"Stupid Evil Bastard"

Grok Headline matches for "Stupid Evil Bastard"

Stupid Evil Bastard: What NOT to do
during "Return of the King."

Stupid Evil Bastard: What NOT to do
during "Return of the King." 12/30/2003 06:24 PM
What not to do at a showing of Return of the King .. Stupid Evil Bastardo .. posted online

stupidevilbastard.com/archives/2003/11/20/what_not_to_do_duri ng_return_of_the_king.php
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Stupid Evil Bastard: Six Apart announces
MT 3.0 Developer Edition, limits
functionality of free version of MT.

Stupid Evil Bastard: Six Apart announces
MT 3.0 Developer Edition, limits
functionality of free version of MT. 05/14/2004 04:54 AM
Les’ account of the new licensing for Movable Type 3 .. post on Stupid Evil Bastard .. Les's post .. everyone

stupidevilbastard.com/archives/2004/05/13/six_apart_announc es_mt_30_developer_edition_limits_functionality_of_free_version_of_mt. php
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Guardian Unlimited | Special reports |
Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports |
Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel 04/16/2004 07:45 AM
Sidney Blumenthal: Bush's press conference shows just how ill-informed he is about Iraq 4/15 .. Hear no evil, read no evil, speak drivel .. piece

guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1192218,00.html
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"You see? You see? Your stupid minds!
Stupid! Stupid!"

"You see? You see? Your stupid minds!
Stupid! Stupid!" 01/06/2004 03:19 AM

Harnessing Evil for the power of...
well, less evil

Harnessing Evil for the power of...
well, less evil 06/05/2005 11:55 PM
There are days I think the $WORK_PROJECT is an exercise in extended programming irony. The parrot code my compiler generates for $WORK_LANGUAGE makes heavy use of continuations. Really heavy use of continuations, to the point where reports are taking (and discarding) three continuations per record plus another two or three per page of the output. For a language which doesn't have functions, blocks, or lexical variables, and whose idea of sophisticated control flow is goto or gosub to bare labels. Go figure....

Chris Abraham: Evil Man in Black and His
Evil Black Suitcases Tackled by the Good
Guys

Chris Abraham: Evil Man in Black and His
Evil Black Suitcases Tackled by the Good
Guys 04/12/2005 05:55 AM
Evil Man in Black and His Evil Black Suitcases Tackled by the Good Guys .. Permalink

chrisabraham.com/2005/04/evil_man_in_bla.html
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Bastard 18b

Bastard 18b 04/15/2004 10:21 AM
A virtual-server oriented patchset.

Bastard 18f

Bastard 18f 08/05/2004 10:52 AM
A virtual-server oriented patchset.

The Bastard

The Bastard 12/04/2003 09:34 AM
CVS restructure

Bastard 18d

Bastard 18d 06/16/2004 03:57 AM
A virtual-server oriented patchset.

Bastard 18e

Bastard 18e 07/05/2004 09:17 AM
A virtual-server oriented patchset.

Bastard 25c (Development)

Bastard 25c (Development) 01/06/2005 12:09 PM
A virtual-server oriented patchset.

Beautiful bastard

Beautiful bastard 05/20/2004 08:42 AM
You know him as that red-faced rageoholic or the drippingly sarcastic dad. But you probably don't know Christopher McDonald's name, despite the dozens of movies he's stolen from bigger stars.

Bastard 21h (Development)

Bastard 21h (Development) 05/24/2004 12:50 PM
A virtual-server oriented patchset.

Jack Valenti says stupid things --
really, really stupid things

Jack Valenti says stupid things --
really, really stupid things 08/03/2004 07:46 PM
Tim Wu has rounded up some of the dumbest things that Jack Valenti said -- and he's found some real howlers, things that make Jack's infamous condemnation of the VCR ("the Boston Stranger of the American film industry") look like a walk in the park.

On the nascent cable industry, in 1974
"[Cable will become] a huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair."

On the dangers on media concentration, 1984 Op-Ed
"Will a democratic society allow just three corporate entities to wield unprecedented dominion over television, the most decisive voice in the land? There are now only three national networks .... There will never be more than three national networks."

