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According to statistics, the leading cause of death is dying. Well I say boll… wait… dying? No no… add a layer of abstraction…  Anyway, Cancer, murder, Car crashes, etc. People die in all these cases. However, while these are certainly something that we need to try to prevent and/or cure, there is also another, more serious killer that has been killing people for decades completely undetected. The giant earthworm. In fact, this particular fact can easily be gleaned from

Just think of all the people, who read the statistics about how people die, or, more often, see pie charts depicting the various causes of death, such as, for example:

Causes of death as pie slices. everybody loves pie, and therefore depicting death as a pie is far less likely to make people consider death at all. Rather, they instead are thinking pie. This is good. buy more pie. stimulate the economy.

Murder, Cancer, and Car accidents are the common causes that are found here. obviously there are other causes not charted, but they are pretty well constituted in the 20% used for car accidents. (for example, spelling mistakes might make a daycare accident look like it says “daves car accident” so filing these types of reports properly can be a chore. the data itself therefore could easily be flawed.

Uncle Floyd is famous for his Chili sauce, in that he has a habit of using a tad too much Cyanide. It’s also best to avoid his purple kool-aid.

Exploding hemorrhoids may sound humourous, but they are not. They are a serious ailment that affect a large portion of people. This ailment occurs in women at least once every month. they get very cranky and may seem emotional and unpredictable, and there may be blood involved. To combat this, companies have developed wads of cotton known as…. What? you mean, it’s supposed to…. from THERE? … and you let me drivel on about it being hemmoroids… damn I owe Susan an apology… No I doubt she’d accept… Yes I did use industrial grit sandpaper… No actually I lost a pipe cleaner in there… on err… where was I? Oh yes. Anyway, Exploding hemmoroids do not pick on any individual gender, and they are equally painful to both. What needs to be analyzed is what really explodes. Well, it’s a number of things; some people call exploding hemmoroids Anal aneurysms, but an aneurysm only occurs in the brain. That being said, I know people with their head far enough up their ass for this to be true, so I accept it, because it just so happens to coincide with the group of people who want to call them anal aneurysms. The explosion is caused by a build-up of blood vessels; varicose veins. they get bigger and bigger, until one day your pooping and suddenly your feeling faint, and you look and you find your gushing blood everywhere, and you have no idea what to do, since I mean, if you pull your pants up you’ll ruin them, so you kind of stumble to the drawer, gushing out bloody mary’s everywhere, you finally discover your girlfriends tampons, and well- you improvise. Anyway, long story short, you go to the doctor and are diagnosed with exploding hemmoroids. the doctor also suggests that you might want to refrain from shoving tampons up your butt, given your condition, which is, needless to say, an unpleasant one.

Dancing Accidents: these are a little bit harder to understand. I mean, sure, sometimes we’ve had a few too many and try to do the worm or something retarded like that, but the worst case scenario is pretty much that your the laughing stock at work for a month or so, or at least until you manage to photoshop all of your co-workers having a giant orgy, and then blackmail them with it to make them shut-up, and they are oddly complacent considering the evidence was fabricated, which raises a few questions. Anyway, Dancing accidents are accidental in nature, and generally involve dancing that turns tragic (accidentally, of course) through accidental accidents that occur accidentally. There are several documented ways where dancing becomes fatal.

The waltz of death: The waltz is relatively simple, however, do NOT, I repeat, do NOT purposely strangle your partner while dancing. this is NOT part of the dance manuever. Also do be careful not to get your legs tangled or you may become immobile and starve to death, even though your only one table down from the wedding cake, which is odd because your at a bar-mitzvah, which is even stranger because your not jewish.

The Tango of Terror: This involves doing the tango on higher floors of high-rises while workmen are installing new windows. you see, the tango is very strict about dancing manuevers; you must move a certain number of paces. you cannot move less, even if there is a 50 story drop. So, do NOT start dancing the tango under these conditions! by the time you realize your fate, you’ll realize that there is no stylish way to break the dance manoeuvre, and be forced to (stylishly, I might add) fall 50 or so stories to your death.

The Last Disco: Much in the fashion of the last supper painting, the Last Disco… well actually, it has nothing to do with the last supper, aside from the word last. In this particular case, the various disco moves poke the eyes out of a burly biker, who, long story short, get’s a new soup bowl shaped like your skull. The moral? Don’t piss of burly bikers. Or perhaps the lesson is simply to not disco. I suppose either point is equally valid.

Another cause of death is Getting entangled in rhubarb and starving to death. Especially ironic given one could in a worst case scenario eat the rhubarb and both free themselves and enjoy a tasty snack. It is assumed therefore that those who succumbed to this fate don’t like rhubarb enough to die rather then eat it. It’s also a fact that these people get covered in dirt while they struggle against the entwining rhubarb plant, as the rhubarb drips it’s digestive juices. in half of these cases, a giant slug eats both the rhubarb and the victim- only 10% are released from the rhubarb by a giant snail, who in 45% of said cases says something about french cuisine and puts on a beret and 50% of the time complains about his exploding hemmoroids (the other 5% is undecided according to recent gallup polls), while an additional 10% are saved from the rhubarb by spiderman, who in 60% of said cases utters “I really need to find a new hobby”.

