Very likely OFN and posted in other places, but have yourself a time playing with WindowsRG.

Notadora.com: WindowsRG – Really Good Edition

Timmy Mac sent me this WoW video that sums up the geek way of life, while somehow bizarrely uplifting my Christmas Spirit. Enjoy.

I found the titles of movies I have with me at work today (I will be working very late on a project I despise) to be very telling. Maybe you can guess why:

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
Dark City
Into the Woods
The Mummy
Pi
The Boondock Saints
The Big Lebowski

They sort of tell a little story about my life when put in that order.

In case you didn’t see this over at Czeltic Girl’s, you should check out Serenity acted out by paper dolls. Big-time spoilers; don’t go if you haven’t seen it.

Emergency Naptime Procedures Implelemted

Apple – Trailers – X-MEN 3 Announcement Teaser – Medium

I still have yet to hear a convincing reason for why this doesn’t ethereally accompany me wherever I go.

Bioware, makers of excellent games like Jade Empire and Neverwinter Nights has expanded even further on their near-open-source approach to computer RPGs, offering to possibly hire the person who can create the best story using their impressive module generator.

I’ve been quite taken with Bioware’s dedication to creating an online experience on par with a tabletop role-playing game, so I’m planning on entering one of my modules. I encourage anyone else interested to compete for free shwag and the possibility of becoming a writer for one of the more enterprising companies in the expanding media of games.

I didn’t mean that to come across as so brown-nosey. They’re not going to read this; I really do appreciate their games and their philosophy.

BioWare: The Contest That Might Become Your Career

non·ver·sa·tion (nnvr-sshn)
n.

1. Spoken discourse resulting in nothing substantive.
2. (Sometimes unctuous) Pleasantries exchanged to promote the illusion of concern, friendship, or respect, usually followed by a request or body language which pleads reciprocation.
   How was your weekend? Good, I need you to…
3. The majority of communication at one’s job on a given day.

Snagged this from William Gibson’s blog. Speaks for itself, I think.

Despotism

The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written January 8, 1986

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”

Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain, ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world.

Mine is a world that begins with school. I’m smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me.

Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms. Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head.”

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me. Or feels threatened by me. Or thinks I’m a smart ass. Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here.

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.

And then it happened. D door opened to a world, rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought. A board is found. “This is it… this is where I belong…” I know everyone here, even if I’ve never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again. I know you all.

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike.

You bet your ass we’re all alike. We’ve been spoon-fed baby food at school when we hungered for steak. The bits of meat that you did let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now, the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all. After all, we’re all alike.