VOTD

I must say, this guy has the coolest job.... EVER!

I have been slowly working on getting a Web server running on my home connection. Insight recently upgraded all of our town to 10Mbps up/1Mbps Down for free, which will make a web server somewhat feasible now. I have a FTP server and domain name and such configured, but I cannot tell you any details just yet.

Bad Blood?

I recently ran across a FSF site called Badvista. It's aim (I always type this in CAPs first, then must correct thanks to AOL IM) is to inform consumers of some of the stuff that is happening in Vista that most of not heard, and to recommend free alternatives . I have to say, seeing as I have not had the chance to play around with Vista, yet I will have to support it (both personally and professionally), that this is a great resource.

While a lot of the info is whining and just common sense, and general Microsoft-Bashing, some useful information can be gleaned from articles like this: (check out the ad in the top right hand corner of this page, pretty inventive and not too intrusive)
"1. SMB2
Vista introduces a new variant of the SMB protocol called SMB2, which may pose problems for those connecting to non-Microsoft networks, such as Samba on Linux"

I never heard about this happening. Or this, which sounds awesome, as long as it doesn't require some ludicrous licensing scheme like so many other "standard" technologies recently:
"20. HHD
Hybrid Hard Drives. These are potentially a huge performance booster, but there's little information and support is available (even though should be available)."

Or this:
"25. WordPad
Ability to open .doc files has been removed."

This really sucks, because I've had a need to do this often. I can't imagine a legitimate reason why this functionality could not be moved to Vista. Just looks like a means to push "customers" to buy Office, which sure isn't cheap. Most of the Other articles right now seem to be Microsoft bashing, and are just cherry picked articles that contain speculation about what could be bad things about Vista. But I do hope they update with some more legitimate useful tech articles that will help me integrate Vista into existing diverse networks which contain anything from DOS,Linux, to XP.

On another note, is has been oddly warm the past week (Highs in the low-to-mid 60's in Mid December!). This has given me the chance to ride my motorcycle a few times, but I have not had a chance to ride anything longer that commuting due to other activities. I did manage to add a Flickr Badge to my profile info, as well as setup a Linux file, SSH, and FTP server at home. I chose Ubuntu server, and I must say this was pretty much a piece of cake if you know your way around the command line. I also have been playing around with TiddlyWiki, which I must say is pretty cool once you adjust to it, but confusing as can be when you first (attempt!) to use it. I think it will work great as a note-taking application for school, so I will experiment with it next semester.

This is why I love mobile phone companies.

I know I've had the run-around on the phone with these people, but this guy's call truely takes the cake.

VOTD

This looks like the coolest and most dangerous thing I have ever seen. I definately want one. Here's another video.

Sadly, probably the last trip of the year.

Well, by some freak act of nature we got a 70 degrees day on November 29th. Since I was off of work I decided to take advantage of this and take one last ride for the year on highway 66. Here are some pics from the trip.

It was quite overcast as you can see, but I didn't get a drop of rain and stayed warm.






I didn't get too many pictures as I was busy riding most of the day, but the few I took turned out decent. As always, click on the pics for larger images.

VOTD

Well, sorry for the lack of legitimate updates, but it's the holidays and time gets scarce. I'll try to upload some new pictures soon.

Here's a video to hold you over. I saw it quite some time ago, but still funny.


Also, ran across this today which just cracked me up. This might be the explanation, but I thought it would be funnier if it were Sony who they were referencing.

VOTD

Nothing much interesting as of late. Here's a video that pretty cool.

VOTD

Some crazy motorcycle riding.

Journey of the Hawk.

Well, It is a new month and a new bandwidth limit for me on Flickr. Here are the pictures of one of my latest trips on the bike out on highway 66. I had to take it for a spin after putting on a new front tire and doing an oil and filter change. The total milage for the 3 days ( I didn't ride any the second day, just visiting) was over 400 miles. Weather was very overcast the first day, but temps were perfect.

A pic of the bike overlooking the Ohio river at Leavenworth. Can you beleive this bike is 21 years old?


And a picture through the mirror that turned out well.


This bridge is outside the town of Rockport.


Doesn't look that big from the picture, but this is a pretty big hill. This is on one of the VERY curvy areas of this road. At the bottom (behind me in the picture) is a very sharp 150-160 degree turn. It's a scary one becuse there is always gravel in it and slowing down after this big hill is hard.


This one is also on the big hill, but looking down. I don't think you can see the curve, but trust me it's down there. It really sneaks up on ya.


I tried to get a picture of myself with this sign, but this tuned out to be the best one. I still didn't get the entire sign, but my arm was neither long enough, nor my lense wide enought to get it all in.


Here's a better picture of the sign.


This would be an awesome place to live. It is out in the middle of nowhere, but I'm sure you could see for miles.


I was woken up early while at my Mom's house so I figured that I'd take some pictures of the rising sun since it looked to beautiful. It's currently my background image on my work PC.



Well, that's it for now. I've started uploading 800x600 pixel images because with the full resolution images I was running out of pace on Flickr to quickly. Should you want a larger size of any of them, feel free to email me.

Cell Phone Blues...

Well, after I spent the day changing oil in different vehicles I noticed that my cell phone was misssing. I thought I remembered having while under the hood of my car. After looking for several hours over the course of a couple of days I finally gave up. It was going straight to voicemail by then and I figured the battery went dead. I figured I left it under the hood and it fell out on my way to work the next day. Anyways After I hit the store and spend $300 on a new one, I start getting emails and phone calls that Pep-Boys was calling everyone on my contacts... They had my phone.

Anyways, it sucked but I really wanted a new phone anyways. I went with the cingular 3125, and I must say its pretty nice. Feels real solid in your hand and the soft buttons are incredible. Windows mobile makes transferring ringtones and syncing with my outlook calendar, email, and contacts a snap. The camera is nice, but nothing amazing. Here's what it looks like:

I have some pictures of my latest trip back north on the bike, but my Flickr account is maxed out this month. I'll upload them as soon as I can upload again.