Oh, and the last little bit? (what is it? 5%?) sure, it says “unknown” but the enlightened know that this is simply because nobody knows what it is, not because it’s not something that is known, but rather because knowing what it is is not something that anybody does. In either case, however many convoluted steps are taken in the explanation, what it really is, is death from giant earthworm. As with the threat of exploding hemmoroids, the giant earthworm is rarely heard about in the media, why? because if you see a giant earthworm, your already dead. Although I suppose that is an exaggeration, Since, if you see a giant earthworm, you couldn’t possibly be dead since you can see (blindness is a leading symptom of death), I think, what the expression means, is that, OK, your alive, but not for long.

The giant Earthworm feasts on nachos, dried tomatoes, lettuce, dead pidgeons, tofu, and of course, people. (as a saving grace the giant earthworm refuses to eat a person succumbing from exploding hemmoroids, but of course people with said condition have far worse things to worry about). When ingesting people, the earthworm first suffocates the victim by covering it with it’s gross slimey stuff, which tastes like bacon. (this often attracts fat people who serve as future meals). Once dead, The earthworm takes a minute or two to remember which side of it has it’s anus and which side has it’s mouth. Giant Earthworms who mistake the two often end up with hemmoroids if their victim is mexican. Once it does so, it feasts on the victim using it’s balleen and super powerful sucking ability, it smushes the victim into a fine paste which spreads nicely on toast. The giant earthworm travels around underground, dragging a carpetbag filled with fat people it attracted with it’s bacon slime during previous meals. The Earthworm will often use the carpetbag to beat gophers, an act known as “carpetbagging”. Once digested, it leaves castings on the surface that can often weight more then a full grown indian elephant, and smells at least as bad as the Ganges river on a bad day. These castings are often mistaken for motorbikes, but upon closer inspection, it is revealed that they are in fact giant pieces of worm crap. (although they aren’t a far cry from some of the lesser motorcycle brands). Some people have said that they in fact look like giant preparation H cannisters, but this theory is usually proven to be a delusion since these people are later discovered to have exploding hemmoroids.

Giant Earthworms make friends with the smaller, more common earthworm, but also screws their wives behind their back, when the giant earthworm finds out which side is it’s back, that is. It also borrows their stuff and never returns it, or claims it was theirs, and leaves beer cans all over the place, which is weird because the giant earthworm doesn’t drink beer. The giant earthworm, when angered, will often call these lesser worms “dirt-eaters”.

For reproduction, the Giant Earthworm has three genders: Male, Female, And Rubben Studdard. The Male and Female “get busy” (again, once they figure out which side is which). Rubben sings gospel about creation, interrupted intermittently by bouts of vomiting. The giant Earthworm’s male gender attracts the female gender by spreading it’s bacon goo in exact portions. The closer to one cup the male can get, the more likely the female will become his mate. This has led to an evolutionary scale whereby later generations have better portioning skills, what particular purpose this skill has when your face and your but are so dissimilar even you confuse them is a question that has plagued scientists for generations.

Even though the Giant Earthworm is unstoppable, you can stop it. Ok, so it isn’t unstoppable, I was saying that for effect, I mean, I could have said “the giant earthworm is not unstoppable” but I mean, come on, does that sound scary? Hell no. I mean, dammit, recognize poetic license when you see it, you pedantic douchebags. Where was I? Oh yes- you CAN stop a giant earthworm. Things you need include two squirrels, an acorn, a dead pidgeon (bait), a screenshot from the boss room of the first dungeon in the original zelda’s second quest, and a box of matches.

What you do, is you place the acorn between the two squirrels, as they fight over the nut, a giant earthworm will appear (a giant earthworm cannot help but watch a good squarrel.. I mean, quarrel). At this time you need to wrap the dead pidgeon with the screenshot paper and light it on fire with the matchstick, and throw it at the earthworm. This will scare the earthworm away. problem solved!

or, have some cheese. cheese can solve almost anything. I mean, it could have prevented world war 2! really, I mean, germany was all feeling down because of that silly guilt clause, and had to pay reparations… but seriously… a few loafs of pumpernickel and some Butterkase would have done just fine! I mean, just send a few pallets of the stuff to the allied leaders and everything would be just fine.

Or, Has anybody wondered why the economy thrives on war efforts? huh? it’s not the making of bombs or ammo as everybody thinks, but rather the creation of fine cheeses for rations. Why, If I recall, D-day had to be pushed back a few days, since they couldn’t produce the needed amount of feta for the greek salad rations. There were some brave souls willing to go without the feta, but they were quickly hospitalized. (I mean, really, a greek salad without feta? That would be like a greek army leaving behind a wooden animal that wasn’t filled with soldiers, another point I’d like to take on in a moment).

I might also point out that lack of cheese was in fact what led to napoleon’s downfall at waterloo. you see, the french… they really like their butter. And back then, there was no margarine… wouldn’t be until ol’ Napoleon III’s time for that to happen. So, they ended up using all the milk they could get to create butter. They were literally running on the dog milk reserves by the end of each night. The cows up and quit, and as much as they loved butter they couldn’t stand the thought of yaks milk, since those things never shut up. By this time napoleon was pretty full of himself; convinced he could win.

So he made the fateful decision.

