Coupe de Ville - First car, metallic red paint so deep you thought you could reach into it.  And I totaled it.
• 1978 Oldsmobile Ninety Eight.  It was white with a green top and interior.  Previous owner died in it.  Engine blew up on a trip to upstate New York.
• 1980 Jeep CJ5. Still owned by a buddy of mine.  It was just an incredible Jeep… it was rigged for racing with big tires and a Holley 650 carb blowing into the bored out I6 engine.
• 1988 Mustang GT Convertible.  Wife hated it but it was so much fun to drive.  Looked like a Storm Trooper headed your way.
• 1994 Chevy Blazer.  Fully loaded but falling apart.
• 1996 Acura Integra.  First new car!  Bought for the wife but I drove it for a few years too.
• 2001 Toyota Tacoma.  Didn’t keep it that long but was a fun ride.
• 2003 Honda Element.  Primary driver for the Mrs’s right now.
• 2005 Acura TSX.  Very much fun but for some reason it wasn’t me.
• 2006 Honda Ridgeline.  Current ride..

What’s next?  Good question.  Lease on the Ridgeline is up in less than a year.  I’ll just have to see…

G’n'R.  Sweet Child of Mine… One of the best things produced by the 1980’s.

Doomsday fears spark lawsuit

The builders of the world’s biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.

So you’d be sucked into a black hole or turned into a “strangelet” or “magnetic monopole”.  Bah…

I apologize now for the language…

TMZ.com  is apparently some magazine that sticks its head up celebrities asses just to enjoy the smell of fame.  Yeah, whatever, but then they pull shit like this:

Former “Bachelor” bachelor Andy Baldwin just got back from the island of Palau in the South Pacific — not on vacation, on a mission with the Navy. Now let’s talk about why we the taxpayers are footing the bill on such BS.

BS?  What the hell is wrong with these chicken-fuckers that they call retrieving the remains of someone’s family members to give them a proper burial?  Especially since these are military members who died so that assholes like TMZ writers can publish crap like this?

I’m a proud lifetime member of the VFW and there are a lot of good people there who give their free time to help retrieve remains.  Because it’s the right thing to do.

People like the TMZ staff writers wouldn’t know the right thing to do if it kicked their asses.

From Blackfive…

Under Pressure. David Bowie and Queen.  Just to remind you the weekend is coming.

Joel on Software covers why IE8 will be awesome, everything the open source folks will want, and a failure.

As usual, the idealists are 100% right in principle and, as usual, the pragmatists are right in practice. The flames will continue for years. This debate precisely splits the world in two. If you have a way to buy stock in Internet flame wars, now would be a good time to do that.

Essentially this is the battle.  There are the geeks.  They set the “standards” and dictate the way software will work.  They’ll ensure it has technical elegance, with a million different options to allow every user perfect customization of everything.  Even though the option the user wanted is seventeen layers deep.  A perfect example is software that converts one type of video format to another.  MediaCoder is a great example.  There are Muxer and WavPack, FLAC and APE, RLSMLS modes aplenty.  Thousands of switches and options and pulldown menus.  Perfect example of geek software.

The geeks are wrong.  Almost always wrong.

I’m a geek.  I’ve been doing this crap since 1981.  I can write code in several different languages.  I’ve built systems costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

And I can’t figure out how to use MediaCoder to convert a video simply from whatever format it is in to the one I want. 

I simply want to select a media file type, and as long as the codec exists on the computer I’m working on, it should be able to display.  Then I simply choose: The output format, lets say WMV.  I should be able to hit Go at this point and the software will figure the rest out by simply matching the screen size and audio format of what is there now.  Or maybe I want to shrink it down, I should be able to select screen size, frame rate, and audio bandwidth.  Or even better, I select a target file size and the software figures out the rest.  That’s it, that’s what I want. 

This is the problem with the new IE8.  At this point the software purists have control of how internet “standards” will be followed.  This makes the geeks rejoice, even though no browser meets these hypothetical standards.  What it means for everyone is that most websites aren’t going to work properly.

Good luck with that…

One of the tenets of being efficient is not doing repeated wasteful actions over and over again.  If you don’t need to do it, why would you?

Some may have noticed that when you hit this site it makes sure the URL starts with http://pirate-king.com.  Notice that there is no www. in there?

This has to be one of the stupidest conventions in the internet.  Reading off a URL to someone with the longest pronounced letter three times is horrible.  Even the shortcut method of saying “dub dub dub whatever” is a major waste.

Just about every website out there can be reached by not using the www. in front of the domain.  By internet convention this should always take you to the primary website for the domain.  I can’t think of the last time I found a major website that isn’t reachable that way.

Is your website compatible?  Check http://no-www.org/ for more information.  The page is a little out of date but the tools still work just fine.

Enjoy the music!

