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Happy (or is it unhappy) May
Day!
Not to say I hate capitalism, but I just find all the protests
and stuff interesting. Shows us a side of society that we rather not
see.
In yet antother example of Microsoft's evilness, they are now
trying to bribe computer companies into telling them who isn't ordering Windows on the
PC's they ship. Apparently they think it's fishy that anyone wouldn't want an OS
pre-installed on thier machine, and have decided to go bounty hunting for the
"criminals". How dare someone want to install their own OS (such as Linux) or
use a previous Windows license on their computer. And rememember, I only mention
this to show why I am not a fan of Microsoft's business practicces.
Daily Radar is no more. The
internet bubble has burst for them, and they can no longer afford to keep it
running. I never really liked that site anyways, but it's still sad to see the
slow contract of the web, after years of nothing but growth.
Salon has a great article on how Clear Channel Communications is
taking
over the radio industry, for the worse. For those who dont' relieze it,
Clear Channel owns over a thousand radio stations across the nation, and holds
many of the hottest markets. Here in Tampa they own like 7 stations, and they
keep expanding. What this means for listeners is a lower and much more tightly
controlled song list, and a real lack of new music and talent. It also talks
about their ruthless business tactics that mirror Microsofts. And to think that
we have Congress to thank for this by relaxing the rules for the number of
statiosn that one company can hold. Anyways, the article is a great analysis of
the state of radio today.
GranTurismo.com has finally relaunched,
after about 2 years of waiting. It looks like it's running some kind of Slash variant, and is pretty cool looking. And
speaking of Gran Turismo, GT3 is being released in June on the PS2. Personally I
don't think it looks as good as it was hyped (as I played a demo of it in
Gamestop a few weeks ago) but it's a definite improvement, and it'd be one of
the main reason's I'd ever buy a PS2. But I think I can hold off for a another
year or two before I spend $350 for one game.
Remember those IBM linux
ads that they put on the sidewalks in different citys? Well they were
supposed to be done in biodegradable chalk that washed off with water, but
instead black
spraypaint was used. Ouch! Sun even offered to
help clean-up the graffitti, saying that they're used to "cleaning up after
IBM". Score one for Sun!
Once again the internet proves itself to be a goldmine of information, this time
in a website that tells all (or at least most of) the answers to the
McDonalds Millionaire
promo. So if your'e ever stuck on a question, or what to know which prize to
pick to get that free ice cream cone, there's your site.
Nintendorks.com has finally officially
reopened, YAHOO!!!!! The long wait is at last over. Unfortunatly the board still
remains down hoever, so it's a muted celebration. But man fresh DRC's are always
a welcome sign.
For all those living under a rock, Tina won Survivor
last night, beating out Colby. I hoped Elisabeth would have won, but alas it was
not to be. At least Jerry didn't get it though.
Researches have built a car that runs
on rotting vegetables. It gets suprisingly good performance too, however
because of the cost (half a million pounds) it won't be put into mass
production. Still a very neat concept though.
Microsoft has yet another problem on their hands, with a huge security
hole in IIS 5.0. It's a buffer overrun vulernability that can be exploited
to gain total control of the machine. So if you hear of an increase in NT
cracks, it's because once again system administrators havne't been keeping up
with updates.
Yesterday was Disney's Grad Night,
where they open up the Magic Kingdom all night to just seniors. They also make
you dress up for it, and not everything is open, but most things are. It was a
lot of fun, and suprisingly I didn't get that tired considering it went on till
5 in the morning. However now my sleeping patters are all screwed up, and I have
my English AP test tomorrow morning so it's going to hard not to be tired for
that.
Dennis Tito has retu
rned to earth after his vacation up in space. At least he didn't break
anything.
The song of the moment is updated. I just can't stop
listening to it!
I took the English Literature AP exam yesterday. I think I did pretty good,
definitly a 4 and possibly a 5. Next on the list is Calculus, which is on
Thursday.
Mozilla .9 was released last
night, so go download a copy. It's faster than .81 was. And we're getting closer
and closer to 1.0, so just a few more months...
