StumbleUpon | Ladadadada's comments & reviews

Banker Saves Suicidal Ducks: Pics, Videos, Links, News

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:42:38 -0800

Meh. Ducks nest in trees. Ducklings jump out of trees and have been doing so for millions of years. Ducklings are built to survive that fall.

Ducklings are not so good at avoiding traffic.

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 16:38:31 -0700

Downright weird. I loved it.

Serial Port Communication Sniffer Monitoring Utility, Com Ports Test Software

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:52:58 -0700

Ha ha ha ha ha. You want me to pay for software that allows me to listen to my serial port and only runs on Windows? Oh, that's a good one.

ScooterFatties.info

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:47:33 -0700

Awesome. Try our new diet of scorn and ridicule.

Or get depressed and ride down to Maccas for a thick shake to make yourself feel better.

Period Fail | Yahoo! Answer Fail

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 23:51:16 -0700

Oddly enough, the page currently says this:

"We are down for a few minutes here and there!
Testing some new things out and BTW its after 2 Est. time.
Def be back up full time tomorrow at 4 AM EST. "

Which has its own period fail.

OpenDNS | Providing A Safer And Faster Internet

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 01:29:09 -0700

They keep saying "sysadmin approved" but as a sysadmin, I don't.

If I want to find out whether my new domain is available yet, I use dig and look for the NXDOMAIN response... but if I'm using OpenDNS, that doesn't work. I have to know their IP address from memory and look for that instead.

If I want to find out who the authoritative name servers for a domain are, OpenDNS won't tell me that either.

They also cache things for longer than they should, which means that can be giving out the IP address when the main nameservers are down but it also means that they give out the wrong IP address when I change it.

All of these things are good for normal users but bad for sysadmins.

There's also an interesting information leak in their statistics offering. If I create an account from a building that contains multiple users who also use OpenDNS, I can tell what websites they have been visiting because their statistics are included with mine.

no description, uploaded by nalogowiec

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 11:55:03 -0700

Awesome.

10 Worst Evolutionary Designs

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:07:56 -0700

A somewhat inane list. I can't quite bring myself to call it an article.

Yet it does allow me to raise a couple of interesting points.

1. People who believe the world was "designed" see it as "finished" and perfect in every way. Sometimes, when criticising evolution, they criticise it for not being perfect in every way. The point that must be understood is that evolution is not "finished". It is still happening. Maybe dolphins and whales are just halfway through changing into something with gills. Maybe they will evolve something even better than gills. Humans are still evolving too. Who knows where we will end up ?

2. Evolution is a process of random mutation and natural selection. Sometimes (nearly all the time) a random mutation is sub-optimal and sometimes it contains both beneficial and non-beneficial mutations. If the sum of all the changes in a mutation is beneficial then the mutation will survive to future generations. Having long legs allowed giraffes to reach higher leaves. Maybe some of their babies died from the long drop but this is offset by the fact that the long legged giraffes survived long enough to have babies at all.

http://www.simonbutterworthphotography.com/photos/502632253_2Ci6p-L.jpg

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:26:33 -0700

At first I thought it was the Totem Pole in Tasmania but a few Google images cleared that up for me.

The gallery page is here: http://www.simonbutterworthphotography.com/Landscapes/Scotland-I-Horizontal/7759857_zpCY8#502632253_2Ci6p and the photo shoot was done in Scotland. Other shoots were definitely done in Orkney, but Google images tells me that this is not the Old Man of Hoy.

Could well be this one: http://www.cromwell-intl.com/travel/uk/orkney-west-coast-walk/pictures/west-coast-walk-007-062.jpg which is apparently called Yesnaby. Another photo here: http://cache.foxsaver.com/thumbnails/2007/12/23/943626415l.jpg

IEEE Spectrum: How Free Is Solar Energy?

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:47:25 -0700

Even Solar and Wind create CO2 during their manufacture, transport and installation. It's nice to see some real numbers on the payback times for various different energy generation techniques.

Most articles concentrate on financial payback but here they are concentrating on energy payback.