Finally graduated to a postpaid wireless plan. All the good shit was taken of course, but I managed to get xxx-FRAK, so I got that going for me, which is nice.

So, apparently there's a lot of hubbub over the national hotline for Obamacare translating to the above epithet.

Now, I thought the idiots hyping this up were conveniently leaving the last digit out in order to preserve the joke, and fair enough.

But then I come to learn that the telephone number actually contains the number 1 in the prefix, so that the transcription would more accurately read 1-800-F1UCKYO.

And again, I'm a charitable man, so have your yucks where you can get 'em, but make sure to get in and out quickly and cleanly. If you get to the part where you have to explain that the joke only works when you rearrange the digits, all they'll remember is that you can't tell a joke.

Any truthers still left out there?

Ya fucking morons.

So I'm cutting up a Trinidad Scorpion Butch-T pepper with gloves on, and sprinkling it around a pizza that I am going to cook and eat. Grown in worm casings, it is said to be the hottest pepper in the history of anything, ever.

I didn't have a surplus of worm casings when I planted my plant, Trisha (yes, I name my ridiculous pepper plants). But I did have enough household compost to dig a big hole and replace it with the results from a worm-heavy cold-compost pile before planting the little girl in the middle of that pile of worm-digested food.

Therefore I suspect she's very well-fed; indeed, she's grown much larger than any other first-year pepper plant in the garden, without any purposeful chemical treatments or chemical fertilizer.

I've grown ghost peppers (bhot jolokia) for a few years, and I think I understand what I'm in for. The Scorpions have just started to ripen for the season and this is my first of them.

So I pick a deliciously-colored one, quickly sharpen a good knife, and chop it up finely with gloved hands. Still wearing the nitrile gloves, I scrape the minced pepper from the cutting board and sprinkle it onto the pizza. And I take the gloves off and throw them away, because I'm done handling it now -- right?

But seeing those tiny morsels of pepper on that slab of cardboard crust, tomato goo, and imitation cheese makes me think: Gee, how hot could it be?

So I gather up a tiny sliver from the surface of the pizza with my fingertips and eat it. Yep: It's hot. So hot that it has no redeeming qualities, other than just being hot. None of this was unexpected, though at least by comparison a Habernero has a strong and sweet citrus quality once one gets past the pain... But there was no redeeming quality to this pepper: Just pain.

Well enough, I say to myself. I set the oven to pre-heat the oven and go take a leak while I wait.

Twenty minutes later, my fingers are fine. My palette is fine. My throat is fine. My genitals are on fire.

It's not like I can buy these things at the market, so it's amusing to see how persistent this pepper is in casual use.

And, by God, I'm going to cook that pizza. And I'm going to eat it. And I'm going to handle each and every bite with dishwasher-safe, stainless utensils, and I am going to wash them with an enzyme-based detergent and then a bleach-based detergent -- nobody needs to experience this on accident.

I might even put a fresh pair of nitrile gloves on, just to make sure that nothing that goes in my face winds up somewhere other than in my face when I eat this pizza.

But the question is: Why? Why not just enjoy some bland, cheap, freezer pizza? Why, while I wait, do I suffer from a special kind of burning nasal distress every time I emit a tiny burp or belch, having eaten just the tiniest sliver of a pepper? Why can't I just admire Trisha in all of her visual Trinidad Scorpion Butch-T delight? (She is a very lovely plant, after all.)

Why must I torture myself by eating her fruit?

I think he gave away the whole game in that one sentence, and his meaning is clear: The interception, collection and storage (not to mention collation, reproduction, distribution, analysis and many other important sounding words Iâ(TM)m forgetting right now) of untold millions of petabytes is simply a byproduct of whatever it is that the NSAâ(TM)s really been up to these last few decades.

It would be irresponsible to speculate at this juncture, but consider that whatever the NSA is truly doing, it is of such horrible provenance that theyâ(TM)re willing the coverup to be âoeWeâ(TM)re running some fairly comprehensive Police State shit on your ass.â

And a hearty Rot In Hell for Maggie.

Honestly, fuck all you fawning, simpering retards who've never set foot in Blighty. Except for a 5 minute period in 1982, a minimum of half the country has always hated her guts, and for good reason. So unbunch your panties already.

Oh, and, Trifecta is in play (only reason I posted this damn thing.)