Nintendo redesigned their website. They got
rid of the stupid splash page and made it quite a bit better. I'm quite
impressed with the new layout. And in a related note, E3 isn't too far away.
Man, now it's like I'm updating only every other day. Sorry about that.
I took my AP Calculus BC exam today. It was easier than I thought it was going
to be, and I think I did pretty well on it. I probally will get a 5 on the AB
part, and either a 4 or a 5 on the BC, assuming I didn't make too many stupid
mistakes. So I'm done with testing this week, next week it's government, phyics,
and economics.
Speaking of phyics tests, you know how most people think phyics is really
boring and only for geeks?. Well not anymore.. Let Britney Spears help
you learn phyics with Britney's
Guide to Semiconductor Physics. And you thought she was just some brainless
teeny-bobber plastic thing....
Salon has a cool story on the Pigeon
Protocal. Yes, some hackers in Norway succeeded in pinging each other via
pigeons. Sure it has terrible latency and speed, but its' a cool idea
none-the-less.
Can a computer tell you answers without ever being on? With quantum phyics it
can! Apparently due to the very screwed up laws of quantum particles, one can
tell what an answer would be without running the
computer. Ah, the possibilities of quantum computing. Just a few more decades
and then it'll be like we discovered the transistor all over again in terms of
leaps of computing power.
Well an Arkansas court has ruled that a fetus
is a human, which to me is like a "Duh!" Now this ruling immediatly brings
into question how aborition is not murder, which is the same question I've
always wondered. I guess to pro-death^H^H^H^choice people a fetus can only be a
person when it's convinent to be a person. Anyways nice ruling by the court,
perhaps our legal system isn't so bad afterall.
The XFL is no more
(thank goodness) which isn't much of a suprise. I watched the first game,
thought it was really dumb, and didn't watch since.
Douglas Adams, author of the awesome Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy, died
yesterday from a heart attack. I loved his "trilogy" of Hitchhiker books,
and he will definitly be missed.
The New York Times has an interesting column on a $3,000
computer back in 1981. It was a 4.77- MHz Intel 8088 with 64 kilobytes of
memory. It's absolutly amazing how much cheaper and faster computing power has
changed over the years. Now you can get a 1.5 GHz Intel chip with 512 MB of
memory for under $3,000. And it keeps getting cheaper.
Here's an interesting dilema: Two people get to divide $1000. Person A gets to
decide how the $1000 should be divided between them. Person B gets to decide
whether that division is acceptable. If Person B rejects it, however, no-one
gets anything.
So what do you do? Person B could reject the money if he felt person A was
insulting him by only giving him like $1. However even if person A recieves more
money, B still might take a 60/40 split because $400 is better than nothing.
There are no right answers, but it's just one of those problems that gets you
thinking.
Happy Mother's Day!!!!
Looks like Romania wants to build a Dracula-themed
theme park. They want to capitalize on the famous Count in order to help
their economy. I'm not sure though what kind of person would want to go to
something like that. I know I sure wouldn't, unless of course it had some cool
rollercoaster like Bat-man
The TI 83+
Silver Edition is now out around the internet, and should hit stores fairly
soon. It's pretty much just like a regular 83 or 83+, except that it has a whole
lot more memory and a really cool looking silver case. It's the case that's a
kicker, I mean with that thing you can be the coolest geek on your block and
impress all your friends along with helping you pick up girls! :)
Well my AP Government exam was today. I think I did better on it then I thought
I would before I took it. Only one of the essay questions stumped me, and I
think I did pretty good on the multiple choice. Next up is phyics tomorrow
afternoon.
The International Space Station is becoming more and more like home, with a new
table
built from scraps. A real table weighed too much, so Bill Shepherd created one
out of spare pieces on the ISS. I wonder if the next thing they try to get up
there will be a sofa.
Copyright law strikes again, this time preventing you from
knowing your own laws. According to a federal judge and appeals court, the
person who wrote the law owns the law, and can then charge for access for
viewing or copying that law. So the obvious question is how can someone follow
the law if they aren't allowed free and public access to it, especially in
something as complicated as building codes? Will the insanity ever end?
