Felix Atagong's Unfinished Projec : February 2008

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Entry 369 posted in: 1. General Mish Mash

It took a Belgian court 13 years to reach verdict in a computer virus case. Here's the story.

Somewhere in the dying decades of the last Millennium a 'professional' software company distributed an update by sending floppy disks to its clients. What the company didn't know was that about 10% of these disks had a virus hidden in the root section. Some clients found that out soon enough, got infected, complained and asked for very huge damage claims. The legal department of the software provider pondered on it for a few months and finally decided to bring the supplier, who furnished the disks, before court. As a matter of fact that happened to be the local computer store from around the corner. The shop owner argued that he had sold sealed boxes, that probably contained already infected disks, to the software firm but said that he couldn't be held responsible as he had ordered these disks from a national dealer who had delivered him the goods, already sealed in boxes. Just to be on the safe side the distributor was then invited to court as well.

The wholesaler claimed that he had bought the disks, packed, sealed and delivered, from the manufacturer in Thailand, one of those developing countries where the local Scrooge McDucks are proud to say that their booming economy is based upon child labour and woman exploitation. All boxes contained stickers saying that the disks were 100% virus free, so why should he have doubted that?

Now everybody found it stupid to attack the manufacturer, although, off the record, everybody agreed that the company in Thailand was as guilty as hell. But attacking Mr. Duck in Thailand would have meant sending over a rogatory commission and you know what is the first thing these commission members do when they arrive for one night in Bangkok. So the software company accused the local shop holder. And the local shop holder accused the wholesaler. And the wholesaler said that someone, but certainly not him, should accuse the manufacturer in Thailand. So, just to keep busy, he accused the local shop holder who, at his turn, accused his buyer who should've tested the disks before sending them to the clients. One could keep on going on like that so let us make it easy for ourselves: at the end everybody was suing everybody.

And thus they kept on meddling for the next decade until at the end of last year the judge in question finally reached a verdict. It took a Belgian judge thirteen years, that is 4745 days, to utter the following wise words. He decided that he wouldn't allow any of the initial complaints because he had received these outside the reasonable period of time...

They all had a good laugh after that, especially the lawyers, who laughed all the way to the bank. And for the youngsters among us: does anyone remember what exactly is a floppy disk?

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: True Story

20 Weird Wiki Entries

Entry 370 posted in: 1. General Mish Mash

Don't try the Bloody Mary either! The Dutch online youth magazine Spunk recently made a list of the weirdest Wikipedia entries, although Spunk contains some rather weird stuff itself. I'm only trying to give you good advice here, if you ever get invited to a Spunk cocktail party try to avoid the Mojito (see picture to the left as well).

Weird Wiki(pedia) Entries (slightly edited by yours truly)

The success of Wikipedia has lead to different - more or less specialized - spin-offs:

20. Chickipedia
One of the most recent additions is Chickipedia: a wiki that is entirely devoted to women of the opposite sex (© Allo Allo). As everybody is entitled to add some goodies I tried one myself: India Waters, wish you were here I'll show you my dark side.

19. Some geeky SciFi wikis
Battlestar Wiki The new Battlestar Galactica isn't that bad, not bad at all. Now, in my opinion and that of mine alone, that is something that can't be said of...
Lostpedia At its best Lost looks like a lame The Prisoner remake but without the psychedelica, but most of the time I find that the episodes have been recycled out of rejects from the second season of Twin Peaks.
Wookieepedia The Stones or The Beatles? Mod or rockers. Star Wars or Star Trek? The next point will give you the answer, me thinks...

18. Star Trek wikis
Although Christopher Lambert maintains that 'there can only be one' Star Trek actually has got two: Memory Alpha vs. Memory Beta, but the feline dancer on Nimbus III actually has got three. Don't overuse your eyebrows too much or you'll finish speaking like this: Sov qawHaq tlhab.

17. Uncyclopedia
Read all about Kitler and other historic figures and events and also how to pee in a cup.

16. How To Give A Tit Fuck
...or in plain English: Intermammary Intercourse is a form of outercourse that takes place when a man stimulates his penis by rubbing it between or on a woman's breasts.

15. How To Find A Dealer
Only interesting for people who don't live in Amsterdam, California and Jamacia. Jamacia?

Death and destruction...
14. Toilet relating injuries
13. Chess related deaths
12. Microwave related injuries

Fetishism. For one reason or another the 3 following items have been deleted from Wikipedia. But luckily I could found some mirrors...
11. Used condom fetish (deleted) (mirror)
10. Inside out eyelid (deleted) (mirror)
9. Partial unbirthing fetishism (deleted) (mirror)
Much more adult stuff can be found on WikiAfterdark (except, strangely enough, the 3 previous entries).

8. The Mermaid Problem
Sex with mermaids can be a hassle although Rene Magritte seemd to have found a way around it in his painting l'Invention Collective (1935).