VOTD

Well, this video is much different than others previously, but I beleive it's definately worth watching. It raises some questions I've never contemplated.

One thing that I was thinking about while watching segment 2 of the video was about CEO's. It seems that they make a choice to put themselves in situations in which they have to make big decisions that effect many people. Most of the time there is no way to know all of the implications of these decisions, and making semi-informed choices some of them are bound to be bad ones. Is this not psychopathic in a way? Now everyone has to make hard decisions, but they normally do not effect hundreds or thousands of people. Now I don't beleive CEO's and other similar people are bad themselves. I don't beleive they purposely make choices that are completely immoral, but they have incentives that the common man does not have. Also they are not effected themselves by these choices other than whether it generated more revenue for shareholders. Most of the time the effects of their decisions are in a different country. When the effects hit close to home for them, they are wealthy enough to just move away from the problem, or throw money in it's direction to make it go away, at least for them. In the end he corporation's main motive is profit for shareholders, who also consist of... the high-end wealthy class.

Now don't get me wrong. Not all corporations are evil, and they are needed for certain services and goods. I beleive we need to take a look into what rights they are granted, and the power they currently have.

Anyways, take some time and watch the documentary.

Who's building the Arc?

Well, after no attack or catastophe on 9/11, we did seem to have a mild one here in town. After raining VERY hard ALL day, the water eventually started backing up. Here are some pics of what I came home to. I had to park a couple of blocks away and hike through peoples yards to get home.






And here is my brother's old car. And yes there is water all over inside.



My house did not have any damage as it is on a hill from the road, which is good. I wanted to see what other places looked like so we set out on our bicycle's.







I think this guy underestimated the depth of the water.

VOTD

Here's a nice video on how to wheelie on a streetbike.

As Promised

As promised here are couple of pictures of the new house. This is my newly painted bathroom, which was covered in green vines everywhere before. It almost hurt my eyes before, but now its relaxing.



And this is a Giant hole which is in my back yard. The previous owners had an above ground pool which they sank into the ground a bit. Still woring on finding an excavator to fill it in.


And this would be a nail in my brand new tire. I'm trying to get someone to patch it, but it looks like I may have to do it myself because all the shops are afraid of lawsuits.

Google Calendar Revisited

Well, I have finally had some time to try out Google Calendar, and I must say that I'm quite impressed. Not only is it easy to use, but it seems to have much less problems than Outlook's Calendar. Putting this on my customized google start page combined with the agenda displayed, it has become quite useful. Not only does it offer 99% of the features I want, but I can access it from practically anywhere. It is also fast as can be, no long loading times. On a similar note, I have noticed that Google Maps seems to be functioning much more smoothly in the past few months.

If you have not had a chance, then I suggest you give it a shot.

On a different tangent, I am finally getting stuff moved in at the house and walls painted. I also got my Camera back from repair finally, and hopefully can post some pictures soon.

HDCP + 32bit Vista = Crap

As an update to my earlier post about HDCP, it looks as if there is more bad news about the future of High Definition video. The following is from a post on slashdot:

"Pity the Vista user with a 32-bit CPU. Senior Program Manager Steve Riley announced today at Tech.Ed Australia that full HD content shall only be played at the full resolution where only signed drivers are used — only in the 64-bit version of Vista. From the article: '"Any next-generation high definition content will not play in x32 at all," said Riley. "This is a decision that the Media Player folks made because there are just too many ways right now for unsigned kernel mode code [to compromise content protection]. The media companies asked us to do this and said they don't want any of their high definition content to play in x32 at all, because of all of the unsigned malware that runs in kernel mode can get around content protection, so we had to do this."

Well... great no HD on Vista on any of my PC's! I really hope they get all these restrictions and problems worked out soon, because it's looking like I won't be wanting any HD media I'm restricted to playing it to it's full ability. It looks like downloading already ripped versions of the HD content will be much easier than worrying about all the hardware and software compatablility, especially when I plan on building a MediaPC soon.

Here is an excerpt from a comment in the post that I find insightful:

"The DRM will always be broken: somewhere inside that cable box or LCD monitor, is an unencrypted digital signal. With the right test equipment, somebody will figure out how to get it back into a computer and record it. From there, they need only to compress it with one of the many HD-capable codecs and video formats available and playable right now (H.264 inside an AVI or Quicktime container), and dump it onto the P2P networks.

This smacks of what we saw happen with MP3 music a few years ago. The music companies feared it, and hoped that they could kill MP3 by using proprietary formats instead (anyone remember ATRAC3?). Instead of buying the legitimate, overpriced garbage that the recording industry tried to foist on them, consumers ignored it and got their MP3s illegally instead. By ignoring demand, the music companies gave up billions of dollars in revenue and created a generation of buyers who got used to getting music for free.

The movie and video companies, together with electronics manufacturers, have an opportunity now to not repeat history. If they give the market what it wants -- HD movies without onerous restrictions, playable on the hardware they already have (which by-and-large is technically capable of the task), sold at a reasonable price -- they could start making money immediately. Instead, I think they'll probably resist the inevitable outcome as long as possible, and waste millions (or billions) of dollars in misplaced technological development and make criminals out of their would-be customers in the mean time."

Turbo power

HERE is a site that reviews the Art of Turboing. Basically it shows you how to get something done after you get stuck in the 7th ring of tech phone support hell.

Oh, and by the way... 5 days until moving day!

VOTD

Been a while since I've seent his one, but everyone must witness this guy's insane beatboxin skills. Combined with a harmonica!

What privacy?

Steven Rambam(who is interestingly missing from Wikipedia) was arrested yesterday before making a presentation at the HOPE Number 6 conference (which Kevin Mitnick and Richard Stallman also attended). No details have been released about the cause for the arrest yet. Needless to say, but many rumors are going around, undoubtedly because of the nature of Steven's speeches. Now I had never heard of Stephen before, but I did stumble upon some MP3's of his previous presentations.

