World of Suck

"We will not surrender. We will be martyred, but we will not surrender," cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi told GEO television, a private channel. "We are more determined now."

[...]

[Government spokesman Tariq] Azim told Dawn News Television that Ghazi's talk about martyrdom was a bluff, noting that his brother, chief cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, had said the same thing and then was arrested trying to sneak out of the complex disguised as a woman in a full-length burqa and high heels.

It's nothing less than amusing that an uber-masculine religion, one that feels their women need ambulatory, full-body tents, can be reduced to this. So where's the macho posturing? I guess it's pretty difficult to manage when you're trying to sneak away from your own embarrassing arrest in high heels and a burqa.

One would think that to be caught dressing as a woman (heels included) for any muslim man should result in instant excommunication (or the approximate for that religion). I can't recall any Japanese officials trying to flee the country in a Kimono, any southern generals in a full bell skirt with hoops, or ... well I guess there isn't much camouflage to be offered by the majority of African tribes.

So what exactly gives here? Do they still get their virgins in heaven if they're shot while trying to escape in this "disguise"? Do they have to give the burqa back to the woman they forced it on to begin with? Do they have to be directly related to borrow it in the first place? Or are there special "manly" versions used just for these occasions?

It's pretty fucking weak that any man would dress up as a woman to escape capture. Especially from ultra-zelots who regard women as sub-human.

The just desserts would be instant castration after capture... then heck, let him go - he could use the burqa full time after that.

MsWord. It's the veritable document standard for most of the world. Well, for material that needs to retain its flexibility and editibility for content (otherwise the unreserved emperor is Acrobat). Over the years this app has become the King Kitchen Sink of features. Spell checkers were de rigueur in the early 80's. Grammar in the late 80's. Thesaurus? Check. Fonts? Out the kazoo. Tables and bullets, templates and clip art, macro's and embedded links Word has so much... junk.

Most of these features aren't used. A sane user never would, much less someone who wants to hand off responsibility for the document and never see it again. But my coworker came up with a gem of an idea for a feature that would skyrocket Word to unfathomable popularity. Indeed this is a feature that would hardly take any work whatsoever. This feature is the "Bullshit Meter".

Utilizing Word's already useless grammar checker and some smorgasbord of the statistics and other fabulous (rarely used) features like the summary generator, Word would estimate the percentage of bullshit in the document and produce a true/false value as to whether the document was actually worth reading.

Think of the value! Already Word can summarize the document for you... but if it were to tell you, with a single mouse click, if it was worth the next hour or two of your life? Now that's priceless.

Actual quote overheard amongst coders:

"And this is what we'll call polymorphism at the complier level"

Brother, I feel your pain.