from qdb

<piercings> A programmer started to cuss
<piercings> Because getting to sleep was a fuss
<piercings> As he lay there in bed
<piercings> Looping 'round in his head
<piercings> was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;

Amnesty, IANSA and Oxfam have launched a global campaign aiming to stop gun running and control the arms trade - and they need your support now. Simply register your support. Some causes are worth it, and I reckon this is one of them. Regardless whether you think you can make a difference , it costs you nothing to try.

I've already signed up and you can see my ugly mugshot in the Million Faces petition.

Armed violence wrecks lives by fuelling conflict, poverty, and human rights abuses. The campaign is calling for an international Arms Trade Treaty which will make it harder for arms to get into the wrong hands.

Act now

Or even better do something extra.

There once was a sysadmin, Eddie,
Who could strip, touch and finger real steady.
But when it came to the mount,
(From his sweetheart's account),
It was always "Device is not ready".

from limerickdb via reddit

that's my shiny e17 desktop, being chased by gnomes, giving a hand to IE.

Bobby Fisher, former chess world champion, chess genius and all around brilliant man has died. Rest in peace Mr Fisher

Haven't followed xkcd for a few weeks now. It's a mistake. Big mistake. Missed another classic.

It is a visual proof of the need for wifi brain implants, you just don't know when you'll need direct connection with god. Until then, this is a good tip.

In this paper we will propose the first — to our knowledge — method that finds the global optimum of the TSP by reducing the NP complexity of the problem to N2 complexity. We achieve this by using white light interferometry
(WLI)[14]. From the mathematical point of view we unfortunately haven’t disapproved the commonly believed conjecture that NP 6= P (the Clay mathematics institute set out a price of 1.000.000 US-$ for doing that) but we apparently reduced the complexity by a trick, namely replacing operations by photons (and the physics of interference).

In section 2 we introduce the method as a gedankenexperiment[thought experiment in friendly german]....
http://www.opticsexpress.org/abstract.cfm?id=140598

Just cool. It reminds me of the often forgotten analogue computers. They are very rarely used in practice these days, although they could be used to solve predefined probles fast, furious and sparkling.

With the introduction of uncertainty and loops you could get some very interesting results. Just think about the offspring of a theremin and a miniMoog on acid. Raving BEAM bots? Pacifist fighter drones?

I was just browsing through make, and tumbled upon this really cool idea - motorway wind turbines. It can reduce the carbon footprint of the automobile. And some electricity. And less auxiliary weather meddling. The wind created by by the stream of cars on the motorway and it's effects on the local weather and the one in China are still not studied, regardless of the advances of chaos theory and other intellectual beauties.

Driving at 90mph - get bladed? Can be really good for "drive safe" campaigners.

update:hmm, there a discussion on slashdot about the same core idea, thanks dogsbody, my festive friend.