HERE is a MP3 of one of his speeches.
HERE is another, but the quality of the recording is bad.
And finally HERE is another.

It is a bit lengthy, but listening to it is quite worth while. It will open your eyes to how much privacy you really have. Oh, and in case your were wondering, that is not a picture of Steven on the top of the post.

Home pwnership

Well, the day has come and I have finally managed to become a homeowner. Although I'm not moved in yet, I closed on the house on Monday. If I seem scarce on here in the future it will be because I will have my hands full moving and getting everything setup with the new house.

I'm very excited about the new house but I do have mixed feelings. On one hand I will finally have a place to settle down for a while and start cutting down spending on my disposable income. I will finally have a garage that I will be able to keep my dream motorcycle (Which I've wanted since I was 15) in, as well as a small workshop that is not in my bedroom or on the kitchen table. I'm also building credit, and gaining equity in the house, thus making future purchases/credit easier. All of these things I have been working towards for a while.

On the other hand it is the longest commitment that I have made, well, ever. Although moving each year is a huge hassle, I love the entropy it causes. A whole new layout of the house, different roommates, purging of the old an unused, as well as many other reasons I cannot fathom at this moment. Also I feel as if I've missed out on a part of life that most people my age are going through, college. Had I gone straight to a 4 year college out of high school I would be finishing up my degree right now. I wouldn't be worrying about many of the things I do now. I would love to have my BS completed by now. I still plan on completing it, but how long will it take at the current rate. Prior to buying the house, I would have the opportunity to go back to school full time and work on finish it up relatively quickly. But now the commitment makes this almost impossible. Of course in a few years I could sell the house off and go back to school, but a few years is a long time when all of your friends are graduating/ have graduated. After getting my BS I would love to get an Masters Degree, but it seems like it will be forever before I have a chance to even get there.

Anyway, perhaps it is my GIAG Syndrome acting up, but I feel as if perhaps going off the school route might of been a better choice in the long run. I would have less money and toys than I do now, but the payoff might be better in the end. Or is the working experience I'm gaining now going to make up for it in the end? Nobody can know for now, only the future will tell.

I will post some pics of the house as soon as I move in (and get my camera back...). It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with attached one car garage and a decent backyard for being in town. It will feel very good to get out of the cramped situation I am in right now.

DJ Ted's Techno Tubes

I stubled across some mp3's of the speech in the previous article. I looked for a while but was unable to find them when writing it.

HERE is an MP3 of his speech.
HERE is a techno remix.

Will the 'net go down the tubes?

Looks like some more news in the Net Neutrality (see bottom of this post for a video) debate. Looks like Alaskan Senator and President Pro Tempore (3rd in succession for presidency) Ted Stephens gave an explanation for why he is voting against the Net Neutrality Bill. In an attempt to explain how the internet works and why Net Neutrality is a bad thing he said the following:

"They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the internet. And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

Now while this somewhat, kinda, sorta, maybe one way you could see how the Internet (Intertube?) works, I don't think this needs to be the explanation the rest of the senate and John Q Public needs to hear. Even worse than his explanation is this gem of a quote:

"I just the other day got, an internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday."

Wow, senator! You got an Internet sent to you? I've been waiting for one for around 10 years! I can only assume that he means that he was sent an email. Anyways, these comments can mean one of two things. That Senator Stephens is almost completely ignorant of computing and the internet, or that he is trying to deceive the public. He seems to have a strong stance on the subject, but why would one take a strong stance on a subject that they know little about? I know strongs stances seem to be popular and win votes these days, but this isn't even a Save-the -Children or War-on-Terror initiative.

Anyways, if you would like to contact Senator Stephens about his comments, you can visit his contact page HERE. I'm pretty sure Mr. Stepehens is a busy man, but I'm sure one of his trusty assistants will read the message. Furthermore you can visit THIS website and find contact information for your Senator or House Member and write them regarding your concern for the misinformation being spread by Senator Stephens.

Anyways, I think I shall go send some Internets... errr... Emails now. Here's the video as promised:



Or even this one from no other than the Ninja himself, which offers a much more technical view:

VOTD

New Video of the day! I always thought that on-road bicycling would be boring, but this is hardcore. Check this out!


And heres a video for you motorcyclists who don't wear a helmet because you think you ride safe. Well, not much you could of done in this situation. Watch how fast it happens.

Zen and Art of the Motorcyclist

Here is something I found on a motorcycle forum the other day:

23 Great Things About The Motorcycle Life

- Those kids on the back seat of the school bus never wave to you when you're in a car
- Your worst day on a motorcycle is better than your best day in a car
- It's kind of fun to be anonymous in your helmet
- Your neighbors think you're a little crazy
- Riding through a rain shower in waterproof gear gives you that bring-it-on feeling of smugness
- Most of the time when you get on your bike, you're heading out to do something fun
- Nobody wishes they were you when you drive by in your car
- Freedom
- Riding a motorcycle makes you different from everyone else
- You arrive with a smile on your face
- Other people read books; you read maps
- We wave to each other on the road
- The feeling you get when you give someone their first ride
- We speak our own language
- Depending on how you feel today, you can be Arlen Ness or Nicky Hayden
- Not everyone can ride a motorcycle
- You never get tired of sitting in the garage, staring at your bike
- The conversation that always start when someone walks up to you and says, "I use to ride one of those."
- Leather jackets are cool
- You can understand why dogs love to stick their heads out the car window
- The look on your co-worker's face when you show a picture of your kid on a motorcycle
- The great feeling you get when you walk into work and set your helmet on the corner of your desk or in your locker
- You can smell when it's going to rain



11 Reasons Motorcycles are the BEST Vehicles

- $10,000 of motorcycle will outperform $70,000 of car.
- You can fill up for $10
- You almost never walk away from your car backwards
- You can identify every bike on the road at a glance - many of them by sound alone
- You can park almost anywhere
- You're not just seeing the scenery, you're part of it
- If you pack them in there just right, you can get six motorcycles in your garage in place of one car
- There are as many ways to make a bike your own as there are people
- You're the most maneuverable thing in traffic
- Downshift, throttle, buh-bye!!!

