ITwhirled

Luddite geeks, smiling babies, and Canadian perverts

Some things to be thankful for this week: 1) Don't feel bad about not running out to buy an iPhone 3G or any other shiny new gadget for that matter, Richard Stallman and Donald Knuth won't be either. 2) If you've been a little lax about fixing a bug in some software you wrote, you might actually be doing a favor to a developer 33 years from now. 3) You haven't yet bought a robotic girlfriend (...probably).

Luddite geeks: Stallman doesn't do the Web, Knuth doesn't do email
You might expect misanthropic technophobes to be less than enthused about using the Internet, but it might surprise you to learn that two of the founders of the modern computer age are also unplugged. Richard Stallman, an open source advocate and founder of the Free Software Foundation, doesn't use the graphical Web -- if there's a Web page he really wants to see, he'll use the Lynx browser. And Donald Knuth, author of the seminal text The Art of Computer Programming, hasn't used email since 1990. read more...

"Robot girlfriend" to console lonely Japanese men
Sega has introduced a robot named Eternal Maiden Actualization, or EMA, that can be programmed to kiss on command. The company frankly states that its target market for the fembot is lonely men. The first hurdle for sales goals: EMA is only fifteen inches tall. read more...

Camera phones a boon for Canadian perverts
An Edmonton man was arrested this week after attaching a camera phone to his shoe and using it to surreptitiously take pictures up ladies' skirts. Sadly, he isn't the first person to be caught in such a scheme -- in fact, he isn't even the first person caught in Edmonton. read more...

Science news: Baby smiles like crack for new moms
If you've ever looked into your baby's smile face and felt an incredible jolt, you're not imagining things: scientists say that a baby's smile activates the parts of the brain usually stimulated by eating, sex, or drug use. Interestingly, mothers only get this intense kind of stimulation from seeing their own baby's happy face. read more...

'Fanboy' makes list of new English words
New to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary this year, a "fanboy" is defined as a "boy who is an enthusiastic devotee, such as of comics or movies." Before you shake your head in dismay at the downfall of the English language, consider that the word first entered common usage in 1919, presumably to describe fans of the Model T. read more...

And, finally, a reader comment that made me chuckle... Responding to the story about the OpenBSD developer who fixed a 33-year-old Unix bug an anonymous reader writes: "I'm not sure about BSD, but what is it they say about Windows? For every bug fixed two more are created. So it would not really matter if a bug takes 33 years to fix."