On the public domain, 1995
"A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality?"

Link (Thanks, Patricio!)

Don't leave me, you infuriating bastard!

Don't leave me, you infuriating bastard! 03/14/2005 05:52 PM

So my colleague Matt Webb is about to abandon me in the BBC and is now trying to work out what to do next. Maybe you guys can help.

This feels like my most significant decision for the past decade, and the one that will most shape my life for the coming ten years. I've no idea what to do. Last time I tried to make a decision was last year, but then the book came along and I did that instead. Before then there was another offer too good to refuse. This time I really have to decide, the time is right, because even if I decide to keep to the status quo, this time that means I'm staying in industry, pretty much for good. And whatever happens now is significant because of my age, and because the subjects I'm interested in are coming to fruition both with people and technology, and because of all kinds of other externalities (funding bodies and so on)... But I can't work it out, and I need to make a decision, I think, in the next few weeks--not only which way to turn, but which college, what focus, which subjects.

If you're thinking of employing Matt, then obviously you could send him an e-mail offering him work and stuff. Or - and I think this is a much much better idea - you could send me an e-mail with details of the opportunity and I'll make sure he gets it... in the end... as soon as I've checked that it wouldn't be more appropriate for a person of slightly wider girth experience instead... er... or something... cough... nothing to see here...

Anyway, good luck old chap. You'll be much missed, impossible to replace and work will not be as much fun without you. Think of me fondly while you're out there in the real world, and send me a postcard occasionally.

Read the comments

New Clie: saucy little bastard

New Clie: saucy little bastard 11/02/2003 09:46 PM
Purportedly, this is a leaked image of Sony's new Clie. It is teh sexy, at least on the surface. Link (via Gizmodo)

Joke Email Forward! Fire the Bastard!

Joke Email Forward! Fire the Bastard! 05/01/2004 07:41 AM
Last week, according to today's Boston Globe (link breaks soon), Major General George W. Keefe of the National Guard received and forwarded a gag email about the Democratic convention that purported to be a schedule of events: "Opening flag burning ceremony," a re-enactment of Kerry's Tossing of the Medals, and "Sen. Kennedy proposes a toast" (six times). Ok, so maybe it's not the funniest gag email you've ever seen. But Keefe felt forced to apologize for forwarding it after Mayor Mumbles Menino fulminated against it: "It's unfortunate that an adjutant general of the National Guard has the time on...

Eric Idle's Greedy Bastard Tour

Eric Idle's Greedy Bastard Tour 12/05/2003 10:16 AM
Around the States in Eighty Days. Monty Python's Eric Idle is three quarters of the way through a North American tour and keeping an extensive online diary as he goes. "I would never be sitting at home writing my memoirs like this. There's just something about the time available and the different places we visit that invites introspection."

Bastard Operator From Hell, compleat
archives

Bastard Operator From Hell, compleat
archives 03/22/2005 04:37 PM
T he latest BOFH, or Bastard Operator From Hell. If you read The Register you're familiar with him... It's the story of an abusive IT guy basically doing whatever he wants to users and getting away with it. It's been going on for about 10 years, all of which is archi ved, so if that one doesn't tease your fancy, maybe some of those will. If you're not familiar with basic IT stuff some of it may be foreign to you, but once I started reading I couldn't stop. Try a couple years back, 2002 is a good vintage. >clickety<

Does CBS think we're that stupid?

Does CBS think we're that stupid? 02/10/2004 02:42 AM

I'd like to someday live in a country where a quick nipple shown on TV isn't the end of civilization, and that's not what irks me about the halftime show tonight. What does get me about the Superbowl halftime show is CBS insisting it was an accident, calling it a "wardrobe malfunction."

