The Null Device

Could this be the worst security hole ever? The Oklahoma Department of Corrections' sex offender database site allowed users to issue arbitrary SQL queries on their database (which contained the complete details of anyone who has ever been on the wrong side of the law). The "print friendly link" took, as its argument, a SQL query, which it would then execute. Which, of course, means that not only could someone get enough details about anyone in the database to steal their identity, but could quite possibly insert arbitrary data into the government's official sex offender database. You can probably imagine the kinds of fun that someone could have with that.

(via Schneier) ¶ privacy security sql stupidity tech [no comments]

Today's words of advice: should you ever decide to burgle a funeral parlour, it is advisable to dress the part, so that, should you be interrupted, you can blend in with the customers, unlike this guy:

Police officers arrived with the owner, and eventually found the suspect lying on a table in a glassed-in chamber used for viewings of deceased people during wakes, a local police official said from Burjassot.

"The custom here is for dead people to be dressed in suits, in nice clothes that look presentable. This guy was in everyday clothes that were wrinkled and dirty," the police official said.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ bizarre crime death deception stupidity the long siege [no comments]

Something which amuses me is the ads on Facebook, and the juxtapositions of irrelevant images (typically of attractive-looking young women, at times in provocative poses) next to pitches for products of various dubiosity, ranging from fairly well-known credit-rating agencies to get-rich-quick schemes and online gambling sites, but having as a common feature an inherent lack of sex appeal. The rationale, I'm guessing, is pure postmodern cynicism: somewhere, some executive decided that the model consumer they're pitching at is like one of the slack-jawed halfwits from Idiocracy ("Gee, I don't know the first thing about work-from-home schemes and stuff... but I sure like hot chicks!"), and decided to market at this notional demographic. Not aiming merely for the dullards, but also for those consumers, brought up on trashy television and celebrity gossip, who are well versed in the practice of simulating being simpletons in order to be entertained, as the Judd Apatows and Seann William Scotts of this world (and their bank managers) know. Call it cognitive slumming, if you will.

Sometimes, though, the juxtaposition between the content (or, rather, its tone) and the Irrelevant Hot Chick Picture becomes quite jarring. Case in point:

¶ advertising bizarre cynicism facebook irritainment marketing stupidity [no comments]

Australia has apparently outlawed laser pointers after some griefers decided to aim them at aircraft for lulz. (Maybe they hoped that they'd get lucky and bring one down and get to see lots of cool flames and shit.) And so, thanks to the actions of a few cretins, the nation's cats are deprived of one more source of amusement.

(via MeFi) ¶ australia authoritarianism cats griefers laser pointers stupidity [1 comment]

A gay Iranian teenager who fled to Britain after his boyfriend was hanged for sodomy is facing deportation to Iran, and almost certain death. Britain's Home Office has already denied Mehdi Kazemi, 19, asylum, and now the Netherlands is extraditing him to Britain:

"There is no doubt that Mehdi will be arrested and probably executed if he is sent back there," said his 51-year-old uncle, a salesman from Hampshire. "The police have issued a warrant for his arrest. He will be in terrible danger if he goes back."

Mr Kazemi's father has also told him that if the state doesn't kill him, he will. "His father is very angry but his mother still loves him. She is extremely worried for him but she is in a very difficult position. In Iran, mothers don't stop loving their children because they are gay."

A Home Office spokeswoman confirmed Mr Kazemi had exhausted all his domestic avenues of appeal and could expect to be detained pending his deportation. But she added: "Any further representations will be considered on their merits taking into account all the circumstances."

And the ultra-conservative former prime minister of Poland, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has spoken out against allowing internet voting because the internet is for pornography:

"I am not an enthusiast of a young person sitting in front of a computer, watching video clips and pornography while sipping a bottle of beer and voting when he feels like it," he was quoted as saying on his party's revamped Web site.

He added that Internet users are "the easiest group to manipulate, to suggest who to vote for."

¶ bigotry chavs cluelessness gay goth internet iran poland rightwingers stupidity uk [2 comments]

London's Brick Lane is installing padded lamp posts to reduce injuries to people walking into them whilst texting on their mobile phones.

Is this a common problem? It could be argued that it would be better to attach spikes to the lamp posts, and let the not-looking-where-you're-going gene weed itself out of the gene pool.

(via Engadget) ¶ mobile phones social implications stupidity tech [no comments]

Spare a thought for Mark Boyle, the 28-year-old English hippie who planned to walk from Bristol to India without any money for world peace or something similar, subsisting only on the charity of strangers. Alas, it was not to be, and Mr. Boyle gave up his quest at Calais after his lack of money and inability to speak French caused the locals to think of him as a free-loader or an asylum seeker.

Not one to be easily dissuaded by the cold hard impact of reality, Mr. Boyle has strategically downsized his plans to a walk around the coast of Britain, learning French as he goes, for another attempt in future.

¶ culture fail french hippies language stupidity [2 comments]

When voters in Chicago found that the pens they were given to mark ballot papers didn't work, the officials told them not to worry, as the pens contained invisible ink, which would be counted by the scanners. Surprisingly, 20 people accepted this and turned in blank ballot papers.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ chicago democracy politics stupidity usa voting wtf [no comments]

A year or so ago, Sony's egregiously misnamed Universal Media Disc format (a prooprietary optical disc which only plays in one device—the Sony PlayStation Portable)—essentially died as a viable medium for selling anything other than PSP games. For some reason, people didn't want to spend good money on a low-resolution copy of a movie, bound to a plastic cartridge, for viewing on their PSP; perhaps the number of PSP owners who would use their units for repeatedly watching Spiderman 2 on the train, as opposed to, say, playing videogames, wasn't that great to begin with, and the percentage willing to incur the cost of buying a movie in this inflexible format was even lower. Not even Sony giving away UMDs of their films with DVDs, for only slightly more money, could revive the flagging format.

So now, we learn that Sony are trying to revive the UMD format as a medium for movies by selling TV shows on it, in conjunction with MTV (formerly a music-video channel, now a purveyor of entertainment to the lucrative young-and-dumb demographic). That's right; presumably some executive decided that, while people may not be willing to pay money for a disc containing a version of a movie that only plays on their PSP, they'd be willing to do so for some episodes of Beavis & Butthead. Unless they're planning to bundle them with boxes of breakfast cereal or something.

It's not just the cost of purchasing the disc that counts; it's also the cost of having another bit of plastic taking up space in your house and your mental filing system. As the value of the bits of plastic decreases, the awkwardness of their material nature increases. (A video game you may spend many hours playing is worth a plastic disc and case to store it in—not to mention £25 or however much it costs— a movie you watch once or twice, less so, especially since looking at a small handheld screen is not the best way to enjoy movies if there are alternatives. A few episodes of a TV show sounds like an even more marginal proposition, and the sort of problem that downloads were invented to solve.) Especially in a format whose flexibility is deliberately limited.

¶ business dead media marketing media mtv sony stupidity tech umd [3 comments]

A chap named Virgil Griffith has correlated the most popular books at every college in the US (as fetched from Facebook) with that school's average test score to find a correlation between intelligence and favourite books. According to Griffith's study, the book most correlated with high scores is Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, and that with low scores is the Holy Bible (not to be confused with the Bible, which is around the middle, just below Harry Potter); other books correlated with high scores are Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle, and Freakonomics, and books dumber than "I Dont Read" include various erotica and hip-hop/ghetto fiction, The Purpose Driven Life and Fahrenheit 451. Slightly smarter than not reading are the likes of Fight Club, Dan Brown and John Grisham, along with Shakespeare's Hamlet; sci-fi, fantasy and geek/fan-interest books like The Lord of the Rings, Dune and, umm, Eragon rate more highly. (Mind you, this is correlated to test scores, not cultural well-roundedness.)

It would be interesting to see one of these correlating a measure of intelligence (such as test scores) with other factors, such as favourite music (I imagine things that a lot of geeks listen to, like metal, industrial and prog rock would come out on top, and rap-metal/nu-metal and R&B would come out fairly low), movies, or even which Facebook groups/applications one has installed.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ culture data mining facebook intelligence society stupidity [3 comments]

Top 100 quotes from Christian Fundamentalists on the web. Pure comedy gold:

Atheists have the greatest "cover" of all, they insist they believe in no god yet most polls done and the latest research indicates that they are actually a different sect of Muslims.