And now for something completely different...
7. McDonalds Urban Legends
6. YouTube Celebrities Hmmm. Basically this is nothing more than a list pointing to another list. Not my cup of tea.
5. Dwarf Tossing

A funny thing happened on the way to the...
4. Toilet Humour
3. Mathematical Jokes
2. Engrish

And the weirdest Wikipedia entry, still according to Spunk, is...
1. Evil reptilian kitten-eater from another planet

TTFN

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Cyberhugging

When in doubt...

Entry 371 posted in: 1. General Mish Mash

...make a list.

Last week's entry wasn't much of a post, I confess. It is a lazy and uninspired blogger's scapegoat to publish a list, especially when it is grabbed from another source, and calling it your own. Magazines do it all the time: the best 100 guitarists of rock, 20 rock stars who went gaga (Syd Barrett, for one reason or another, is always on that), 50 ways to leave your lover...

When sci-fi authors don't have enough inspiration to write a novel they add a touch of time travel. It is easy but also a bit cheap. I will have to elaborate on that subject in another post, if I ever find the time...

This blog is in the middle of being relocated to its own domain (and server): atagong.com. Normally I wanted to do this on the first of January but I have discovered that Murphy's Law also exist in Cyberspace. That goes for the Peter Principle too. But finally, my domain is up and running and now I am in the process of checking every single post and every inside link. As long as that phase isn't totally finished the old blog will keep on existing.

So until that moment not a lot will change over here, but in the meantime you can practice your billiard ball physics with this nifty and very addictive, game, called Shuffle.

Wish me luck.

If you liked this post - you might be interested in this one as well: Tourette's Planet (18+)

Dreams come through

Entry 414 posted in: 4. Orb Weavers

The typescript Why isn’t double U double U double U atagong dot com up and running yet? Good question. It took me 3 weeks to realise that my domain didn’t need the www (the only abbreviation, according to Douglas Adams, that is longer than the phrase itself). So I thought it was better to start all over again, searching, checking and replacing all internal links on the odd 200 archived posts. I should’ve read the fucking manual first, I know…

About a dozen of years ago I was planning to create the best Orb site of the world, called Orb Weavers. For those out in the wild, The Orb - and I quote my own previously unpublished ramblings here - …mainly orbits around a guy called Duncan Robert (DR) LX (Alex) Paterson, who, on his different projects, has chosen a wide variety of the musical human species to assist him. I started writing like a nutter and somewhere between 1998 and 1999 a rough draft was finished.

For various reasons – mainly because some people who had promised to collaborate pulled the plug - the website never got published, although it tickled and hurt in a far region of the left upper corner of my brain. In a streak of momentary madness, now five years ago, I shredded the complete folder and made it impossible – even for the CIA – to recover it from my hard disk.

Gone was my typescript, but more important: gone were also plenty of downloaded articles, interviews, reviews and even personal messages (and insults) that I had received from Orb aficionados and (one time) collaborators. These are - I fear - gone forever because the sites and places were I had found most of these no longer exist. Archiving isn’t part of the World Wide Web priorities. One example is www.theorb.com, nowadays the official Orb website, belonging to LX Paterson, but in those days it was the Ultraworld fan site that contained a treasure chest full of Orb related stuff. Does anybody remember In Orbit Dreams?

The only piece of junk I still hold in my hands, and I guard it with my life now, is a printed version of the typescript - 50 pages long - 31 chapters (every chapter was going to be a separate webpage). It ends with a review of Bless You, a compilation of the short-lived Badorb label that appeared in 2002.

Since then not a lot of creative things happened to The Orb, and just like Pink Floyd, they were mostly active in the recycling business. Alex Paterson released compilations of unreleased material (Orbsessions 1 and 2), deluxe re-releases of their first groundbreaking albums (Ultraworld and U.F.Orb) and partner-in-crime Thomas Fehlmann found it necessary to reheat some leftovers from his solo career and label those as genuine Orb tracks. I didn’t found that Okie Dokie at all. The pile of Orb releases that I possess (I still maniacally buy every Orb related stuff I can find) but that I didn’t care listening to is big, last on my list is The Art of Chill 4, a mixed ambient compilation by Alex Paterson that has never made it into my cd-player.

When the Orb mailing list (and their MySpace page) promised a new album end of last year I was not that excited. But then good news started sipping through. This week’s Orb was Alex Paterson, Tim Bran (Dreadzone) and long-time-no-see Youth (Killing Joke), once a very prominent Orb collaborator.

There is an Orb album, can’t remember which one actually, that states that ambient is dead. According to the German electronic music magazine Raveline ‘das neue Album der Elektronikpioniere ist ein groβartiger Space-Trip zurück zu den Wurzeln von Ambient House’ and who am I to contradict this. Last time the world tried to contradict the Germans they invaded Poland.

But anyway: I haven’t heard a single note yet, but I already like the album.