Commercialization of Christmas/etc. Part II

So today, the people that fell for the big rip-off company's Christmas message that it's about giving, buying stuff, etc. are exchanging the by-products (presents) of gifts that they gave to the large corporations (money).

Being hypocritical seems to pay off for big companys, preaching a message of giving when they're the ones that are raking everything in and the only people they're giving to are advertising companies.

Also, I feel sorry for anyone that actually believes one of those bags that Westfield put out that say "I believe in Santa". If you do, I just want to tell you, you are really sad, believing a make believe commercial character, like elves, gremlins and eskimoes.

Commercialization of Christmas (and variations)

OK, so basically there's all this crap with rich companies shoving the idea into peoples face the idea that the true spirit of Christmas is giving (the products that the companies make money from).

It doesn't take a genius to notice that marketing ploy, but while it takes advantage of people that are stupid enough to fall for them (and rightly so), but then it also boosts the economy, at the cost of people who are stupid enough to go bankrupt in the process of feeding big corporations.

The commercializers can hardly be blamed for people being idiots, but maybe Julian Morrow could step in and make a "public service announcement" like "Christmas is not for giving. It is just a scam to cheat you of your money. Thank You!".

Getting away with bullshit

Now without a doubt, we've all heard of the APEC summit. Not much people even know exactly what it stands for or what it's about. Now we probably have a vague idea amounting to something like this:

• A heap of leaders from different countries coming to Sydney to do something


• A large section of the Sydney CBD is closed off by an expensive 2.8 metre wall


• It's a public holiday

But what most of us probably don't know:

• It goes for a whole week and only one day is a public holiday


• It actually stands for Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation


• It's supposedly to discuss ways improve economic growth, etc.

What I find disgusting is that they spent something in the order of $10 million (or billion, I forgot) setting up a zoo for the wives of the APEC people. I hardly consider that economically benefical. But then again, no one really cares because it's a public holiday. So if you're a politicial reading this, I have this to say you you:

1. You're gay

2. Give us more public holidays and you will recieve less criticism. It's called inverse variation, if you ever got to grade 8 maths...



Thanks for reading, and now you know the ultimate way to get away with bullshit.

More Political BS

Now, today in assembly at school, we were read a (supposed) message from the Director General of the NSW DET. It said something that read like: "If you play pranks with fake weapons that look like real weapons and the victim of the prank gets a heart attack, you have committed a crime". Let's look at the implications of that. In effect it's saying that it's illegal to indirectly cause someone a heart attack. Let's look at what could potentially be illegal activity according to what was said:

• Giving back a test with a 0% mark (teachers)


• Unexpectedly patting someone on the back (anyone)


• Telling someone that they have been charged with indirectly causing someone a heart attack (police, teachers, principals, director generals of the NSW DET, etc.)


• Seeing a scary movite (movie makers)


• Filling a bag with air and popping it (anyone)


• Suddenly screaming unexpectedly (anyone)


• Seeing a blog post telling them that indirectly causing someone a heart attack is a crime (me)


• Many more...

So accoding to what this director general has said, everyone is a criminal. I consider this to be worthy of "CryptWizard's Bullshit of the Month" award. I will make some sort of Photoshopped medal for it soon. Thanks to the Director General of the New South Wales Department of Education for indirectly delivering that speech.

My Science Comp Answers

are stored encrypted in this text file: http://up.cw.siteoz.info/encryptedsciencecomp.txt (I've been told I'm good at science)

Now here's an introduction to the fine science of cryptography.

The encryption is given by the formula:

Where:

E is the encrypted text

P is the plain text

n is the position in the text

K is the key



E_n = P_n + (n + K)^2



By simple algebraric moving stuff around, you can find the formula for P_n. In the case of these answers, the key I used is between 0 and 5, so it's easy to brute force.

Science Comp etc.

The UNSW Science Competition was today, and for the benefit of anyone that hasn't done it, I will post some answers using my very own Quadratic Caesar algorithm shortly. Also, my CityRail ticket collection has officially piled up to the height of the length of one cable tie!

Silverlight continued...