Gravity: Doesn't exist. If items of mass had any impact of others, then mountains should have people orbiting them. Or the space shuttle in space should have the astronauts orbiting it. Of course, that's just the tip of the gravity myth. Think about it. Scientists want us to believe that the sun has a gravitation pull strong enough to keep a planet like neptune or pluto in orbit, but then it's not strong enough to keep the moon in orbit? Why is that? What I believe is going on here is this: These objects in space have yet to receive mans touch, and thus have no sin to weigh them down. This isn't the case for earth, where we see the impact of transfered sin to material objects. The more sin, the heavier something is.

I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don't think he's ready to date yet. What's worse is that he's sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!

I can sum it all up in three words: Evolution is a lie

Apes are just creatures twisted by Satan to mock Jesus by giving EVILolition credibility. Further more they are naturally lust crazed for human women. Since they are not natural creatures they should be exterminated forthwith as the tools of evil they are.

The word of God has been in heaven forever. The KJV has always been there. The so called Hebrew words like Alleluia are English words. The English did not borrow them from the Hebrew but rather the Hebrew borrowed them from the English. If the KJV has always been there and is the original word of God then there is no other conclusion. The same can be said for any so called Greek words that were borrowed from the Greek or transliterated. It is a matter of what bias you approach this particular subject.

Jesus is not a Jew. Jesus was Jewish.

Do you know what medical students are exposed to as they are learning about medicine? In one college course, students were required to "examine" other stripped down students! This is abominable. Is it worth it to go through that kind of education and ignore God's Word? Looking on nakedness is a shameful and intolerable thing. And most employment for doctors and nurses requires looking on other people's nakedness (bathing patients, giving shots, operating, examining, etc.) What will we do as people who have been bought at the very high price of the blood of God? What will be most important to us? Our careers... or our integrity as priests of God?

(via Charlie's Diary) ¶ christianity creationism fundamentalists religiots stupidity unclear on the concept [1 comment]

Some hackers are creating a system for detecting stupidity in text using Bayesian techniques:

In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point.

It's time to fight back.

Of course, such a system is going to work only if you define "stupidity" in purely stylistic terms (such as using words like 'lol' and 'omfg!!1!!eleventyone'), ignoring semantics altogether. In which case it becomes a way of keeping the rabble who don't punctuate properly out of your blog comments. Perhaps then someone will develop an extra-prescriptivistic filter which blocks comments containing split infinitives or inappropriate semicolons, for those wishing to move up to a higher class of gated community.

(via Boing Boing) ¶ culture grammar internet newbies punctuation stupidity [no comments]

A family in the Northern English city of Newcastle claim that they have been forced to move home twice afrer being violently persecuted for their red hair. WTF? That's insane.

¶ bigotry culture england hair colour hate racism red hair stupidity uk wtf [no comments]

Could this be a new record for concentrated stupidity on an advertising poster?

• Hollywood is staffed by people who don't know what a cow actually is, or
• they're assuming that most of the kids whom they market this steaming pile of mass entertainment at are clueless about where their hamburgers come from and those who aren't are sufficiently conditioned by condescendingly stupid television and movies to switch off the parts of their brains that notice that there's something wrong and just go with the flow, or perhaps
• in this post-industrial, post-post-agricultural society, the concept of barnyard animals has receded from plausible reality into the realm of mythology, where taking liberties (such as anthropomorphising cows as male) is acceptable.

¶ advertising cynicism hollywood marketing stupidity [3 comments]

Charlie Stross has posted a collection of Amazon reviews of classic books that miss the point spectacularly:

1984 by George Orwell:
Caitlyn from Atlanta, GA, wrote: "1984 is the worst book I have ever read. I would advise anyone who is thinking about reading this book to reconcider! George Orwell is not a bad writer, however, this book he does not do evry well on, as some of his others. Prehaps he was getting old and lost his touch. Animal Farm was okay, but 1984 was horrible. It took him forever, it seemed like, to get into the accual book. If someone were to take out all of the useless part of 1984, it would be half as long. Why would he wirte so much about nothing? I havent ever meet someone who could wirte such a boring book about the goverment. I have meet many people who have loved this book, but i dispised it. I am not at all intrested in the goverment. This may be part of the reason that I didnt like it. I would advise you not to read this book."

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
R. Vanderhoof wrote: "I spent several weeks slogging through this book and found it to be very repetitive and tedious in the extreme. Keeping track of the family tree is a constant effort. At best, Marquez reveals an egalitarian attitude that seems to pervade the Americas south of the Rio Grande (no wonder those countries are in constant economic trouble). Marquez should study supply side economics as described by Milton Friedman, another Nobel Prize winner, in order to give his book better balance."