It's funny, when you collect the evidence, I wonder if CBS really thinks the public is stupid enough to believe it:

1. It was planned from the start.
2. There are snaps on her outfit clearly visible, designed to be unsnapped. Most garments are sewn together sans snaps and don't fall apart.
3. She's wearing a "nipple shield" to partially cover her breast. If it was unplanned why on earth would she have this huge chunk of metal there? Was it to skirt some FCC rule against an entirely naked breast?
4. Worst of all: She has a single coming out which is coincidentally being rushed to the airwaves based on the "overwhelming worldwide demand." Check the timestamp on the bogus press release, it was posted before the game was even over.

Is it all a big coincidence or is this how controversy is manufactured to sell records these days?

Bio-stupid

Bio-stupid 08/02/2004 11:59 PM
Salon Aug 3 2004 4:08AM GMT

It's the war, stupid

It's the war, stupid 05/27/2004 05:07 PM

It's the IQ, stupid

It's the IQ, stupid 08/27/2004 01:51 PM
"Innate intelligence has to do with capability and ignorance to do with variables such as educational opportunity and personal diligence. But the conundrum remains. Is intellect important in presidents? If Americans can't solve the question definitively in the matter of John Kerry and George Bush, we damn sure ought to make an educated guess."

It's the googleware, stupid!

It's the googleware, stupid! 11/11/2003 03:22 PM
It's never good to leave things hanging (nor, I suppose, is it that great an idea to link to yourself) so I did the sensible thing--empirical testing. Threw up a new image, mentioned it on IRC, and a few folks went to look. No googlebot. Dowloaded Opera and installed it, telling it that I was OK with google's adware/spyware stuff. Threw up another image, and looked at it with the new install of opera, which I then shut down and haven't fired up since. The result? Five minutes and 38 seconds after my look at the image, here comes googlebot!...

Stupid PDF-only Policy

Stupid PDF-only Policy 01/28/2004 06:41 PM
he Consumer Federation of California just issued a privacy report that is full of useful information -- but it's available only as a large PDF file, not in HTML or RTF or plain text.

It's the Customer, Stupid!

It's the Customer, Stupid! 06/05/2005 10:54 PM
Best Buy expands in-store offerings for small-business customers.

fat and stupid is no way to go through
life, son

fat and stupid is no way to go through
life, son 02/05/2005 09:02 PM
RIP, Dean Wormer

It's The Standard, Stupid

It's The Standard, Stupid 02/19/2004 06:04 PM
Ultimately it's not about the player. It's about the music you put on the player. By Christopher Breen (Macworld via MyAppleMenu)

Ben Affleck's stupid Car

Ben Affleck's stupid Car 12/31/2003 11:59 PM
Ben Affleck taking their parking spaces .. More of Ben's expensive car

tommee.net/ben
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stupid cupid

stupid cupid 02/12/2004 04:50 PM
I occasionally contribute to this fantastic online magazine called "The Cult of the One Eyed Cat." It's named after a real cat, who only has one eye, who once gave me half a look that chills me to this day.
This month's issue is all about Valentine's Day, so I wrote a snarky piece wherein I get frank about my true feelings for this annual tradition.
Here's a little bit to get you started:

Valentine's Day is upon us yet again, and husbands and boyfriends all over the country are trying to solve a fiendishly complex puzzle: what do we get our wives and girlfriends? If you're dating, are you dating long enough for roses? What if you're dating too long for roses? And what color? Should you get chocolates, because she's so sweet, or should you stay away from chocolates because she will freak about how it's going to make her fat?
The stakes are incredibly high. If we work out the Rube Goldberg machine that is the female psyche, we may just get that once-a-year blowjob . . . but if we fail to read the tea leaves correctly, we end up spending the evening alone in the bedroom with ESPN Classics while she watches Lifetime in the living room and talks on the phone with her bitter single friend who hates us.

You can read the rest of my story, and some other stories that are much better than mine, at The Cult of the One Eyed Cat

All the stupid people. Where do they all
come from?

All the stupid people. Where do they all
come from? 11/03/2003 11:13 AM
Opinion Campaign to Re-Educate the Public

It’s the Libraries, Stupid

It’s the Libraries, Stupid 06/09/2004 11:39 PM
Via Jeff Dillon, some insightful words on programming in Java and in the C#/.NET/Mono ecosystem. I hadn’t thought about it that way.