The Pirate Bay plundered, but rises again.

Well, after news that Swedish police raided The Pirate Bay's (TBP) servers at the end of August. A press release from the MPAA can be found HERE (pdf). This caused a lot of controversy about the legality of the raid as The Pirate Bay's website was perfectly legal under Swedish law(as far as we know, but the police have presented no evidence suggesting that it is performing illegal actions). Under Swedish law, it is illegal to distribute copyrighted material, but TPB claims to hosts no such data. They distribute Torrent files which merely contain information on how to build the file, which other users who are using the same torrent send to users who do not have it. A much more detailed explanation of Bittorrent can be found HERE and will help the uninitiated understand how torrents work as well as their their legality.

A team or 50 police officers raided several servers, including some that hosted data that did not belong to TPB, and have caused disruptions of service to many small companies. Many beleive that this raid was pressured onto Swedish police by U.S. politicians as well as the MPAA and RIAA. Apparently Swedish reporters have begun to pick up on the story(a blog which is translating Swedish media reports) and have been reporting it extensively. Many Swedish citizens are angered because the swedish police force is known fo being understaffed and underfunded, and often many smaller crimes go uninvestigated, yet they could spare 50 officers to raid a server room for suspected illegal activity. Perhaps they thought they might encounter actual pirates? Here is a video of the raid. The Swedish Pirate political party is organizing public demonstrations today.

Well, today TPB is back up with new servers located in Denmark. Apparently they are still experiencing some performance issues, but hope to be up to full capacity. Many suspect that the actions taken have actually helped out TPB in the eyes of the public, especially in Sweden. An interview with one of the sysadmins, Peter, can be found HERE. I do not know if it is in english or not yet.

Another interesting thing is that Canada recently introduced Captain Copyright, a superhero that will brainwas...AHEM...teach kids more about copyright infringement issues. It's better than sueing people I guess.

Camera

Well, the ongoing saga of getting my FujiFilm camera back from Bigston Corporation keeps on getting better. After the repair shop having it for over 6 months I called them yet AGAIN to ask them if anything has happened. They never contact me so I have o run through the phone games with them each time.

When I called yesterday and finally getting through to tech support after about 20 minutes I was told that my name was not in their system. I was asked if I had a work order number, but I was never given one. After sitting there is disbelief for a while, and reiterating that I had sent it in over 6 months ago and soke to someone several times about it. The lady then asked me what model of camera I had, and upon hearing that it was a FujiFilm she quickly told me that this was the support line for Samsung (Um, OK, I was never asked what kind of camera I had when I was transferred to you. What made her think that I had a samsung was beyond me). Anyways, she quickly found me in the Fujifilm system and said that they were still waiting on parts that were on backorder from Fuji. She was going to send the camera top Fuji the next day for them to repair or replace the camera.

Now I'd like to be optimistic about this whole thing, but if my camera is sent to Fuji, and never makes it way back to me I will not be a happy person. I could easily see Fuji saying they never received it, and Bigston says they sent it, and my camera will be forever lost in some sort of shipping lingo. The good news is that they did verify this time that the camera is under warantee (or well, WAS when I sent it to them LAST SUMMER!). Well, anyways wish me good luck. Here's a picture of my baby:

Electronic Supersonic.

Well, been quite busy recently so I have not had a chance to write any articles. Looking for a house to buy and beginning to pack my belongings into boxes. Also doing some research on the a forum for Yamaha R6's in preparation to buy one. Anyway, to prevent you from becoming bored, here is an awesome music video...

Reflection in oil

Upon researching the backgrounds of the members of some my most favorite bands, I recently ran across this essay written by Serj Tankian of System of a Down (site doesn't seem to work in Firefox).

"This essay was originally published on systemofadown.com, but was promptly removed by Sony.
---------------
Understanding Oil
By Serj Tankian
9/13/2001

The brutal attacks/bombings this week in New York, and Washington D.C., along with threats of attacks there and elsewhere in the country have changed our times forever. While the mass media concentrates on the details of the destruction, and the blanketed words of politicians, I will attempt to understand and explain the events from the fence. BOMBING AND BEING BOMBED ARE THE SAME THINGS ON DIFFERENT SIDES OF THE FENCE.

Terror is not a spontaneous human action without credence. People just dont hijack planes and commit harikari (suicide) without any weight of thought to the action. No one in the media seems to ask WHY DID THESE PEOPLE DO THIS HORRIFIC ACT OF VIOLENCE AND DESTRUCTION?

To be able to understand the answer to this, we must first look at our U.S. Mideast Policy. During most of the 20th century, U.S. businesses have worked on attaining oil rights and concessions from countries in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. After WWI, secret back door deals by our State Dept. yielded oil rights from then defeated Turkey to fields in what is now Iraq and Saudi Arabia, in return for looking the other way at a crime against humanity, the Genocide of the Armenians by the Turks. Oil profits have been the motivating factors behind many attempts at counterinsurgency of democratic regimes by the CIA and the U.S in the Middle East (such as Iran in the 1950s, where the Shah replaced the Prime Minister who refused to give up oil rights to the U.S., and since the people couldnt deal with the Shah, an extremist government headed by the Ayatollah Khomeini ultimately prevailed). During the Iran-Iraq war, America supplied both sides with weapons and advice. These are not the actions of a rich superpower wanting peace. Lets not forget that Saddam Hussein, before being Americas vision of the Anti-Christ, was a close ally of the U.S., and the CIA. So what was the firm belief system of consecutive American administrations that caused all this to occur ? PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST WILL LEAD TO HIGHER OIL AND GASOLINE PRICES. Lets not also forget the power of the Arms industry, disguised as defense, that still sells billions of dollars of weapons to the area. Therefore it has not been in the short-term economic interest of the U.S. to foster Peace in the Middle East. Using the above reasoning, the U.S. has encouraged extremist governments, toppled democracies, as in the case of Iran to replace it with a monarchy, rigged elections, and many more unspeakable political crimes for U.S. businesses abroad. Lets not also forget the Red Scare. During the war between the then Soviet Union and Afghanistan, the U.S. armed and supported the Taliban, a fundamentalist Muslim organization, and allowed them to export opium and heroin out of their country to pay for those weapons. Therefore the Taliban rose to power and control with the help of the U.S.A. Today, the bombing of Iraq still continues, no longer covered by the media, the economic embargo still remains, killing millions of children, and recently, while the world and the U.N. General Assembly have cried out to bring in peacekeeping forces into Israel and Palestine, to end the escalated war and recent assassinations, the U.S. has vetoed the rest of the Security Council and has halted the possibility of peace, there, in the most volatile place in the world.

