Lawyer Pwns “Reporter” – TVI

(in portuguese) TVI – Evening News.

teaser:

Badass Bible Verses

The 9 Most Badass Bible Verses | Cracked.com

If the Bible had been written by King Leonidas and the rest of the Spartans from 300, it would probably read pretty much the same as it does now.

It turns out, the Bible is already chock full of ass kicking. Here are the verses that make us want to take to the streets and put some unbelievers to the sword.

Aim For The Starts

Is the title of a film about the rocket physicist and astronautics engineer Wernher von Braun. I haven’t seen it but I like the suggested subtitle:

I Aim For The Stars (But Sometimes I Hit London)

Wikipedia

(originally via Joao)

CNBC Gives Financial Advice – The Daily Show

Chamomile Tea

I just LMAO with this:

Chamomile Tea

Chamomile Tea

ACTUAL COLLEGE THEME PAPER – HEY I COULDN’T MAKE THIS UP
Remember the book “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”?
Well, here’s a prime example offered by an English professor
at an American University.

“Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story.
The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person
sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write
the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the
first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The
first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and
forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order
to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely NO talking
and anything you wish to say must be written on the paper. The
story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”

The following was actually turned in by two of my English students:

Rebecca -last name deleted, and Jim – last name deleted.

————————————————————
STORY:
(First paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The
chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home,
now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times,
that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs,
keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if
she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again.
So chamomile was out of the question.
—————————————————–
(Second paragraph by Jim)
Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack
squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to
think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named
Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S.
Harris to Geostation 17, he said into his trans- galactic communicator.
“Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so
far…” But before he could sign off, a bluish particle beam flashed
out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The
jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across
the cockpit.
———————————————————-
(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately but not before he
felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one
woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth
stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers
of Skylon 4. Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and
Space Travel,” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news
simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window,
dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed hurriedly and
carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract
her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things
around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocence to become a woman?”
she pondered wistfully.
——————————————————–
(Jim)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live.
Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu’udrian mothership
launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted
wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament
Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenseless target
for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the
human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty
the Anu’udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough
firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop
them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium
fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President,
in his top-secret Mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor
off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion,
which vaporized poor, stupid Laurie and 85 million other Americans.
The President slammed his fist on the conference table. “We can’t
allow this! I’m going to veto that treaty! Let’s blow ‘em out of
the sky!”
———————————————————
(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature.
My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate
adolescent.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Yeah? Well, you’re a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts
at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. “Oh shall I have
chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F*CKING TEA??? Oh
no, I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele
novels.”
———————————————————-
(Rebecca)
Asshole.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Bitch.
———————————————————-
(Rebecca)
Wanker.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
slut.
———————————————————
(Rebecca)
Get f*cked.
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Eat shit.
——————————————————–
(Rebecca)
F*CK YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!!!
———————————————————-
(Jim)
Go drink some tea – whore.
——————————————————–
(Teacher)
A+ I really liked this one.

Asustek May Use Google’s Android in Netbooks, in Challenge for Microsoft (Tim Culpan/Bloomberg)

Asustek May Use Google’s Android in Netbooks, in Challenge for Microsoft (Tim Culpan/Bloomberg): “

Tim Culpan / Bloomberg:

Asustek May Use Google’s Android in Netbooks, in Challenge for Microsoft‘ —’ Feb. 20 (Bloomberg) — Asustek Computer Inc., which pioneered the market for sub-$500 laptops, may install Google Inc.’s free Android operating system on its low-cost notebooks, challenging the dominance of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows software.

(Via Techmeme.)

Alan Kay at TED – A powerful idea about teaching ideas

Alan Kay (wikipedia) – A powerful idea about teaching ideas (TED Talks)

With all the intensity and brilliance for which he is known, Alan Kay envisions better techniques for teaching kids by using computers to illustrate experience in ways -– mathematically and scientifically — that only computers can.

Noise Sample

How Digg Works is a nice blog post on the digg technology blog that gives an overview of the digg network architecture: load balancers -> application server (apache, memcached, gearman) -> database server (MySQL) / file server (MogileFS). Quoting:

“Digg uses Debian GNU/Linux across the board with a mixture of MySQL, Memcached, MogileFS, Python, PHP, Apache, Gearman and various appliances to serve up billions of requests a month (and more every day!)”

What’s New In Python 2.6. My highlights: new documentation format using Sphinx (which btw looks incredibly powerful – read “complex”), awesome (but still optional) with statment (from future) to replace try…finally blocks, multiprocessing package,and more.

I had more stuff to put in this post but it has been in my “draft” folder for more than a week now so I’m just gonna post it like it is.

UbuntuWebServer Virtual Appliance V1.4

This is probably the last version of my ubuntu web server VM that will use Ubuntu 7.10.

UbuntuWebServer

Direct Download Link

REVISION LOG:

1.4 – added phppgadmin and some php stuff
1.3 – added FTP Server
1.2 – added JDK+Tomcat5.5 and PostegreSQL
1.1 – added OpenSSL and demo apache configuration (commented)
1.0 – initial release

Google Web Services for Free

Dave Winer recently broke the news that Google will soon introduce a “Google Web Services”,  a competitor to Amazon Web Services. This isn’t much of a shock to anyone. The extra bit that is somewhat of a surprise  is the price: free. He then explains that the reason it will be free is that they can pay for it in the reduced cost of integrating new acquisitions into their infrastructures which would become, effectively zero.

I don’t agree with that. At least I don’t think that is the main reason. I think it’s just the same old business model – basic service is free, premium is paid. The same model you see in Google Apps and a lot of other business on the web.

The basic service will be limited, in terms of traffic and/or storage (file and DB) etc. This will be the most widely used by startups. The premium service will just be the same pricing model amazon – pay as you go, the only different is that you don’t start paying at zero usage but rather at a higher threshold. When a startup becomes successful its needs will grow exponentially. They will be using more than the maximum allowed for free, and they’ll need to pay. But that’s alright because now that they are successful they can afford it. And the 1% or so that will be successful will have subsidized everyone that didn’t make it and still give Google a nice profit. Let’s not forget that Google’s infrastructure is already here and even tens of thousands of failed ventures won’t make a dent in it. Successful ventures will generate enough cash to upgrade that same infrastructure. Specially as the cost of hardware continues to drop.

Off course I’m sure people at Google also thought of the acquisition factor. Past acquisitions have taken a lot of time to be integrated. I think it took something like a year for writely to become “Google Docs“. That’s a very long time on the web.

Combine the free GWS with the powerful web development frameworks like Ruby on Rails that allow single individuals to create useful applications quickly and the new marketting oppurtunities that the web2.0 has created and the cost of trying won’t be measured in millions, thousands or even hundreds of dollars. It will be measured in terms of hours – the hours you “wasted” trying. And that, in many cases, won’t even be “time wasted” but rather “experience gained”.

It’s a brave new world indeed.