HE sent his troops into battle with nacho rations. and no cheese. This was a mistake that would mar his otherwise flawless campaign. Other theories about the battle, such as the fact that Napoleon really just wanted to climb the elm tree the duke of wellington was using as a command post, are easily dismissed; Napoleon was a short man and there was no way in hell he was going to be able to reach the branches to climb the tree; and there was no mention of napoleon having a stepladder, aside from the one he used to get the rice krispies off the top shelf, because josephine was a total prat and insisted on doing stuff like that, including that other time when she pretended to be pregnant, pretended to have a miscarriage, and then used a 3″ tall doll as proof.

He wrote in his memoirs a lot of stuff. Nothing about cheese. His autobiography, however, is a bit low on the fact scale. For example, he describes himself as a “tall, handsome man” when in fact he was a “short ugly git”. What nobody mentions is that Napoleon got all his miltary skills from playing Risk over and over, he figured that since he won every game, he can probably do it in real life, so he packed up his dice and started a campaign across italy.

Then, disaster struck. The airport mixed up his bags with that of a local Risk hussler, whose dice were weighted to always give snake eyes, or two ones. (the hussler would get his opponent(s) to use these dice, not himself, obviously). This caused quite a disastrous campaign as Napoleon set across italy to defeat all the famous Italian Risk players; Since he lost every single battle in every single game (except for the times he managed to get at least three infantry on one country, and attacked, then I suppose he’d have a chance with one dice, but even the best case scenario was him losing two infantry and his opponent losing one, which doesn’t exactly serve as a long term solution.

Thankfully for him, he was able to poison each of his opponents drinks, so they would all have terrible nipple itching. As they excused themselves (you couldn’t itch your nipples in public in those days) he would add vast swathes of armies to the board. allowing him to win the game. In an awkward twist of fate this was in fact how he met Marie Louisa, his second wife; he completely forgot about the effects of his concoction and believed her to be making passes at him.

Anyway, he met his final blow, which knocked him out of the tournament, from the Duke of Wellington, who, after eating a few pieces of his bread-wrapped beef (which we call ” beef wellington” today) he accidentally spilled some of his drink into napoleon’s white wine with perrier. This would spell disaster and at least a bit of remorse on the part of napoleon, who was completely unaware of just how unpleasant the condition can be. He lost the battle, but he won the war, so to speak. Wellington’s sister, (who’s nickname was “willingto’n” for obvious reasons that napoleon would discover first-hand) saw what appeared to be self-fondling. Anyway, one thing led to another, and they ended up starting their own marshmallow factory. Her brother was disappointed, as he had it all planned out that they would start a puffed sugar mass factory, not a marshmallow factory. He declared war on Napoleon, which, being the emperor of france, Napoleon took quite personally.

Thus mildly angered, he stormed out of the room like a 5-year old, only to return when he realized he forgot his risk board on the table. It took an entire 15 minutes for him to pack it up, since he kept throwing the little cannon things into the containers last, and when you do that, you know all sorts of the infantry are going to come flying out, so he had to look for them on the carpet, but he couldn’t find them, so he ended up having to take off his shoes and socks and walk across the carpet, (since, everybody knows you can only find pointy sharp things on the floor when your not wearing any socks or shoes). Unfortunately, to his great surprise he found this illegal and was taken into custody.

When he was finally released, he held a good amount of anger for the duke of wellington, and an equal amount for his sister, who he discovered was more then willingto’ imbezzle funds from the marshmallow factory. He went home, where he was reunited with his original baggage that he had left in his car, which had at least 35 tickets, so he then had to go to the
LFPPC, (Le Français ne peut pas conduire) to figure out what to do with his tickets. he was all “I’m the emperor, dammit” and the receptionist was all “And I’m santa claus” and he was all, “but santa clause is fat, and he’s a man- your a woman” which pretty much got him thrown out. so he put on a fake mustache and toupe, which covered his eyes. he then made romantic passes at what he believed to be the receptionist, only to remove his toupe to discover it was actually a nearby copy of McLarens, and a roomful of somewhat disgusted visitors staring at him. This was also where he learned the power of the nacho, as a nearby new-worlder asked him “eh, holmes, want a nacho?”to which, Napoleon eloquently replied:

“nous sommes en France ainsi pourquoi est tout le monde l’anglais parlant?”

Anyway, long story short, ol Napoleon had a bad day, and decided to get even. so he decided, what the hay! If I can’t win the Risk tournament, I’ll increase the stakes.

And the rest is history.

According to Al-jazeira, Bill gates uses utorrent:

Nope- Bill was killed and replaced by the YFAIFAS,(Young Felines Attempting to Imitate Fat Opera Singers)

You see, the association wants to fatten themselves- so they need food, and thus they need money. So they brainwash bill gates by having hundreds upon hundred of cute kittens crawl in his bedroom window, and create the windows logo on his floor. Bill, so touched by this strange behaviour from what he believes to be feral cats, then calls Animal control and tells them to step on it. The Cats, realizing their plan is not going as they planned, Ripped him to shreds, placing his body in the closet (where else?). The cats, realizing Animal control was on the way, quickly performed the old army ant Bivouac manuever and put on a suite and some glasses.

When animal control got there.

“Alright Mr. Gates, we brought the grenade launcher, where are the cats.”

the cats quickly realized that they had no vocal cords and could not speak, and they couldn’t meow the answer because it would seem unprofessional. So the cat forming the face did the only thing he could do. He coughed up a hairball.

