• ping floyd (unregistered) in reply to Hatshepsut
    Hatshepsut:
    You've never seen Australian currency before either, I take it?

    [BTW, How do blind people deal with US currency, other than the Ray Charles approach? ("Singles.")]

    Addendum (2008-09-26 09:20): Oh shit I just re-read this and it's one of those sniffy know-all posts that I really hate.

    Sorry all. I'll get me coat...

    Don't leave, there's enough candy to go around.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt J
    Matt J:
    It's mainly England that has the issues. We don't get snow with any regularity, unlike the alpine countries. Even Scotland handles it better than us.
    This is a total misrepresentation of the problem; it's nothing to do with issues. It's more fundamental than that.

    Snow on the tracks? Well, we were looking for an excuse to cancel the train/close down the motorway/make weird buzzing noises over the intercom, anyway.

    IRA planting a bomb in a litter bin at Paddington station? Excellent. Twenty years later, and there are still no litter bins at 90% of stations in the UK. Less work, innit?

    Shortage of technical expertise in just about anything? Not a problem. Hire more managers to make up the difference (cf Railtrack), and complain that the government ought to be forcing schools to train more engineers. God forbid we'd actually increase the remuneration for engineers, or anything like that.

    Just shot an innocent Brazilian for no reason at all, other than systemic incompetence? We'll have a Royal Commission look into that. Maybe two. We already know what the answer's going to be.

    It isn't hypocrisy, as such: it's what Kingsley Amis called the "Sod you" culture. And he was right. That's us, to a T.

  • (cs) in reply to DoctorFriday

    For speed boost, a single drive won't cut it. Heck, two isn't enough. You need like seven to get the full effect...

    [image]
  • (cs) in reply to LarZ

    If a single drive gets you a 20% boost and boosts stack, that means that your software will run at 358% speed with 7 drives!

  • Atlantys (unregistered)

    That 100,000 Dong note (D with a cross through it) must be new: the highest bill was 50,000 when I lived in Hanoi (10 years ago).

    iirc, 10,000 Dong is about $1US (well, maybe not, with their economy in the tank right now), so the largest bill was about $5. We paid rent with a suitcase of money.

  • (cs) in reply to DaveAronson
    DaveAronson:
    If the thin mousepads have the usual grippy rubber backing, they could still be useful as jar openers....

    I actually like thin mouse pads better than thicker ones. They don't skew my wrist at a funny angle, and they travel better in my laptop bag. A mousepad is only useful for giving you a good surface to mouse on... the "pad" part of it doesn't do much when it's thicker if it's stiff enough to properly use a mouse.

  • Robert'); DROP TABLE 'students'; -- (unregistered)

    So what's really in the zip file?

  • (cs) in reply to Pitabred
    Pitabred:
    DaveAronson:
    If the thin mousepads have the usual grippy rubber backing, they could still be useful as jar openers....

    I actually like thin mouse pads better than thicker ones. They don't skew my wrist at a funny angle, and they travel better in my laptop bag. A mousepad is only useful for giving you a good surface to mouse on... the "pad" part of it doesn't do much when it's thicker if it's stiff enough to properly use a mouse.

    I haven't used a mousepad for years. They have these newfangled gizmos now with a light in place of a ball.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt.C
    Matt.C:
    If a single drive gets you a 20% boost and boosts stack, that means that your software will run at 358% speed with 7 drives!

    Really depends on how you think of it: a 20% boost will reduce a 1 second operation down to 0.8 seconds and shave 0.2.

    So, you get just 5 drives hooked up - you can complete any operation instantly. You really don't want to go with more than 5 though, or you'll run into a causality paradox.

  • Matt J (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent
    Code Dependent:
    Matt J:
    Why the snideness? Do you make a habit of casually insulting people?
    "Poor" Americans? There is in your choice of adjective the implication of superiority on your part. While I'm impressed by old or ancient buildings, especially if they're still in practical everyday use, I'm not clear on why having fewer makes us "poor". As for building with wood, houses of wood were built in areas where wood was plentiful. In areas with different resources, those resources were used. The main advantage I can see in living in an old house of stone is that you get to admire the electrical and plumbing fixtures that were bolted to the wall at some later time, rather than being hidden inside the wall as with wood.

    I don't casually insult people, no; but I do occasionally return like for like.

    Whilst poor may have been a bad choice of word, I did not mean it in any pejorative sense, neither was I seriously suggesting that the use of timber as a building material was a aesthetic choice, and that the builders of old were stupid for using the most at-hand resource. So I apologise for not prefacing my post with the socio-economic context of colonial America.

    And finally, most old buildings still in use here have been plastered on the inside, so as to hide the plumbing and cables.

  • Ed (unregistered)

    Holy crap, it's a textbook sponsored by Goatse! Where else will that turn up?!