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens:
A reader wrote: "I found this book difficult to follow and hard to hold my interest. I am an English teacher so I don't think it's me. I was revved about the book and started it immediately unpon receipt. I didn't even finish it--which is something I can say about few books..."

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare:
Son of Sammy wrote: "i just read this book. everybody like always talks about how great it is and everything. but i don't think so. like, it's been done before, right?? soooo cliched. omg."

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck:
M. Landis wrote: "This book was 600 pages written purly about a bunch of hicks from Oklahoma starving. Thanks, but no thanks."

(via charlie) ¶ books culture stupidity [no comments]

According to the UK's Public Health minister, pregnant teenagers are deliberately taking up smoking to have smaller babies and thus an easier birth.

¶ cancer drugs sex society stupidity uk [no comments]

According to NME, that Daily Star of Indie™, Oasis' "Definitely Maybe" is The Greatest Album Of All Time™. It is followed by lesser luminaries such as The Beatles (at #2. #3, #13 and #14; not bad for an earlier, imperfect form of what Oasis would become), The Clash ("London Calling" is at #12), David Bowie (#18) and The Smiths (#9). Elsewhere on the chart is a lineup of NME darlings from years past, including The Stone Roses (#7), The Strokes (#20) and glamorous-nihilists-with-really-good-stylists The Libertines (#15). That really says it all about NME.

(via xrrf) ¶ carling-indie nme oasis populism stupidity [8 comments]

Some people have strange ways of celebrating their sports teams' victories, such as by spontaneously castrating themselves with wire cutters.

"I'd told my pal Gethin Probert before the game that Wales didn't stand a chance," Mr Huish told The Sun. "It wasn't a bet but I said I'd cut my b*lls off if we won."

¶ bizarre self-mutilation stupidity wtf [no comments]

Australian lingerie model arrested for ecstasy possession in Bali released. Michelle Leslie, best known for appearing in an underwear ad, has been released from prison and deported as a criminal after the prosecution in her ecstasy-possession case agreed to only seek a penalty of 3 months' imprisonment (i.e., the time served). It is not clear whether she would have received a more severe sentence had (a) she not allegedly been with the son of Indonesia's Economics Minister at the time of the arrest, or (b) the Indonesians not feared hordes of bloody-minded tabloid-reading Ugly Australians boycotting Bali and demanding their tsunami-aid donations back if one of their sheilas went down.

I suspect that the pivotal factor in Leslie's early release was not her showing up in a burqa at her trial and announcing that she had converted to Islam, seemingly oblivious to the fact that (a) Bali is a largely Hindu province, and (b) burqas are not commonly worn in Indonesia. Oddly enough, she did not seem to be observing Islamic traditions of modest dress upon release; perhaps when she sells her story to Womens' Weekly or the Herald-Sun, she'll say that Islam was just a phase she was going through, as if it were Kabbala or Scientology or Hollywood Buddhism or something. (Though doesn't converting from Islam technically make her an apostate? I wonder whether she'll end up with a fatwa on her head.)

¶ australia drugs indonesia islam michelle leslie stupidity tsunami ugly australians [1 comment]

A list of expensive products for "audiophiles" with more money than common sense. It includes the usual sorts of things: $30,000 speaker cables, "cable elevators" to keep said cables from being compromised by contact with carpet, $1,500 power cords to ensure that the electricity that powers your hi-fi reaches it in pristine condition (apparently the high voltage lines outside your house aren't a problem, presumably because you can't pay to replace them with ridiculously expensive versions), and special, magically expensive, pieces of wood; as well as various hand-wavey mystical artefacts, such as lacquer which removes "overtones" and a magic chip which, when placed on a CD player, makes CDs sound better (apparently it works by means of quantum physics), not to a "CD clarifier" which not only enhances the sound of audio CDs, but also enhances the experience of "Multimedia CD-ROMs and Photo CDs". (I wonder if it'll make your copy of Microsoft Office work better too.)

(via Gizmodo) ¶ audiophiles scams snake oil stupidity [no comments]

A shop in Manchester is reporting a surge in business after a young gentleman in hooded jacket broke in and stole a laptop. The thief seemingly failed to notice the significance of the shop's name being "CCTV Surveillance Solutions", and was caught on no fewer than eight separate cameras; shop owners and police are confident of an imminent arrest.