Anyway to cut a long story short they had to lock the animal control officer in the closet and throw away the key. Which is amazing considering their lack of opposable thumbs; or digits, for that matter. The cats, whose association grew with the addition of two neighborhood kittens, Opal and Glit-Glit, continued their onward march.

Unfortunately, it was the middle of the night and they looked like bill gates, so it wasn’t long before the cats noticed a group of muggers (they hunt in packs) following them. The cat’s quickened their pace but it was to no avail. the muggers caught up, and it was revealed that the muggers were in fact also Cats, from the OCAWYCAFALWCFOD (Old Cats Against Whatever the Young Cats Are For and Also Like Wet Cat Food as Opposed to Dry).

the old cats outnumbered the young cats three to one, but the young cats had a secret weapon. Quickly, they tossed out a yarn ball at the older cats.

Imagine the young cats horror when not only were the less playful older cats unphased by this, but half the young cats bolted out of the “costume” after the ball.

Their numbers thus dwindled, the young felines had no choice but to surrender. But before they could, spidercat came from the shadows, and along with batcat, spat out hairballs and left. the Old cats, confused and forgetting what was going on, began meowing about the state of their eyesight and what they did as kittens. Taking advantage of thier confusion, the young cats bolted, leaving behind the empty shell of a bill gates costume. The old cats, half of which had recovered from their confusion, followed then at a lazy pace. Only to be met with their arch-rivals, the LPBWUB(Lizards painted to blend in With Unconventional Backgrounds) The cats, now thoroughly confused (as any readers will be) ran back the other way, and found their only disguise- the Bill gates shell discarded by those darned young felines, who by now had regrouped….

Anyway- it’s a bit round-about, but eventually they state the quote provided by Al-jazeira, in their first moves at controlling the grain.

The scourge of the internet, really. Personally, I call them script kiddies. Essentially; they use other peoples scripts to “DoS” a website. A number of fine specimens can easily be found on youtube. For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVfEoBPV4Nc. What makes this particular example even funnier is that they don’t even understand what is happening, AND they don’t understand why they are so stupid to even try.

Basically, there are two levels of “hacker” now, 99.9% of them are really just script kiddies, who can hardly even understand Batch files, let alone perl. They copy and use scripts (such as the posted youtube video’s kiddie) created by the 0.1%. What makes it all the more interesting is the 0.1% people often are unaware of their code being used this way.

In either case, a DoS attack is so simplistic to the very core that any cheap 20$ router at the local wal-mart can block it; and any sufficiently equipped server can deal with the extra load from a single PC quite easily.

In this particular example, the first web-site mr.kiddie tried was obviously set to reject constant HTTP get requests. I mean- it’s not too hard to mechanically filter out GET requests that come within, say, a second of each other for the same page, and even the most basic server software implements this.

What happened to the second, less developed (apparently) site simply doesn’t have basic safeguards in place, perhaps because they live in a optimistic world where teenagers go out and get jobs instead of sitting on their asses all afternoon trying to take credit for copy-pasting code from other sources in programming languages they only pretend to know in order to take down some site that nobody will miss for the 10 seconds they manage to bring it down, and then they get called to dinner, where their veteran father yells at them for being so god damned lazy and for not mowing the lawn, to which the “experienced hacker” responds, “you’ll be sorry, I’m gonna start the next M$, and you will be begging for dollaz from me pops” and then he get’s grounded.

The “hacker”… or more precisely, the “script kiddie” culture is really quite simple, much like the social structure of one-celled organisms. You have the fat hairy parameciums, and then you have everybody else. their interactions with one another generally involve using made up english words, like “pwned”, and of course replacing as many of the letter s with z’s in a desperate attempt to look cool. Additionally, conversations often just involve them making stuff up.

“Hey, dawg, I just haxxored Oracle, d00d”

“Oh yeah, well I’ve been buyin stuff off ebay for free using my l33t skills”

ad infinitum. Even early on it’s absurd; I mean, my grandmother could hack an Oracle server with two toothpicks and a ceramic bowl, it’s really that easy, Hell, my second cousins guinea pig was able to drop a few tables from one of their badly administered database servers, but that’s not the point.

You know what? I’ve spent a good 5 years trying to shrug this shit off but I’ve grown sick and tired of putting up with arrogant, know it all little shits whose knowledge could be summarized on the head of a pin. I’m SICK of hearing about how “talented” little Billy is, and then looking at the code only to mistakenly believe little billy designed his code to emulate that mysterious sack of mould in the back of my fridge. Why do I hate this so much? Do I need a really good reason to hate it? really? because honestly I think the problem damn near hates itself, in a manner of speaking.

To make things worse, not only is little Billy a arrogant little prick, but his own ego is fed by his own family members, “Oh, little billy is a genius! He found the file menu in Word, He’s gonna be the next bill gates!” No, Uncle Tom, Billy Didn’t find the fucking file menu, your just too retarded to see whats right in front of you. Do I get points for pointing out a lawn chair for you to sit in when your sitting in it? No, I don’t, and I really don’t think billy should be proud of himself for pointing out the obvious, instead he should feel pity for somebody so stupid they cannot understand a basic UI and then evangelize the person who comes to point out the obvious.

