Rant 351 / Is The LHC Really The World's Biggest White Elephant?

So I've been putting off my IPPT (physical fitness test) for so long it's too late for me to book IPT now. So I'm left with 2 choices:

a) fail IPPT

b) go to DB

Fux!

Of course it's A I'm choosing. This means I will be going for Remedial Training. Then IPT for my next window. One of my friends is going for IPT, and he actually went for a session last night. We took MRT together from school yesterday, and he reminded me about it.

Apparently even though the schedule for IPT is like shit (7-10pm for weekdays and 4.30-7.30pm for Saturdays), no one watches you when you're training, ie you can do things very slowly. It sounds good. Sounds like destiny. For the rest of my life till I get out of here or I hit my ROD (retirement from conscription).

Yeah I'm not planning to pass any IPPT at all.

There aren't many places where I can have IPT though. Only the FCC at Bedok and Khatib is available. The friend I mentioned lives at Yishun, so Khatib's not too bad for him.

So the best I can do is take the test next weekend (projects during the weekdays T.T) then satisfy the RT requirements during the holidays. Then apply for IPT during my next long holiday.








KFC cancels their free chicken promotion after being featured in Oprah's show. This was originally organized to celebrate Obama's victory in the elections.

In the racist culture of 4chan, fried chicken and watermelons are always associated with black people. This kinda proves them right...








Intel got fined US$1.45bn by the EU Commission for illegally removing competition. That's like 3 times more than what they fined Microsoft. The number may be big, but it's not big compared to the profits they had just reported.

It's so funny! Just last night the front page news on Reuters was Intel reporting a relatively good revenue of US$7.1bn for the first quarter of 2009. While everyone else is seeing dropping profits, they get no drop (nor rise). The other article was on their performance for this quarter, which was headline," Intel CEO says orders better than expected so far".

Then BOOM! The EU Commission drops the bomb on them. The 1.06-billion-Euro fine is not merely a slap, but almost a kick in the butt.

My face when I saw the numbers.






The UK government is getting a huge PR problem. Not only are various members of the Parliament revealed to be misusing public money, but so are members of the Shadow Cabinet, the very people who are supposed to watch the MPs. It's not that they did anything horrendously serious, but that there are just so many of them spending taxpayers' money on things that they could have easily paid for out of their own wallets.

In fact I thought this recent disclosure made the government seem pretty clean. Especially after reading about Intel's fines. I mean, they paid a certain company to use only their chips in the computers they sell (among other things). Imagine how much money that would require.

The media are the ones making a big fuss out of a very small problem. Of course, if left alone problems can get bigger someday, but right now it really isn't as bad as it sounds.








4chan /b/ and /r9k/ are back up! Seems that some people have been spreading trojans that make computers DDOS these 2 boards. Users of /b/ were DDOSing /b/...

Epic fail.