People in Serbia, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, and Afghanistan to name a few have seen bombs fall, not always at military targets and kill innocent civilians, as the scene in New York city yesterday. The wars waged by our government in our names has landed smack in the middle of our living room. The half hour of destruction closed down all world financial markets, struck the central headquarters of our military, and had our leaders running into bunkers, and our citizens into fear and frenzy. What scares me more than what has occurred is what our reactions to the occurrences may cause. President Bush belongs to a long generation of Republican Presidents who love war economies. The media has only concentrated on the bombings, if you will, and what type of retaliations are looming for the perpetrators. What everyone fails to realize is that the bombings are a reaction to existing injustices around the world, generally unseen to most Americans. To react to a reaction would be to further sponsor the reaction. In other words, my belief is that the terror will multiply if concrete steps are not taken to sponsor peace in the middle east, NOW. This does not mean that we should not find the guilty party(s), Bin Laden, or whoever they may be, and not try them. Put simply, as long as a major injustice remains, violence precipitates to the surface of life.

Native American folklore, the Bible, Nostradamus, and many other major religious beliefs point to this era with the visuals of yesterdays disasters, and conditions of ecological disasters we experience daily in our lives today. War, rumors of war, famine, long burning fires, etc., are at our doorstep. We can prevail over this possible vision with the power of the human spirit, understanding, compassion, and peace. ITS TIME TO PUT OUR NEEDS FOR SECURITY AND SURVIVAL, ACHIEVED ONLY THROUGH PEACE, ABOVE AND BEYOND PROFITS, ESPECIALLY IN THESE TIMES.

SOLUTION:

The U.S. should stop sidestepping the U.N. Security Council, and allow U.N. Peacekeeping troops and missions to the Middle East. Stop the violence first.

Stop the bombing and patrol of Iraq.

With todays gains in the use of alternative fuels, develop them to full usage with autos and other utilities, to make the country less dependant on an already depleting natural reserve, oil.

By initiating peace, we would have already shaken the foundations of support for Bin Laden, and/or all those that sponsor activities like those we saw yesterday, and break the stronghold of extremists on the world of Islam. On the other hand, if we carry out bombings on Afghanistan or elsewhere to appease public demand, and very likely kill innocent civilians along the way, wed be creating many more martyrs going to their deaths in retaliation against the retaliation. As shown from yesterdays events, you cannot stop a person whos ready to die. "

It raises some interesting points that I don't beleive have been answered even now, almost 5 years later. Why does the American majority not wonder why these people decided to attack the U.S.? I know that if I was going to give my life for a cause, I would have to beleive it to be a pretty important one. But the media always seems to gloss over these points and make these terrorist out to be madmen with no reasoning whatsoever. While I do not agree with their methods of making a point, I do beleive that there is a point to be made.


Anyways, Tool recently released a new album entitled 10,000 days. At first listen I didn't like it as well as their older stuff (ahem, Aenima), but it is growing on me, as their older songs did. So eventually I may like these songs better. We will see...

Over and out.

Gaming Industry Musings

Last night I had my first nightmare in a very long while. This was a recurring nightmare when I was a kid. It was of those where you wake up paralyzed. I won't go into the details as dreams rarely seem to make sense when retold. It was just strange as I was mentioning to someone earlier about how I hadn't had a nightmare in several years.


Anyway my main reason for posting today is to share my opinions on the state of the gaming industry. I see a few problems (See pic above....) that could be fixed that would make the end-user experience much better. It seems that everytime a new game is announced, that they are trying to recreate the wheel each time. Often a game can have an excellent concept, but then be executed so poorly. Many times that I see thins problem has to do mainly with problems in the engine of game. There have been so many good engines created, like the Source engine with it's Havok physics, to the Unreal engine. Other companies can license these engines to use in their games, but often don't. For what reason, I don't know. Perhaps the price is too large. It would be nice if there was a company that focused mainly of producing an engine and then reselling it to game developers, who will focus on making a game playable and fun. This also might help develop some standards in the game industry that will make installing/troubleshooting problems with games much easier.

Another problem I see is when a game concentrates only on the story, or the graphics. This can make an otherwise great game crap.

Another idea I daydreamed about one day was to develop an easy to use platform where you could implement a basic version of your game. Just a robust toolset and framework that will allow people who concentrate on games to realize their vision before investing millions of dollars in developing it. This wouldn't have to look pretty, or have the best performance, but it would allow for developers to see if their concept will work practically. This will also allow a small group of people to demo their game to managers/companies who can then develop it into a full fledged game.

It's not that I think the gaming industry as a whole has failed, but it saddens me to see such a potentially good game be ruined by poor controls, gameplay, or visuals. Let the storyteller concentrate on the story, while letting interface people concentrate on the interface. Let the engine be robust before other start working on graphics and such, so there's no need to change everything later.

I think Steam is a good step in this direction, but it is still proprietary and has many, many problems. Just look at some of the mod's using the Steam engine. I downloaded the new chapter of Half-Life2 and it was under 100MB. If I bought another game that had this much gameplay, it would probably come on several CD's. I like the ability to only sorry about one underlying system for all my games, rather than 100 different engines all with their own little tricks to get everything working how I want it. DirectX and OpenGL are another example of a step in the right direction, but more modularized components would be great for the gaming system.