Verizon Says Don't Be Stupid

Verizon Says Don't Be Stupid 05/27/2004 09:35 AM
Sometimes you have to wonder why companies bother to put out press releases. We don't usually post press releases here, but some are just so odd, they deserve to be called out. Verizon Wireless put out a press release today that can best be described as telling people: don't be stupid while using your mobile phone. Basically, it's a list of things that you shouldn't do while driving and talking on your mobile phone ("Never take notes or write down phone numbers while driving!"). It's not as if someone is going to read this list, smack their head and say "Aha! No wonder I keep getting into accidents!" Then, at the end, they sneak in the real reason for this press release, first saying: "Dropped calls and dead zones can be frustrating for drivers," which may be true, but doesn't seem to have much to do with the rest of the press release. So, they quickly follow that up with the "oh, and by the way..." part of the press release reminding people that number portability is now in effect - so, if you must do stupid things on your mobile phone while driving, you might as well do them as a Verizon Wireless customer.

Its the War Economy, Stupid

Its the War Economy, Stupid 01/22/2004 02:11 AM
So Dean has lost Iowa, but he will get another chance to win that state. Jeff points to exit polls and says: Kerry has strong support among those who support the war. Ditto Edward and Gephardt. In short: The war...

Stupid Fun Club

Stupid Fun Club 06/04/2004 01:14 AM
Software Development Magazine: Inside the Stupid Fun Club.

Software Development Magazine wrote an article called "Inside the Stupid Fun Club" (registration required).

The author, Alexandra Weber Morales, unexpectedly encountered the Sad Robot, broken down and crying for help on the streets of Oakland.

We were shooting a couple of hidden camera reality TV "One Minute Movies" for NBC: one of a Sad Robot torn apart into pieces and pleading for help from passers by, and the other of a Robot Waiter taking orders,  serving food and bantering for a tip in a barbecue restaurant.

I (Don Hopkins) developed the custom "robot brain" software for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club, mostly in Python. It involved writing lots of high level Python code and XML data, and integrating all kinds of different software components together with SWIG, C++, ActiveX, Java, IRC, HTTP and WiFi. The robot features 3D facial animation, speech synthesis and recognition, conversational scripting, artificial intelligence, personality simulation, telerobotic remote control via wireless networking, with an interactive web interface for controling its behavior in real time.

For another Stupid Fun Club project, I also used Python to develop expressive synthetic speech authoring tools (audio speech “phonoscoping”, like visual animation “rotoscoping”), and talking toy simulations.

Python is ideally suited for brainstorming and prototyping new product ideas, as well as developing custom real-time robotic software for supporting creative Stupid Fun Club projects like reality TV production.

Eventually, Alexandra Weber Morales tracked down the person responsible, Will Wright, at his private production company, the Stupid Fun Club. She asked Will about the Sad Robot:
[I've added my own comments like this.
-Don]

Uh, OK. So, what kinds of reactions did people have to Sad Robot?

Wright: A lot of people were talking directly to it. Most of the women who were walking alone just sped up like they were spooked by it. Most of the single men would stop and start stripping it for parts, ignoring that the robot was talking to them. And it was mostly the couples who would actually interact with it and try to help it. Some would have long conversations, pushing the buttons.

We had a whole sort of troubleshooting thing, and we wanted to see how far people would go to help it. It was sort of a Good Samaritan experiment.

She also asked about the software we developed to control the robot, simulate its personality, animate its face, and listen and talk with people.

Have you heard of an AI knowledge base called Cyc?

Wright: For the conversational side of it, we’re using something similar to Cyc—in fact, we were looking at Cyc. There’s so many different layers. First of all, there’s the voice recognition, which is getting much better but is still pretty limited. Then, once you have the voice, you go into the conversation engine, and then it’s doing something like Cyc or Alice or Eliza: trying to give an appropriate response to what your input was. One of the projects we’re working on here is this toy design where we have these toys that converse with each other via infrared text-to-speech.