While I agree it seems a little short-sighted to give "everything" to JJ Abrams and/or his production company, pretty much everything else on the FP thread about him and Valve teaming up is just fucking useless. While I'm not going to hold up Super 8, Cloverfield or even the Trek reboot as masterpieces, the sheer fucking entitlement, whining and nose-holding regarding the news is just awe-inspiring to behold.

And here's the thing. I read a lot of internet crap in the course of the day, so I've seen a ton of editorial and commentariat content on this news already, from a variety of different websites, each with their own style and community, and nowhere on any of those will I find anything close to the retardery here.

So, why am I here again? Can't think of any bloody reason really.

Y'all have fun, and feel free to drop me a line if you want, but fuck this place. It's not even worth the handful of half-assed visits I could muster up lately.

http://perens.com/blog/2013/01/16/1/

As a Canadian, I am fucking disgusted and appalled at our recent No vote at the UN.

Bad enough it's a shitty decision, but worse yet, when lumped together with the other No voters, the list looks even more pathetic than "The Coalition Of The Willing" one did. I didn't even know that was possible.

I think my favourite thing about this whole Benghazi fake scandal is the apparent assumption by conservatives that the Diplomatic Corps should not be behaving in any kind of diplomatic fashion whatsoever.

On 9 October 2012, the game XCOM: Enemy launched... launched in the US. Unknown to me, the EU launch date was to several days layer, 12 October 2012. Maybe. Yet, 9 October 2012, I received an SMS from Gamemania.nl a dutch gaming retailer chain, that my copy was ready to be picked up. So I left work early that day to arrive 17:54 in front of the store. Doors pulled almost shut, store had already closed and refused to serve me. Very well, I thought there are other stores in the world, so I bought it the next day at Free Record Shop in Amsterdam. Then when I came home, I tried to install. First I had to install steam, which crashed, crashed and crashed some more but finally I got it working and had to create an account. Then activate my email. Then I installed the game and was told it was not released. What? If the game was not released, what was I holding in my hand? Note the error message mentioned nothing about a region or what would be the release date. Just not released. By google came to my aid and I found that throughout Europe, the game was available for sale but not yet ready for install. I read this from angry users posts. Not a single forum had an official answer yet. Not yet and counting. Even the official release date was less then clear. But I know my Internet, if Steam, Dutch retailing, 2kgames/firaxis couldn't/wouldn't help me, maybe some pirates would? thepiratebay itself is of course famously blocked in holland but there plenty of mirrors around. So I checked and yes, full downloads were available in various flavours for a total cost of ZERO bucks! And if you had issues, then the supplies answered your question in minutes. Not like the hours, days and counting before getting a reply from people I had payed money too. Many a reply to a piracy story has had comments similar to my story, so what is so special about it? Nothing. Just that after years of downloading, I have with MMO's gotten used again to paying and I didn't have any issue with paying for this game, if it had worked. But I do have an issue with paying 50 euro's for a game that can't be played and that now that I have read the forums I have seen is filled with bugs. Bugs the official forums have no answers for but that are fixed on piracy forums. To repeat myself, for this game the people that wanted me to pay did:

• Act as if my giving them money is a favor they are doing me and only when they feel like it, opening hours be damned.
• Not reply in a timely manner (or at all) to complaints
• Treat Europeans as second rate customers for no reason (what are they afraid of, that a world-wide release will overload the servers)
• Break consumer laws by selling a product not fit for its purpose (a game that can't even be installed is obviously not a fit product)

Meanwhile, the pirates offer:

• Early access
• No charge
• Free, fast useful support by computer experts.
• Service available any day of the week at any hour.

Sometimes the anti-piracy people complain the content industry can't compete with free. But come ON! I had PAYED already and the companies just said "no". Meanwhile the group that doesn't want money, said "yes". This is like paying a hooker to have an headache while your wife is stuffing your wallet full of money and begging for sex. Something ain't right!

And this is why I pirate. Because how else can I send the signal that I am not a sheep who will just keep turning the other cheek? Sure, there are sheep who advocate just that, just wait 3 days, it is not the developers fault etc etc. FUCK THAT! Nothing is every anybodies fault and I as a consumer should just take it all and keep quiet.