I got my 00-01 yearbook yesterday. They're bright red (to match school colors)
and very very big, much bigger than any other high school's yearbook, and even
bigger than Texas Tech University's yearbook. I'm also in their more times this
year than I've probally ever been in my whole life combined. It helps being
involved in a fair amount of clubs and stuff, as well as being friends with the
chief yearbook editor :)
E3 has begun!!!!
For those of yall living under a rock, E3 is THE event for gamers in America.
It's where all the game companies announce their big announcements and do their
big unveilings. So of course Nintendo and Microsoft are going to be the stars of
the show by displaying the Gamecube and Xbox. LlamaNation.com (Which no
longer exists) has a really good summary of all the news that is happening over
the next 4 days, as there is always a constant flow of news, impressions,
movies, and pictures. These next 4 days should be very very interesting
indeed.
My phyics ap exam was today, and was very very hard. It's the
only one I'm actually worried about not passing on, so that should tell you
something. The main problem was that I just forgot a lot of the things I learned
over the year, and you can't make up stuff like in other tests like government.
Well at least tomorrow is my last ap test, economics, and it'll be my easiest
one.
Peanut Butter cookies are yummy.
Finally conclusive proof that
girls are in fact, evil.
E3 is now in full swing, and initial
impressions are all over the internet. My movie of the day is a Nintendo
propaganda piece that shows all the awesome new games that are going to be
coming out for the Gamecube. Get your 15 MB version, or the
smaller sized 5
MB version for those of yall on dialup.
Today is also the 10th birthday of
the world wide web. Yes, it was but a scant 10 years ago that the awesome power
of the internet was really unleashed. Now for my readers who don't know their
computer terms well, note the difference between the Internet, which has been
around for over 30 years, and the world wide web. The web is considered a part
of the internet, the part that you are viewing right now with text and pictures
intermingled in a layout view. The web is not the same thing as the internet,
despite what AOL and the mass media might have you to believe. So anyways, happy
birthday to the web!
Today was my final official day at high school. I still have to come back Monday
for a "party" day in the morning, but today was the last time I had to go to
classes. Graduation then is May 30th. It doesn't feel like I'm totally done with
school, it feels like a Tuesday in October or something. It's also a little
scary to think that society believes I am now mature and responsible enough to
go out on my own. It's been a fast four years though, and while I anxiously
await college, it's also sad to know that an era of my life has now passed away
never to be experianced again. I must also say though that this year has been by
far the best year of my life, and to all those underclassmen reading this: Enjoy
highschool because before you relieze it, it's over.
And speaking of college, I got accepted into an minority engineering summer camp
thing (because everyone knows that minorities are dumb and need more help..) so
I get to "start" UF on June 30th with orintation. The camp runs from July 2nd
till August 10th, and then fall classes begin on August 22nd. Basically the
engineering camp is just to get students used to college and take some beginner
engineering courses for no credit. But I figure I'm not going to do anything
else with my summer anyways, so I might as well have some fun at college before
I officially start.
And because I can't just always talk about my life, check out an article on
Segfault about what happens when you are away too
long (which is currently in limbo).
Tonight is my senior prom, and guess who won't be going.... Alas I've known for years that people like me don't go to proms, so it's not that suprising. Such is life.
Now this is neat. Some guy is using Samba de Amigo to lose weight
(Unfortunatly the site is now bankrupt). I guess shaking maracaas (as well as
your body) would be pretty good excercise. I know playing DDR is a great way to
lose the pounds, as they even include a "diet mode" in the home version where it
counts the calories you burn playing. Who would have thought that videogames
could be so healthy for you? :)
There is a new worm out for Linux
systems called the Cheese worm. What's
interesting about this particular worm is that instead of destroying a system,
it attempts to patch security holes in the system. So it's like a "good" worm.
Some have theorized that perhaps something like this could be used to fix poorly
adminstered machines, but in the end, it's still breaking into a computer which
is illegal.