There are all these different approaches to AI. Some of them are more brute force, like Cyc. There’s also artificial life, an attempt to evolve systems rather than build them from the ground up.

Where’s this work being done?

Wright: The Santa Fe Institute is one place. There’s genetic programming, or adaptive systems, to give computers a way to learn and get feedback. That looks like a more promising approach.

Back in the ’60s, when computers were first being used in business, everybody assumed we’d have artificial intelligence in 10 years. When 2001 came out, in 1967, and people came out of that movie saying, “I can’t believe that a computer will be able to play chess that well.” But they took the conversation with HAL for granted. In fact, it was the opposite: Chess turned out to be the easy part; natural conversation turned out to be the hard part. Within 20 years, we’re going to have machines like this that have full autonomy and pretty good conversational ability. We could build a stove that would have a long conversation with you. So the real interesting question for me now is, what’s going to happen when our world is surrounding us with intelligent machines? These are going to be the first aliens we meet.

Describe the software running this thing.

Wright: The conversational chatbot is Alice. It takes input and you give it a dictionary to define what it knows about.

[ALICE is written in Java, so Python talks to it through an IRC server running on the robot. We can connect to the same IRC channel over the wireless network, watch the messages going between ALICE and the brain, interject text to speak and think, switch moods, play facial animations, tweak the personality, execute commands, etc. Later I developed a more powerful web based " Homunculus" interface, for operating the robot in real time, with a web browser on a remote laptop or handheld.
-Don]

Winter: That’s connected to Microsoft speech recognition, which is fantastic.

[I wouldn't go that far. It doesn't suck, but "fantastic" is a stretch. 
-Don]

Winter: And some simple AI, since Alice may or may not understand what you’re talking about.

[In other words, Alice is like the mad old aunt with Tourette's Syndrome you keep locked away in the attic. Alice is only used as a backstop, when the Python/XML/AI layer of the robot brain can't think of anything to say. But it's turned off when we don't want the robot to seem insane.
-Don]

Winter: The most intelligent thing it ever did is we had an opera singer in here singing to the robot, but the robot didn’t like it. So she said, “maybe I should explain the story,” and after the singer finished, the robot paraphrased the whole thing back to her. It was about the most amazing thing we’d ever seen; we all just about started believing in robots at that moment.

[What's really interesting is abusing the speech recognizer, by putting the robot brain into a mode where it listens to itself (and anyone else) talk! It's like the mutating telephone gossip game, or the news media echo chamber: The robot repeats what it thinks it heard itself say, which it then mis-recognizes and distorts again and again, in a feedback loop of quasi-coherent rhyming speech! Any words you interject get mixed in and distorted in the speech recognition/synthesis feedback loop. It naturally finds and converges on extremely strange attractors in the recognizer's hidden markov models of the English language, chanting and mutating gramatically plausible but semantically ridiculous phrases, in response to whatever it thinks it hears. When properly configured, the robot can actually compose live performances of original surrealistic beat robopoetry, responding to the audience in real time! Stanislaw Lem calls that "Bitic Literature".
-Don]

Winter: When we take these in public, it seems like the people who are less technical savvy are the ones who interact with it, whereas the people with technical backgrounds are standing there reverse-engineering it.

Are you following what MIT has done with humanoid robots such as Kismet?

Wright: There are lots of research labs around the country building these types of robots, but they never take them out into the public. We drive them into a laundromat or a restaurant and see what the response is.

When we filmed Sad Robot, we also filmed a scene in a restaurant with a robot waiter. It was interesting how many people totally bought it. Usually within three or four minutes, they were completely normal about it. People kind of expect that there will be robots in the future; it’s just a matter of when.

