I remember back in 2008, when the Debian OpenSSL package was found to have a gaping hole in it. I was fascinated at the fact that it had been able to lie their, dormant, until it was discovered and immediately fixed. By rights, the damage should have been widespread.

Back then, I wrote:

So, perversely, yeah: The fact that the GnuTLS hole remained unnoticed for yonks is -weirdly- an argument for using open source libraries. Notwithstanding the fact that the vulnerability remained unpatched for years, it appears to have remained pretty much unexploited for the same period of time.

When processes are perceived to be robust, by black hat and white hat alike, then the mere presence of trust in the system makes them more trust-able. (I won't say trustworthy, because hindsight shows us that they're not.)

I don't need a report. I just need an address. Reduces recidivism.

Yeah, first thing I thought was chats like this:

SPARTACUS19982: YO!

SPARTACUS4x9: 'Sup?

SPARTACUS12: U rite?

SPARTACUS19982: Wait, who said that?

SPARTACUS4x9: Said what?

SPARTACUS12: What?

SPARTACUS19982: That!

SPARTACUS12: What?

SPARTACUS19982: Yeah, what!

SPARTACUS12: Wait - which what?

SPARTACUS4x9: Dude, being Spartacus is starting to suck, ya know..?

SPARTACUS4x9: I mean, I don't even know who I am any more...

SPARTACUS@X0®: DISREGARD THAT I SUCK C0CKS!!!!

I sympathise, but as an old Canadian geezer, I always felt that by the time the US audience finally heard about them, the SCTV alumni had already done their best work. That troupe - and their cheezy, low-budget show - formed my sense of humour more than anything else. Dave Thomas, Harold Ramis, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara... all of them went on to make memorable comedy in the US. I think Joe Flaherty was the only one who didn't make a big splash. (Which is America's loss, not his.)

But there was a time when all of them were callow, reckless youths with nothing to lose by making asses of themselves week after week on a second-rate Toronto-based network that was so small (it had only 13 stations at the start) it too had nothing to lose.

Back in junior high school, my week was centred around that blessed moment when the Indian-head test pattern would appear and the announcer would say, 'Don't touch that dial. Don't touch that one either. And stop touching yourself.' I still remember the intonation....

(... I never did stop touching myself, but that's another story.)

Helping us understand, even from beyond the grave: Moe Green: So you're dead; now what?

The guy had so much class, he could even use a semicolon and still be funny.

Nobody said it was. The issue here is that Comcast subscribers are not getting what they paid for, unless NetFlix pays again for the bandwidth. This is bandwidth for which NetFlix has already paid, and for which Comcast has already been paid by its customers.

You're dead wrong on this count. Comcast is arguing (speciously) that traffic to and from a particular destination doesn't deserve the same service as traffic to and from other destinations - unless the destination pays an additional toll. The fact that this is a popular destination is only relevant inasmuch as this increases Comcast's ability to extort payment for something which has already been paid for.

This is straight-up anti-competitive behaviour. If the US telecommunications regulatory environment made any sense at all, Comcast would be slapped down hard for doing this.

I'm guessing somebody didn't put their doobie out before going in the house.

If there's to be fucking involved, I think it probably is their business. A more appropriate answer might be "you've gotta buy me dinner if you want to find out."

Dude, if prison is the worst thing that happens from promising two different women that you'll never leave them, you got off light. The real horror show is when you come home and they're sitting on your couch, having coffee.

Guitar, bass, guitar, drums... and... viola?!?

... Could work, I guess.

Not in this context. 'Badly written' normally means 'illegible'. 'Poorly written' is the appropriate phrase.

So Dexter, seeing a quotation from Paradise Lost scrawled by a bloody hand across the wall of a Miami condo, would say, 'That was badly written.'

Milton's ghost, on the other hand, would look at the awkward parts of the latter seasons of Dexter and say, 'That was poorly written.'

Then you probably didn't have an anaphylactic "immediate hypersensitivity reaction after peanut ingestion" as the article says. If you had, your mother probably would have been terrified of putting you near a peanut ever again.

Because these people tend to die when they eat peanuts. You need to know how to do it in a very careful, controlled manner otherwise people will die. Mostly children. That would be a bad thing.

I agree it's based on the same idea, but this is quite a different thing. House dust antigen is relatively harmless and leads to worsening of atopic (asthma, eczema etc.) symptoms in some people. This new trial looks at treating people who have an anaphylactic response to peanuts ("immediate hypersensitivity reaction after peanut ingestion" from the article). People in this category die rapidly if they eat a peanut, which is why they carry epi-pens. Even with immediate epinephrine (adrenaline) some people could end up needing intubation and ventilation when exposed. Treating these sorts of reactions with desensitisation therapy is certainly not "standard practice" and would be groundbreaking if these findings can be confirmed on a wider scale and turned into treatment regimens for non-research settings.

The northerner solution to that situation is to park our butts at home and wait it out. Hills + polished/wet ice = trapped at the bottom of the hill.