Now, I said that I would validate Silverlight's homepage's HTML when W3C's validator went back up, to find out how much Microsoft meaures up to their "supposed" new stance of "not-not-giving-a-fuck-anymore" about W3C standards.



Evidently, they have decided to maintain their old stance on W3C standards for now... If you don't believe my screenshot, why not run the test yourself? http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fsilverlight%2Fwhy-flexible.aspx



So not only is Silverlight a rip off piece of shit, they're also hypocratic.

War on Silverlight

Now, if you've been keeping up with IT news (or if you haven't), you've probably heard of Microsoft Silverlight, the pathetic inferior alternative to Adobe Flash Player. Everyone knows that soon, Google will come up with something like gPlayer that will own both of them, but thats beside the point for now. What isn't beside the point is how Microsft spammed the words "cross-platform" all over their website. Just take a look at this bullshit that's just their front page:



And "cross-platform" is already used twice on the front page. But the front page is just skin deep. Let's delve a bit deeper:



As you can see on the first dot point, even Microsoft themselves are admitting that Silverlight is based on a shithouse rip-off of Java. And they don't really expect me to believe that Microsoft changed their "don't-give-a-fuck" stance towards W3C standards. Not far after that they pull the classic Microsoft stunt of trying to sound cool with buzz words and then using the words "cross-platform" again.

So I decided to take it upon myself to find out how much Microsoft really does care about W3C standards by running a CSS validation on their Silverlight website: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fsilverlight%2Fwhy-flexible.aspx&warning=1&profile=css21&usermedium=all.



Evidently not much... When W3C HTML validator goes back up, I will do a HTML validation on their site too.



Now, I don't know if anyone other than anyone at Microsoft would consider supporting just Windows and Mac OS X as cross-platform. What about those other users that use GNU/Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD or OpenBSD or Solaris or OS/2, etc. I wish to congratulate Microsoft on their excellent support of 2 platforms. It's quite an achievement for them, since they usually only support half (ie. broken support of just Windows).



The final verdict: Just another piece of bullshit with a cool looking logo.

Brain Confused

Here's an interesting article. Your brain gets into a tangled web of crap if you get exactly the same written and spoken information at the same time. Now you know, parents of little kids, don't read to your kids while pointing at the words! Great work Sydney Morning Herald. <.<

Contructive Stuff

Some people want window hiders that doesn't appear in the task manager. Based on that, I infer that the probably also want the game that they're hiding from their parents to also not appear in the task manager. Also someone said configurable hotkeys are nice. I plan to make a program that does that. Source of consumers wants: https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=6087094198616855711&postID=6987934156440009212

April Fools!

and Google has the right idea. Click here for some pure ROFLMAO. In case you're a retarded noob and don't know that it's a joke, I want to tell you this:

YOU'RE A NOOB!

Cough. Anyway, I think this is a very good idea, just like last year how Google came up with how to give GMail users unlimited space without really giving them unlimited space (quite clever actually, and it's true). The counting thing on GMail's homepage is actually last year's April Fool's joke, and it turns out they're doing it for real.

EDIT: Look at this page: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/. See on the right where it says "Sign up for Gmail". Hover your mouse over the link and notice at the end it says: "utm_source=afj". Doesn't take a genius to figure out what afj stands for. This is definite proof for anyone that is actually dumb enough to believe anything that's said on April Fool's Day.

EDIT 2: It appears they have another joke: http://www.google.com/tisp/

EDIT 3: Look at the way Wikipedia worded the attached message.

Pretty Boring

Well, not much to blog about today. Hmm, the highlight would probably be Bill giving me 2 bombs in the timespan of one bus trip during the homage routine in the game of Chinese Big 2. Also, I put in a screenshot of my new Ubuntu 7.04 Beta installation.