  • Daniel (unregistered) in reply to moshbox
    moshbox:
    WhiskeyJack:
    Tim Horton's! Canadian Tire Money!

    The stuff of my day-to-day grind. I bet every Canadian reader of TDWTF has at least 50 cents worth of Canadian Tire money in their wallet.

    I cleaned out my truck last month and wound up with a brick sized wad of stuff. Naturally I headed straight to Crappy Tire for some big ticket item I really didn't need. After watching the poor girl spend 15 minutes sorting and counting it, I got a whopping $5 knocked off. Seemed kinda pointless in the end.

    Pointless to whom? You gave them quite a bit of money, and all they had to do was knock $5 off.
    That's "ingenium" (captcha) :p

  • John (unregistered)

    I'm not sure about 'Crapton'. It looks to me like 'crapped on'. Can I propose a new unit for calorific content?

    I try to avoid buying coffee from those chain stores like Gloria Jean's, Starbucks, etc, because they tend to have the calorific content of a small thermonuclear device.

    So the tableful of confectionery could be expressed in terms of STNDs.

  • (cs) in reply to John
    John:
    I'm not sure about 'Crapton'. It looks to me like 'crapped on'. Can I propose a new unit for calorific content?

    I try to avoid buying coffee from those chain stores like Gloria Jean's, Starbucks, etc, because they tend to have the calorific content of a small thermonuclear device.

    So the tableful of confectionery could be expressed in terms of STNDs.

    Okay, first of all, d'you mind if we change "calorific" to "caloric"?

    Hmm... on the other hand, "calorific" does seem to apply more directly to STNDs. Nevermind. I must admit, after consuming a "vente" I sometimes feel like I'm holding back an STND attempting to get out through my flesh.

  • (cs) in reply to Matt J
    Matt J:
    So I apologise...
    Thank you. Accepted.
    Matt J:
    And finally, most old buildings still in use here have been plastered...
    Quite all right, sir: so have I.
  • MRAB (unregistered) in reply to John

    I think the new unit is obvious: mile.

  • (cs) in reply to Hydragyrum
    Hydragyrum:
    I got 80 cents in mine!

    Can't say I'm as enthusiastic for Tim Horton's as most English Canadians though...

    And, alas, that is why the two solitudes will never truly be reconciled. It may not be an issue worthy of separation, but it may well warrant that "nation within a nation" thing Harper did.

  • (cs) in reply to Robert'); DROP TABLE 'students'; --
    Robert'); DROP TABLE 'students'; --:
    So what's really in the zip file?
    Random photos, some of which are amusing.
  • Grant Emsley (unregistered) in reply to Craig F

    The D&D cards are self printed, using a combination of the template files here: http://sites.google.com/a/educatedgamer.net/4e-fans/

    The software here: http://magicseteditor.sourceforge.net/

    A whole lot of time copying and pasting the powers from a PDF file.

    And a few Photoshop scripts to resize and batch print the cards to fit on 3x5 index cards.

  • (cs)

    Alex P makes me laugh : "historic building (circa 1860)"

    hahaha, yeah, very 'historic'

  • (cs) in reply to Helix
    Helix:
    Alex P makes me laugh : "historic building (circa 1860)"

    hahaha, yeah, very 'historic'

    His building is half as old as the colonizing of the United States.

    Pre-recorded history: nomadic tribes, oral tradition, portable housing 1607 - Jamestown, first successful colony established by non-natives 1620 - Mayflower arrives, half the colonists survive; big deal for some unclear reason 1670 - Charleston, South Carolina founded 1732 - Georgia founded, named after George II 1760 - population in America reaches 1 million 1763 - Britian tries to enforce acts on exports from America, pissing off the colonists 1765 - the Stamp Act imposes duty on the colonists, who respond with "No taxation without representation". 1770 - the Boston Massacre, in which British soldiers killed five colonists for throwing snowballs at them. 1773 - the Boston Tea Party 1774 - the Intolerable Acts 1775 - The American colonies declare a state of rebellion. 1776 - July 4th, the Declaration of Independence 1783 - America wins the revolutionary war with the signing of the Treaty of Paris 1803 - Louisiana purchase 1804 - Lewis and Clark expedition maps the northwest. States continue to be added to the union. 1825 - Erie canal between the Hudson River and Lake Erie 1828 - first railroad in the United States is built 1836 - Texas wins its independence from Mexico 1838 - Cherokee tribe forced to move (Trail of Tears) 1842 - first wagon train sets out on the Oregon Trail 1845 - Texas becomes a state 1849 - the California gold rush 1860 - US population 31 million. Slavery becomes a divisive issue. Alex's building is built.

  • Peter (unregistered)

    71 comments and no-one's pointed out the real WTF: Kithkin Soldier tokens aren't Australian.

