Archived News starting from 08-24-2003 and earlier
BlogAnother great AutoCross event, this time at
the Palace, which meant a
HUGE track with lots of ups and downs. Nobody finished in less than a minute, which goes to show just how long and complicated this course was. My first run I took it way too easy, my second run I was manhandling my car like a brutish oaf. My third (and final) run I finally managed to balance it gracefully and pulled off my best time. I also got to
show off my girlfriend since she decided to tag along for this race. Despite the varying weather, and a
short delay due to an oil leak, everything went smoothly.
I'm leaning toward photoshoppped fake, but at least it looks cool.
As I
stated earlier the RIAA is out of control. After failing to stop all swapping by suing Napster out of existence and bringing suits (still pending) against the other P2P networks, they decided to switch tactics and are now
suing individual users. I secretly hoped some rich parents college kid would get served to help drain the infinite funds of the RIAA. Thankfully, an ISP that was served with one of the "give us your customers information" subpoenas
returned it on jurisdictional grounds. This means the RIAA now has to go to each court in each state they sue in. In addition, there's at least one
privacy countersuit from an actual user. While I'm overjoyed the RIAA won't be able to just waltz around and demand customer information from ISP's as easily as before, I'd be kidding myself if I thought this even makes a dent in their litigious crusade. Let's break down a typical CD purchase and we'll see exactly how much money the RIAA has to throw around, and why they will be filing lawsuits till long after we're all dead.
| Typical CD Price: | $17.00 |
| Cost to Manufacture: | -$0.75 |
| Artist Royalty: | -$2.00 |
| Store Markup: | -$5.00 |
| Label Profit: | $9.25 |
Since the RIAA is funded from the music labels, it's not hard to see why they will NEVER run out of money as long as people buy CD's. I have personally refused to buy a CD for over 3 years for this very reason and will continue to listen to the radio for all my musical entertainment needs. I'm not giving one cent to the RIAA.
I recently decided to take a chance and installed the
Google Toolbar. Almost invariably, any free software you find on the Internet is now bundled with
spyware so as a rule I never install it. However, since it's offered by Google I assumed correctly it was the one piece of software that's still safe. Besides all the great shortcuts (including an UP button that navigates to the root folder of a page, long since overdue) it now comes with a popup blocker FOR FREE! If you need a popup (some sites require it) just hold down CTRL while clicking. It also tracks the # of blocked popups, which naturally lead to the
Popups Blocked competition. So far my one day of using it has saved me from 27. Highly recommended for anyone that hates popups (I'll assume a conservative 99.5%)
Starting with Niagra Falls power plant, the blame bounced around each affected state at least once, including Canada (the big state at the top). Now FirstEnergy is the one we're all supposed to pick on, but I'm not sure I buy it. For guidance, I turn to you: the users of the Internet. Afterall, if supergrrrl8485, newkids4ever27 and seexyboy8978 all think it was aliens, then it has to be true!
Make your voice heard!Looking around for ASP.net scripts, I ran into a very good PHP blogging script. It has been installed as
AtomicInternet Weblog System and added to the HOSTED links. I plan to tweak the settings, modify the CSS file, and play around with the database. Since it supports multiple users and multiple categories, I encourage anyone who has the urge to create a blog to create your own category and have at it. Image uploads are also supported, which was very thoughtful of the authors.
Playing around at
www.bandwidthplace.com I found a "Test Your Site" link generator that can test the speed between this server and anyone using it. Just click the
400k/1500k link under the STATUS heading on the left of the
homepage. Late at night when nobody is on the server I've confirmed that
RoadRunner does indeed have 400k upload speed. Thanks to them, I can continue to pollute the internet at high speed.
08/14/2003: 04:10 pm -
UPS Reports Power Failure
After discovering the outage would forever be known as "The Great Outage of 2003" I left work for home. As you can see from the
Gnome Cam the server was still running when I arrived at 6:10pm, a full two hours after the outage. Unfortunately the cable company isn't as prepared so most likely the server was down from the beginning. I decided to turn off the server and use the remaining power to charge my phone. While it was charging, I
took some pictures while the power was out including a
movie of the 5 and Beech intersection. Walking back, I saw Lindsay, who was
obviously hysterical over the whole thing. As is tradition, I
ran my roomba during the outage just because I could. I also gave my cat a
brain protection device to keep aliens and the government out. My
girlfriend did bills, and my
computer sat lifeless so we decided to head for
Duane's house. Upon arriving, we found
Gina also doing bills, and also hysterical. Duane got
looter protection and we
headed outside. ATV's were
running rampant as is typical in Redford. My response was
pure panic. A few drinks and a bonfire later, we braved the looters and rioters and headed back home. <WalterCronkite>"And that's how it was during the Outage of 2003"</WalterCronkite>
It just turned 12:01am and I'm not sleeping like tired programmers should be. Instead, I just finished making my server monitors more accurate. On the
homepage, the SYSTEM and STATUS sections (on the left) now have real-time updated information. If you refresh, you'll notice the used/free memory changes, and if you wait long enough the used/free storage will also change (from GnomeCam captures). In addition, if you click on the
SYSTEM heading, it will take you to an even more detailed real-time system info page. Is any of this useful? Probably not to everyone, but it will help me if there is a runaway process or memory leak somewhere, or if my diskspace starts to become a premium. I can also see who's connected at any given time, so at least it's useful to me. Now it's
bedtime for bonzo!
Today and yesterday everyone was yapping about the
new worm taking advantage of a well known flaw in Microsoft software. It's not being discussed quite as chicken little as the
slammer worm of January was, but still elevated to "run around in a panic" status. The Internet itself is rarely affected by these worms. The idiots who don't know how to patch their servers or use firewalls are the real victims and fortunately the media has been making an effort to inform rather than sensationalize. Since I'm striving to better inform rather than rant, I've included a few useful links you can use to determine if you really should run around in a panic. As a note: all of these sites only registered a small increase in backbone traffic.
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