NO! And that is my reason why I post about being a pirate. Because just downloading alone isn't enough. Consumer boycotts don't work, there are to many sheep drowning out the silent protest of people like me who just see no other option but to not pay to make it clear I expect more service for my cash.

Because I see no other option. Mails go unanwered, forum posts get ignored, I can get my money back from the store and the sales clerk don't care, not his problem. How can I HURT that manager who thought it was a good idea to do a staggered release, hurt that Steam admin who didn't just flip a switch to prevent customers getting angry. How can I even get the companies involved to acknowledge my existence?

I can't. But I can keep my money in my pocket. That doesn't solve anything but it is a lot more fun having impotent nerd rage with cash then without.

Anyone want a beer over the backs of game developers who haven't learned that if they want an income, they need to tell their managers to not upset their customers?

This is how bad it is now. At some point a couple months ago, either /. or FF logged me out for some reason, and I literally couldn't be arsed to log back in. I checked in on the FP a few times a week, but it's as bad there as it's ever been. Paid trolls? Check. The first hundred or so comments containing nothing but moldy humour and politically retarded geeks? Check. The other half of the thread containing pointless, nitpicking digressions? Check.

Here's something interesting: According to a recent audit, I am part of the 1%. I'd been suspecting this for a while now, but to have some fussy accountant reveal your worth in 7 specific figures is another thing.

Mind you, that's all paper. Give me 30 days to liquidate, and I doubt I could break 50K. Still, nothing to sneer at, especially in these times.

Then again, contra Churchill, I've only gotten more liberal as I've aged, so I sleep well at night. There's never been, and never will be, any of that Galtian bullshit at any of my businesses. Oh noes, I'm only a paper millionaire because I believe in responsible work hours, comprehensive benefits, generous vacation time, and ridiculously competitive pay packages. Give me a friggin break.

Apologies for the shitty grammar. Apparently this new JE interface is even worse than I thought.

Dick Clark isn't dead, because Dick Clark can't die. They just ran into some temporary problems during a scheduled reboot.

Someone on Slashdot recently claimed I hadn't read Keep the Aspidistra Flying because I thought the ending was depressing. After I finished my PhD in 2007, I've managed to avoid the same fate and have successfully avoided having a real job for almost five years. I've done freelance programming and written four books, and had a lot of time to post on Slashdot (as you can tell from the fact that, so far, I've posted more than anyone else this quarter) and do open source stuff (Ohloh ranks me in the top 2,000 geeks with no life^W^W^W^Wopen source developers).

That's about to change though. I had two interesting job offers recently (I seem to get job offers from banks very often, but I have a very low tolerance for tedium, so I'd probably have been fired around day 3 if I'd taken any of them). One was from Google in Paris (yay!) but working on boring things (boo!). The other was from Cambridge University, which is about as well paid as you expect in academia (aww!) but basically involves working on the same stuff I do for fun (yay!) with some very intelligent people (yay!). Oh, and it's in a city where a quick search found four tango classes (yay!) and property prices not much lower than London (oops!) and which is both small and flat enough that I can cycle everywhere (yay!) and so does everyone else (look out!).

So, in a few weeks I'm moving to Cambridge. I'll miss looking out at the sea, but being able to dance tango more than once a week should be some compensation. There also seems to be a lively salsa scene, although having to learn yet another set of names for the same Rueda steps is going to be a little tiresome...

When I visited, I went for drinks with some of the makerspace guys the night before my interview (I have no idea how much I drank, but it didn't seem to affect my interview performance too badly...) and met someone who worked on the C++11 atomics spec (which I was in the middle of implementing at the time) and someone who had ported 2BSD to a 32-bit PIC with 128KB of RAM, so it definitely seems like a city with no shortage of geeks...

Most men will spend years, sometimes even decades, convincing their ladies to perform outré sexual acts.

As for me, it was trying to convince my wife to watch a DVD...with the commentary turned on.

So, as of Thursday night, success! We both thoroughly enjoyed Aliens, with has a nice 'blended' commentary track, involving Jimmy Cameron himself, ex-wife and producer Gale Ann Hurd, the venerable Stan Winston, along with a couple of FX leads, and rounded off by a quartet of Colonial Marines.

Sadly, no Sigourney Weaver, but honestly, she wasn't missed. On a related note, someone needs to give Michael Biehn, Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen their own podcast. Great energy from those three.