Author: markus

TSA: Don’t mind the rifles, but beware of the mighty nailclipper

In another story of epic stupidity, TSA officials decide to strip returning US soldiers from their multi-tools and even nailclippers, while simultaneously letting them keep their carbines, pistols and machine guns.

Quoting from the whole story over at redstate.com:

So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers. The conversation went something like this:

TSA Guy: You can’t take those on the plane.

Soldier: What? I’ve had them since we left country.

TSA Guy: You’re not suppose to have them.

Soldier: Why?

TSA Guy: They can be used as a weapon.

Soldier: [touches butt stock of the rifle] But this actually is a weapon. And I’m allowed to take it on.

TSA Guy: Yeah but you can’t use it to take over the plane. You don’t have bullets.

Soldier: And I can take over the plane with nail clippers?

TSA Guy: [awkward silence]

Me: Dude, just give him your damn nail clippers so we can get the f**k out of here. I’ll buy you a new set.

Soldier: [hands nail clippers to TSA guy, makes it through security]

This might be a good time to remind everyone that approximately 233 people re-boarded that plane with assault rifles, pistols, and machine guns–but nothing that could have been used as a weapon.

Words can’t even begin to describe how stupid this is…

Killing gays around the world

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7_r2zeZq-0
(click the link, embedding the video has been disabled)

Religion and fear-mongering at work – gotta love it. :-/

In related news: Arab and African nations successfully managed to get the United Nations to remove the reference to “sexual orientation” from a resolution condemning unjustified executions. (Reuters link) The vote passed with 79 in favor and 70 against with 43 abstaining or being absent. That’s what happens in a democratic process, when the majority of voters apparently are fucking idiots – namely: Afghanistan, Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belize, Benin, Botswana, Brunei Dar-Sala, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, China, Comoros, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Getting Fallout New Vegas to work with Wine

If you can’t wait to play the newest iteration of Fallout, yet don’t want to boot Windows to do it – with a little effort you can get it running under Wine as well.

It doesn’t seem to work out of the box, even with a very recent release (Failed to initialize renderer. Unknown error creating the GamebryoRenderer.)

But if you don’t mind adding a little patch and compiling Wine yourself, you should be able to get Fallout New Vegas up and running in no time.

WineHQ Bug 24831 describes the problem and someone else came up with a fix just a few hours later. But if you’re running Ubuntu 10.10, sadly the patch doesn’t apply right away. To manually fix it, just get the Wine source package and edit the file ‘dlls/d3d9/directx.c’, go to line 477, remove or comment out this part

*device = NULL;

return D3DERR_DRIVERINTERNALERROR;

and substitute it with this:

return IDirect3D9Ex_CreateDevice(iface, adapter, device_type, focus_window, flags, parameters, (void *)device);

Save the file and run ‘dpkg-buildpackage’ and when finished, install the resulting .deb.

(Or just download my modified directx,c and save it to wine1.2-1.2.1/dlls/d3d9/directx.c before compiling)

That’s it. Enjoy your stay in New Vegas. :)

How to bake a scone


Step One, Pre-heat the oven ’til it’s hot And take the mixing bowl or pot Spatula or wooden spoon Settle down, we’ll be baking soon A cup of milk, A cup of flour Mix in an egg, wait for an hour Take sultanas to fill the hole I just can’t wait to lick the bowl Take the bowl and pour the mixture in Make sure that you pre-grease the tin You see it’s easy, it won’t take long Now you know, how to bake a scone.

The Next Financial Crisis

If you have about 45 minutes to spare and want a nice, short summary of one of the many reasons we’re pretty much fucked, go and watch “Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis” on Journeyman Pictures YouTube channel.

In times of crisis people seek strong leaders and simple solutions. But what if their solutions are identical to the mistakes that caused the very crisis? This is the story of the greatest economic crisis of our age, the one that awaits us.

Assvertising

The Consumerists reports that KFC has come up with an ingenious new advertising concept: Gluteus Ad Maximus

Or as I like to call it: Assvertising

Also, check out this short news clip, discussing the issue and showing some nice examples :)

KFC ‘Double Down’ campaign has people talking ‘buns’ more than ‘chicken’ [WTEN.com]