I'm recently hearing the term pushback often. This is a new word. The previous one was resistance.

Vikings gain ground on Romans.

The Earth be damned

Environmentalists could possibly become the new industrialists.

Environmentalists say, convincingly "Banish this toxic packaging from household products and comsumables!" They say "Hecatons of carbon, and teragacres of lost forest result from unnecessary paint and plastic on breakfast cereals packages, juice bottles and detergent cartons."

The greens appear logical. But if we do replace all unnecessary packaging by uniform, grey recycled cardboard and dull bulk bins, we will all fall into soviet-style depression everytime we visit the supermarket. The suicide rate will climb, and, no longer inspired to choose a product over its competitor, the consumer will cause the economy to plunge.

No! We need colour! We need unusual profiles and complementary fridge magnets! Keep painting those Corn Flakes boxes in bright colours! for the sake of humanity, and the Earth be damned.

This is a march (bum pum pum)

bum pum pum pum

(On) Monday, I shower before I shit.

(On) Sunday, I shit before I shower.

(On) Monday, I shower before I shit.

(On) Sunday, I shit before I shower.

verse

(On) Monday, I'm done in one minute.

(On) Sunday, I shit for a whole hour.

x8

Step left around together with the right.

Between the stretched-tight sheets, there's a squashed bug or smeared shit.

Flawed software

If somebody wrote a bad, but useful, piece of software, and that software got really popular, then an industry would spring up to compensate for the flaws in that software.

Lots of people would get paid to help others use the software optimally.

Organisations would sell training for using the software in a way that would circumvent its flaws.

Companies would make money selling software that eased the discomforting aspects of the bad software.

Economies would grow because of the demand for products and services that made the bad software good.

Unemployment would fall.

Productivity would rise.

Would it not be disastrous, then, if somebody else wrote a piece of software that was equally useful, but had no flaws?

The contour

I follow the contour of your face my darling, with my mouse pointer.

Refactoring Fridays

Here at Supertitle Electronic Language Logic (NYSE:SLX,NASDAQ:SELL), partners are always impressed at how ready our developers are to integrate completely new features into their code. In fact, they are impressed at how much we just talk about code.

It all comes from our agility in the way we treat the mountains of code that we produce. One big factor is discipline in its internal documentation. Another, is our willingness to refactor.

At the management level, we have a culture of refactoring. Developers are always itching to refactor their code, but they need management support in order to assign a high priority to their refactoring tasks in favour of other sometimes immediate-looking sales requests.

To that end, we have something I've called Refactoring Fridays. This is the day that all developers can dedicate all day to refactoring their code. We all contribute to the "kitty" throughout the week, and on this day we use it to buy pizzas, so nobody has to interrupt the furious refactoring ideas that have been building inside them all week.

The result is great code that's easy to extend, and robust, so it can take all the new features coming at it. Partners can't believe how quickly we can code, and of course clients love it. And that's what keeps you ahead in this business.

Major security flaw in Windows

I just found a major security flaw in Windows.

If you type your password somewhere, even though it is shown as a row of dots, when you press CTRL+arrow keys, the cursor stops at all the special characters in your password.

Here's the explanation in pictures.

1. I use Internet Explorer, and I go to the del.icio.us login page, typing my password strong.password.

   My password, strong.password, displays as a row of dots.

   

2. I put my cursor at the end of the password box.

   

3. I press CTRL+left arrow.

   The cursor stops in the middle. This is the position just after the character . (period) in my password.

   

4. I press CTRL+left arrow again.

   The cursor stops one position over. This is the position just before the character . (period) in my password.

   

5. I press CTRL+left arrow one more time.

   The cursor stops at the first position of the password box.

   

Incredibly, I have discovered that my password contains a single special character, and that that character is at position six. This allows me to, with full confidence, declare that the words from positions zero to five, and seven to 14 are weak passwords.

This is an awful problem, and hundreds of secure bank account are sure to be wiped clean within minutes. Unless they are running on Vista. So please, don't ever type in your password anywhere if you use Windows, and if you have to, then upgrade to Vista first.

Attempt at 90's nostalgia

• Tori Amos

• Sarah McLachlan

• Ace of Base

• that song about following a girl home, or something, that they always played as the last song of the night in bars because it was somehow embarassingly appropriate to leaving a bar

• Short Dick Man

I just thought of a game.

You need an apple, a field, and a paper target.

You stand on the target and throw the apple in the air, then you run.

When the apple hits the ground, you stop running, and you measure how far you got from the target: that's your score.

But, you also measure how far the apple hit the ground from the target. You multiply that distance by a number (say ten), and subtract it from your score. And that's your score.

That is all.

Video that makes my world turn upside-down

This video makes my world turn upside-down.