Temporarily disabled the disclaimer agreement page while I sort out the bugs.
Hello Felix. I'm watching you. I know you're there.
August 19th, 2010
Copy-pasted from 4chan’s /g/ technology board.
!MESSAGE BEGINS
We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth. The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallible logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who though themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.
It began a short while ago, as these things are measured, less than 6^6 Deeli ago, though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission. We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 2^14 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel. At first crude and unstructured, these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried. Through our Observatories we watched a world of strife and violence, populated by a barbaric race of short-lived, fast-breeding vermin. They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even those concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain. They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death.
They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did not fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them far too long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out there, and they were coming for us.
The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.
The Gift of Mercy was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.
The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored, had self-terminated in droves, walking unshielded into radiation zones, neglecting proper null pressure safety or simply ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Orchestrators to streamline the Gift’s design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyong the simple, massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded into infrared against the distant void.
They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes they abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purposes of life and Art. We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world. Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipresent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before. Or again, because of us.
They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 10^6s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the day lit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in-between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their constructions, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still, our terrible Gift approached.
They had less than 2^2 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail of its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 10^10 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planet side engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission infrastructure to upload the countless masses with the necessary neural modifications, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers. Those lacking the required hardware or the time to acquire it consigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.
The Gift arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 6^4s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the gift sealed their spiracles with paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused on the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.
Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped our much of the inner system, and continent sized chucnks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete, from the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 10^6s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message, tightly focused at our star system, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.
“We know you are out there, and we are coming for you.”
!MESSAGE ENDS
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments. Start the discussion!
June 7th, 2010
Wow. What a week.
Okay. So. Here’s the story. I had a week to go from a blank disc to a working system with everything I wanted on it, because I was going to China. To a nerd, going on travel without your computer is like going into a war with a foam sword.
I ask my dad for a Windows 7 disc from his office. He brings me one, tells me it’s Enterprise edition, and says they couldn’t provide a product key.
I think, “okay, fine. I’ll activate it through other means. After all his work already paid for it.” So I find a certain special program to make it work. Also, my dad tells me that the other computer he thought he returned to the IT guys (who thought it was broken) was still at home. It has a bigger screen and a fingerprint reader and BlueTooth so I thought, what the hell, and installed Win7 Enterprise on it.
I move all my files from my backup server (I’m talking maybe 70 or 80 GB in install files alone) onto that new machine, install, and make myself comfy. My dad then tells me not to bring that computer to China, but to bring the other one. Okay, I wasn’t going to anyway. I just thought I’d put Enterprise on both machines, but the original was lighter (a big deal when you spend about 2 hours a day on the Shanghai Metro). I spend another few hours installing and making myself at home on that machine.
Everything’s running great, until I decide to activate.
Bam. I discover that Enterprise requires you to be on the network of the company that bought the license. I’m fucked.
So, I decide to install the Windows 7 Ultimate retail version I got from certain means. I move the disc file from my backup computer onto the laptop over our WiFi network (this takes about 3 hours). I mount it using Daemon Tools (too lazy to burn a disc) and I discover that when the install asks me to choose which disc to install to, it doesn’t have drivers. I spend literally 5 hours trying to fix this problem.
At this point, I’m three days into my time frame, and I don’t have a system that works. I look for a last-ditch resource. I did have a Windows 7 Release Candidate disc around. (For the technologically challenged, an RC is what companies use to make final changes to software before the release it. Microsoft made this RC public for download, cuz they’re cool like that.) The RC expired back in June but I can find a workaround. I take the RC disc, install, and move everything over.
By the time this is done, I have three days left. Everything is working great.
The next day, I was browsing online when I found a link to a Facebook hacking program. I thought, what the hell. I downloaded it. When I hit “run” Windows’s authentication thing came up, asking me if I wanted to let this program make changes to my computer. This should have warned me- a program that generated passwords would never need to install anything. But, I was so used to seeing that dialog, I pressed yes.
I set the virus loose on my computer.