Does anything exciting ever happen on Sundays? Does it? I know I never really liked Sundays, because it always meant that Monday and a new school week was the next day. Plus I'd have to do all the homework that I procrastinated off all weekend. It feels weird not having ANY homework by the way, usually I always have something (usually in English) that I need to be working on. I could get used to this feeling though :)
E3 ended yesterday, and what an E3 it was. Nintendo seemed to have the biggest buzz of the show, which isn't suprising with all the awesome games that Nintendo showed off. The Gamecube controller is supposed to be really neat too. This show also once again proved to me that I'm going to have to pick up a Gameboy Advance when it launches in June. With games like Tony Hawk 2, Super Dodge Ball Advance, and Sonic the Hedgehog (who would have thought that a Sega game would be on a Nintendo product 7 years ago?), it's just too good to pass up.
BT's "Satellite" and Elliott Smith's "Miss Misery" are some really nice mellow songs for a lazy Sunday afternoon.
Today was my very last official day of school. We only went for half a day, and that was all hanging out in the stadium just doing nothing. It's going to be nice sleeping in from now on, at least until college starts. And no, I never did get Senioritis, which actually scares me a little bit :)
Now this is just awesome. Someone created a flash movie for a Guide To Electronic Music. It has samples of all the many many different kinds of techno/trance/etc music, and includes commentary and an example song for each genre. I had no idea there were so many different genres of electronica, and even the ones I did know I always had trouble trying to figure out which song was in which genre. This makes it a whole lot easier to catagorize what I like. Anthem Trance, Progressive Trance, and Hi NRG (in Trance) are my favorites, along with Happy Hardcore (I love those Happy Hardcore CD's too btw)
The New York Times has a very interesting article on the problems of standardized testing. It describes how CTB messed up grading tests 2 years ago, which resulted in 9,000 students in New York having to take summer school because they supposedly "failed" even though they really didn't, along with principals getting fired for not having high enough test scores. Ouch. I always hated standarized testing, because it seemed like a waste of time. Not only does the teacher have to go over boring crap we already know (aka teaching the test) instead of learing new intersting stuff, the tests themselves were really easy for anyone who wasn't half brain dead. But then again it's sickening how people have managed to graduate even though they can barely read or do basic math.
I had an eye appointment today. Amazingly my eyesight is at the same level of badness that it was when when I got my current prescription, so I won't be needing new glasses. They also put some eye drops in my eyes to dialate them, so for about 2 hours I was even more blind than I usually am, even with glasses.
This Kung Fu Flash Movie is the latest and great internet fad, following the steps of AYBABTU. It's actually pretty darn cool, and the motion of the stick figures is suprisingly good. It also has some cool Matrix-like effects thrown in there for good measure as well.
The sad news came in yesterday that Attrition.org, the website that mirrored the thousands of website defacements that occur each year, will be shutting down. It just doesn't have the time to keep up with all the defacements that are now occuring thanks to easier GUI cracking tools. They will be keeping up their archives of over 5 years of defacements however, so at least that part of internet history will not be lost.
Pizza Hut now delivers to space! They sent a personal pan pizza aboard a Russian rocket ship that then docked with the International Space Station. The astronauts then cooked it themselves in the ISS's oven. Pizza in space, now that is bliss.
This is pretty neat, especially if you're a political junkie. The official Whitehouse website has the full text transcrips of Whitehouse Press Conferences. So if you ever wanted to get the news about the president yourself, instead of relaying on some biased corporate mass media guy, you can skim through the day's press briefing. Ahhhhh, the power of the internet.
Tetrinet rocks!
Two nerd things today. First is a joke that also functions as a nerd test. Why
do geeks think Christmas and Halloween are on the same day? (Hint: Think number
systems). Secondly, this recipe is why
engineers don't write cookbooks. Chocolate chip cookies do sound real good about
now though.
In yet another example of how the internet is changing the
way people can get information, you can now read the US 2002
budget online. It's pretty dry reading, but it's still pretty neat that it's
possible to read the actual document that has been in the news so much recently.
