Rule by decree passed for Chavez

I honestly thought Chavez might have been one of the good guys, but it looks increasingly less likely. Is our race really incapable of keeping a handle on our greed?

BBC News: Venezuela’s National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting the president the power to bypass congress and rule by decree for 18 months.

President Hugo Chavez says he wants “revolutionary laws” to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.

Rip-Off Ireland: The iPod Index

Ireland is 8th most expensive in the world for a 2GB iPod nano, according to a survey produced by an Australian bank. Here’s the playlist:

  1. Brazil $327.71
  2. India $222.27
  3. Sweden $213.03
  4. Denmark $208.25
  5. Belgium $205.81
  6. France $205.80
  7. Finland $205.80
  8. Ireland $205.79
  9. UK $195.04
  10. Austria $192.86
  11. Netherlands $192.86
  12. Spain $192.86
  13. Italy $192.86
  14. Germany $192.46
  15. China $179.84
  16. South Korea $176.17
  17. Switzerland $175.59
  18. New Zealand $172.53
  19. Australia $172.36
  20. Taiwan $164.88
  21. Singapore $161.25
  22. Mexico $154.46
  23. U.S. $149.00
  24. Japan $147.63
  25. Hong Kong $147.35
  26. Canada $144.20

I am Hans Frank?

Well, that’s what they tell me. I’d never even heard of the guy!


You are Senior Nazi Official
Hans Frank

You are a sellout and a traitor. You would have killed the Fuhrer if you had the chance. You live in the now and justify your actions. You’ll repent shortly before you die but will it be enough?

Bastard?

[ find out which Nazi Bastard you are ]

Duck call on a dump valve

Yes, it is a very peculiar post title. But entirely accurate I assure you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZG0RS3mVBc

Gimli Track Info

Great story, brilliantly told. And of course kudos to the pilots.

If a Boeing 767 runs out of fuel at 41,000 feet what do you have? Answer: A 132 ton glider with a sink rate of over 2000 feet-per-minute and marginally enough hydraulic pressure to control the ailerons, elevator, and rudder. Put veteran pilots Bob Pearson and cool-as-a-cucumber Maurice Quintal in the in the cockpit and you’ve got the unbelievable but true story of Air Canada Flight 143, known ever since as the Gimli Glider.

(This page should appear here, but it’s been Dugg so you can access a page without images here. More info on Wikipedia.)

The Gimli Glider

Irish Blog Awards

I’m a sponsor of the Most Humorous Post category in the Irish Blog Awards again this year, albeit with my new company name of Beecher Networks Ltd. I guess this year I’d better actually attend the event? Or should I send a masked man in my place? :)

More on Beecher Networks over the next couple of weeks. Lots of fun ahead!

A new type of spam?

Hopefully Justin or someone else in the antispam community will browse past here and tell me I’m way behind the times, but I’m seeing a new type of spam in the last couple of day, stock shills with dynamically-generated subject lines that appear to come from news feeds. The news items are usually up to date, and the “More” is often appended to the subject to make it look even more like an email feed.

I don’t think I’ve seen it done in this sophisticated a manner before, although the bodies are still woefully amateurish, with the result than most of the messages are tagged correctly as spam and sidelined on the server.

That being said, the bodies don’t seem to focus on a particular stock symbol at all, which makes me wonder if they’re rotated dynamically, and thus perhaps a test run?

I hope not. We really, really don’t want to see spammers get too clever. It’s their relative stupidity that protects us from a real flood imho.

Here’s a screenshot from my quarantine:

Spam subjects