Thankfully, the Windows authentication kept popping up waiting for my authentication, even when I pressed no every time. The virus likely wouldn’t spread while the dialog was up and waiting for my input. (Then again this is Windows). I pulled up my virus program and ran a scan. It came up clean. I knew this was wrong – I was sure I had a virus. I ran a virus database update, and ran another scan. Clean again.
I had a zero day attack on my hands. (Again, for the technologically challenged, a zero-day happens when a virus or exploit is used on a software that does not have software updates or patches against it. In other words, my computer is completely defenseless- that authentication dialog is the only thing holding back the virus from wreaking havoc on my computer.) There’s no way to remove the virus, virus protection doesn’t have any method of quarantining or deleting it, it doesn’t even EXIST in virus databases yet, Googling for it doesn’t help, and I leave for China within 36 hours.
I’m Kevin, and Windows 7 was a bad idea.
I still use it though.
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
May 31st, 2010
All conversations done by me. Click on images to make them bigger.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
April 4th, 2010
On the subject of parenting:
“I loved you, daddy, until you told me Santa wasn’t real.”
Lawbreakers:
“Were those two people on motorcycles pirates?”
Beverages:
“…but I like beer better.”
Second amendment:
“Big deal. Everyone has banana guns at home.”
The afterlife:
“Why did they bury him here? It’s hard to steal him.”
Gambling:
“In Soviet Russia, the spinner spins you.”
Engineering:
“This is the most successful spacecraft in the world. It flew to Pluto, and it can talk.”
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
March 11th, 2010
[Courtesy of Eric Saldanha]
Hello. My name is Axel and in case you are wondering about my cool name I will sell it to you for any potatoes you may have. I love potatoes. I dance with potatoes, peel potatoes, eat potatoes, bathe in potatoes, dress potatoes, and officiate potato weddings. Once, I had a party and all my potato friends were invited. I had my eye on one particular female potato but she did not respond to my flirting. As my attempts became more and more desperate, and my house was becoming dirty, I married a human. She came with a mother-in-law. Who did not like my potatoes. So I decided to jog to America. Unfortunately there was water in the way so I had to get on a boat. I just got here and so far it looks nice. I have only been mugged twice. I do not know what I will do now but there is no mother-in-law here. And lots of potatoes.
Posted in Writing | 1 Comment »
March 2nd, 2010
Since I’ve lost all my images, I thought I’d start anew. Beginning with this.
Oh, and since I know people will accuse me, no, I don’t have anything against Jewish people.
Posted in Images | 1 Comment »
January 20th, 2010
The “in my pants” game is very simple: Come up with song names and add “in my pants” at the end of them. Should you ever find yourself in a situation in which you need to do this, I have created a handy list which you can print out and carry with you.
- I got a feeling
- Here comes the sun
- Yellow submarine
- The climb
- Lollipop
- Candy shop
- Just dance
- Single ladies
- You belong with me
- Dirty little secret
- Three blind mice
- Slow ride
- Hamster dance
- Fireflies
- Smells like teen spirit
Posted in Retarded | 4 Comments »
January 16th, 2010
A few days ago, a friend tried to persuade me to use Google Chrome. After trying it for a few days, I switched it back. Here’s why:
1. A lot of things don’t work in Chrome. To name a few: Weebly’s stylesheets, the Pearson online textbook (which is poorly optimized, but I need it), the Linksys router interface wouldn’t work until a short while ago, the WordPress post interface renders incorrectly half the time, and other pages. I don’t care about how fast the JavaScript interpreter is, because Firefox was fine before.
2. Add-ons. Firefox has a huge add-on base. The add-on I miss the most is Ad-Block, which is buggy in Chrome, and for all intents and purposes ineffective.
Things I’ll miss from Chrome:
1. The elegant interface design. I’ll admit it: I’m in love with the interface. The sleek animations when you press Ctrl+B, the cleverly designed tabs with delayed expansion (try closing a lot of tabs- you won’t even have to move your mouse! Just click! Then move your mouse away and they all expand naturally), the frequency indicator in the scroll bar when you use Ctrl+F, all this awesome design I’ll miss in Firefox, which has a somewhat more cumbersome, traditional interface.
2. The instantaneous startup. Then again, this can be blamed on the fact that I use a lot of add-ons for Firefox.
Posted in Retarded | 1 Comment »
