Have at it, folks.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
I did not have this on my fuck 2020 bingo card.
Too inconsequential to be sued
A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.
… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine
Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.
It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.
How do you get liars to care about the truth?
Lighten up, Francis.
How has Obama failed you today?
We have all the best words.
Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.
I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week.
Nevertheless, she persisted.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.
We still have time to mess this up!
Naturally gregarious and alpha
And we’re all out of bubblegum.
Historically it is a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.
We are aware of all internet traditions.
Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…
Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.
Verified, but limited!
I’m going back to the respite thread.
jcricket
How come no comments about the EPA/Bush vs. the Blue states (CA, WA, etc.)? Basically all the staff in the EPA says “we have to give CA, et.al. the waiver. Bush appointed head of EPA says, “STFU”
Sirkowski
Why can’t we all get along? (Look out for the white spot on the cat.)
MikeL
This being a special day, I’d like to thank John, Tim and Michael for providing us this site. It’s one of the better ones in terms of both quality and honesty. The Web award was earned.
And to everyone – Have a Groovy Solstice!
Dreggas
That’s MERRY FUCKING CHRISTMAS you ignorant Heathen scum! Didn’t we burn enough of you solstice types to get it through to ya?
[ /end wingnut ]
LiberalTarian
IWIWAL, OK! ;)
chatterbox
Merry Christmas all. I’ve been reading this site for some time now but I’ve stayed out of the fray due to a New Years resolution to be less political (it’ll drive you crazy…).
Cain
I just want to say, Happy Eid Mubarak to all of you!
cain
chopper
god, i was just flipping through channels and landed on CNN just in time for some execrable special on ‘the war on xmas’.
the best is, one of the dudes interviewed was d’souza, who said something idiotic about how “besides, christianity is what brought compassion and respect for life into the world.”
i guess the jews were just a bunch of assholes. they didn’t even know what kindness was until one of em came up with the idea like 2000 years in. yeesh. reeks of coulter’s ‘perfected jews’ remark.
Zifnab
Hey, tomorrow is Global Orgasm Day. Don’t forget to celebrate.
RC635
Happy Festivus!!
JWW
Merry Chistmas all,
Maybe a massive IED in Iraq or Afghanistan would cause you all too rejoice. What a Holiday Season, at home, warm and around those you love.
My calander must be wrong, I thought the news update stated our major concern in the USA was a pregnant 16 year old.
Sleep well!
RSA
Does anyone have a favorite free PDF-to-text (or RTF or Word) converter? WIndows, Mac, or Unix are all fine.
Dreggas
well they did give us circumcision, not necessarily kind that bit…
demimondian
RSA — what’s your purpose? At Gollum, the usual approach is to go through ghostscript, but that’s pretty heavyweight.
RSA
I have a blind student taking one of my classes next semester; he’s more comfortable using RTF, Word, or raw text than whatever accessibility tools Adobe had built into their PDF reader. Most of my lecture material is in PDF format, produced from LaTeX using the beamer style. Unfortunately latex2rtf breaks for some reason that I can’t track down, so I’m stumped on how to built the RTF files directly. It’s mostly text (it’s a programming course). I’ll take a look at ghostscript (though I’ve only used it in the past for displaying PostScript files); thanks for the suggestion. I have mail into our tech support folks, but I thought someone here might have a better handle on accessibility software than I do.
Darkness
You are, of course, stretching the bounds of “open thread” on a drunk Solstice Holiday Friday, I think.
But hell, I’ve used this with some luck:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdftohtml
Jake
Heh. Someone tell the fRighties to cancel their date with Rosie Palm. If they accidentally participate in an activity related to world peace they’ll never forgive themselves.
RSA
Hey, I just got out of a long (and late in the year) Ph.D. defense this afternoon; computer science geeks unwind differently from normal people, I guess. Thanks for the suggestion.
myiq2xu
Somebody should be watching G-Dub and his homies really carefully this weekend. With Congress on Xmas vacation and everybody busy shopping and spending, this is the perfect time for them to try some of their patented snaky shit.
myiq2xu
Oops! That shoulda been “sneaky” not “snaky.”
Even if they are all lower than snake shit.
Darkness
Ah, you have LaTeX to start with. LaTeX to anything readable ought to be a no-brainer. And getting to HTML should be easy directly too, if acceptable, rather than via pdf, which is like reaching around your cat to pet your dog… or something.
Royston Vasey
Hey, I went to Universal Studios Hollywood today for the first time in almost 20 years.
The Mummy’s Revenge ride was waay cool!
myiq2xu
That’s not until Sunday. BTW – I made a donation to the Human Fund in John, Tim and Michael’s names.
Figuratively, of course.
myiq2xu
That sounds kinky
RSA
Well, in principle, but I’m mainly a cut-and-paste LaTeX user, and the obvious tools I tried didn’t work. But pdftohtml worked surprisingly well. Thanks.
myiq2xu
I would be afraid of leaks if I tried that, which defeats the purpose of wearing condoms.
RSA
I’d forgotten about that; back in the early days of search engines, looking for LaTeX packages used to generate a lot of porn hits.
