Reflective Surface

If think you have seen too many strange bugs in your programming career, take a look at this list of articles compiled from Microsoft’s Knowledge Base detailing weird problems with its products. Even SATAN is blamed for one of those bugs.

This is so much fun: an American judge ruled some weeks ago that the X-Men are not human. And it was actually a victory to Marvel, which was fighting a six-year battle between against the U.S. Customs Service. The reason? Lower duty rates. The U.S. Customs Service makes a distinction between dolls, which are subject to 12% import duties, and toys, which are subject to a 6.8% rate. Human figures are considered dolls, while other figures representing animals, monsters, and robots are deemed toys.

So, in 1996, Toy Biz Inc., a Marvel subsidiary, sued Customs saying that its collection of action figures should be considered as representing nonhuman characters, and consequently were toys subject to a lower duty. Duties have since been eliminated from both categories, but the case only ended on the last January 3rd when a judge ruled against Customs.

Needless to say, Marvel fans are outraged. It’s actually ironic that Marvel’s famous stance of touting characters like the X-Men as icons in the fight against prejudice was discarded so easily. Of course, business is business.

(via Cris Dias)

This thing is just plain weird. My head is hurting now

(via Simon Willison)

Never thought of spam as something good? Well, the Linux Jornal is about to change that. Create a new e-mail address and try to accumulate as much spam as you can on it in the course of one week. The winner — that is, the most spammed person — will get a Lego Mindstorm Robotics Invention System.

Aquarionics writes about an moronic message displayed in a message box for visitors of a site. I can’t decide if I laugh or cry. The message is:

Welcome to The Buffy Network. It has come to our attention recently that a lot of visitors to this website do not have the correct setting on their computer when they try and access the site. For example, 0.82% of visitors are using Netscape — which does not support the kind of html coding we use. 2.10% of visitors dont have Java installed and/or turned on, Java is essential for some of the pop up windows we use. And 40.76% of vistors are using the wrong screen resoloution. Anything larger than 800 x 600 is too large, and the pages do not diosplay properly. Please try and use the right settings on your computer before entering the site, in order to make it look on your screen, how we intened it to look on ours. Thank you for visiting The Buffy Network. Please click ‘Ok’ to close this window.

And they even try to get visitors to install an ActiveX in their computers after the message is displayed.

Lake Superior State University publishes an annual “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-Use, Over-Use and General Uselessness”. The 2003 edition, which is the 28th, is out. The list is compiled from nominations sent by people from all around the world, and contains some funny comments like:

• Untimely death: “Has anyone yet died a timely death?”
• Challenge: “No one has problems anymore, they only face ‘challenges’.”

A site I keep rediscovering is Rinkworks. It’s a large collection of entertainment “services”. One of its best sections is Computer Stupidities featuring (mostly) real-world accounts of clueless use of computers. You can laugh for hours reading and remembering some of the unbelievable stories there.

Unbelievable as it may seem, it actually happened: a Brazilian woman caught up in crossfire between police and drug dealers was shot in the breasts, but was saved by silicone implants that slowed the bullet down. Now, imagine how plastic surgeons will advertise implants: “Improve your appearance, and get a free chest armor.”

The dullest blog in the world. A quote:

Whilst walking along I became aware that I was approaching a building. When I had almost reached it I saw that it was a house. I passed the house and continued walking.

(via Eliot Landrum)

Worldometers™ is an interesting site which has various world statistics on diverse areas like population, health, education, and energy consumption. The statistics are show as counters that are constantly updating to reflect the current numbers. They are obviously imprecise but can give a general idea of the trends. The births and death counters are particularly eerie.