Archive for the ‘political’ Category

Happy Zombie Jesus day!

Sunday, April 12th, 2009

Today is zombie jesus day! So in the spirit of the day, I thought I’d write a little program so your computer too can have a zombie jesus.

File: jesus.c

#include <stdio.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <unistd.h>

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
    pid_t  pid;

    pid = getpid();
    fork();
    if (pid == getpid()) {
        strncpy(argv[0],"god",strlen(argv[0]));
        sleep(30);
    } else {
    }

    return 0;
}

And then…

$ ./jesus &
$ ps ax | grep jesus
19565 pts/0    Z      0:00 [jesus] <defunct>

Voilà! Your very own zombie jesus! (for 30 seconds)

(See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_process

Posted in General, computers, political | 1 Comment »

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

The soda machine here lights up and makes noise when you walk by it.

I don’t like being marketed to.

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Software Freedom Day

Sunday, September 17th, 2006

Today was Software Freedom Day, and while I certainly could have done more to publicize it, I did take it to heart for myself and my computer.

Today I finally uninstalled the last bit of proprietary software I was using, Flash, and am compiling gnash to replace it. This will certainly be a bit of a drop in functionality—there’s a long list of things unimplemented—but it’s worth it to finally have my computer clean. Macromedia/Adobe hadn’t released any version of flash for linux since 7 anyway, so I was already starting to get locked out of sites. I just hope my game site doesn’t accidentally detect it as me cheating—I’ll probably be the first person ever to use it on their site. :P

(I also got rid of a few old (unused) java plugins that were lying around. I still have some games installed that I can’t see the source for; I treat those as media, the same as music, and while I don’t listen to music from companies I don’t like (read: any RIAA member), I don’t restrict myself to only openly licensed music if the money’s going somewhere decent. Feel free to try to convince me that I’m wrong (or right) about that.)

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Because they’re taking my rights, that’s why.

Thursday, August 3rd, 2006

If you ever buy me a CD, please first make sure it is not released by a member of the RIAA. Thank you.

I’m happy to report that although approximately 1/3 of my CD collection is RIAA-affiliated, not a single one of those was bought by me. In terms of how much I actually listen to them, it’s more like 1/10, soon to drop farther as I finish putting the rest of the independent CDs on my computer.

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The right take on politics…

Friday, July 1st, 2005

I have to say, The Onion has exactly the right take on things:

“Man, if the Democrats are going to block every terrible idea Bush has, nothing’s ever going to get done in Washington.”

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Things Creationists Hate

Thursday, March 24th, 2005

This is quite an interesting thought:

And speaking of lack of humility, M. J. Chapman contributes the following:

Evolution is a lie, correct? It’s an idea spawned by Satan to damn our souls. Okay, let’s think about that. Satan gets the souls of sinners, correct? If he wants souls, he has to make humans sin. What are the seven sins? There’s greed, lust, sloth, envy, gluttony, pride… and I can never remember the last one [ed: it's anger], but that’s okay because the important one here is pride. The Bible goes to great lengths to say that terrible things lie in store for the proud in the great hereafter.

So which is an idea that contributes more to human pride: that we were specially created in the image of God to be the masters of all other creatures upon the Earth? Or that we are one species out of countless billions that has arisen according to simple and probably inevitable rules of chemistry and selection?

The whole page is pretty good: Things Creationists Hate

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Overpaying taxes

Thursday, February 3rd, 2005

Mike Pinkerton says:

So H&R Block claims that Americans overpaid their takes by a billion dollars last year. So if you average it out, that’s each person overpaying by about $3. That’s right, America. The federal gov’t swindled you out of $3. Better run out and pay $75 so H&R Block can save you….$3.

What he fails to realize, though, is that various coroporations, rich individuals, etc. underpay their taxes by multiple billions every year through loopholes, so to make it so the total is positive 1 billion, the normal people probably overpaid by something much closer to $75.

(Actually, I have no idea where these numbers came from, so in all probability he’s right. I just thought I’d point out the posibility.)

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Evolution, Creationism, Schools, and the First Amendment

Tuesday, January 18th, 2005

I just have to quote Kevin Drum here:

I myself would not argue that Darwinism in biology classes is protected by the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Rather, I would argue more narrowly that everything else is forbidden. If a school district decides not to teach biology at all, that’s fine. But if they do teach it, they aren’t allowed to include religious proselytizing in the curriculum.

The distinction here is this: creationism is Christian proselytizing, a no-no for government bureaucrats. Intelligent Design is so clearly a thinly veiled version of creationism that it’s forbidden too. Darwinism, however, is simply science. School districts are free to stop teaching science if they want, but if they do teach it, they have to teach Darwinism just as much as they have to teach Newtonian mechanics, Boyle’s law, and the theory of relativity.

The rest of the post is about something else, but still an interesting read.

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