Bob In Pacifica
Just watched “Superbad” for the second time in two days, this time with my girlfriend and her two daughters. It reminded me of when I was a sophomore and I’d get these spontaneous erections in my geometry class, lo those many years ago.
Wonderful film. Five stars.
TenguPhule
Happy Hogswatch, Asshole Spooferific!
Keep an eye out for those flying pigs!
Darkness
Back in the early days . . . there were no search engines. We had to walk ten miles in the snow with bare feet to find a gopher server with some porn on it.
A “cut and paste LaTeX user”. I would not have imagined such a thing was possible. Things have changed since I had to use LaTeX on an Apollo workstation, clearly. It sure did print up a pretty document that put that pussy program Word to shame. Someone with the middle name Kern must have worked on the original code. (sorry, bad font humor, it’s late). Glad it worked, though. Funny, I had to find that program for writing a search engine index. Gods, full circle! argh!!
myiq2xu
Donating is the best way of celebrating.
Jake
Any minute now, the Majikal Free Market Fairy will wave its wand and fix the American health system…
Look, over yonder! Is that a sign the spell is taking hold?
Nope.
Perhaps Mitt-the-difference Romney will say he saw every American getting comprehensive health care coverage and it shall become so.
myiq2xu
I started out using unix commands and Veronica was the newest and bestest search engine.
Royston Vasey
There was a ‘undred and fifty of us livin’ in a shoebox in the middle of t’road.
JWW
No Tengu,
I would prefer not seeing your ole lady flying, thnx anyway.
Spoof is that the soft hand towel you wipe your ass with, tell me does your washing machine ever rid itself of that smell.
myiq2xu
At least you lucky duckys had a shoebox.
myiq2xu
You wash your asswipe? Eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwww!
Gus
5 years left according to the Mayan calendar…
Gus
“cardboard box?”
“aye”
“you were lucky”
Royston Vasey
Well, of course, we had it tough.
We used to ‘ave to get up out of shoebox at twelve o’clock at night and lick road clean wit’ tongue.
We had two bits of cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at mill for sixpence every four years, and when we got home our Dad would slice us in two wit’ bread knife.
Royston Vasey
Asteroid!
Scientists are hoping to gain an unexpected glimpse beneath the surface of Mars after the odds of a huge asteroid hitting the planet next month shortened dramatically.
NASA scientists have reduced the chance of an impact between the asteroid known as 2007 WD5 and the Red Planet to 75 to one.
A direct hit would carve a hole the size of Asteroid Crater, AZ and throw up a plume of debris that astronomers could analyse for clues about material below the surface.
Michael D.
I’m not sure I’ve gotten to the point where I deserve that thanks yet. I need to get used to being scrutinized. But thanks!
TenguPhule
Picture the Future of the Human Race, a Doughy Pantload sitting on their face…Forever.
-Gleefully stolen from Instaputz
myiq2xu
I just threw up.
VidaLoca
No problem! :)
Paul L.
Our lady of perpetual outrage stalks and swiftboats another another poor oppressed black woman.
The “Shut up, white boy!” woman is the “slum” dweller with a 60-inch TV
The Other Steve
Did anybody notice this week Bush acknowledged Global Climate Change was real?
In comments made during signing of energy bill.
Just for fun, the next time you see a denier, point out their blessed saint Bush believes. :-)
The Other Steve
I just sold a 51-inch rear projection TV for $350 on craigslist, and felt lucky to get that. If you check ebay and craigslist they’re all over the place, sometimes at pretty low prices.
Rear Projection TV’s are now the hand-me-down of the wealthy as we purchase LCD flat screens.
Looks like Our Lady of Perpetual Outrage once again is attacking something she does not understand.
John Cole
I think I paid 1200 for mine, brand new, four years ago.
I like the rear projection ones, though. Until very recently, I felt they had a better picture. At least I felt the blacks and dark colors were better. Nowadays, I am not sure, but I probably won’t replace the one I have for another 10 years unless it breaks. That is just how I am with big purchases.
John S.
Was she a star witness for Nifong in the Duke larosse case? Because that would really be news.
Dreggas
I dunno what languages you teach in but you may also want to snag a copy of iText or iTextSharp (C# port of iText). It works wonders for pdf manipulation.
LiberalTarian
Do they have to be new or can they be genlty used?? ;)
LiberalTarian
Gently, I meant gently.
I hate to think what “genlty” might suggest!!
RSA
Thanks, I’ll take a look, though I’m a dinosaur; the only language I program well in is Common Lisp.
chopper
i only program in commodore basic 2.0.
demimondian
How have you managed to avoid teaching Intro programming/data structures/etc.?
I’m about to have to add Java to my list of languages. The thought makes me feel dirty.
RSA
We have a pretty large faculty (around forty tenure/tenure track) and a number of very good instructors. I did teach a service course for several years, but it was an introduction to computers for non-majors; the majority opinion, according to RateMyProfessor.com, was “So boring”. :-) Otherwise I’ve been lucky enough to stick mainly to upper-level undergrad and grad courses in my research areas, artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction.