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My first day of classes for Spring 2003 is now over. It was typical first day
stuff, where they just go over the syllabus and tell us how much wer'e going to
suffer during the semester. Actually most of my classes wont' be too awfully
bad. Comp Org looks to be pretty easy, Circuits won't be that bad, and while
Digital Design will still be a lot of work, the teacher this semester is making
the lab reports easier and shorter. As for the bad news, I have to buy a $150
development board for digital design, and everyone says not to take my data
structures teacher as he's the hardest one you could possibly have. Instead of
one assignment every two weeks, it's one every week. And his tests are
supposedly a lot harder too. But I can't put it off for another semester since
it's a prerequisite for so many other courses, so I"m just going to have grin
and bear it. Fun fun fun.
It's finally legal for me to watch DVD's in Linux! Or well at least in
Norway. Norweigen courts ruled that
Jon Johansen didn't break any laws when he created DeCSS, which broke the
encryption scheme on DVD's so a person can view them however they please. The
Motion Picture Association of America was suing Johansen because they felt it
contributed to piracy, even though the encryption does absolutly nothing to
prevent copying. It only restricts playback, meaning I can't view my legally
bought DVD on a non-MPAA approved player. But the judge in Norway reliezed that
source code is free speech and that consumers should have the right to view the
things they bought, and ruled in favor of Johansen. Unfortunatly thanks to the
DMCA, it's still quite illegal in America to have intellectual freedom when it
comes to computer code. But at least Norway is a start.
The speed of gravity has finally been confirmed.
Gravity isn't instantanous like most people think, but it actually propgates at
the speed of light. So as the article points out, if the sun disappeared, the
Earth would still revolve for another 8 minutes before going off in a straight
line. It's sorta cool to know such neat discoveries are still taking
place today.
A new Gameboy Advanced is coming out in March, with backlit screen and
flip-up LCD. I may pick this up, as I just have a Gameboy Color and there's
a bunch of cool Advanced games.
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