Plus it has some interesting figures in there too, like that we'll spend $455
billion on Social Security next year, and just $21.2 billion on all science
related activities (which includes $13.6 billion for NASA).
And speaking
of space, scientists are having a hard time figuring why two deep
space probes have not traveled as far as they should have. Apparently there
is some "mystery" force that is slowing down the probes more than expected. That
could mean that some of the laws of gravity might have to be modified or
rewritten, once scientists figure out what exactly those new laws are. Such is
the path of scientific progress; just when we think we know everything,
something comes up that nothing we know can explain.
I picked up the Beatles 1 album today. It's a great album that I highly recommend buying. You wont' regret it.
The 2.4.5 Linux kernel was released today.
For some really weird reason I can not stop listening to Nsync's "Pop". It's not even that great of a song (I'd say average) but man is it ever addicting. Scary no?
The Beatles and Nsync both mentioned on the same day's update. Oh my.... What is the world coming to?
Gotta love the How to Annoy People websites. I especially like the ones on how to annoy people in the computer lab; gives me good ideas for next year at college. Muahhahaha
Kuro5hin has a very interesting essay on politics and the internet. Basically the author blasts the 2000 presidential canidate websites for not fully using all the avaliable resources that the internet allows. I for one agree with his general dissapoinment, cause I mean both Bush's and Gore's websites were terrible. They didn't go into near the in-depth detail that I've come to expect from the web. Instead of telling us exactly how they stand on issues like the DMCA or UCITA, it's mearly a glossed over "I support technology". How can anyone agrue against that? However as the posters below the article noted, campaigns are not won on details or firm stands, but are won on 5 word slogans or "images" that are carefully cultivated by hordes of public relation people. It's too bad that it has to be like that, but such is politics.
Zzzzzzz
The mp3 list is updated finally. Almost 1,500 songs now; and NO I WILL NOT give them out via emails or downloads. Go use Napigator.
I saw Pearl Harbor today. I thought it was pretty good, but not excellent. The first hour isn't all that great, but the last two make up for it. It's also pretty sad at times.
One more week till the 18th anniversary of the greatest day in history. :)
In an unfortunate decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that golfer Casey Martin can use a cart in PGA events. The reason I disagree with the ruling is that walking is a part of the game of golf, and by using a cart Martin does gain an unfair advantage. I know for myself that there is a huge difference bewteen walking up and down hills during a 5 mile course in hot weather versus riding in a cart, and I think that with this court decision, political correctness is taking the place of common sense. We don't give short NBA players stilts, or give slow marathon racers a lift in a car so they can be "equal" with the faster runners. Will the madness ever end?
Someone made a very, uh, interesting map of how American's view the world. The scary thing is that it's fairly accurate.
Today is my high school graduation. I will have passed 12 years of general education to get a diploma, and our government thinks that I'm smart enough to be benificial to society now and thus need no more required schooling. It doesn't feel like that special of a day, even though it closes an era in my life. I guess on the school side it feels like just another break from school, because I'll be right back at it this fall in college. And I can't say I've always had pleasant memories from my school days, although these last few years have been pretty good. School has gone by so much faster than I thought it would, it feels as though I should still be a sophmore or something, and that elementary wasn't that far back. It just goes by so fast. So incredibly fast.
NASA is considering building a new facility to house rocks from Mars that it plans to maybe get in 2014. They're not only worried about any potential "bad" life on the rocks that they bring back, but also worried about contamination from earth of the rocks, thus giving a false-positive of life on Mars. It'd be really cool though if there were life on Mars.
Has it really been 12 years?
Thinkgeek released this awesome shirt just a few short days ago. MUST..BUY..
Salon has another article on the problems with Clear Channel, this time focusing on employees. It's almost scary the kind of control that Clear Channel has over the radio market, and the ways they abuse that power. Anyways it's a really insightful article about the company most people have never heard of, but listen to everyday.
IGN Pocket has a bunch of pictures of the Gameboy Advance boxart for both the actual system as well as a lot of the games for it. It won't be too much longer till that awesome little portable system is released.
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