  • Mathias (unregistered)

    Man, Jonas sent the wrong package. That Matador Mix is the new, buttugly kind with hideous wrapping (and it has gummybears! Heathens!!). I'd send in a proper Matador Mix bag if I still had one around. Man, those are awesome.

  • Aran (unregistered)

    Whoa, that's a lot of Dongs.

  • Sam B (unregistered)

    In certain parts of the country, building codes restrict the use of brick or stone in construction of residential buildings.

    I.E., here in Los Angeles, you won't see many houses built entirely out of brick because of the earthquake risks. Some "historic" buildings are still around that were made out of brick, but, not so much anymore.

  • (cs) in reply to jimmySixNuts
    jimmySixNuts:
    you can buy that radioactive warning tape on the internet, how cool is that? as soon as my order arrives i'm going on a spree, people around town will be terrified

    You'd better watch out. In many countries it's illegal to mark something as radioactive that isn't. Even posession of such tape without the proper permits might be illegal.

  • concerned reader (unregistered)

    You might want to rethink eating all that candy. Here in Singapore, M&M's are being recalled for using Melamine contaminated milk from China.

    But dang...I'm craving for chocolate now...

  • (cs) in reply to LarZ
    LarZ:
    For speed boost, a single drive won't cut it. Heck, two isn't enough. You need like seven to get the full effect...

    [image]

    Dude, that's not the way you get the speed boost. You need software to support it. Assuming those neato red drives will flash when accessed, let me give you teh pseudo codez:

    OrderedArray<driveletter> USBDriveLetters 
  = GetDriveLettersFromLeftToRight()

int TehSpeed = 1000;

main()
{
 while 1
 {
   foreach (DriveLetter in USBDriveLetters)
   (
     touch SomeRandomCrappyFile();
     sleep TehSpeed;
    )
  }
}

Event MakeSystemGoFaster()
{
  TehSpeed = TehSpeed / 10;
}

Event MakeSystemGoSlower()
{
  TehSpeed = TehSpeed * 10;
}
  • (cs) in reply to WhiskeyJack
    WhiskeyJack:
    Tim Horton's! Canadian Tire Money!

    The stuff of my day-to-day grind. I bet every Canadian reader of TDWTF has at least 50 cents worth of Canadian Tire money in their wallet.

    I think I'm one of those rare Canadians who saves up the money. I run a haunted house ever Halloween, and the budget is always near zero. So my fiance and I pool together our Canadian Tire Money all year, and in October, blow it on hardware supplies like 48" black light bulbs and Rubbermaid storage containers.

  • (cs) in reply to Peter
    Peter:
    71 comments and no-one's pointed out the real WTF: Kithkin Soldier tokens aren't Australian.

    Of course they are. If they were American MTG cards (like God intended), they'd be written in English. These were obviously written in Australian, and thus a souvenir (American: freedom trinket) was born.

    Interesting bit of useless information for the day: The Star Trek: DS9 character Michael Eddington is Canadian, to the point where he even had a "lucky Loonie". During the beta testing for the Star Trek CCG set with Eddington, playtesters suggested that his skill, "honor", be properly spelled "honour". The game designers responded by changing every "o" on the card to "ou". Alas, neither of these features made it onto the final product.

  • jbrecken (unregistered)

    You're right; that is a nice-looking Ho on your dong.

  • Garrett Fitzgerald (unregistered)

    Somehow, those Aspose mouse pads don't surprise me. :-)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Salman.sarfraz&oldid=180102134

  • Mnc (unregistered)

    I'd kill for some Matador Mix right now.

  • Linda (unregistered)

    That JAOO bag really makes me wonder if they had the same bag at the last convention. Cause this version of JAOO is only on it's fourth day. (Looks at the bag she has lying beside her.)

    And four days to send something from Denmark to the States isn't much...

    Huh, and the captcha is conventio, almost convention which is where I am right now...

  • Jonas (unregistered) in reply to Linda

    Linda, you are right. The bag is from last year's JAOO. It served me well but became too small to fit my needs so I decided to send it to Alex as an aknowledgement of his great site, and of course in exchange for some stickers :-)

    I don't know yet what to do with the bag from this year's conference...

    For those wondering: JAOO is a conference for software developers and the bag is something that is handed out to every participant at the beginning of the conference.

  • (cs) in reply to ThomsonsPier
    ThomsonsPier:
    Aha! Now we know what you look like!

    Is that a metric or imperial crapton?

    I always assumed it was a shortened version of "crap ton" as opposed to "short ton", "long ton", or "metric ton".

  • (cs) in reply to jwenting
    jwenting:
    jimmySixNuts:
    you can buy that radioactive warning tape on the internet, how cool is that? as soon as my order arrives i'm going on a spree, people around town will be terrified

    You'd better watch out. In many countries it's illegal to mark something as radioactive that isn't. Even posession of such tape without the proper permits might be illegal.

