Duty calls

I found this funny cartoon (attached below) via this blog. Cartoon by xkcd and licenced under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

People ask too many dumb questions on your auction?

Some people get annoyed at people asking various random, annoying questions. This guy seriously did.

Hat tip: Whale Oil Beef Hooked.

I done broke the Wikipedia

Well, in an exclusive Wikinews report, it looks like Wikipedia user Scientizzle has “done broke the Wikipedia”.

A couple of Wikipedia users added virus code to a couple of Wikipedia pages to make anti-virus think there was a potential security risk, when in fact everything was fine.

So Scientizzle, an admin, decided to go through and delete the revision history. The only bad thing was one of the affected pages was the sandbox. This basically crashed the server and locked the database and prevented any editing of the encyclopaedia for around half an hour.

Wikinews has the frankly amusing article in its entire exclusive state online.

Captcha will make a c*** out of you

I think the screenshot taken by Stuart Parker speaks for itself.

Hat tip: David Farrar.

Bill Gates’ last day at the office

An extremely funny video has been made by Microsoft (no, really!) featuring Bill Gates’ and detailing his “last day at the office”. Link to the video below.
Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip

W00t the success of w00t

W00t is the word of the year, as voted by visitors to popular dictionary website, Merriam-Webster.

Quote:

“w00t belongs to gamers the world over. It seems to have been derived from the obsolete ‘whoot’ which essentially is another way to say ‘hoot’ which itself is a shout or derisive laugh,” ThinkGeek said on its Web site.

“But others maintain that w00t is the sound several players make while jumping like bunnies in Quake III,” it added, referring to a popular video game.

Online gamers often replace numbers and symbols with letters to form what Merriam-Webster calls an “esoteric computer hacker language” known as “l33t speak.” This translates into “leet”, which is short for “elite”.

Reuters (via Stuff) has full news coverage.

Worlds fastest texter

Elliot Nicholls now has the right to call himself the world’s fastest texter after beating the previous record twice.

The 17-year-old New Zealander texted a 160-character phrase blindfolded in 51 seconds on his second attempted. This preceded his fourth attempt where get texted the phrase in a mere 45 seconds.

But before you go trying to beat this Dunedin, New Zealand resident, be warned he wears a wrist support. However, as he claims, it is from a boxing injury. Sure…

And also you’ll have to pay for a lot of phones, Nicholls says he is on his seventh mobile phone. Four were replaced due to worn out keypads.

Perhaps he should buy the world’s biggest phone for the world’s fastest texter?

(Wrist support joke hat tip: Brian Anderton).

Virtual stealing = physical prison

A Dutch teenager has been arrested by police after stealing fake furniture worth a real NZ$7,653.  Who knew that people would pay that much to own something they couldn’t use…?

The social networking site, Habbo Hotel, was – allegedly – hacked into by the 17-year-old and has been accused of stealing fake furniture and using the ’stolen’ goods in his own virtual room.

I love to Google myself, but this is going too far

For those who love to Google their name, like myself, there is now a Google Ring to show off how many other people do; or the count of how many times you have done it, if you are unpopular.

The VanityRing shows how many searches people have conducted for the particular search term, your name.

Now I love to Google my name, and looking at all those beautiful results that come up! But I would never get this, because I don’t wear rings and furthermore do I need another excuse to be labelled a geek?

25-years ago, I smiled

Well, the computer smiled really.

25-years ago Carnegie Mellon University professor, Scott E. Fahlman, was the first person to use to show how you could display what you were really trying to say through text.

However, I don’t actually use the dash in the middle for the nose, waste of time I say. I usually just put the colon and then the parenthesis to form a quicker smile.

After the first emoticon, a huge number have now spawned, such as and and there are also a full array of IM applications that support these emoticons. There are even 3D applications for you to use, I don’t however.