You know what sickens me the most when I read letters to the editor pages on newspapers?  It’s when people write in saying how great America will be when <insert Democratic candidate here> will be elected so that X, Y, and Z will finally happen!  The only problem is in both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution, the document that holds this country together, X, Y, and Z (Oh most definitely Z!) isn’t allowed.  Because those are things the government shouldn’t be doing for people.

Basic history lesson here folks.  The founding of the US came down to essentially this: the Founding Fathers were smart enough to realize that for thousands of years, the government had its hands in everything going on in people’s lives.  You lived and died at the whim of the government.  Your necessities were provided at the whim of the government.  Your luxuries were provided at the whim of the government.  And that is no way for free people to live.  So they built in to the Constitution of this new nation controls that prevented these types of things.  So that you could be as free as possible.

And now we have half the population wanting to give up their freedom for security and greed.  I’m not talking about things like the Patriot act offense to freedom even though that also applies.  But people wanting nationalized health care and other new big government programs.  Why?  It’s simple.  It has nothing to do with the percentage of the population without insurance.  That’s the big lie in all this.  They can still get health care, all you have to do is look at the unpaid bills to hospitals to have that proven to you.  It’s so that the lazy and the greedy can get what they currently have to pay big bucks for to be free.  Well, not free, but in making everyone else pay for you.  I find it fairly disgusting when a so-called free person says “Let the rich pay for my health care so I don’t have to.”   Because you know for a fact that they’d squeal like a pig should they win Powerball only to find out they government is going to tax 75% of those winnings to pay for some other lazy person’s health care.  Oh the injustice of it all then.

Health insurance is a pretty funny example.  In capitalism each insurance company would try to do the best job they can so that more people use their services, and therefore overall they’ll make more money.  But people wanting nationalized care seem to think that more government is the answer, not realizing that most of the problems with the entire system has been caused by the government stepping in and regulating things already.  Why do you think you can only change your plan once a year?  Because there are all these laws controlling what they’re allowed to do.

But this trend of more government is most evident in the Democratic party, with the Republicans only slightly behind.  Which is why I find internal arguments such as what follows pretty darn funny.  Because in the appeals to every special interest group the DNC has found they’re in a deep hole of their own making. 

From Glenn Beck

Democrats aren’t happy that delegates from Florida and Michigan won’t be seated at the national convention because those states broke clear party rules. Well you know what? Too bad. We don’t say that enough anymore. Too bad. You agreed to the rules; you broke them. Now you’ve got to deal with the consequences.

“But Glenn. … Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama [spit] will have enough delegates to win the nomination. We don’t want this to be decided in some backroom by superdelegates.”

Too bad.

“But Glenn. … You don’t understand. If we don’t seat delegates from those states now, then we might lose their votes in the general election.”

Too bad.

“But Glenn. …. The voters in these states are going to be disenfranchised if we don’t let their voices be heard.”

Too bad.

So either they have to disenfranchise two big states, follow the rules, and ensure a “united” party behind Obama [spit] (with all the Hillary voters royally pissed off), or let the people’s votes count, throw the entire primary/caucus system into complete chaos in the future as every single state moves the 2012 primary to they day after the 2008 general election since they know their voters will not be punished.

NASA Science News for March 12, 2008

To celebrate Women’s History Month, an all-female team of scientists and engineers has taken control of Mars rover Spirit. Is Mars exploration different with women calling the shots? Find out in today’s story from Science@NASA.

FULL STORY at

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/12mar_spiritday.htm?list191982

Oh my, there are a lot of snide remarks that can be made on this one.  I welcome comments from the peanut gallery on this…

Attention college students. Put down your beer bong and water pipe long enough to read An Open Letter to the College Students of America

Self-protection is a basic human right and it has been recognized as such for centuries! It is not a privilege to be handed out by administration nor can it be doled out to a privileged few through legislation. In every case that you can name, violence happens to individuals or groups when they have surrendered their right of self-protection to some other entity besides themselves. It matters not if it is a community’s trust in its police force, a campus’s trust in the administration and security group or a civilian population disarmed by decree of the government, when you surrender the right of self-protection to another agency, you voluntarily place your life at risk. It should be obvious to anyone that it is not possible for the police to be in every single place where violence can occur and that at best, police officers are provided to maintain the appearance of law and order, yet in most cases of violence they can only write reports, investigate the behaviors of the law breakers and perhaps notify next-of-kin. You may believe that it is the obligation of your local law enforcement agency to protect you and seeing security guards on your campus may make you feel secure, but in fact the courts have proven time and again that there is no obligation by law enforcement to provide for an individual’s security. Note what Jeffrey R. Snyder wrote in his 1993 essay; A Nation of Cowards:

Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police’s, not only are you wrong since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you?

College students are known world wide for claiming to know everything on one hand and having no clue on the other. Also for when a crisis comes along, they can be guaranteed to try the absolute wrong thing every time. So I doubt they’ll take this type of advice until it is way too late.