(no subject)

[jack]

Tojan horses

Linked from Raymond Chen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs3SfNANtig

What happens if you build a wooden horse, put some soldiers inside it, and then ask security guards if you can leave it overnight inside their complex? Mostly, nothing. The Turkish consulate refused though.

Choice quotes (With no prompting) "Why would there be anyone inside?" and later "I had no idea those soldiers were in there!"

Isn't it amazing what you find on wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_and_video_games_considered_the_worst_ever

I mean, isn't that useful? It is exactly the sort of thing you might want to know. I think I found it when someone joking about a notoriously bad game and I wanted to know why, or possibly when I wanted to joke about a notoriously bad game and had to look one up to be the butt :)

50 worst named computer games of all time

http://www.gamerevolution.com/feature/worst_names

I feel sorry for them, but it can be funny.

"Zeitgeist (Playstation/PC, 1998)

Man, nothing says 'fun' like a German philosophical term for an era in the dialectical progression of a people or the world at large."

Intermediate Value Theorem in "Down to earth practical utility" shocker!

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1524163.htm

On a smooth but not flat surface you can theoretically rotate a four-legged table so it doesn't wobble (but mayn't be flat). Doesn't knowing that your irritating failure is mathematically impossible make you feel a warm glow inside? Go maths!

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/vitriol_/]

The wooden horse clip was genius :D

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Slightly predictable (I don't know all those places were really supposed to be guarded securely), but they actually did it and it actually worked. And they don't just say "Can we leave this here" but make sure to describe it as a "trojan horse" and "a gift from the greeks".

I don't like to post videos, and I don't like to duplicate other people's links, but this one was worth it :) So I pulled the last three off my "to share" bookmark folder and collated them :)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Why not have a del.icio.us feed? Then we can syndicate it on LJ and opt-in to it.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thanks, something like that is what I want.

But the effort of posting some to lj occasionally is nil, except for justifying it :) And I'd want to go and check if that is exactly what I want, and does it need to get everyone else to sign up, etc. So I haven't yet.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

You can get RSS feeds of the links posted by del.icio.us users which get syndicated to LJ, so for LJ users it's just as simple as friending the feed on LJ.

I get [Bad username or site: andrewducker' / @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: pw201' / @ livejournal.com]'s links this way.

The advantage of del.icio.us is that you can post loads of links and people only get to see them if they want to.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

But currently I post occasional links which are (hopefully) of some interest to most of my friends. If I just put those in a separate feed (or a delicious feed), then I'd save trouble for anyone who wanted to filter them out, but I don't know if it's worth it.

If I had a feed and went ahead and linked every site that caught my interest, most people probably wouldn't gain anything even if they read it, because they've seen the links somewhere else.

Possibly there's a good compromise, but that's what I'm not sure of, and I haven't bothered to think about it. And I don't know, if I had the opportunity, whether I'd like to post lots or a little. I kind of like the opportunity to link things and then post them later when I see whether they were as funny as I thought or not, though that means they're always out of date.

Ideal features would be:

* Easy to use (copy and paste, delicious, reddit all have this afaik :))
* No duplication -- other people can subscribe to multiple feeds, and eg. if I copy a link from fanf, subscribers to me only see that, and subscribers to both see his only (and maybe my post as a comment on his post?)
* Have a feed or just collect a list people can browse later (eg. for useful reference sites) -- delicious probably does this.
* Preferably be decentralised for a variety of reasons such as (a) being customisable and (b) being able to post private things securely.

That's just off the top of my head, and mightn't be necessary, but I don't know of an immediate improvement, and don't know whether or not five minutes research would give one, so I haven't got round to it...

[senji.livejournal.com]

Surely the last of those isn't news -- I remember IWJ stating it in New Hall bar before now (and then performing it)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I didn't say it was news, I said it was funny :)

Indeed, the problem with amusing links is that I can't tell if 90% of people I know have seen them already, or 10% have. My natural inclination is never to post anything unless I'm confident I wrote it myself and its original (and even then lots of people have often said the same thing). So I compromise by throwing out a chunk of each, giving a sound bite, and hoping people who are bored of seeing it forgive me :)

(I could have a separate link blog, but I've resisted, as it seems to cry out for something like reddit, but I've not got round to setting that up. I'd rather have a smaller percentage of links that a larger percentage of readers read, than vice versa :))

[senji.livejournal.com]

I have the link-list, but it's a piece of tissue-paper tied together with CVS (OTOH this makes it a lot easier to update than LJ).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

LOL. Yes, that works quite well.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

FWIW I don't remember that but it's entirely probable, it may be ages ago, or it may be from wherever this came from in the first place :)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I loved the woman saying "Check what's inside it before you let it past the gate!!!1"

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, I missed that bit :)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

She shouts it just after the guardsman tells them its ok to bring it in and leave it somewhere.