    But isn't everything radioactive? Carbon-14, Oxygen-16, etc.

    But anyway, what countries would those be?

  • Shill (unregistered) in reply to Yanman.be
    Yanman.be:
    The "knuffeltje knuffel" cartoon is from a Belgian cartoonist, Jeroom.

    I believe this was scanned from Humo, a rather popular Belgian magazine. I think they'd ban or censor most of the articles in the U.S., for instance, check this week's cover:

    Yes, that's a guy holding a woman's tits, and the wife of a police officer in a rather...interesting position. The text is about a suicide line.

    Please cite an example of a magazine being banned or censored in the U.S.

    We've done the naked woman with her breasts being held by a man on the cover of a magazine before (I think it was Janet Jackson, coincidentally, on some woman's magazine in the 90s).

  • TekniCal (unregistered) in reply to Code Dependent

    1565 - St Augustine, FL

    Code Dependent:
    Helix:
    Alex P makes me laugh : "historic building (circa 1860)"

    hahaha, yeah, very 'historic'

    His building is half as old as the colonizing of the United States.

    Pre-recorded history: nomadic tribes, oral tradition, portable housing 1607 - Jamestown, first successful colony established by non-natives 1620 - Mayflower arrives, half the colonists survive; big deal for some unclear reason 1670 - Charleston, South Carolina founded 1732 - Georgia founded, named after George II 1760 - population in America reaches 1 million 1763 - Britian tries to enforce acts on exports from America, pissing off the colonists 1765 - the Stamp Act imposes duty on the colonists, who respond with "No taxation without representation". 1770 - the Boston Massacre, in which British soldiers killed five colonists for throwing snowballs at them. 1773 - the Boston Tea Party 1774 - the Intolerable Acts 1775 - The American colonies declare a state of rebellion. 1776 - July 4th, the Declaration of Independence 1783 - America wins the revolutionary war with the signing of the Treaty of Paris 1803 - Louisiana purchase 1804 - Lewis and Clark expedition maps the northwest. States continue to be added to the union. 1825 - Erie canal between the Hudson River and Lake Erie 1828 - first railroad in the United States is built 1836 - Texas wins its independence from Mexico 1838 - Cherokee tribe forced to move (Trail of Tears) 1842 - first wagon train sets out on the Oregon Trail 1845 - Texas becomes a state 1849 - the California gold rush 1860 - US population 31 million. Slavery becomes a divisive issue. Alex's building is built.

    captcha: plaga

  • OBloodyhell (unregistered)

    (Hooks, Texas) learned the hard way why some custom mouse pads cost $0.10/each and others are $1.10/each. Too embarrassing to give out as trade-show swag, he sent in a small stack for some WTF Stickers. "You'll find they're one step up from colored Saran wrap," he added, "most paper towels are thicker, though."

    So, WTF? The purpose behind a mouse pad is to provide a surface which a mouse ball (or, nowadays) laser, works reliably on. You don't need anything much thicker than saran wrap. As long as it clings to the underlying surface smoothly, even under hand movement, it should work fine. Who needs inch thick foam padding?

  • OBloodyhell (unregistered) in reply to DoctorFriday
    DoctorFriday:
    Alex:
    As for the USB drive, it's a whopping 16MB

    I wonder if Vista could use something that small for Speed Boost

    C'mon. This is Vista we're talking about. It couldn't use anything that small to store Bill Gates' name.

  • OBloodyhell (unregistered) in reply to Mike
    Mike:
    It is always interesting watching European countries shut down under a hit of snow when we sit here under feet of it at times in Michigan.

    On the other hand Michiganders seems to run for the hills (or more likely the storm shelters I hope...) when a tornado watch shows up and the Florida people are laughing at us...

    Who the hell needs a tornado watch, unless you're living in a trailer/RV park? Those things are tornado magnets.

    Just about the only time you see anything get damaged by a tornado, it's one of those places. They either don't hit anything else, or they don't affect it when they hit it and so no one even notices.

  • HughG (unregistered)

    Austrian currency used to be really cool, pre-Euro: as well as transparent sections, they had notes (a.k.a. bills) which had the number picked out several times in a grid of dots, where some were ink, some hologram, and some holes :-) At least, I think it was Austria. Wish I'd kept 'em ...

  • Enos Shenk (unregistered)

    Oh cool! I see some of my stuff in the last picture! I totally forgot I sent that in until I ran across this. The pictures in the bottom-left are ones I took in Orlando while working for BellSouth installing cellular equipment in those sheds under cell towers. The dazed-and-confused looking guy was my co-worker.

  • Steve Crawford (unregistered)

    I imagine the Australian or Canadian things would be useful if you would ever want to pass yourself off as $nationality.

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