Oh, this is good!
You may have heard a few days ago that the latest MyDoom variant includes a request for work in the antivirus industry.
Well, the comic strip User Friendly has come up with the perfect solution!
Category: Humor
Effective Oxymorons
On the way to work this morning, Katie noticed one of those ubiquitous catering trucks and remarked, “With a name like ‘Superior Coffee,’ you know it probably isn’t.” It’s a useful guideline: if a company has to tell you something is gourmet, for instance, that means it can’t count on its reputation alone.
That reminded me of a story David Weber told at a convention about the first Honor Harrington book. They were almost ready to go to press when he got a call from his editor.
“I’ve been thinking. Your viewpoint characters are in the Royal Manticoran Navy. The villains are the Republic of Haven. Isn’t that backwards? Shouldn’t the monarchy be the bad guys?”
They went back and forth a bit, until one of them said, “What if it’s the People’s Republic of Haven?”
They agreed that was a good solution, and then proceeded to look through the proofs for a place where they could insert the word without moving the page breaks around. As I recall, he said they only found one spot, and possibly the map, but he used the full name in the rest of the series.
Living in Middle Earth
A few years ago I lived in the city of Lake Forest (formerly El Toro) for a bit. One of the interesting things about Lake Forest is its collection of streets named after characters and places in Lord of the Rings. (And yes, these were around long before the movies were made.)
I still drive past Gondor Drive on my way back from the comic store, and I’ve been meaning to get a picture of the street sign for a while. It turned out to be too hard to shoot without actually aiming, so I turned onto a smaller street where I knew I could catch Elrond Lane:
Other Tolkien-inspired streets include: Buckland Lane, Bywater Road (and it is at least near water), Rivendell Drive, Shadowfax Drive and Brandywine Lane.
While checking the Thomas Guide for some of the ones I missed, I just discovered a neighborhood with Sesame Street, Muppet Lane, Big Bird, Oscar, Grover, and Cookie Monster. And Kurmit [sic], though I suppose that could be a typo.
And then there’s Dana Point, which has the Street of the Green Lantern. Of course, it has about 20 named Street of the fill-in-the-blank Lantern — Blue, Amber, Golden, Silver, Violet, etc. [Update: Here are some Green Lantern Street photos.]
Update Sep. 24: Here’s a blurry picture of the Gondor street sign:
Backhanded compliment
Microsoft responds to Apple’s contention that portable video isn’t a big market:
“Ask kids in the back of a car on a two-hour trip, ‘Hey, would you like to have your videos there?’ My kids would,” Gates said. “I guess Steve’s kids just listen to Bach and Mozart. But mine, they want to watch ‘Finding Nemo.’ I don’t know who made that, but it’s really a neat movie.”
Yeah, who was that?
Oh. My. Grodd.
While looking at website referrer logs, I came across an article at Radio Heroes detailing Gorilla City (Or, What if Grodd Was One of Us?)
The site is all about “reviewing—well, okay, making fun of” a series of audio-drama comic books, and this one tells a tale of Batman in Gorilla City, and how he uses trancendental meditation to defeat Grodd, the Super-Gorilla!
No, really!
I haven’t listened to the sound clips yet, but the write-up is great!
Giving virus writers honest work
By way of Justin Mason and the SpamAssassin mailing list comes this post about writing add-ons for Outlook.
Seth Goodman writes of Outlook’s contact list:
This feature was apparently added for the convenience of virus writers, who it appears were one of the key groups that set the design requirements for this product
Ronald F. Guilmette replies:
So if I want source code for a software tool that can extract addresses from a personal Outlook address book, I guess that I should just go out and hire a virus writer! Hummm. I would have no problem with that. At least this would give them some honest work for a change… keeping them off the streets and out of trouble for a short while.
So now, where does one post a ‘HELP WANTED’ ad for a virus writer?
The people in your neighborhood
While in San Diego for Comic-Con, we passed this exit several times and thought it wonderfully appropriate for all things Firefly:
We didn’t think at first that we’d actually gotten a decent picture, having had a case of slow trigger finger on one camera and basically stuck the other out the window and clicked. It was a great addition to the fruits of a recent foray into unfamiliar territory, the first of which would be more appropriate for Comic-Con than an upscale apartment development:
No, Greg Dean doesn’t live here:
And finally, a bit of map serendipity whereby we find out where one of my stories takes place:
