Voicemail decoding assistance required

Got a call from a blocked number while I was writing the last post. I get a lot of these, but this one left a weird voicemail. Could be an issue with the digital recording or something at the beginning, but still… weird.

Any clues? Feel free to listen online or to download the MP3.

Also, if you remix it into a song, I at least want a mention in the credits. 🙂

Ninja Edit: On the plus side, this is another reason why I love Google Voice. It took me under a minute from getting this weirdness to posting it on the blog. Seriously, Google Voice is awesome.

The Debt Keeps Rising

… while the Republicans keep using non-free software.

Anybody examine the difference between http://republican.senate.gov/ and http://democrats.senate.gov/ lately?

Hint, one of them is complaining about the debt, while the other one is using the free and open-source software package, WordPress, to create their website.

Guess which is which. No points if it takes more than one guess.

The Republican website seems to be running on ColdFusion, a software package that kinda went out of style in 2002-2003, but for which Adobe nevertheless keeps releasing version after version, hoping somebody will notice. Well, at least now I know they have one client, I suppose.

On the other hand, the Democrats site is clearly running on WordPress 3.1.3 (not the latest version, but they’re only half a day behind, and probably not even that by tomorrow), which is a free software package that runs roughly 14.3% of the sites on the internet, including all the major websites that the people who read my blogs read every single day.

Hmm… I wonder who’s more in tune with the times.

Disclaimer: I work on WordPress, but would be heavily biased against the Republican party regardless of who my employer was. #justsaying

Why news coverage of medical science sucks

Ever read one of those news pieces that says something obviously stupid, like “acupuncture proven effective”, or “new study proves HFCS makes you fatter than sugar”? (Hint, both of those are false. HFCS may be worse than sugar in other ways, but you’ll get just as fat with sugar as with HFCS.)

Well, here’s why you see those news articles making claims that are provably false: Sometimes, people lie in science journals.