That’s what I’ve got to say for today. Really, you don’t want to hear about 6 months worth of my monotonous life.
OK, let’s spice up the post a bit.
100% corn socks – socks made out of corn. Yup. Instead of using cotton or wool or petrolium based fabric. And Kansas produces helluva lot of corn – most of it for cattles, but others for ethanol production too. Go Kansas agri-business! (Not that I have any part in any of that business.)
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=8443560&src=rss/oddlyEnoughNews
No, I don’t buy that. That’s screwed up!
Since I was bitten by a dog 20 years ago (and I think I had much worse injury than this girl), I got very scared of dogs, then I gradually come to love them again. Properly behaved dogs are just very lovable. I couldn’t possibly name anything I disliked about Maggie, a very sweet border collie. Of course, she has a very responsible owner – she’s a fortunate dog. But sometimes, I wonder about some owners…
City of Wichita has no regulations on how many dogs you can have. Not that it’s a bad thing, but I do wonder if people are wise enough to know their limit. Take this news item for example – that house had 6 grown-up dogs. That’s a quite a few to handle for anyone. I know some people gets very attached to their pets. That’s a good thing. But along with that must come responsibilities. It may be hard to let go of your puppies. But wouldn’t it be worse if your dogs gets sent to the pound, as these dogs did?
I hope that this girl will overcome the fear against dogs. It might take time. But animals can bring lots of good to us.
Another story linked from slash dot – ‘Geek speak’ confuses net users
I’m not too surprised about this finding, but the result is still depressing and scary. People tend to form some sort of community anywhere and everywhere they go, and some type of lingo starts to form. IT is very notorious about that. All kinds of new technologies are born everyday, both good and bad. Along with them, new lingoes pop up.
I hear it at my work place all the time too. Answer the customer questions using the terms that we have gotten accustomed to. We know exactly what we mean, because we face the technology everyday. To end user, that may not be the case. What might sounds like a common sense term is not common at all to the customer. It is difficult to provide help in the language that anyone and everyone can understand.
I also see it on AnimeSuki Forum too. People ask “I can’t play the video I downloaded. What’s wrong with it?” Someone else answers “It’s your codec. Reinstall the codec.” Most readers knows what that means, to some extent. What’s a codec? That’s a simple question. “How do I exactly go about this reinstalling?” That’s a much harder question. And often, this more complicated part is omitted from the answer, just because that’s something those people who give the answer do all the time. It’s a common knowledge to them. But to the person who asked the question, this “how to” is what they really want to know… most of the time.
But hey, there are plenty of FAQs and README and manuals out there. So we say RTFM!
First Swede Prosecuted For File Sharing
By itself, the news isn’t too big. It’s just another case of pirate being caught. But it’s the method used that’s questionable. An unconfirmed report (I read it on faireal.net, a Japanese site) says that APB, the anti-piracy bureau (Antipiratbyrån) was using an agent who acted a part in the file sharing community. 68000 titles of games and stuff!!! A thought of cyber-Jack Beuer came to my mind, but heh… this is just insane. Even Jack wouldn’t go THAT far.
Kansas legislature is considering a total smoking ban in any public, enclosed space. Finally, it’s about time.
When I visit Charleston, WV, one of the really nice thing is that all restaurants are smoke free. has said numerous times that it’s weird when the waiters ask “Smoking or non-smoking?” at restaurants in Kansas.
All restaurants have smoking and non-smoking sections, if the place allow any smoking in the building currently. But there are still many places where there are no wall or anything effective to separate the two areas, minimizing the effect of such separation. I’m sure you’ve experienced in the past too – you get seated in a non-smoking section which is still close enough to the smoking section, and you can clearly smell the smoke.
Finally, they’re considering this smoke ban.
I do feel this proposal is a bit extreme. Even banning smoking in the bars? I’m not very sure how wise that choice is to the night life scene. This is where I feel the facility or business owner needs to make their own decisions about smoking policy, not the state… Not that it matters to me too much, but crippling the business economy too much wouldn’t be a good idea.
Still, I can’t wait for the day I don’t have to worry about smoke in restaurants.
I just found out that Baskin Robbins is giving out free icecream to celebrate Yahoo’s 10th birthday. What about me? The closest Baskin Robbins from here is 3 hours away. Oh, too bad…
While I was waiting for another dental appointment, I read the news about Steve Fossett’s challenge – first solo flight around the world, non-stop, without any refueling. At lunch today, I read the news about the fuel consumption being more than expected so far. I hope he can still pull this feat off.
The start and goal of this trip, Salina Municipal Airport, is just 90 minutes North of where I live. Along with BTK case, Kansas is making some big national news this week…
UPDATE : Yay! He landed as scheduled!
Spyware on My Machine? So What? (found through slashdot)
This is a scary notion – people are giving in to the adware products willingly. They’re just giving away their personal informations, online behaviors, and what not… Where did the notion of privacy gone anymore?
As an opensource lover, it’s a pretty painful blow. People are very unaware of the free software that’s really free, with no catches.
On top of that, it’s scary that people are more willing to install these software on their work machines. Not only they don’t care about the privacy, they don’t care about the company confidentiality either? Hrm!
I’ve once used this quote in my blog:
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.
Now this quote is taking a completely new meaning. Whoa…
Just couple entries ago, I put up a post that showed how Japanese couples have less sex than the rest of the globe. Now I see the other side of it:
http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=news&cat=1&id=317577
The amount and level of sex education must be very low in Japan. The figure shown in the article is horrifying. 1.1 million babies were born last year in Japan (http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-06-02-japan-women-usat_x.htm). If you do the math, that means more than 1 in every 5 babies conceived get aborted. (One of the reader comments in JapanToday site says .5 million, but that seems like a misfigure.) The rate of sexual assault is somewhat high, but that figure tells me that there are more than just that. Japanese people needs to be taught how precious lives are, even that of the infants. And, as many readers of JapanToday suggests, the country needs much, much higher sex education.
I can’t say for sure, but I believe there’s certain level of denial as one of the reason for the lack of sex education. The talk of sex is somewhat of taboo subject there. And they don’t want to think that there’s that rampant of a problem among themselves. While not religious in nature, the marriage and family planning is still a sacred topic. It should not be violated. If it was violated in your life, the violated person feels ashamed, and doesn’t want to talk about it. The others feels close to it – the denial.
It’s easy to say “they need to be better educated.” It’s harder to put the program in place because of the cultural tendency.
On a lighter note – the USAToday report still confirms that Japanese people are sex deprived: “In a 2001 survey, condom maker Durex found that Japan ranked dead last among 28 countries in the frequency of sex: The average Japanese had sex just 36 times a year. Hong Kong was next to last with 63. (Americans ranked No. 1 at 124 times a year.)“