tala @ so-phobic

I met Santa today on the GB4-Landmark Walkway. I recognized him from his long white beard.

Except that this Santa was emaciated. Living in the Philippines has made him poor. All his elves have left him since they don’t get any Medical, SSS or Pag-ibig benefits working for him. They’ve all moved to the Hobbit House in Malate, serving drinks to humans, and listening to the band of the night. His reindeer started working in Hollywood part time. After all, Santa only needed them 1 day of the year. The pay and the adulation must have suited them. Santa can’t get through their agents nowadays. He was told that the reindeer, specially Rudolph, were booked for the year, and that bookings must be made 6 months in advance.

Santa didn’t save any money to buy his own production line, so now he’s forced to make his toys by hand. Sadly, his production can’t keep up with Mattel, and so he lost more money than he gained from selling his toys.

Santa is so poor, all he eats now are the local canned sardines, which he bums from Aling Nena’s sari-sari store. His debt list is as long as Pinocchio’s while-I’m-telling-a-whole-bunch-of-lies nose.

Poor Santa. Poor, poor Santa.

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Everyone loves a freebie. Free lunch or dinner, free cut in school, free gadgets from a website! Chances are, you’ve heard of the website Tech4free.com. It’s a website that let’s you claim a free gift in 3 steps. The gifts include a 20GB iPod, $300 in cashier’s checks, and a Canon digital camera among others.

The site outlines these 3 steps:

• STEP 1: Choose your free gift.
• STEP 2: Create login information.

After creating the login information, you will proceed to STEP 3, which has 3 more sub-steps.

STEP 3: Do the following steps:

1. Finish one offer of your choice.
2. Have some friends do the same.
3. Pick the FREE GIFT of your choice.

I moderate for the iAcademy Yahoogroups and I got a lot of Pending posts about this website. So I decided to check it out. I’ve always thought that there’s no such thing as a free lunch, so I decided to check their Terms and Conditions page. Lo and behold, iAcademy students residing in the Philippines:

TERMS

I. ACCOUNTS

1. Information

(a). All users shall provide accurate information. At any time during the signup process or after the user must give correct information involving their identity.

(b). A user must use their own information for this site.

( c ). A user must reside in the United States. (emphasis mine)

If you are not a US resident, you forfeit the prize. Of course, there’s a loophole to this. Simply ask a relative living in the United States if you can use their address. They can ship the free prize and charge you for family shipping expenses.

Next:

2. Registration

(a). A user may only have 1 account per household. A household includes a mailing address, and may include your IP address. Post Office boxes are not accepted and your account will be put on hold indefinitely if a P.O box is used. (emphasis mine)

So better make sure that the relative whose address you’re going to submit has no plans of getting a freebie him/herself. Oh, iAcademy students who registered using the student labs, they track IPs guys.

From the FAQ section:

My account has been put on hold, why?

There could be many reasons why you have been put on hold. We take fraud VERY seriously and if we find that two accounts have been created from one house we will put your account on hold. We have many ways of checking for fraud including IP tracking (every time someone signs up, there IP is logged and if two IP addresses are registered both accounts are put on hold).(emphasis mine)

I signed up using a newly-made e-mail addy to check it out. I chose the iPod for my free gift. According to the site, after signing up, I have to complete one of the offers listed as well as refer 5 of my friends using a referral link provided by them. But in my Refer Friends page, it says that the 20G iPod requires 5 offers to complete. 5, _NOT_ 1, as opposed to the information on the Complete Offers page.

These offers range from purchasing cigarettes, applying and getting approved for cards (credit? membership?) to signing up for free trials.

I’m not saying this website is a fraud. But people may have stumbled into this thinking that all they have to do is refer people. Sort of like multi-level marketing. All I’m saying is to be more careful when signing up for websites that claim to give stuff away for free. Chances are, there’s a catch. And if the website with the catch involves referrals, then you are spreading possible harm and/or headache (not to mention spam!) to your friends and family. Always read the Terms of Service first.

Anyway, for those who are thinking of ditching their Tech4free.com accounts, here’s the good news:

3. Cancellation

(a). A user may not cancel his/her account; If a user no longer wishes to be a member of this site, the user must simply stop using his or her account.

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Found two interesting and exciting tasks to do in the very near future.

1. Put up the iAcademy Message Boards using IPB 1.3
2. Making a calendar on a pentagon dodecahedron for next year.

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I was curious about the mixed reviews Alexander has been getting so I dragged {Nix} and Martin last night to watch the almost 2 and half hour film.