[The Sad Robot: A pitiful broken down female robot is crying for help, bent out of shape and fallen on its side with a mangled tractor tread, next to a stinky garbage dumpster, begging reluctant passers by to turn it upright, describe its condition, press its big red reset button, adjust its controls, step away before it explodes, and call a mysterious professor on their cell phone.
The Robot Waiter: An earnest robot waiter, just trying to do its job taking orders, delivering food to tables, telling jokes and bantering for tips, and collecting dirty dishes. Afterwards submits itself to a Robot Waiter Performance Evaluation Survey, and begs the human to give it good marks, otherwise it might lose its job.
-Don]

Robot: If you could have any kind of robot, what would it be? The goal is elimination of crime, combined with rehabilitation of criminals … Yes, it seems very long to me, too.

What do you use for automated testing?

Wright: Our own suites. Most of our stuff is in C++, but we have a proprietary visual scripting language I designed, called Edith, for the behavioral code for the Sims. It’s totally geared to AI and the Sims.

[The robot software is written in C++, Python and XML. Edith is used to program simulated personalities, but for simulated people instead of real robots. Edith is the tool for programming The Sims, for scripting the artificial intelligence of the characters and objects. The Sims visual programming language itself is called SimAntics. Edith is Maxis's official tool for programming SimAntics code, while iffpencil2 is another third party SimAntics programming tool, developed outside of Maxis.
-Don]

Winter: I think it’s time for the Christmas robot.

Wright: Are you running that … weapon? I don’t know if we want to sit here. [A dancing snowman on a wheeled platform with a circular saw mounted on its front bumper approaches a plastic toy-store robot.]

Winter: No, you would die. You’d better take cover.

[The interview ends.]

The snowman quickly demolishes the toy, shooting debris throughout the warehouse. With Winter’s encouragement, I spend 10 minutes in a nonsensical conversation with the robot. He also shows me the Minute Movie that have been made for NBC—and they’re hilarious.

I leave this unconventional interview impressed with the way the Stupid Fun Club has turned a fascination with robots and toys into a lucrative and wholly entertaining enterprise. Meanwhile, the larger concerns about the technical strengths, limitations and implications of these semiautonomous machines go mostly unanswered. Wright and Winter seem firmly on the side of presentation, and somewhat unwilling to delve deeply into how their toys work—as if to say, “Where’s the fun in asking all these questions? Just talk to the robot.”

I'm certainly interested in delving deeply into how the robot brain works myself, but not everyone else is. So I used Python to develop a high-level XML based AI and wireless web remote control system, which enables creative writers and designers like Will Wright to script and control the robot behavior, and reconfigure it for different scenarios, without needing to deal with Python, C++ or the other software components that went into building it.

[Don Hopkins' RadiOMatic BlogUTron]

Stupid Movies

Stupid Movies 05/28/2004 09:35 AM

I'm glad to see that "The Day After Tomorrow" -- a disaster movie about climate change -- is getting bad reviews. Much of science in this picture, by almost every account, is ludicrous. There's almost no doubt that we're heading toward serious global consequences due to our prolificacy in the use of energy and other things that affect climate, but stupid movies shouldn't be moving the discussion in either direction. And when otherwise reputable people and organizations like Al Gore and Moveon.org use the movie to leverage their own concerns, they don't enhance their own reputations. The notion that global warming could set off an ice age is not stupid, however idiotically and unrealistically the movie portrays such an event. Scientists have offered persuasive evidence that such a thing is at least thinkable. And there's widespread consensus among scientists about global warming itself. I'll probably watch this movie when it hits the cable channels. I won't imagine, however, that it's about much of anything serious.

Stupid rain

Stupid rain 05/24/2004 12:32 PM
Why is it everytime I make plans with someone, the goddamn weather gets in the way?!?! Even my mother said...

It's Your Stupid Boss

It's Your Stupid Boss 07/19/2004 03:18 PM

Direct and Related Links for 'It’s Your Stupid Boss'

“Refraining from opening e-mail attachments from unknown senders is the number one way companies can stop the spread of viruses and worms. But evidence from a survey by AT&T and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EUI) shows that 78 per cent of top-level employees surveyed, ranging from board members to CEOs and CIOs, plead guilty to double-clicking on unknown files. Ironically, this ‘Network Security: Managing the risk and opportunity’ survey, released Thursday, also showed that 92…
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"Stupid Evil Bastard"

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