Now of course, not having worked in the gaming industry for even a minute, I do not know the internal politics and difficulties that would be involved in implementing my ideas. But, I do end up dealing with a lot of the problems that other end users experience. I shell out $60 for a game that has been hyped up, but then am horribly disappointed by a seemingly simple annoying "feature", that was left in the game in order to ship by some arbitrary deadline. I figured the gaming industry would have evolved beyond these problems seeing as it is bigger than the movie industry. Many people will avoid a company in the future if they have problems with a product such as a DVD player or computer, but these same people cannot seem to even remember who produced the game they just bought for $60. How are they expected to avoid games from problematic publishers?

Now I see these problems the most on cosole games as opposed to PC titles, but it does effect every peice of the gaming market to some extent. I do hope that the Nintendo Wii will be a step in the right direction, and from what I've seen so far it looks like it will. The Wii looks like the best investment to me, with a lower price-point than any other console and even more so compared to building a new PC. It will also open up some opportunities for inventive gameplay, especially when you have some friends playing with you. I will even prefer some of the more "Kid-Friendly" games than the more "Mature" titles if they offer better controls and gameplay. Plus, they are making Duck Hunt 2, which is awesome.

Can you hear me now?

It appears that Colorado Represenative Diana DeGette is proposing a bill that will require all ISP's to keep a log of customer data permanently, until at least one year after they have cancelled their account. In the proposal (pdf) it states that this will apply to any ISP which "enables users to access content", which I cannot think of any ISP which does not do this. It will require them to "...retain records to permit the identification of subscribers to such services for appropriate law enforcement purposes." Now this is a very vague definition. Will it require them just to keep subscription information such as name and address, or much more detailed information such as a record of what their IP address was and at which time, or even more detailed connection information? A spokesperson for DeGette said "We're still addressing some of the issues, and we will have those issues or answers before we introduce this as either an amendment or a bill. " I would suspect that when you propose a bill or an amendment you might have a good idea of what technical limitation you are up against, but it seems that DeGette doesn't. If an expansive reading of her proposal were taken, then a whole lot of data is going to be generated. Many people and especially businesses will stay with the same ISP for many years. With all this this data being generated, that is going to cost a lot for the ISP to store permanently, and the cost will be pushed onto the consumer.

Now of course this bill isn't being introduced standing alone. It is being toted as a means to curb child pornography in the U.S. (another post in which I discuss privacy issues relating to child pornography laws is located here). This in addition to the recent announcement that the lawsuit against the NSA regarding illegal wiretapping was going to be dropped due to the States Secret Privilege.

In other, non-political news I have finally managed to hurt myself on my bicycle. It's a bit funny because I also happen to have a video of it. In retrospect, any jump big enough that it justifies taking a video recording of, is probably not a good idea. I have also embedded the video into this webpage below.

7 Wiki's Feast

While browsing through various articles on Wikipedia (which I believe is one of the greatest achievements on the web in a while). I ran upon some terms of which I've recently heard people throwing around with little regard to what they may actually mean. Another problem I see is that way that they were presented in the public school system (At least in my experience most things were presented in a very Black and White, good or bad manner.)

Fascism
Authoritarianism
Nazism (Most people are not so much wrong about this, but grossly ignorant of the origin/ideas. There are also some interesting similarities in current policies and political views in the U.S.)
Marxism
Totalitarianism
Police state
Socialism


I have been sick for about a week straight, and this is the worst I've felt in many years. I don't think I've felt this bad since I was sick as a kid. I've seemed to of made it through the worst of it without any life altering problems, so I guess it's not too bad.

On a somewhat lighter and semi-comical note(in retrospect), I did manage to finally get my motorcycle down here again. It was, what's the word I'm looking for...hmmm... Wet, and I did not have on proper raingear.




I will be repairing some minor damage (due to age and dryrot from the sun) and just do some general tune-up and work before I sell it and purchase a newer bike. I would like to keep this bike since it used to be my dad's, but it will be a big burden to keep both and a car, both financially and practically. I'll throw in some pics of me riding my other bike...




until next post...

Livin' the G-life

In addition to the plethora of other web-based apps that Google is producing, I recently discovered Google Calendar. Upon first use the interface seems to be very intuitive and snappy. Currently it has not been integrated into my Gmail interface, and actually took a while for me to figure out why it was not displaying. Nonetheless, I will give it a more thorough test when it's integrated into my Gmail interface.

While I love the simplicity and cost (Free is good, right?) of Google's products, it now seems to be getting a little scary. Many people forecasted that the path Google was choosing will be a privacy advocates bad dream. Not only does Google have info about what I talk to my friends about through Gmail and Gchat, as well as what I search for through my Google personalized Page, but now they know what I'm doing and when and where I'm doing it with Gcalendar. While Google has had the "Do no Evil" Motto for some time and seem to be sticking to it pretty well, the fact that they collect this data and have it stored somewhere is the scary part. Now, even if the current people at Google have no intention of using this personal data without our permission, it still has the chance of falling into others hands. It just seems like a bit too much information collected on me to be sitting on a HDD somewhere. Where will this data be in 10 years? 20 years? 50 years? What if a future oppressive government were to seize the data? They could use this data to spy/imprison/eliminate possible troublemakers based on emails sent years ago that do not agree with their political views. Of course this is a worse case scenario, but the fact that it's possible is what scares me. In spite of all this concern, I will continue to use Google's services for now. They are just to useful and easy that it's hard to turn down.

On another somewhat frightening note, it seems that the President of China's first visit to the states will be for a dinner with Bill Gates.