Store owner David Arathoon said people saw his clear CCTV images in the press and wanted that for themselves. "He's given us publicity that we could never have dreamed of," he said.

(via darwin) ¶ crime stupidity surveillance [no comments]

What mobile-phone-related juvenile-delinquency fad could come after "happy slapping"? How about train-dodging, where kids use their camera phones to film themselves playing chicken with trains, and proving how hardc0re they are by staying on the track until the last possible minute, and then post the videos to dedicated train-dodging web sites. Of course, the hardest of the hardcore are the ones who don't jump out of the way like a big girl's blouse, instead choosing to become track chutney (and, rumour has it, extra-valuable video files for trading). Which seems even more Darwinian than the old-sk00l craze of train-surfing.

(And then, one imagines, there are probably those who combine train-dodging with gricing, filming themselves jumping out of the path of trains in the nude.)

(via districtdriver) ¶ darwin railway stupidity train-dodging [2 comments]

Some genius in the Netherlands has proposed a tax on MP3 players, with as much as €3.28 per gigabyte being slapped onto the price of each MP3 player, the proceeds going solely to the major record labels. This tax is set to become law in a few months. Were the tax extended to PC hard drives, it would increase the prices of hard disks many times over. Of course, given that Germany and Belgium are a short drive away, and under the EU constitution, there's nothing the Dutch government can do to stop the flow of tax-free iPods from German (or British or Slovenian or whatever) online retailers, the whole exercise seems about as effective as "Copy Controlled" audio CDs.

¶ europe stupidity the recording industry [no comments]

For your amusement, this charming photo-essay titled "Why Women Live Longer Than Men", and giving eight scenes which, had it not been for luck, could have been Darwin Award material. (via darwin, of course)

¶ amusing darwin photos stupidity [no comments]

A 21-year-old Perth man is lucky to be alive after a home-made motorised beer bong, with a pump powered by an electric drill, blasted a shot of beer down his throat, rupturing his stomach and forcing beer into his abdomen. (via bOING bOING)

"No one else had any problems and I didn't think it would be any different to other things like funnels that people use," he said. "But I knew something wasn't right soon after I drank from it. I started spewing up red stuff and was in a lot of pain."

Surgeon David Cooke said the split in the wall of the man's stomach had pushed food and beer into his abdominal cavity, making him septic. His insides had to be "washed out" twice and he was put on heavy-duty antibiotics.

¶ beer beer bong stupidity [no comments]

Am I the only person who, upon seeing Sorry Everybody, was reminded of VICE Magazine's Donts page?

(And that goes fivefold for We're Not Sorry and its ilk; a finer collection of belligerent chest-beating yahoos you'll never see.)

¶ culture war politics stupidity usa [3 comments]

Loud music can do more than damage your hearing; it can make your lungs collapse:

One man was driving when he experienced a pneumothorax, characterised by breathlessness and chest pain. Doctors linked it to a 1,000 watt "bass box" fitted to his car to boost the power of his stereo.

It is thought the intense pulses of low-frequency, high-energy sound causes the lung to rupture because air and tissue respond differently to sound. The usual risk factors for collapsed lungs are smoking, illness that has weakened the patient, chronic obstructive lung disease or use of drugs that depress alertness or consciousness, such as sedatives, barbiturates, tranquilizers, or alcohol.

(via darwin)

¶ darwin health music stupidity [2 comments]

Stupidity of the day: a nightclub night, advertised on the front of a street paper from a few weeks ago, calling itself "Le Belle Donne". If they're going to act all sophisticated and Frenchified, it would help if they actually got the word genders right.

¶ fail french language stupidity [1 comment]

Scientists have finally monetised the formerly un-monetisable, the benefits of a happy sexual relationship. According to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a healthy sex life is worth A$71,500 a year; or at least that's how much happier couples who have sex at least four times a month are than than those poor unfortunates who only get to do so once a month. Meanwhile, if you're a man, the more educated and intelligent you are, the less sex you have.

¶ health sex society stupidity [1 comment]

Neural imaging technologies have shown that feelings of love lead to a suppression of activity in the areas of the brain controlling critical thought; in other words, love is blind. Or perhaps it just makes you stupid.

¶ intelligence love neurology stupidity [no comments]