WTF, Safari?

So I’m checking out my RSS feeds via Google Reader on my iPhone this morning, and suddenly I get this:

Yay me. Now I have to convince an inanimate object to give me permission to use the internet. Which is patently absurd.

BTW, no, it’s not on Google’s end, as I’m accessing Google just fine from other locations.

Poll Test

I’m testing out WordPress’s poll functionality. Not that I’m going to inundate this blog with pointless polls or anything, but I’m exploring whether this type of poll can be useful for administering Game Design SIG elections via the SIG Blog.

So for testing purposes, here is probably the greatest poll ever to grace the internets:

U.S. to PCA: WTF?

Peanut Corporation of America knew its products were tainted with salmonella, but shipped them anyway:

“In some situations the firm received a positive salmonella test result, followed by a later negative result, and then shipped the products,” said the FDA report, which was included in an e-mail to CNN. “In some other situations, the firm shipped the products [which had already tested positive] before it had received the [second] positive test results.”

Common sense suggests that if your product tests positive for this stuff, even if it’s only just once, you destroy the lot. That’s just good risk management.

Instead, PCA deliberately shipped products it knew to be tainted, showing complete disregard for the health of its customers. Thanks guys. You’re real fucking saints.

Why I Love the Internet

Why I love the internet:

I’m co-chair of the (fledgling) IGDA Game Design SIG. Teramis, one of our members, pointed me to her blog, where I found this post about something called “social publishing”. That linked me to this essay by Paul B. Hartzog, which describes the subject in detail. There, I was introduced to this assertion by Cory Doctorow:

I’ve discovered what many authors have also discovered: releasing electronic texts of books drives sales of the print editions. An SF writer’s biggest problem is obscurity, not piracy. Of all the people who chose not to spend their discretionary time and cash on our works today, the great bulk of them did so because they didn’t know they existed, not because someone handed them a free e-book version.

It’s always nice to find people you agree with.

But further treasures lay in store. See, I like reading, but — unlike with video games — I lack a good source of information as to what’s new and what’s good, so I end up not reading very much at all. However, that essay put me on to LibraryThing, which looks like it might be a near-perfect solution to that problem!

This connectedness is quite possibly the single most enabling invention in the history of humankind.