In personal news, not much has been going on. I've been searching for a house to rent for several weeks, but haven't found anything that stands out yet. I will be buying a new(used) motorcycle soon, after I sell my current one. Oh, and one last thing. If you are using Myspace and reading this, please learn how to design a webpage that is somewhat readable and functional. Also, stop using static background images that contain colors that are the same as your text and make posts that are somewhat coherent. Another thing, stop playing damn music on your website, it's annoying and your taste is music is really bad. If I want to listen to music, I'll fire up my media player and listen to my music. It seems that Myspace is the new AOL.

Window Vapor!

With news that Vista will not be out this year, and the new Office Suite will be pushed to next year, things are not looking so bright for Microsoft. Here is a blog of a Microsoft insider about the recent concerns which contains many comments from others inside the company. This video of an interview with Ballmer (sorry will only work in IE) is quite interesting. Funny how he cannot admit that things are not going like they promised us not too long ago, even after all the innovative and useful features were stripped from the product. I got a projoect for ya Microsoft, how about making roaming profiles THAT ACTUALLY WORK! We have all this advanced replication between domain controllers, but a simple folder with profile settings and misc files is way to complex to sync with the server. In any case, I'm sure it will not effect them too greatly because we all know that consumers will eat Vista up as soon as it is released, whenever that may be. Well, maybe force-fed is a better term, at least for home users who get their OS pre-installed with their PC's.

In other breaking news, researchers have found that you should close any panels made of glass, especially when it is dark. I have confirmed this firsthand.

Yeah, glass is not fun to cleanup from carpet. I didn't even see it at all and ran right through it.

One Slick PC

Tom's Hardware Guide has an interesting article that I stumbled across showing an entire top of the line PC that is cooled passively by cooking oil (Submerged completely within it). They also did some trials with De-ionized water, but the PC crashed within 5 minutes. They had no problems with the oil once they got everything sealed up. A followup to the article can be found here, and contains several responses from PC enthusiasts who offer several suggestions that would improve the design.

BBspot post

Looks like one of the bloopers on my personalized google page that I sent in made it to BBspot's blooper page. Linkage.

DRM Insanity

Cory Doctorow, an employee of the EFF as well as a Sci-Fi writer, recently gave a speech to Microsoft employees about DRM. The full speech can be found here. This is one of the best writings about the absurdity that DRM has become that I've read. It also explains how it works and why there are major difficulties getting it to work as they (the media companies) envision it will. Cory's blog can be found at craphound.com (very strange name btw...).

Go ahead... give it a read, it quite interesting. I even hear he is giving similar speeches around the country at different college campuses and such. I hope he comes around this part of the country, but seems unlikely.

Florida - Spring 2006

Well, Finally got some pictures from florida uploaded. Had a great time, but my alternator went out about 30 miles away from home. After being awake for over 24 hours and paddling 7 miles this made it a very, very long day. Finally ended up having it towed back to town after having my brother come down and try to help me get it back to town. One word to the wise... Never take Highway 41 through Kentucky. It is horribly marked and is one of the worst roads I've ever tried to follow. Anyways... on with the pics!









More can be seen by Clicking on one of the photos and following the links.

On another note, a cool little link I found was Retrievr, which allows you to draw something and it will try to find photos from Flickr which kinda match your drawing. Give it a shot!

Black Magic Voting

Black Box Voting is reporting that the internal logs of 40 or more electronic voting machines reveal several anomalies in the 2004 presedential election. Black Box sucessfully sued former Palm Beach County, FL supervisor of elections Theresa LePore to obtain these logs. One thing to note is that these were not the Diebold machines we have all heard of, but were produced by Sequoia Voting Systems. Some of the anomalies include votes being cast before and after polls were closed and one machine being powered off and on 128 times during the election.

Now, I won't jump to the conclusion that these log anomalies were done with malicious intent, but it is something that needs to be investigated. Blackbox.org has invested over $7,000 just to obtain these logs, which took 9 months to obtain. I encourage you to explore more of Blackboxvoting.org (not blackboxvoting.com) as they have several other interesting stories and appear to be very non-partisian.

ATI's Debacle

As an update to the previous article about HDCP, it looks like ATI themselves have taken notice that their graphics cards that they have been selling that claim to have HDCP support, while they don't. They are now removing the claims from their website. Hopefully this is just the first step they are taking and will issue a press release soon. A coverup with something like this would be foolish and almost impossible. There are several sites which archive other sites and a simple look at these archived sites would show what they had earlier.

Infact, if you would like to inform your represenative that you oppose these type of measures, it can be easily done right on the EFF's website. A written letter would also be great as opposed to a digital version.

Unsocial Networking

Here is a hilarious video clip from the daily show about social networking sites such as Facebook or Myspace.

In other not so funny news it looks like Myspace is going to attempt to make it's site safer to users. Who knew that putting your personal information on a public website would allow for unwanted people to contact you?

And well, I leave for Florida in the morning, so wish me luck! I just bought a 512 MB SD card for my roomates camera, so hopefully I'll be able to get some good pics and post a few.

Digital Rights Nightmare (DRN???)

With DVD's supposedly going the way of the VHS, the push for higher definition video is on. With the new and improved resolution, comes "new and improved" copy protection schemes. It seems that the new scheme for the next generation of media will be HDCP, or Hi-Bandwidth Digital Content Protection. This system will be necessary for hi-def playback of the new HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs. Basically this system allows for every piece of the system to protect the videostream, from the source, to the display itself. What this means is that without "DHCP Compliant" TV's/graphic cards/monitors and everything inbetween, nobody will be able to get the full benefit of this new media. Now, while this sounds like a technical limitation, it is not. There are many HDTV's and other hardware devices (such as computers) out there that can display the full resolution of the media but will not, because the video will be downscaled to 540p. 540p will be only 25% of the full resolution that these discs support. That's a pretty noticeable difference. It also means that all analog outputs will also be downscaled to the smaller resolution. But it is not guaranteed that you will even be able to output an analog signal at all in the future. You will need to use a digital output such as DVI or HDMI. Another article that describes a few of the personal computer problems in greater detail can be found here, and shows just how complicated it's going to get. The average consumer is not going to care about all of this stuff. They are just going to get angry because they are seeing no benefit with this "New Fangled DVD". How about the fact that just because your graphics chipset says that it is compliant, doesn't mean that your graphics card will be compliant. According to this article most(if not all) of the graphics cards produced in the last few years that have advertised themselves as HDCP compliant will not be.