Computer Competition

OK, a lot of people got a nice surprise when they saw some bullshit questions that some Excel freaks would not know, let alone some year 9 people. First, after I've done some Googling, I will give you guys the answer to the VLOOKUP question. First, cast your eyes to the right of the spreadsheet given (I know you don't have it, but imagine). Now look at the lower block of stuff. Then on the left column find "2", then move 2 cells to the right and that's the answer. I got some help from Google (Result). I fully scribbled on my question paper "WTF IS A VLOOKUP" and the person sitting behind me suggested "And then the teacher's like 'what's a WTF?'". Another question expects that our brain has a built in SGML (HTML) rendering engine. That's complete trash. I think approximately 1 person in this world probably has a SGML rendering engine built into their brain. BTW, the answer to question 1 is "field". The last question, the numbers are in descending order. If you picked one of the ones where the numbers weren't in order: CONGRATULATIONS! You have won the "CryptWizard's complete retard that doesn't know the meaning of sort award" for today. For the normalizing (normilising if you want to act aussie) a database question, it was the "students" table that could've been improved by adding a foreign key (Wikipedia it) to the "attendance" table. You probably have to be like some professional database designer to know that. Also, the algorithm on the last page is a recursive (Wikipedia it) algoritm. You can see it by how it calls it self.

In other news, the 2594/8594 was driven by a drunken retarded lunatic who reacted positively when called a "fucking faggot" (note the alliteration). Also I found a Pentium 1 computer in front of my house. I took the CPU out of it.

If there's a computer competition question you want me to answer, comment describing the question. Thanks. Comment please!

Hypothetical #1

First, I couldn't post yesterday I had a severe headache and therefore could not utilise as much of my brain as I usually do.

OK, let's say that you are Vince Graham, Chief Executive Officer of Rail Corporation. Also, let's assume (yes, it is an hypothetical) that the amount of money + criticism (to put it nicely) you get is inversely proportional to the amount of trains running. How much trains would you have running? Here's a graph to help you (we'll assume it's linear to make this easier). Available in PNG and SVG format.

PNG (click to enlarge):

Click for SVG format

Leave your answer by commenting. You can say about where, take the image and make a mark on it, whatever. Just comment!

Quick War: Science Assignment

Now what the hell is the point of an assignment. Now, current affairs programs have done numerous experiments at some shit ass schools (not mentioning any names (not that they mentioned it anyway)) and found that when they banned homework, students improved by up to 90% (without mentioning in what aspect). Now, based on the theory of quadratic binomial scalability (yes, I'm entering into bullshit with technical terms): Wikipedia, the effect will be quadratically increased if we tried banning homework at our (much better in theory) school. Here's a thereotical graph: . In practice, I think it will be even better, since it frees up our time, whether it be to get fresh air and exercise all the way to playing nerdy computer games. Whether you're a teacher or a student, or just some random guy with something that even remotely makes sense to say, please comment using the link below.

Conclusion: Election

Well, Labor won and Liberal got owned. Now, I'll save the Liberals their "soul searching" (yes, I am watching ABC right now...). Where they went wrong, is targeting the intelligent community instead of the majority of the voting pupulation that swallows bullshit (MOTVPTSB from now on). If he did his homework, he would realise that you can't win an election telling the truth while voting is compulsory and the MOTVPTSB still controls the majority of the votes. See Labor acted smart by churning out bullshit which of course the MOTVPTSB would take as truth. So in conclusion, Mr. Debnam, I saved your valuable time, assuming you're smart enough to read the funniest, yet discussing important issues, blog in NSW.

World Shutdown Day

Read about it here http://www.shutdownday.org/. It starts in 3 hours.

Can you make it? Please comment.

Update: Election

The election is tomorrow. Now of course, the moment I got home, I turned on 2GB.
Anyway, take a look at these two websites: http://www.morrisiemma.com.au/ and http://www.debnamrecord.com/. Please note that both sites are owned by the NSW ALP, and both sites are filled with steaming mounds of bullshit. I'm going to (try my best) not be biased here, but from using all sources available to me, it seems that Morris Iemma is more full of shit than Peter Debnam. I would also like you to know that Morris Iemma can't pronounce his opposition's name properly. He pronounces it as Peter Deb-eh-nem. Now, if there were a list of top #10 easiest to pronounce names in the world, I would rank Peter Debnam somewhere in the regions of #3, after John Smith and Mark Latham. Now, if Morris Iemma can't pronounce the world's 3rd easiest name, I don't know how he can manage to run a whole state.