The problem with the entire thing is, either they “have it” or they don’t, and the longer they fester, with no real skills, seated on their high pedestal because they mistakenly believe that employers will come to them after they barely graduate from high school, because of that awesome space shooter program they made in Visual Basic 2.0 and released on a shoddy geocities web site. Is the  longer they don’t gain any skills whatsoever, and the higher the chances that they will be struck down, working as a custodian in their local elementary school. Having been forced to realize that they aren’t bloody geniuses, that copy-pasting other peoples code is plagiarism, not “leet skills” and that they really, really, really, have a lot more respect for their old schools custodian.

Another issue- and this applies globally to programmers,software developers and those that want to pretend they are one of those two, is that they mistakenly believe they have reached a “plateau of greatness” or skill; No programmer, no matter how much experience, cannot learn something new; and it’s far too common that you have people, fresh out of college, or high school, or whatever, that think that because they read the programmers guide included with Visual basic 2.0 that they can crank out AJAX applications; this simply is not the case. It’s not a plateau- it’s a group of infinitely rising mesas, and joy of programming comes from climbing those mesas, every once in a while looking back, and realizing just how far you’ve come; just remember to do one thing before you start feeling satisfied; look up, and realize just how far you have to go.

Over the years, many different games have been published. many different genres explored. People think games have gotten worse over the years, but really, that is simply not true. Parents are simply paying attention now, whereas before they kind of used the Nintendo as a baby-sitting tool (“dammit kids, go play your tendo, or whatever the flip you call that thing”…. “dad, that’s a VCR…”) now they are actually paying attention to what their kids play, the “violence” and “nudity” they expose them too. I of course put those in quotes because seeing red particles come out of a polygon hardly consists of violence to me. And I mean, really, they might have improved the whole modelling concept, but I’m afraid that my experience has taught me hard lessons that game characters often lack any sort of anatomical correctness. In the case of kirby I imagine this is really for the better, last thing we need is more confusion over what the hell he is. As he… it, whatever stands now, he’s a giant pink testicle that happens to be able to swallow and eat other enemies and absorb their powers. Sorry, did I say testicle? yeah, I meant balloon. Anyway, imagine him anatomically correct. little pink member flappin around as he flies through the air. he does littles spins with his hammer weapon and his little doodle slaps the enemy in the face… hmm, maybe it’s better the way it is.

Anyway, as I was saying, the worst offender for me has been The Zelda Series, breaking RULE after RULE. I mean, not even ten seconds into the game, and your encountered with this screen:

There are FAR too many rules being broken here. I mean, first, you don’t just barge into some old guys cave. you knock, I mean, for badger’s sake, what if he was naked or something. Secondly, you NEVER accept wood from some old guy. It never turns out well. And Lastly, WTF are the flames here? are we encouraging children to light balls of fire in their bedrooms? NO, this is NOT SUITABLE for children. they are far too damn impressionable, they might start walking around talking to people in badly translated two line broken english, like “give me the tomato for the old man” or “sign permission slip for go on field trip” or something stupid like that. NO! not right at ALL.

And then we have the old man on the mountaintop. I was too lazy to go that far into the game, but basically he gives you a little parchment and says “give this to the old woman”. There is no statement of what is ON the paper, and most people might assume it’s a recipe or some shit. But no, I’m almost certain it’s a picture of somebody nekkid. it always is. Sure, there are little lines on the side of the parchment implying text, but those are just stink lines from the actual subject. And His vague suggestion “the old woman” Like, for the love of scented candles woman, there are like 10 or 20 old men living in caves in this god forsaken shit-hole of hyrule, which cat-snuffing old man do you want me to give it too? Oh, wait, let me guess you old liver-spot ridden old dustbag, it’s the one wearing red. well they all wear red, god damn it.

And then you go into a cave and the bastards are all, “I’ll take 10 rupees for the door repair” and it’s like, WTF, that wasn’t a door, it was a god damn cliff wall, you smelly old weirdo, I’m LOOKING FOR TREASURE. If you don’t have treasure, just tell me you don’t. What the assweasel do you want 10 rupees for, I mean, for the love of all marsupials, you poke the god damn roof and the rocks tumble back down, there, and your door is repaired, you miserly old coot.

And those damn moblins in the caves, all “It’s a secret to everybody”, stop telling me to shush and get the hell outside and start shooting arrows out your belly like the rest of your kind, you lazy bastard. Get a god damn job. Bloody moblins, always “oh, it’s a secret, here, have some rupees” Like, god dammit moblin, I know these rupees are either from drug money or from your pimping, But I’ll be damned if I’m going to refuse rupees.

And then we have the graveyard. here, you touch a gravestone, and a ghost appears. How many young, impressionable children do you think saw this and went to a graveyard and tried to summon ghosts? A bloody lot of the little buggers, that’s how many, And you can be damn sure at least 14 of the little pukes became zombies, It’s mathematically proven via a number of statistical models that kids+graveyard =… well, actually, nobody really knows what it equals, but it sure as hell cannot equal chocolate cake, if that’s what your thinking.

If your thinking that only the first zelda is an offender, well, you’d be wrong.

