A bit of relaxation
The past week was such a crazy week for me (this week is no better), thus I was extremely grateful when I came across this humorously sarcastic article about common stereotypes of programmers. Again, just as any other stereotype, the supposedly “quirks” of programmers made fun of in this article does not apply to everyone. But there could be no smoke without fire — what have we programmers done????
The article gave me not only a good laugh but also a jolt warning me about what I’m wanting to do….
10 Ways a Programmer Can Improve His or Her Sex Life
By Laura Milligan
Okay, so you’re smart. Unbelievably smart. You know how to set up Web sites and develop whole software programs while the rest of us are stuck trying to download a new browser. What most people don’t realize, though, is that coders and programmers are a pretty sexy group of guys and girls who just happen to know a lot about computer technology. Everyone could use a little help in the dating and sex department, however, so we’ve compiled this list to help you get lucky in the bedroom – as well as the chatroom.
- Only hang out with other programmers.As if anyone else is really worth your time. Who else understands the importance of the new JavaScript updates or the appeal of disemboweling a new Mac notebook? Going out to a bar or club packed with hot, sweaty dancers in revealing clothing is not the way to form a lasting relationship. Instead, sit in your friend’s basement and drink cases of ale while you count down the number of days until the SxSW conference or play Bill Gates: the Early Years trivia games.Practice speaking in your own language made up of obscure programming symbols that only you know how to articulate. If you do happen to go out in public, everyone else will be so wowed by your inside jokes and intricate server understanding that they might just overlook the fact that you haven’t bathed in nineteen days.
- Act superior because you know who Linus Torvalds is.You also know how to perform even the most obscure input and output challenges, and you torment those who can barely plug in their modems correctly – as if learning everything about computer programming is that difficult. Anyone who has enough passion to stay up into the wee hours of the morning memorizing fascinating timelines and cracking codes would understand whatever it is you’re talking about. Cryptanalysis through quantum computing is your passion, baby! Behaving like a snob will get you lots of attention, because it makes everyone want to be just like you. They wish!
- Never leave the house (unless you are going to meet other computer programmers).Everyone knows the opposite sex is turned on by mystery. Act the part of the dark, enigmatic stranger, and you’ll be fighting off hotties left and right. Click on this Web site for cool tips on how to be mysterious. We’ve also found that the easiest way to create intrigue is to stay shut up in your home for hours, even days on end, emerging only to do your hunting, er, grocery shopping or to attend a web programmers’ party. It’s best to sneak around after dark, eliminating the chances of someone actually spotting you – except your sexy stalkers, of course, who have just been waiting for you to come out into the open. If you do bump into one of your stalkers by mistake, look away immediately and do not speak. Feign cool disregard while you sneak a peek at them gawking after you. Heh heh. You’re so bad.
- Avoid sunlight at all costs.Pale is in, people, hasn’t anyone been watching Conan O’Brien? Extreme sunlight damages your sensitive skin, and besides, a deep tan will make you look common. If you have to step outside during the day, pull your socks up to your knees, wear a protective flannel over shirt, and top it all off with your grandmother’s gardening hat. Your future hookup will love you for your soft, smooth, milky white flesh. Elizabethan royalty prided themselves in having the whitest skin possible, and who doesn’t strive to be as cool as Elizabethan royalty?
- Remain viciously territorial of all software you designed, Web sites you developed, or revolutionary new ideas you harbor.Once something makes it onto the Web, everyone thinks they have the right to assume partial ownership. The truth is somebody worked long and hard to make it possible for you to order pizza online or set up Google Adsense on your worthless little blog. The moment you hear anyone try to take credit for his or her own Web site, challenge them on the spot and quiz them on how they formatted their source or how they managed to solve the frustrating problem of float bugs. You’ll win major points with your date for sticking up for yourself and being a confident brainiac. There’s nothing sexier than being armed with knowledge.
- Make fun of your date’s “cool new computer.”If you actually get the chance to be invited to a guy or girl’s house (!!!), the first thing you should do is check out their computer system. How many computers do they have? Desktop or laptop? PC or Mac? If he or she is excited to show off a new computer, act suspicious. Unless your date is also a computer programmer, they are probably light years behind in the newest technology. Too bad they don’t know how outdated that “brand new” computer really is. When did they buy it anyway? 6 months ago? What a moron. Point out everything dysfunctional about their system and how much money they wasted on a worthless piece of junk. They will appreciate your honesty someday.
- Wear a backpack as high on your back as possible.And don’t forget to fasten the straps around your stomach. If you must leave the house, best to take everything with you. You never know when some technologically retarded sellout is going to need your help designing a Web page for his daughter’s wedding photos. Humiliating, yes, but it does pay your bills. Stuffed full of laptops, batteries, chargers, reference manuals, and bananas, you are going to need to wear that red vinyl pack as high as possible to avoid straining your weak back. Your practicality and attention to personal health will attract a surprising number of younger guys or girls, who still find it appropriate to flirt with you by pointing and laughing. Its okay, they’re just jealous and unsure of how to approach a stud like you.
- Publicize how erotically charged you get every time you unwrap a new piece of software or computer accessory.Moan and perhaps even lick your new gift as you take it out of the box. Once you start to play with it for the first time, cradle it in your hands and pet each surface, really taking in its beauty and the supple coolness of the hard, plastic exterior. Others will take note of your sensual prowess and may even become aroused themselves. If you’re that charged with sexual energy, you’re going to need an outlet…and fast. You want a partner to accompany you on the love ride, and they can’t really assume that you’d prefer to take along the new Yoggie Gatekeeper Pro…or would you?
- Constantly talk about the newest conferences coming up and how excited you are to go.Post your itinerary for the SxSW festival on your blog so that you can meet up with all your followers and sign autographs. If you’re really a diehard blogger, see if you can set up a booth where your fans can converge and review the best (and worst) seminars you’ve attended. Arrange to meet your other programming friends at the hotel two days in advance so that you’re guaranteed a good spot in line. If you can, order the conference t-shirts before you go so that you can arrive in town proudly displaying your computer infatuation. As tip #1 states, continue to only hang out in large groups of other computer programmers, as this will show everyone that you are in fact a social computer programmer, not a loser computer programmer who sits in his basement all year.
- Wear the same Star Trek shirt every single day.Since you’re generally not allowed to walk around naked in public, this is probably the sexiest thing that you, as a computer programmer, can do to get someone to want to have sex with you. He or she will think you’re adorable, quirky, and original. Wearing the same thing everyday might seem a little repetitive, but at least you’re no tool. In a stifling sea of pink popped collars, a Captain Kirk “Risk is our Business” t-shirt is a breath of fresh air. If the sexy young thing you’ve been eyeing hasn’t caught on to your anti-establishment originality, don’t be afraid to brag a little. Whisper in their ear: “You know, I haven’t changed my clothes in eight days. And yes, that means I haven’t washed them either!”
Don’t be overwhelmed. Just remember: the fact that you’re a computer programmer means you’re already halfway there. Your occupation and love for computers and all their small little parts makes you a huge turn on to the opposite sex. If you adapt each of these tips to your own personal programming lives, you’ll be on the road to sweet lovin’ in no time.
http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2007/10-ways-a-programmer-can-improve-his-or-her-sex-life/
Computer’s brain
Once upon a time, PC shoppers relied on the CPU’s clock speed to decide which computer to buy. A computer equipped with Pentium III 1.3 Ghz was definitely twice as fast as one with Pentium III 650Mhz. Nowadays, my laptop with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0Ghz runs significantly faster than a computer with Intel Pentium 4 3.6Ghz. That is just within the Intel’s processor family, let alone cross-manufacturer comparison. 650Mhz, 1.3Ghz, 2.0Ghz, 3.6Ghz… what do these numbers mean anyway? A little bit of research shows that these numbers tell you the speed of the clock driving the computer’s processor. All computers use a timing clock to drive them. This clock has high and low voltage changes, and changes at an exact frequency. Each time the clock changes, the computer’s processor processes some part of an instruction. So, a computer that has a 650Mhz clock is doing something 650 million times per second. Likewise, a 3.6Ghz computer does something 3.6 billion times per second. With the new generation of processors, that is roughly equal billions of operations/computations per second. Let’s put it this way: during the 10 seconds it takes you to compute this: 34*6/78 – 12, a modern computer might done millions of similar computations.
Nevertheless, the human brain is NOT easily paralleled by the the binary number processing of today’s computers. During that 10 seconds it takes you to complete that math problem, your brain was simultaneously processing data from millions of nerve cells that handle the visual input of the paper and surrounding area, the aural input from both ears, and the sensory input of millions of cells throughout the body. The brain is regulating the heartbeat, monitoring oxygen levels, hunger and thirst requirements, breathing patterns and hundreds of other essential factors throughout the body. It is simultaneously comparing data from the eyes and the sensory cells in the arms and hands to keep track of the position of the pen and paper as the calculation is being performed. It quickly traverses a vast, interconnected network of cells for relevant information on how to solve the problem it is presented, what symbols to write and what their functions are, as it graphs their shape and communicates to the hand how to make accurate and controlled strokes to draw recognizable shapes and numbers onto a page.
Computers cannot “think” for themselves in the sense that they only solve problems in exactly the way they are programmed to. Anyone of us could easily determine what the nth term of a Taylor series is, whether the series converges or diverges, or even the sum of the series given proper conditions just by lexamining at the formula defining the series. A computer has to compute each term of the series one by one to reach the wanted answer. And this is what you get if you have a computer or calculator integrate y’ = 2xe^(3x)
y = (2*(3*log(e)*x-1)*%e^(3*log(e)*x))/(9*log(e)^2)
And this could be easily obtained by using integration by parts:
y = (2xe^(2x))/3 -(2e^(2x))/9 + e^(-x)
A computer is as smart as the person who uses it, I always say.
XP is not dead yet…
After Windows Vista came out at the beginning of this year, several people thought that day marked the death of Windows XP. Microsoft even announced that there won’t be a Service Pack 3 for Windows XP. But guess what? Vista hasn’t been doing as good as Microsoft expected. It even lost some loyal Windows users to Mac OS X. As a result, Microsoft has to continue the support for Windows XP by releasing SP3 sometime early 2008. There will also be a Service Pack 1 for Windows Vista. But don’t get to excited… Vista SP1 will just be a collection of patches to fix the annoying bugs and incompability issues that shouldn’t have been there at first. There won’t be any new feature like SP1 and SP2 did to XP.
Quick advice: for now, just stay tuned until the official release date. Even if you’re lucky enough to get a hold of either of them, don’t install them. Why? Read below.
Microsoft is currently in full throttle with the evolution of both its server and client operating systems. Windows Server 2008, formerly codenamed Longhorn, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 and Windows XP Service Pack 3 are all cooking, with final releases planned for 2008. The Redmond company is gearing up to release Windows Server 2008 to manufacturing in the first quarter of the coming year. And although the RTM was postponed from the end of 2007 to the beginning of 2008, Microsoft is still targeting a joint launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 in Los Angeles, on February 27, 2008. Kevin Turner, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer announced that the LA release will catalyze similar events worldwide for the three products.
The 2008 RTM of Windows Server 2008 automatically determined pushing Windows Vista SP1 into next year. You have to understand that Windows Server 2008 and the first service pack for Windows Vista are joined at the hip. Well, not so much at the hip as at the core. Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 feature the same kernel and Microsoft took it a step further, making all the shared components identical in the two operating systems, in contrast with the development policy for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP. The strategy automatically implies conjoining future Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista releases. In this regard, Microsoft is bound to synchronize Windows Server 2008 and Vista SP1. And although Microsoft has failed to confirm the release details for Vista SP1 arguing that the date is in accordance with the testing feedback and the quality standard of the service pack, the launch of the refresh will not happen any earlier than the end of February 2008.
Now, as for Windows XP SP3, the refresh is nothing more than an example of unfinished business. Service Pack 3 is for Windows XP the last breath of fresh air before the end support coma. And the truth is that XP SP3 is long overdue and it shows. Microsoft initially planned it for 2006, before the release of Longhorn, back when that codename referred to the next version of the Windows client and not the server operating system. The release was postponed in early January 2006 all the way to the second half of 2007, after the release of Windows Vista. And of course, from this year, Microsoft pushed XP SP3 further back to 2008. The first half of 2008, that is.
But this does not change the fact that users are already feeling the aromas of the upcoming Windows feast and there is a consistent volume of crumbs from the Microsoft table to satisfy their insatiable appetite. Peer-to-peer file sharing networks are in this aspect flooded with Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1 releases, available to all via torrent clients.
The Hunger for XP SP3
The fact that Windows XP SP3 is long overdue is an understatement. There are downloads available via P2P that went live back at the beginning of 2006. There is a real, almost palpable hunger for the third service pack for Windows XP. Case in point, a website which claims to be a superindex for in excess of 5,000 torrent trackers worldwide, where the actual volume of downloads associated with the items referencing XP SP3 is somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000, on just the first page displaying the results entered to the “Windows XP SP3” query.
XP is without a doubt the dominant platform on the operating system market. And has been in this position for quite some time as it had since 2001 to 2007 to dig in its roots. In December 2006, according to data from Market Share by Net Application, XP hit an apex of 85.3% on the operating system market. Vista had been released to businesses for just one month and Microsoft was getting ready for the consumer launch on January 30, 2007. Immediately as it hit the shelves, Vista began eroding the share of Windows XP, while also impacting that of older Windows operating systems such as Windows 2000. Over seven months later, Vista accounts for 6.26% of the operating system, while XP is down to 80.48%. One thing that Vista failed to do is convert Mac users to Windows. The share of Mac OS X remained intact after the availability of Vista and is even on the increase.
And as Microsoft won’t declare XP expired, working to delivering the third service pack in the first half of 2008 and having already extended support for the Home and Media Center editions throughout 2014, the same as the Professional version, Windows Vista will have increasing difficulties dislodging it in order to become the dominant presence on the operating system market. Currently Microsoft plans to deliver the first full beta for XP SP3 in mid September 2007,
making it available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers.
But other examples of XP SP3 are less limited, and I am of course referring to the versions up for grabs via P2P networks. As temping as they might seem, such downloads have to be avoided at all costs and in this context the sole cost is related to the time you will have to wait until the official XP SP3 drops next year. The vast majority of XP SP3 torrents are not exactly what they claim to be. In fact they are hybrid Windows XP SP2 builds loaded with everything but the kitchen sink. A torrent picked at random advertises its own contents: “Adobe Reader 7; Alcohol 1.9.5; Avast Antivirus 4.7 PRO; Google Toolbar With GMAIL; HDD Life; K-LITE Mega Codec Pack; Power Archiever; UWI BBChanger Pack; UWin Installer 2.5.0; UXPBSOD Utility; Windows Vista Media Player for XP; WINAMP 5.0.4
WMP 10 Enegry Bliss; XP To Vista Theme Pack; XP PowerToys; XP-2-Vista Transformation Pack
Yahoo Messenger; Zone Alarm FireWall ………..and many more.”And two things that you can surely bet on is the fact that the download is not Windows XP SP3 and that it does contain “many more” items. But judging exclusively by the description, the so-called copy of XP SP3 features so much malicious code that it is no longer Windows. Another XP SP3 offers everything from Adobe Acrobat to Firefox, ZoneAlarm, Nero, Quicktime, to the Windows Vista RTM sidebar and even Photoshop CS2. The third example I selected promises Windows XP SP2 plus all the post-SP2 updates and hotfixes made available by the Redmond company. Such a download has the potential to kill your system even if it does not contain any malware. It’s one thing when Microsoft integrates a range of updates into the fabric of the operating system and delivers a service pack and quite another when the bundle is artificially put together by a third party.
