Obscure Papal Trivia *redux*

Thought I would trot out this item in honor of our Holy Father's visit.

Some little known facts about our Holy Father's likes and dislikes:

Favorite programming language: C. Not C++. Just C. There is no need for pluses when you sit on the Holy C. There is none higher on earth and the throne in Heaven transcends programming.

Truck manufacturer: Peterbilt of course! Not quite as durable as the Church that Jesus built, but coming in a close second.

Season: Winter. One might consider springtime, but remember red looks good in heavy garments. And since the Holy Father usually has several layers on, summertime is definitely out.

Operating System UNIX. Some would argue Mac, but there is always that ancient problem with apples. LINUX is more Protestant in its recent creation and frequent spin-offs. Plus it has no visible head, everyone can make up their own rules. So why UNIX? Because Jesus said there are those that become so for the sake of the Kingdom.

Needing support

My daughter and I have determined there is a great need, a need all good Christians in the Ivory Coast should fill. There is a need for a support group in the country, specifically at the Kuwait embassy in Abidjan Cote d'Ivoire. Not sure if that is in the Ivory Coast or Kuwait, but where ever it is, please help these poor people.

Seems there are lots of widows there that are suffering immense tragedy. Yes, they are rich, having several million US Dollars in the bank there, but what good is money when such tragedy hits a family? It seems that a support group for these widows would be well worth the effort. They all have recently lost their husbands to a brief illness. They don't have the support of family as they are recent converts to the Christian faith (evident by their liberal use of the Bible verses).

Not only have they lost their beloved spouse, but all are suffering from cancer and stroke sickness (?) that has them not lasting "for the next eight months". And in the face of such trauma, I applaud their fortitude and courage to "not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home". As of course, that sort of behavior goes against the teachings of the Bible. Not sure about the remarriage, but getting children outside the matrimonial home is for sure.

The good news is these women have all found God, and for a modest sum promise to donate their millions of US Dollars to a charity of your choice.

One would think with them all being from the Kuwait embassy in the Ivory Coast, they might have already shared stories, but I think this is not the case. At least I haven't received an email from their support group yet!

Fun for a day

April 1st is a day to enjoy. Thanks to the INSERT COIN trick, my printers have been talking back today.

Best result so far, NEED ICE CREAM

Until I pulled this one out late in the day.

Good form

Been seeing this error on the status bar of Mozilla Firefox lately. Not sure what the error is, but I rest easy knowing what ever the error, it is at least well formed.

Not a floppy

But still pretty impressive. 

Saw the "files waiting to be written to CD" pop-up balloon on my wife's laptop this weekend.  I opened it to see what was "waiting" to be written.

More proof we should NOT take the internet too seriously

Ha! Good one. A little humor via The Spirit's Sword

KaleJ -- [adjective]: Visually addictive 'How will you be defined in the dictionary?' at QuizGalaxy.com

I know what they need

Hmm, a Catholic site, Muslim hackers, prayers... Wonder what they need?
Catholic website allegedly shut down by Muslim hackers

Rome, May 18, 2007 / 12:40 pm (CNA).- The editors of a Catholic website claim their site was brought down by Muslim hackers residing in Turkey.

The website — www.totustuus.it– was hacked May 10, but is again operational. Editors of the website, named after the motto of the late Pope John Paul II, believe it is a religiously motivated attack.

"In the past two months we had already suffered 70 attacks," David Botti told AKI. Botti is the president of the Totus tuus network. He told AKI that 80 percent of those attacks were carried out by Islamic hackers, and of those 25 percent were by Turks belonging to Turkhacks.com.

Botti said that the source of a hack can be determined by thehacker’s signature, for example a propaganda message with which they replace the original text. “The most frequent is the Islamic crescent symbol with words offending the Holy Father," explained Botti.

Botti said prayer, rather than technological protection systems, is the key to staving off further hacking. Readers, he said, need to pray for Europe.

They need the St. Michael firewall that the Vatican uses. And if prayer is what they need, perhaps The Curt Jester can help.

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us against Denial of Service attacks.
Be our protection against the bots and packets of black hats.
May thy firewall rebuke them, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Hosting Provider-
by the Divine Power of God -
cast into digital hell, distributed attacks and all buffer overflows,
whose packets roam throughout the network seeking the downing of sites.

The old and the new

The Curt Jester has some items for Palm Sunday. I especially like the Palm Pilate.

Palm Sunday Old and New

Daylight Savings Time? Could it be...

With all the tech issues this has caused, I will be sure to throw my considerable weight behind this cause.

The Ironic Catholic: Why couldn't the Vatican use its influence on Daylight Savings Time?

As we know, the dating of time is a human creation, for God is beyond time. If time is a human construct, then it is open to the twistedness of original sin. Although time as we date it is neutral, daylight savings time is clearly against God's will.

1. After all, in Gen 1:5: "God called the light day, and the darkness night." DST is an idolatrous human attempt to improve upon God, and extend the light for specious reasons.

...

Mediatrix of all Internet Graces?

The Ironic Catholic has a Caption Contest

Here is my submission.

Look closely at the company logo.

Seems fitting, after all, what word better mingles faith and technology than Mediatrix?

The spider gets religious

Crowhill Weblog: Thou shalt not …

… believe anything you get in email.
I got an email that began “I did a lot of searching, fasting and prayers before … ” and I figured, shoot heck, this is some over-zealous internet religious fanatic who read some dumb thing I wrote in the past and wants to set me straight.

The email continued, “… choosing your contact from your country’s website.” It then went on with the standard “somebody’s died and we need to transfer a gazillion dollars out of the country and need somebody we can trust” scam.
Who falls for these things?

I believe the spider that filched his email address off the website did a lot of searching, but am I too believe it was hungry and of a religious nature?
And how did he get so important to be on our "Country's website"?

I always enjoy the humor in these "Nigerian" email scams. Here, I got one.

I am the first cousin, not removed, of the third wife of the 8th richest man in America. (seriously) When he dies, I can hope to get nothing from him, but if you will kindly send me $10,000 US dollars, I will promise upon my misspelled word that I will do my best to spend the money while thinking of you.

Holy Firewall

As a follow-up on the Firewall named Michael that defends the Vatican website, I have been thinking about what type of computer would be worthy of the name. Perhaps a brand name, Prince of the Heavenly Hosts Firewall, or simply Archangel Firewall.

Since it is named after an archangel, it must be a blade server. Many angels in scripture have use a fiery blade to repel attacks or protect paradise. I thought about Adobe's Fiery software, but having worked "with" it, I am more inclined to rank it along the lines of attempting to quench the eternal fires.

It must be a UNIX server also. Consider that Jesus related something about his operating system preference once. "there are those that are UNIX from birth (HP or Sun?), those that are made that way (LINUX?) and those that are UNIX for the Kingdom of God."

Of course the Archangel Firewall is far superior to the legacy product used by past pagan empires, such as the fire-Walls of Jericho. That defense was shown to be vulnerable to the 7 day distributed denial of service to the pagan gods. In fact it crumbled completely without even seeing a brute force attack.

Now would it be a hardware appliance or some software solution. I wager hardware as there is nothing soft about the business end of an Archangel's blade. Just as Lucifer. And software firewalls are usually full of holes and the only holy describe this firewall ends in 'y'.

The defenses are not infinite, but the support contract is endless. No need for constant upgrades here, you get the top of the line from day one. Or even prior to day one of the human time.

Recent tests have shown this product to be extremely successful in repelling remotely distributed denial of service attacks from Win95 laptops in Afghanistan on 28.8 dial-up connections.