Some People Are Clever, Some Are Just Strange

  • Some great thoughts on how
    new technology can help refugee operations     — make sure you also read the
    comments as there are further cool thoughts there
  • Well, Google
    may be building an OS     but someone else has passed them by an developed Gmail
    into a filesystem:

    GmailFS     which is just one of the coolest things I’ve seen in ages
  • Bruce Schneier has some interesting commentary on how
    security alerts are terrorizing
    America    . Funny how everyone gets up in arms saying that countries are
    “giving in to terrorism” if they pay ransom and so on, but America are the worst
    for perpetuating the effects terrorists want
  • Mall has weird rules.
    Mall enforces weird rules     … selectively? Is the problem that only a certain
    demographic wear their baseball caps sideways or was the rule created to catch
    that particular set of people? Or are only a particular subset of skew baseball
    cap wearers being stopped?
  • Everything you
    need to know about writing    , in 10 minutes, by Stephen King
  • The Time Travel Fund
    is quite honestly one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Can’t decide if
    it’s some sort of scam, misguided belief or something serious!

  • Tricks of the Trade     includes some great tricks, some seriously useful, others
    seriously funny. My favourite useful one has to be:

    “Technical Support:
    When helping someone fix their computer over the phone, and you want them to see
    if all the cables are plugged in correctly, don?t ask, ?Have you checked to see
    if the cable is plugged in?? because the customer will always say, ?Of course I
    did, do you think I?m a moron?? Instead say, ?Remove the cable, blow the dust out
    of the connector, and plug it back in.? The customer will most likely reply,
    ?Hey, it?s working now?I guess that dust really builds up in there!?”

    On the other hand, the funniest one I think is this:

    “Nurse: Patients
    will occasionally pretend to be unconscious. A surefire way to find them out is
    to pick up their hand, hold it above their face, and let go. If they smack themselves,
    they?re most likely unconscious; if not, they?re faking.”