What do you see wrong with this picture? Looks innocent enough. BUT! It’s important to realize that people, and fire dragons, lock their god damn doors for a reason. What if you were to catch them nekkid or something? huh? I mean, for god’s sake, don’t bosses get a little god damn privacy? anybody ever think, “shit, you know, maybe these bosses really just want to be left alone” they evidently don’t WANT to fight you, or there would be a huge sign and the door wouldn’t be locked and the key hidden in an ornate treasure chest halfway across the dungeon.

And half the time, the boss doesn’t even really do anything to provoke you- you just, for example, start smashing them in the head with a bloody sledgehammer. does THIS give a good impression to kids? Smash things with a sledgehammer first, ask questions later. NO! they are too impressionable!

As you can see above- the dragon may LOOK fearsome, but you can see that look in his eye- you know, the one that says, “where the flip are my god damn SMOKES! who took my smokes! I don’t need a freakin lighter, my hair is made of fire for Possum’s sake, but if I don’t get my smokes I’m gonna get really tempermental” you really think smashing it’s face with a sledgehammer will make it feel any better? I mean, he just quit cold turkey, have you ANY idea what that’s like? just look at the poor guy. He has the look of somebody who just quit smoking, finished there coffee, and now REALLY wants a cigarette, but can’t have one. a look of pure helplessness. and we are just supposed to smash the c-button and smush his face with a hammer? No, actually we’re supposed to do that then cut up his face with a sword, too.

Lately, I’ve heard a lot of talk about “Registry Boosters” and “PC speeder upper’s” and fix-it programs. They make big claims, and it seems that a lot of their customers refuse to accept that they paid for something that was either a scam or completely useless.

I have decided to put some of these programs to the test. The idea is simple; under various conditions, run the program “scan”- probably watching the program with process monitor. Then ensure everything works properly.

The test I have decided on so far will use a VMWare Workstation Guest OS, namely, XP Pro.

For each program I wish to test, I will start with a CLEAN install of the XP SP3 OS.

First, I will run the program right away- right after the clean install. Then, after another clean install (I will probably make a clean install Image) I install a number of common applications; MS Office XP, Visual Studio, and a few freeware programs such as IMGBurn. Then I will run the “booster” again. Making sure to test each program afterwards.

Each run will be monitored with Process Monitor; I’ve found that some of these “Scam” programs hardly access the registry at all, and simply make a claims of bad entries. Obviously, these are complete scams. There are also programs that do very little but are purported to make the PC much faster, a claim that I aim to disprove based on the fact that it simply doesn’t make sense. IF it does make the PC faster it is not in the order reported and likely has a few trade-offs that either aren’t reported or simply aren’t known.

I am uncertain what programs I will test with this method; suggestions are welcome. It won’t be hard to develop a list, however, through a quick web search. Also, I aim to put the copy of System Mechanic andFix-it Utilities I have to work, too. See just how “comprehensive” these utilities really are.

When first encountering a x64 based system running windows, one of the first questions posed is often, “what is C:\program files (x86)?” The simple response is that it is the equivalent of Program files on 32-bit systems; that is, 32-bit program files are installed there. This is true; but this is far from the only difference between the two systems and their file systems.

There is, however, further redirection within both other folders as well as The registry.

For example, the “real” %systemroot%\system32 folder actually stores the x64 system files; the 32-bit files are stored in %systemroot%\syswow64. However, when a 32-bit application access this system32, Windows automatically redirects all requests to the syswow64 folder, so accessing, say, “C:\windows\system32\file.txt” is actually accessing C:\windows\syswow64\file.txt. This includes any file operation at all. creation, editing, etc. there are a few folders exempt from this redirection- that is, they are not redirected. these folders include %windir%\system32\catroot,windir%\system32\catroot2,%windir%\system32\driversstore (this folder is redirected on all pre-windows 7 systems),%windir%\system32\drivers\etc,%windir%\system32\logfiles,%windir%\system32\spool. There are a few other features, for example, running “C:\windows\regedit.exe” from a 32-bit program will in fact run the program from C:\windows\syswow64\regedit.exe.

An additional feature is that a 32-bit program can access the 64-bit folder, Vista adds a “sysnative” alias folder in the windows folder, by accessing C:\windows\sysnative instead of C:\windows\system32, one gains access to the real C:\windows\system32 folder rather then being redirected to C:\windows\syswow64. The caveat of this feature is that most programs have validations before they accept a filename; since sysnative is not an actual folder but rather an alias used by the redirector, many validations (including the standard Open/Save dialog) can fail, meaning that one cannot “force” the access to a specific file. the main purpose is for use by the application for various reasons, not so users can access files within the folder from 32-bit applications.

The registry posesses redirection as well; the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE hive on x64 systems contains a key called “Wow6432node”, when a 32-bit program accesses, for example, “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\company\app”, they are in fact accessing “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Wow6432node\company\app”- basically, it separates 32-bit machine-specific data from 64-bit data. The only caveat is that, unlike the file system redirections, registry accesses are “mirrored” across the two; for example, COM classes are stored in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\classes. when either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\software\classes or HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\wow6432node\classes are have keys within changed, the change is reflected to the other location.