Well, why don't companies just make their hardware/software HDCP compliant you ask? As with most of the major DRM attempts, this technology will need to be licensed. The controlling corporation for this particular technology will be Digital Content Protection, LLC. The current HDCP specifications can be found in this PDF. What will this mean for open source software? I doubt they will be able to include this software and still be open source. I fail to see how this system is making things better for the consumer at all.

Another great concern is with the DMCA, which currently trumps all fair use rights and copyright terms. Even if the copyright expires on an item of Intellectual Property, then it will eternally be legally protected by the copy protection mechanisms.

Another big problem for HDCP is that there a several known problems with the system. A paper was published in 2001 detailing the flaw, which as far as I can tell still exist. How long will it be before some hacker (yes, hacker... NOT cracker) bypasses this system just like CSS for DVD's?

I for one hope that the inherent problems and complexity of this system will show itself early in the game. This will hopefully cause a consumer backlash that will stop this system in it's tracks. I'm sure that when John Smith finds out that the HDTV he bought 6 months ago cannot play the new HD-DVD resolution, and that he will have to buy an entire new TV to see the benefits of the new HD-DVD player he just bought, he's going to be pretty angry. How long is it until we see a future so encumbered with digital rights management that it will resemble something like this? It seems that so much progress is being hindered by DRM and IP (intellectual property) legislation. Why would any consumer want a system so complex and resource intensive when we just want a better looking movie? If it were not for these roadblocks I think we would be watching HD-DVD's right now. Making more complex and expensive players is not good for the consumer in any way.

P.S.
I'm sorry for all the links in the article, as there is a plethora of reading there, but this is a complex issue. Anyway, I've already spent too much time on this issue. I am waiting to see how this one plays out.

The Broken Patent System.

Phillip Hallam-Baker has a very series of articles on his blog that detail several of the problems with the current patent system. As of today he has completed parts 1 through 3 of 4. A very interesting read indeed.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Link to his main site, dotfuturemanifesto which has many more interesting posts.

Word of the day!

Technorealism. I found this today while stumbling upon descriptions of other philosophical ideas.

Some others you might want to check out if you are unaware of the basics behind the names:
Pragmatism
Idealism
Materialism
Realism

Many others are linked to within the text, so I'll let you explore those on your own.

Sand

A very cool Java game that has had me entranced for quite a while recently is this sand game. I've seriously spent hours playing with different ideas in this. It's been linked by many, many other sites, but I figured I would put it here as well.

I will be leaving for Florida on the 18th and still don't have my camera back from the repair shop. I'll see if I will be able to borrow someone's for a week or so. I will be visiting Tampa again as well as many of the sites I visited before in the northern part of the state last year. Some warm weather will be welcome, and hopefully it will be much warmer than it was when I went last spring. If I ever obtain a camera I will be sure to post some of the highlights of the trip. My next big trip after this will hopefully be out west to Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. I've been there once and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. I would like to be able to go with a few friends and take dualsport motorcycles on some of the mountain passes. Anyway, enough with the daydreaming, play with some sand!

Flickr, Florida

Well, after a long period of procrastination, I have finally managed to find somewhere to host my Pictures. I've heard a lot of hype regarding Flickr and decided I would see what all the Hoop-la is about. I'll post some of the pictures from Florida that I have had in my vault for some time.

This is currently my background at work. I like this picture, and it turned out quite well. It also took a very long time to get this close to the bird. I kept "chasing" it down the river for a good half mile. Full size can be found here.



The Rest I will not comment on, but will show some of my work. Hopefully I will receive my camera back soon and can take some more.

Google Still "Doing No Evil"?

I appears that the Bush administration now wants access to Google's massive database of search entries and have subpoenaed them to get it, all in the name of keeping pornography away from children. Google has claimed that it will fight against this request,that they play no major part in this lawsuit and this subpoena reaches too far out of bounds. The government claims that the information within these databases is needed to defend the constitutionality of the Child Online Protection Act, passed in 1998, and which never went into effect as it prevented adults from accessing completely legal sites. The website for the COPA commission can be found here.

This could be an important case not only because of it's immediate effects of google, but on further rulings in similar cases. This could be a big deal for all of the major search engines and an other website for that matter. Some sources are reporting that other search engines have already agreed to comply, but still remained anonymous. It also effected google shortly after the announcement as their market share prices fell 8% (a record for the stock).

Funny thing about this one is that I heard about it from the local broadcast news (Fox news out of Louisville, KY for anyone inquiring) before any other source(which is normally Slashdot). More impressive is that this sort of news is making it onto the less tech savvy media channels, and that my mother knew about this before I did. Does this mean that the general public is becoming more interested in privacy legislation? More aware of the reduction of rights in the name of protection? Are they starting to realize that the internet is a global network of resources and that the United States, although they did found the basics of it, does not own it. Do they realize that a law passed in America, plays little part on a server in Norway or Finnland? In any case, I hope to hear more about these issues on more media channels in the future. Another interesting fact that I had not yet realized is that according to Nielsen/Netratings, Google now handles 46% of all web searches. Yahoo was in second with 32% and MSN in third with 11%. I did not realize Google had taken hold of the market that much. Any comments/rantings about the topic at hand would be nice, or pretty much any activity other than bots posting about their surf videos would be nice.

In personal occurances, not much has been changed really. I will be working nights again for a while, and am currently adjusting my body to the new sleep schedule. I am watching a new anime series called Samurai Champloo, which although it sounded bad from the recommendation of a friend, is actually quite entertaining. I am almost done reading 1984 by George Orwell for the 3rd or 4th time, which ties in closely with government restriction of literature/materials/pictures. If you have not yet read it, I highly recommend that you do(I would even have to say the best book I have read).