All you have to consider is the fact that Microsoft delivered a pre-beta version of XP SP3 in mid July, but that the final release will come in 2008, which automatically implies a whole year of testing. Now compare the official SP3 with something thrown together and just bearing the SP3 label. And of course that even the official XP SP3 testing milestones from Microsoft get leaked. Windows XP SP3 build 5.1.2600.3180 (xpsp.070718-2058) is widely available via torrent trackers. But still, you’d better wait for the final release. There’s no telling what the download contains, despite of the claims that it is genuine and not corrupted in any manner. And since XP SP3 is just a standard release, you won’t be missing much at all.
Windows Vista SP1 Holds the Leakage Record
Although the sheer volume of Windows XP SP3 torrent far outweighs that of Windows Vista SP1, the latter still holds the record in term of leaks. Both build 6.0.6001.16549.070628-1825 and build 6.0.6001.16633 of the pre-beta versions of Windows Vista SP1 have been leaked to P2P networks compared with just one for Windows XP SP3. Additionally, in the case of Windows Vista, torrents are available for download not only for the 32-bit variant but also for the 64-bit, delivering the complete release from the Redmond company. This detail is rather significant as Microsoft only dropped Vista SP1 and XP SP3 in the laps of a limited pool of testers and despite this all the refreshes managed to leak to P2P sites.
The Vista SP1 torrents are not as corrupted as Windows XP. For starters the downloads are at least clean of third party programs. Still, there is absolutely no guarantee that malicious code was not integrated in the release before making the torrents available for download. And since Vista is by no means immune to malware, the leaked versions of the first service pack are also to be avoided. Microsoft will deliver the Beta of Vista SP1 to MSDN and TechNet subscribers by mid September 2007. Between 10,000 and 15,000 testers will be permitted access to the release. But if you aren’t one of them you’d better hold on until the first quarter of 2008 for the final product. There is also the chance that Microsoft will drop a public beta build by the end of 2007, close to the date where Vista SP1 will move into release candidate stage.
Still Vista SP1 is clearly differentiated from XP SP3, as there is less anticipation for the service pack designed to refresh Microsoft’s latest operating system. With Windows XP, the gap between 2004 when Microsoft served Service Pack 2 and 2007 is felt through the user frustration. There is a clear demand for SP3 if users have started building their own refreshes, while the Redmond company was busy hammering away at Windows Vista. But with both Vista SP1 and XP SP3 available in 2008, Microsoft risks encouraging users to ride Windows XP SP3 for all it’s got until Windows 7 (Seven), Vista’s successor drops in 2010.
And just in case you needed a reason to stay away from the Vista SP1 and XP SP3 downloads exemplified above, IDC performed a study commissioned by Microsoft at the end of 2006, titled: “The Risks of Obtaining and Using Pirated Software.” The study revealed that: “25% of the Web sites we accessed offering counterfeit product keys, pirated software, key generators or crack tools attempted to install either malicious software or potentially unwanted software. A significant number of these Web sites attempted to install malicious or unwanted code. 11% of the key generators and crack tools downloaded from Web sites contained either malicious or potentially unwanted software. 59% of the key generators and crack tools downloaded from peer-to-peer networks contained either malicious software or potentially unwanted software. A significant amount of malicious or unwanted code was present in the key generators and crack tools.”
Now pirated materials have been long used along pornography as an incentive to compromise the victims system. There is no free ride when it comes to pirated software and the same is valid for Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista SP1, actual free offerings when they will become available from Microsoft next year.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Avoid-Windows-XP-SP3-and-Windows-Vista-SP1-Downloads-65038.shtml