Additionally, certain 32-bit compiled applications can be given special treatment; if the image file (exe,dll, ocx) has the IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE flag set, wow64 (the windows 32 on windows 64 emulation layer) gives it a 4GB user-mode address space, whereas with a 32-bit system it would be given a 2GB user mode address space. the flag is required, rather then being the default behaviour, because such large addresses may not have been expected when the program was written; therefore, by adding the compiler flag, you are telling windows “yes, I understand and am able to deal with the larger address space in my program”. It doesn’t actually do anything to the program itself, just changes how windows deals it memory.

another special-case is with regard to program installers for some older 32-bit programs. Many such programs used a stub 16-bit windows 3.1 program to determine the windows version, and then, launch the 32-bit installer if possible. Since 64-bit windows cannot run 16-bit applications, Microsoft decided to hack about a little fix; the followint 16-bit installer technologies have 64-bit equivalents that will be launched instead:

Microsoft Setup for Windows 1.2

Microsoft Setup for Windows 2.6

Microsoft Setup for Windows 3.0

Microsoft Setup for Windows 3.01

InstallShield 5.x

the list of such redirections can be found in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\NtVdm64, the 64-bit equivalents are found in Syswow64.

For the most part, these changes make using a 64-bit operating system nearly indistiguishable from using it’s 32-bit equivalent; windows itself bears the brunt of the change, and the application developers pick up a little of the tail-end of it.

In my previous entry, I discussed and provided code that would allow for the detection of Triple-Clicks on a window. By extending the provided architecture, it is relatively trivial to allow any number of consecutive clicks; for example, detecting pentuple clicks.

More »

Visual Basic 6; and, well- nearly any other relatively modern language; provides a way to detect mouse events. These usually include mouse down, mouse up, mouseclicks, and double clicks. Absent are any higher “N-clicks”; I speak, for the most part, of the triple click. More »

I have been using Visual Basic 6 for many years; I have come to the point where using it is effortless; nearly any problem I have I can design and program with Visual Basic 6.

However. Visual Basic six is over 10 years old. Mainstream support ended a few years ago, and after Vista Microsoft makes no promises that programs designed with Visual Basic 6 will work. Even creating programs that support the various UI features of XP could be a chore. With Vista, Not only does one need to include the proper manifest resource or file  to force their VB6 applications to link with the newer version of comctl32, but it is almost always necessary to include an additional set of directives in the manifest to make the program request administrator permissions. I have yet to determine why some of my less trivial programs crash before they even start when run with the same security as the user, but I imagine it’s directly related to COM components, their usage, and the permissions surrounding them.

Another area of concern is with the use of proper icons; Visual Basic complains when you try to use a icon with a alpha channel. However, through a few API techniques and some resource editor trickery, it’s possible to have your application use 32-bit icons both as the program file icon as well as the icon for your forms. Rather then repeat the material here, I will point you in the right direction if this type of this piques your interest. www.vbaccelerator.com- I cannot praise that site and it’s creator enough. While many of the projects and controls he has on-line I have personally attempted before finding the site (I had a somewhat working toolbar control and a control I called “menuctl” that allowed moving the main menu around as a toolbar), the sheer number of completed, documented, and well written controls on his site is simply mind-blowing. There is also a .NET section to his site as well, which brings me to my next point.

There are only a few reasons why a programmer would choose to use Visual Basic 6 for a new project today. The main reason is simply because we are stubborn, for the most part. The fact that .NET is better in many ways then VB6 does not sway us to use it. The fact is, we all feel “betrayed” in a way, but the shift to .NET. Millions of lines of code that were dutifully compatible through all 6 versions of Visual Basic 6 now break when loaded in VB.NET. But I believe, that the majority of VB6 programmers have simply been blinded to the number of problems Microsoft would have faced to continue using the same COM oriented framework that VB4 and higher have used.

COM,or, Component Object Model,(sometimes referred to as “Common Object Model” which is dead-wrong) is a Binary compatible method of providing interoperability between applications. COM was essentially designed to prevent what was known as “DLL hell”, since at that point in time DLLs provided their functionality through exposed functions, some versions not compatible with previous versions, meaning it might be necessary to, for example, have 5 different versions of MFC41.dll on ones PC. The idea was, each version of a COM component would be Binary compatible with the previous version, which means, for example, that a program designed for version 1 of “foocomponent” could still run and use version 4, but without the new features of version 4. This functionality was implemented by the creation of Interfaces. Each version of a component would add a new interface- for example, IFooComponent, IFooComponent2,IFooComponent3, etc, and client applications who want to use FooComponent would use the interface appropriate to the version they wish to use.

There was, however, one problem. Most of the maintenance between versions was left to the programmer of the component- they had to create the new interface, make sure previous interfaces worked, that old clients could still instantiate their objects, etc. Basically, it made the critical mistake of putting the user of the technology (in this case, the programmer) in a critical position and with a number of responsibilities to get things to work properly.

Microsoft, of all companies, should know that putting the programmer in a position of such responsibility is prone to failure; hell, many of them can’t even be bothered to follow standard API documentation; for example, actually reading the documentation; this resulted in hundreds of man-hours of programmer time being consumed by the creation of “compatibility shims” to let these programs work. (otherwise, installing a new windows OS would break these programs; they worked before, so as far as the user sees the new Operating System is to blame). Anyway- this failed miserably. Programmers would sometimes simply change their interfaces rather then implement new and old ones, meaning, like with the DLLs of before, new DLL versions were incompatible with the old ones.

It was clear that COM, or, at least, COM as it was presently designed, was far to dependent on the programmer to “do the right thing” then was reasonable. So, Microsoft, at some point, decided they needed a new object framework architecture.