Now, there's 16 hours to the election and 2GB tells me that Morris Iemma is nervous (who wouldn't be when you tell that many lies) while Peter Debnam is confident (contrast with nervous). If you have any common sense, I urge you to leave your ballot paper blank when you go to the polls tomorrow. If you want to do one better, nominate yourself for the next election, then vote for yourself, then if you do get in (which is unlikely, since the majority of the voting population will swallow bullshit as truth), then you can act on your own beliefs.

Next problem: how to we prevent the majority of the voting population from swallowing bullshit as truth and voting based on it. As you can see, there are 2 factors: the voting population and the bullshit. Now sure, the politicans could spend more money and churn out more bullshit to counter the other party's bullshit, but that's way too much trouble. I want to point out the only good point of the US: non compulsory voting. That's how we can change the other factor: the voting population. Based on a sample survey done personally by me: 90% of the voting population couldn't give less of a f*** about poiltics and will, once again, make decisions based on bullshit. So instead of forcing uninformed people to vote, why not just let them not have to vote. Then maybe parliament might finally have more non-retarded people.

I don't know how many people out there have watched the Election Debate on Friday 16/02/2006 7:30PM on ABC. Well I did, so I guess that makes me a nerd and a political freak. If you want to watch it (trust me it's good and it's only 45 minutes long), visit http://www.abc.net.au/elections/nsw/2007/default.htm. Scroll down to "Leader's Debate". Remember that both sides bullshit a lot, so exercise common sense while watching it.

In conclusion, I hope that both sides end up with exactly half of the seats. Please comment.

Update: Election

I am listening to 2GB right now as whoever is talking about Kevin Rudd's 4.7 billion dollar broadband proposal. Whoever called some guy who said what's the fuss about people getting faster iPod downloads a dopey bonehead. He is talking to the Daily Terrorgraph's Business Commentator (note that The Daily Terrorgraph is a shit newspaper that exaggerates things more than Today Tonight). He is pointing out that a fast broadband network is different to building a new road is that it is an investment that generate's income (reasonable point). He also stated that the plan would have to involve the Telstra network, so how other telcos could access the network. Now, he said that other countries are getting 3, 4, 5x our speeds. Now, let's take the thereotical average speed of ADSL2+: 17 mbps. That would mean that other countries are getting 85mbps home broadband. First of all, I want to point out that that is the most steaming piece of bullshit I have heard in the whole day. Now I don't know how the hell we can achieve those speeds short of relaying our entire copper network, which by my estimates will cost at least 47 billion dollars, 10x the amount that Kevin Rudd suggested.

Now for me to separate the facts from bullshit once again. First of all, Mr. Phillip Clark from 2GB, fast broadband is about faster iPod downloads. How the hell can businesses use 85mbps on sending a few emails? This guy obviously thinks that big business communications is about downloading large files. NOTE: I have forwarded this blog post to 2GB.

Declaration of War on: Politicians

In less than a week, it's coming to my favourite time of the (3) year(s): The Election. It's a rare opportunity to kick retarded speds (EDIT: I apologise if I have offended any retarded speds by comparing them to politicians[1]) out of parliament and replace them with people that actually have an IQ higher than that of dirt. So therefore, I strongly recommend usage of your brain (if you have one), however minor, to help you differentiate from reasonable people to people who are "commited" to making 100 billion dollars of empty promises *COUGH*Morris Iemma*COUGH*. In conclusion, don't vote for someone that has a 5c coin for a brain.

~ Crypt

[1] - You will recall last year in parliament something similar to this was said and was taken well as a joke. When repeated by a person from a different political part the next day, that person was thrown out of parliament.

Declaration of War on: Maple Story

OK, I hate Maple and everyone knows it and I couldn't think of a sadder way to waste away your retarded life. I originally wanted to spam Wizet, but then I remembered that monkeys can't read (inside joke). So what better way to turn people off Maple than PKing AFKs with vac hacks. Now apparantly, Maple Global is about to release patch 0.35 which has an "amusement park" in Henesys. WOW THAT MUST BE SO MUCH F***ING FUN. RIDING A VIRTUAL ROLLERCOASTER </sarcasm>. Anyway, Maple is getting shitter and shitter, just hack it or play a less sad game.