I’m going to say this this early on. If you want to be entertained, DO NOT watch this film. This is not another Troy, nor is it a Lord of the Rings. It is an Oliver Stone interpretation of some of the parts of an ancient hero’s life.

The movie was dragging and was full of unnecessary fag scenes and misplaced accents.

There was nothing spectacular about the battle scene. The only exciting part was in the first battle, when the momentum builds up along with the dust as Alexander and his men ride swiftly to disguise the numbers of his army amidst the dust. There were no choreographed battle scenes. It felt like the actors were placed in the middle of the desert, the jungle, and were just instructed to do their best to kill each other. Everybody on the set? If you see a guy on a black horse with a spotted cloth pseudo-saddle, stay clear okay? Battle scene X, take 1, Action! That’s it, hack and slash ‘em. Where’s the blood fountain? That’s Alexander, dammit, let him through! And cut! That was good chaps, now let’s move to the jungle set and do that all over again.

The narration dragged the film as well. There were scenes that were gaining in momentum only to be interrupted by Ptolemy’s narration. I understand that they _had_ to give Anthony Hopkins something to do, but maybe, in the interest of making the film more compact, they should’ve hired some lesser known actor and given him shorter screen time.

I don’t know how Stone did it, but he even managed to make one of the key high points of the movie drag. It’s a scene in the forest battle in India, wherein Alexander charges ahead towards an Oliphaunt (yes, yes, wrong movie, but let’s just call ‘em Oliphaunts okay?). The slow-mo starts as he is charging, and the camera flicks from his mad face, to the Oliphaunt rider with a small spear, to a bowman on the ground, about to shoot Alexander. The melodramatic background music reaches a crescendo. I’m holding my breath, waiting to see who would hit Alexander and the freaking scene drags on! The camera keeps panning from one face to another, and if I don’t exhale, I’m going to die right there in the cinema. The slow-mo continues, but by the time the highlight scene where both the horse bearing Alexander and the Oliphaunt raise themselves using their hind legs in this sort-of fighting stance _finally_ happens, I’ve lost interest.

The film was riddled with unnecessary bisexual scenes. Yoohoo, Mr. Stone, we _know_ he’s bisexual okay? And if there were people who didn’t know they certainly would have caught on after the early scene where Alexander’s teacher talks about Achilles and “his lover Patroclus”. The way Alexander and Hephaistion looked at each other in that scene was enough to show their bisexuality. Once, twice is acceptable and enough. But every other scene was a blatant scene of nothing but bisexuality. Sure, in some scenes they start with talk of war, but the conversation eventually degenerates into an “I can’t live without” monologue worthy of our Pinoy teleserye. Hasn’t the director heard of subtlety? It seemed so perverse, more offensive even than some of the ST films we have here. It was an offensive assault, and you’d have to wonder if Oliver Stone didn’t just use the “epic lifestory of a hero” as an excuse to make a bisexual film. It grossed me out.

If you’re still curious after reading this and have money to waste on the big screen, go see it. If not, there’s still your local Boss DBD. If you want to be entertained instead, go see National Treasure and involve yourself in the world of conspiracies and Freemasonry. :coffee:

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From the CompSci Mailing List:

HIPPOCRATIC OATH FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERS

1. Never ever write a line of code that someone else can
   understand.
2. Make the simplest line of code appear complex. Use long names. Don’t ever code “a=b”, rather do something like: AlphaNodeSemaphore = *(int) & (unsigned long) (BetaFrameNodeFarm)
3. Type fast think slow.
4. Never use direct references to anything ever. Bury everything in macros. Bury the macros in include files. References those include files indirectly from other include files. Use macros to reference those include files.
5. Never include a comment that will help someone else understand yourcode. If they understand it they don’t need you.
6. Never code a function to return a value. All functions must return a pointer to a structure which contains a pointer to a value.
7. Never discuss things in concrete terms. Always speak in abstract. If they can understand you they don’t need you.
8. Never complete a project on time. If you do they will think it was easy and anyone can do it and they don’t need you.
9. When someone stops by your desk to ask a question, talk forever but don’t answer the question. If they get their questions answered they don’t need you.
10. Never clean your office. Absolutely never throw away an old listing.
11. Never say hello to anyone in hallway. Absolutely never address anyone by name. If you must address someone by name, mumble or use the wrong name. Always maintain the mystique of bring spaced out from concentrating on complex logic.
12. When you are having lunch at the office canteen, never fully concentrate on your lunch. Try to get absent minded suddenly in the middle of the lunch and say to your colleague something like: “But I don’t think that datapage was actually locked by another RX call, rather I see the possibility of a wrong access mode.” Other wise they will think you are not serious about your job and then they won’t need you.

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