VB6, as a COM-based language, would have required extensive changes to support this new architecture. the prospect of such a huge revision probably made them take a second glance at the language itself, and the cruft it still has from previous iterations of the basic language. aside from retaining such archaic constructs as the “GoSub…Return”, VB6 also “failed” in a sense on a number of other areas. Error-Handling, for example, was still done using “On Error” statements, which redirected flow to another segment of code. It was up to that block of code to evaluated the error, using the “Err” object (In VB1-3 there was only Err which was the error number and Error$, which was the description), and then either resuming that same statement that caused the error (Resume) skipping that line, and continuing with the next, (Resume Next) or even raising the error again, causing the error to cascade up through the call stack.

This Error architecture had a critical flaw- by using this form of error handling, flow could change to the error block for any reason, at any time. This meant that if the procedure dealt with resources, such as file handles or memory blocks, it would have to keep track of what needs to be undone so that the error code could also double as partial cleanup code. Another critical flaw was simply that it was ugly; it looked and functioned nothing like the Try…Catch statements in many other languages. Also, it could become impossible to trace exactly where an error occured when errors cascaded; and error handler might be forced to handle an error from three levels down in the call-stack, so even if it understood the error in the context of the procedure, the context that the original error occured in and exactly what it means was lost.

My main language is Visual Basic 6, but I am not so blind as to reject VB.NET, or .NET as a whole, merely because it essentially replaced VB6. The truth is- we, as VB programmers, have made a large number of requests to the VB developers. VB .NET answered and fixed a huge number of those requests, and yet it is still shunned; it is clear to me that it is not merely the loss of backwards compatibility that causes such antagonism with VB6 programmers, but also the human element of resistance to change.

With previous versions of Visual Basic, one could migrate all their code to the new version with little or no difficulty.

This, however, had a price- since the new version made few, if any, requirements for conversion, old antique code would often be upgraded and imported into the new environment. Since backwards compatibility was the rule, old elements such as line numbers gotos, and gosubs remained in the language. Antiquated concepts such as type declaration characters remained in the language. Such visages of a forgotten era had no place in a modern language.

All the above being said, VB6 is still a language capable of creating modern applications; however it is important for the programmers who still use it to realize that they aren’t using it because it is superior or because .NET or any other language “sucks” by comparison, but rather as a result of their own stubborness and unwillingness to learn new programming concepts.

A anecdote, if I may, can be found in my introduction to the use of “class modules” within Visual Basic. at first, I had no idea what they were- I simply shied away from them, and stuck to Forms and code modules. I used all sorts of excuses- Class modules are slower, they bloat the code, etc. All of which were, almost universally fabricated or found on the web written by grade 8 students who barely understood the meaning of the word “class” in the context of programming or objects.

After, however, creating ActiveX Controls using the “userControl” Object, I realized the similarities, and the possibilities that could arise. My first conversion attempt was on my Current “flagship” program, the game I called “Poing”. At that time, the entire game was designed using User defined types as functions that operated on them. I understood the concept of encapsulation and managed to convert the entire architecture to a Class based object heirarchy- and it worked. My concepts still contained flaws, such as including critical game logic in down-level objects, but for the most part my udnerstanding was sound.

As my understanding of the concepts involved improved, so too did my antagonism disappear. It was clear to me that the fact that I didn’t understand classes at the time lent itself to a distaste for them- basically, the old adage that one is “afraid” of what one doesn’t understand was at least partly true. This, I feel, is at the very core of the antagonism against .NET. the main detractors of the framework are often people that neither understand the concepts involved nor do they realize how said concepts add increased possiblities and easier maintenance.

Even so- .NET has, in my opinion, one critical flaw. the IDE is slow. even on my quad core machine I see huge delays as intellisense is populated or any number of other operations. Perhaps it is a result of a mere 7200RPM hard drive? I don’t know. perhaps I need more then my current 8GB of RAM? who knows. I think, that using a 10 year old program and expecting and recieving quick responses from it have perhaps jaded me in terms of what the extra features of the new IDE actually cost in terms of performance; the delays feel like minutes, but in general it is only a few seconds. On the other hand- a few seconds is a lot longer then necessary to make one lose their train of thought. At the same time, this same argument was used against the initial usage of Intellisense; and there is no denying that although the initial display of a number of said intellisense lists can take some time, subsequent usage is nearly instantaneous, and the lists provide far more in terms of function information then the VB6 OR C++ 6 IDE could provide; this, in addition to the ease of use of assemblies between multiple .NET languages is not something that should be passed up because of an ego-centric desire to prevent change. The IT industry changes constantly. The fact that VB6 is now a “past item” should not dissuade us from moving forward because of a snobbish desire or fictitious affection for the corridor of our programming efforts for many years; the complaints about VB6 when it was introduced were very vocal. This is, no different with VB.NET, however the very complaints made about VB6 that have been remedied with .NET are now being passed off as inconsequential (since in many cases programmers have devised ways of working around limitations or even forcing behaviour that VB6 was not designed for, such as, for example the creation of Command-line programs.

The mistake Microsoft made was not the creation of .NET, but rather the belief that any sane person would move to a new platform if it was superior. They forgot the take account of the psychological factors involved.