Habemus plus vis computatoris quam Deus

C|Net has a pictorial on the Paris Airshow.  Cast your eyes upon the caption to the 12th photo in the article, captured below:

That aircraft in the rear is, indeed, an Airbus A380.  The grey aircraft next to it is not, however, the Lockheed C-130 that the caption declares it to be.

It is, in fact, an Airbus A400M, a very logical aircraft to be parked next to an Airbus A380.

Well, anyone can make a mistake, right?  So what makes this such a failure of identification?

Well, you see, it's the fact that the same writer has correctly identified the same A400M, in front of the same A380, eight photos earlier in this shot.  And then correctly identified it again in the next shot.  Both of these right after correctly identifying an actual Lockheed C-130 in this shot.

That's ... quite the blunder. Even without the "A400M" in black letters several feet high on the side of the fuselage, visible even in this doubtless-reduced-for-publication photo.

"Oops."

Yeah, it's just a fail-y day today.

If you go to sign up for GTE Federal Credit Union online, you will find that the first thing it does is have you create a site login.  Then it goes on to the actual application form.  Currently, you can't get past the first page, because (here comes fail #1) the "Job Title" field is a text field, but the page verification logic thinks it's a drop-down list, and will reject the page forever because you haven't selected a job title from the drop-down list.  Which you can't, because it doesn't exist.

So, suppose you think they'll surely notice an error like that and fix it soon, and you decide to come back in a couple of days and try it again.  Well, the next thing you discover is that when you come back, you now need to create a new login identity.  Because, even though the site failed and wouldn't let you complete the application, it saved your login data.  So the login identity you created has been consumed (fail #2).¹

"Well," you figure, "maybe I can log in with that ID and resume or retry my application."  Nope. That produces a site error.  In fact, customer service confirms that there is no way to log in with that identity and resume or restart your application.  (Fail #3.)  But the identity will expire after ... some time.  They don't know how long.

I really wonder sometimes at the stupidities committed by supposedly professional web application designers.  If online shopping worked this badly, online vendors would charge your credit card before determining whether the item you wanted was actually in stock or even available.

[1]  A malicious individual could probably figure out a way to use this as a denial of service, by robotically completing just that first page with throwaway data and consuming all available user identities, since nothing on the first page except for the username is verified to be valid or unique.  Fail #4.

It appears Fujitsu ran a "future design" contest.  And C|Net ran a pictorial on the winners.

This is the first winner.

I think I can say with complete confidence that whoever designed this "cane" has never needed to use one.  Not only is this thing almost completely useless as a cane, it looks like a repetitive-stress injury (probably to the carpal tunnel) waiting to happen.  It's comparable to all these design-school motorcycle "concepts" designed by people who have never ridden a motorcycle and don't understand the first thing about how one works, and which it's usually obvious at the first glance would be completely unrideable.

I don't care how high-tech and sexy your "design" looks.  Make some effort to learn a little about whatever it is you're trying to come up with a new design for, before you whip out your copy of Illustrator and just start making shit up.  This is not a mobility aid for a disabled person; it's a bloody fashion accessory.

If you develop code, you're gonna love this.

I have a multi-threaded Perl ICB client that I wrote.  I've always had an occasional problem with a race condition between different threads trying to write simultaneously to the screen.  I thought I had it solved at one point, but all hell broke loose after I built a new babylon5 with a six-core processor.  I tried various approaches to solve it, including meticulous use of Thread::Semaphore.

Well, I think I've finally solved the problem this time, by using a simple shared scalar as a semaphore and using lock($sem) instead of using a Thread::Semaphore object and $sem->down()/$sem->up() calls.  But, the ironic, yet inescapable conclusion from this...?

Thread::Semaphore isn't thread-safe.

Well ... maybe.  According to this University of Michigan report, the authors reviewed 41 reports and studies on the effectiveness of state motor-vehicle inspection programs and found that not one was able to provide definitive evidence that the program showed a positive cost-benefit analysis.

But it appears, according to Pharyngula, that the State of Kentucky is giving the Creation Museum $37 million in tax breaks to build a Creationist amusement park featuring a "life size" Ark ... well, actually, several times life size, if the artist's rendering shown is even approximately to scale, and if historians and archaeologists are even in the ballpark on the actual length of a cubit.  Holy crap, that thing's gotta be over a thousand feet long, easy.

The Creation Museum claims this is going to create 400 jobs.  Even assuming that number is correct, I'll bet very few of those jobs are going to pay anywhere close to the almost $100,000 in tax credits that each one of them is going to cost the state.

Hell of a jobs program, Kentucky.  Way to go.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon has told the BBC the US should do more to reduce the demand for drugs that is fuelling violence in Mexico.

[...]

Meanwhile, President Calderon and other regional leaders have urged Californian voters to reject moves to legalise marijuana in their state.

...Because legalizing drugs might, you know, actually reduce demand for the illegal drug trade that Calderon is complaining about.  And that'd be one less thing he could blame the US for.

[Calderon also] told the HARDtalk programme that more should also be done to stem the flow of illegal weapons from the US.¹

Frankly, I don't give a rat's ass what Calderon says the US should do.  More than 90% of the weapons the Federales have managed to seize from Mexican drug cartels are not coming from the US; they're coming from South and Central America, from Russia, from China, and out of Mexican Army arsenals.

The majority of guns confiscated by Mexico and submitted to the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) for tracing do originate in the US.

However, a large number of seized weapons are not sent for tracing.

Exactly.  Starting with all the ones bearing only markings in Russian or Chinese.  They only ask the BATF to trace firearms carrying US-required markings.  It's no big surprise most of those turn out to have passed through the US.  In fact, it would be a bigger surprise if they hadn't.  However, over at least the last three years, those US-marked firearms have accounted for less than 10% of Mexican seizures.  (What's more, it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that a significant number of those are weapons we sold to Mexico for their military.  The Mexican drug cartels get a significant percentage of their "soldiers" from Mexican Army deserters attracted by better pay, and they often take their issue weapons with them.  See the comment above about Mexican Army arsenals...)

President Calderon launched his crackdown on the drug cartels after taking office in December 2006, deploying thousands of troops and police.

Since then more than 28,000 people have died in drug-related violence.

Mr Calderon insisted that the war against the traffickers would be won.

Felipe Calderon can insist whatever he pleases.  But it looks to me like this is a war Mexico is losing, rapidly.

[1]  Yes, I'm quoting out of sequence.  So sue me.

There are good ideas, and there are bad ideas; and then there are ...

Well, and then there is this.

"This is the original Barrel Button.  It can be attached to any shoe or boot that has laces (snap closure).  It allows you to securely rest the muzzle of your unloaded shotgun.  [...]"

This is such an unspeakably awful idea that I really have no words to express the massive fail here.  Much though I'm opposed to frivolous liability suits, I have to agree with robhansen's comments:

If I were on a jury, I have to admit, I'd be torn about whether to hold the Barrel Button liable for someone losing their foot.

On the one hand, your own damn fault for letting the muzzle cross your foot.

On the other hand, given there is literally no safe way to use the product…

For those of you among my readers who are not initiates of the proper ways of safe gun-handling, allow me to cite the first two of the four firearms safety laws propounded by the late, lamented Col. Jeff Cooper (USMC, Ret.):

1. All guns are always loaded.  (Or, to clarify his intention, always treat all firearms as though loaded at all times.)
2. Never let the muzzle cover anything you are unwilling to destroy.

Which makes a device intentionally designed to rest the muzzle of a firearm (that you were CERTAIN was unloaded) securely upon a part of your body ... yeah.  It's that stupid.

Officials in West Vancouver, Canada, apparently aren't satisfied with the driver-slowing properties of traditional speed bumps.  On Tuesday, the town unveiled a new way to persuade motorists to ease off the gas pedal in the vicinity of the École Pauline Johnson Elementary School:  a 2-D image of a child playing, creating the illusion that the approaching driver will soon blast into a child.

(Original Discover magazine article here)

I don't know about anyone else, but this sounds to me like a really, REALLY BAD idea.  I can imagine the mental dialog already after drivers get used to these "speed bumps":

<hindbrain>  Oh, it's just another optical speed bump...

<forebrain, a second or two later>  OH SHIT, NO IT ISN'T!!!      [THUD]

I can see this basically conditioning drivers that the visual image of a kid in the middle of the street is NOT a hazard, and delaying realization that this time it's a real kid for just long enough that the driver no longer has time to stop.  I have severe concerns that this experiment is going to result in dead kids.  Apparently Yahoo's Michael Dykes shares this concern:

You have to wonder if the designers of the "speed bump of the future" considered that drivers might become conditioned to disregard Pavement Patty and her imaginary cohorts, creating something similar to a "boy who cried wolf" effect.  Couldn't such conditioning reduce drivers' caution if a real child should cross their path?

"I have a really bad feeling about this."

... And the saga of the Hanns-G 28" monitor continues.  When I shut it down last night, it was fine.  When powered on this morning, there is a bright red vertical line the entire height of the screen at about 30% screen width from the left side.  It won't go away.

Fortunately, this monitor came with a three-year warranty, because not long after it turned two years old it's begun throwing one fault after another.  I am becoming less and less impressed with Hanns-G with each iteration of this, and at this point I am virtually certain never to buy another Hannspree product.

It's still under warranty.  I suppose I have to deal with YET ANOTHER return for repair under warranty...  this will be its third trip back to Hannspree.

Granted, it's still very inexpensive for a monitor this size.  But at this rate, shipping for warranty returns is going to eat up the difference fast.