Virtual Thought

Cats are funny.
And where does this come from?

Yes, I’m just clearing out my drafts. So sue me.

Terra, Alex and I were talking about the Lifetime of tacos for a Playstation 3 deal and, besides a couple of side arguments about just how many tacos $12,500 would buy, we started wondering how Taco Bell is going to enforce such a deal. We figured the Taco Bell Cops have free reign to enter the winner’s house anytime to check for the presence of Playstation 3s.

Then we got to wondering: If Taco Bell has cops, what do the other fast food franchises use to enforce their terrible wills?

These things are funny only to me.

I owe someone an apology.

I was chatting with someone (I won’t name names to protect the vaguely innocent) a while back about trends in technology. My friend lamented, “When are scientists going to invent wireless power?”

“Dude,” I said. “I think that’s called lightning.”

Wireless power can also work on resonant electical effects.

Damn. I shoulda saw that one coming.

Update (I’ve always wanted to do that): Count on Ars Technica to have a big ol’ cool write-up about wireless power.

He could have said, “Our competitors are trying to limit the power of the OS,” but, instead, Bill Gates has said that Microsoft’s competitors are trying to castrate Vista.

I find I don’t anthropomorphize the various material objects around me… much less the abstract realm of software… and when I do, I don’t sexualize my software. I’ve never said, “Man, that Microsoft Word has hairy balls,” or, “My RoR project needs a training bra.” I’ve said, “The code is angry!” and, maybe once, “This method’s being bitchy,” but never assigned a gender identity to the software I’ve worked on or with. That’s just weird, man.

I was talking to Ryan and he asked me what RSS reader I used. “Nothing,” I replied, “I just visit the websites themselves.”

“What?” he exclaimed, flabbergasted. “You visit websites?” Jesus, I thought, when did visiting websites become old school?

So I’ve been taking Ryan’s suggestion and using Google Reader. It’s a pretty nice piece of work and has definitely decreased the amount of time I spend catching up. As I remember to add sites that I frequent (Boing Boing, 37signals, the various friends’ blogs I read) I’m reminded of just how much information I try and take in every day in an effort to raise my cluefulness.

In that vein, one thing that caught me by surprise today was a post on BoingBoing about phishers sending out pink-slips. Apparently when someone sends out targeted spam with the intent of defrauding someone (installing malware like keystroke loggers or the like) this is called spear phishing.

That is awesome.

PTB, please don’t take down YouTube. I love them too much.

So I’m lurking around digg (like ya do) and I came across the Most Flirtatious Avatar? story.

So I slouched on over to see this flirtatious avatar:

This fascinates me (it helps that she’s pretty). WTF? I love innovative advertising and I love spotting viral corporate advertising (herding cats anyone?) but this is something else… is this exploitive? Was this on purpose? Did she have a director telling her to mouth words, smile, shift, lean forward, all that? To what purpose?

Am I blowing this out of proportion?