Quotulatiousness

October 23, 2009

Worst. Promotion. Ever.

Filed under: Japan, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 16:52

Behold the culinary crime that Microsoft is committing in Japan:

Microsoft is celebrating the release of Windows 7 in Japan with a Burger King promotion for the Windows 7 Whopper: Seven patties stacked on top of one another in one sandwich. Given that Microsoft has been criticized for releasing top-heavy, bloated operating systems, this could be one of its worst promotional ideas ever.

Windows_7_Whopper

The Windows 7 Whopper weighs in with about 1,000 calories, and likely packs enough cholesterol to require immediate surgery for anyone foolhardy enough to try eating one. It’s a full five inches thick, and costs the equivalent of $8.50.

Wreck of WW1 British submarine found in Baltic

Filed under: Britain, History, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

BBC News reports on a recent discovery by the Australian descendent of the only survivor of the sinking:

The wreck of a British naval submarine lost for more than 90 years has been found in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Estonia.

HMS E18 – with its complement of three officers and 28 ratings – went out on patrol in May 1916 and was never seen again.

The submarine was one of a handful sent to the Baltic during World War I by Winston Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, to disrupt German shipments of iron ore from Sweden and support the Russian navy.

E18 left its base in the Russian port of Reval – now Tallinn, the capital of Estonia – on the evening of 25 May 1916 and headed west.

The following day she was reported to have engaged and torpedoed a German ship.

A few days later, possibly 2 June, she is believed to have struck a German mine and sunk with all hands.

Corruption quadruples the price of military transport aircraft

Filed under: Africa, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

South Africa has a serious corruption problem with their yet-to-be delivered A400M military transport planes:

Yet another corruption case in South Africa. This time, members of parliament are asking why the military is suddenly paying $809 million each for eight A400M four engine transports. The price other nations are paying for the aircraft are under $200 million each. The price South Africa agreed to pay, in 2005, was about $279 million, and included training, maintenance support and some spare parts. It is believed that the price went up so that government officials could siphon off large bribes. Meanwhile, the A400M aircraft is four years behind schedule, and has not flown yet. It was originally to start deliveries to European customers this year. South Africa is supposed to begin getting its A400Ms in seven years. South Africa has already paid $400 million for its A400Ms, and more progress payments will soon be due.

Such blatant corruption is not new in South Africa, but lately the crooks have been winning. Last year, the South African parliament passed a law disbanding an elite government investigation unit nicknamed the “Scorpions.” Investigations by this unit had led to dozens of corruption prosecutions of government officials. That’s why the unit is being dismantled. Corruption is a major problem throughout Africa, and many nations are now setting up units like the Scorpions, after having realized that corruption was the major cause of the poverty and civil wars that afflict most Africans.

WordPress plugins to consider

Filed under: Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:27

Charles Arthur looks at a few recommended plugins for WordPress blogs:

First, there’s been another upgrade to WordPress (it’s now at 2.8.5). The WordPress blog describes it as a “hardening release”.

Much more important, in my view, is the release of the WordPress Exploit Scanner plugin. Plugins are little extensions to WordPress; and Exploit Scanner is probably the next one you should install. (The first you should install, in my opinion, is Dr Dave’s Spam Karma 2 – which weeds out spam comments more effectively than anything I’ve ever seen, and is specific to your blog.)

The Exploit Scanner does a number of things: it compares your files against an MD5 hash of the WordPress files for whatever version of installation you’re running; it finds examples of suspicious code in your files – three principal ones being the use of “invisible” text through CSS; the use of iframes to embed code from other sites; and base 64 encoding, which can be used to obfuscate entire programs. It will also look through your posts and users to see if there’s anything suspicious or spammy about them.

Check your homework, says the dog

Filed under: Economics, Environment, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:12

Brenda and Robert Vale recently published Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living, where they made the case that your pets are a greater environmental burden than a typical SUV. Cocoa the dog begs to differ, having checked their math:

Conclusion

0.61 hectares to feed the soulless Toyota Land Cruiser.

0.062 hectares to feed your best friend.

That’s 10 times as much for the Land Cruiser than for me. I could have sworn the professors said the dog required twice as much land as the Land Cruiser. They were only off by a factor of 20.

Bad professors, BAD. Don’t make me rub your nose in it.

When a poll goes very wrong

Filed under: Britain, Religion — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:20

Lester Haines reports on a poll that didn’t go quite as the sponsors expected:

An online poll enquiring as to the possible existence of God has somewhat backfired on Christian outfit The Alpha Course, with 98 per cent of the popular vote currently saying he doesn’t:

poll_gone_wrong

According to the Sun, The Alpha Course kicked off a multi-million pound advertising campaign back in September to promote its particular road to enlightenment, described as “an opportunity for anyone to explore the Christian faith in a relaxed setting”.

The poster and ad drive was a response to a Humanist Society campaign last year suggesting there was “probably no God” – a view shared by the vast majority of the 154,500 online votes at time of publication.

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