Archived News starting from 09-12-2003 and earlier
BlogThe
Electronic Frontier Foundation has created a
petition for congress expressing outrage on the
recent lawsuits against P2P users. The petition requests concentration on legalizing P2P with appropriate artist compensation instead of generating thousands of lawsuits. It also touches on the amnesty program, which if you look carefully, is a crock. The record labels are issuing the subpoenas, not the RIAA. Amnesty from the RIAA is meaningless.
sign the petition and avoid buying CD's at all costs. Each one you buy only helps to fund the giant legal machine that is the RIAA.
In a
previous update I mentioned that the new 64 bit processors are coming out soon. I had planned to wait at least a year to get one, or a dirt cheap 32-bit system. Well, I've been a bad person and bought a 32 bit system today.
Duane bought one and it was so cool I had to have one too. It's the
Biostar iDEQ 200N. In my defense, I had $250 from a recent e-Bay sale which brought the total cost of the machine down to $280. I'll post specs when I get it (hopefully sometime next week). So much for self control.
It's a sad truth. Instead of being a true geek and using web technology to implement his
photo albums, he has created a windows macro to crop/resize and display his photos. All I ask is a simple ASP or ASP.net script that parses through the files and generates thumbnails on the fly, like any lazy web developer would implement. His complicated maze of macros and automated non-web scripts make me ashamed to admit he is a friend. Let's all pray he eventually does the right thing.
Today on my way to work I saw a squirrel dart out in front of the car in front of me. He made it to the space between lanes, then ran away from the car in the lane next to me. By this time I had moved up to where he was parallel with me so he ran back again and went under my car for a loud WOMPFH noise. I saw him bounce up in my rearview mirror and manage to get off the road, but I already felt sick from it. If he had just stayed calm and waited he would have been fine, but pure panic took hold of him and made him run around until he got hit. Now he's just another
curb squirrel.Today I woke up at 2:00am to start work at 3:00am. I came in early because the company I work for only makes changes during this timeframe (minimum traffic window) and today was the day of "the big push." For the past month I've been working on
Equity Online! exclusively and today it finally went to production. I'm very happy with this application because it had good marketing requirements and a good overall design. I put alot of effort into writing highly efficient and reusable code and I feel I did a pretty good job. Needless to say I now have a huge weight off my chest and plan to sleep the remainder of the day. I can attest that driving at 3:00am is a very relaxing experience.
I read a recent
article discussing fine increases from traffic enforcement. Since the economy is down, people are buying less and making less, which means less taxes are getting to government. Instead of raising taxes to compensate, which would cause riots (similar to the ones witnessed when
gas prices go up) more and more local police are concentrating on traffic fines as supplemental income. This means the traffic cops that liked my flashy car before have a stronger hunger than ever to pull me over. As a result, I'm forcing myself to do the speed limit and stop at yellow lights no matter what. Let the people that can afford it supplement our shallow tax base. I'll drive 65 (and save gas doing it too).
During
Enorym's photo rampage of California, he stumbled upon more proof of the undeniable truth, set in stone.
In case you live under a rock, the planet Mars is only
34.6 million miles away and it won't be close again till 2287. My initial plan of driving out to the middle of nowhere and using
Stavos' telescope was foiled first by cloud cover, and then second by his father taking the telescope this whole weekend (DOH!). Frustrated, I decided to take some pictures from my house until I can finally get my hands on his scope. I think they turned out fairly well. The ones out of focus looked almost real so I figured I'd keep them too.
A few weeks ago, I decided my chain-link fence looked like something out of Sanford and Son. I don't think it had been painted since it was installed. Aside from it looking like crap, it also left rust stains on my new driveway whenever it rained. Something had to be done, and that something was paint. My first attempt I managed to wire brush off one side and get it painted, but found silver marks under my nose. I was paranoid about aluminum poisioning from the paint for at least a week. Today I decided to brave the hot sun and aluminum paint to finish it off, but this time armed with a face mask. I took
before and
after shots for comparison. Even though it took me almost 3 hours (6 total) I think it was well worth it. A pat on my back for such a
beautiful job.
Since my last update involved computer replacement, I thought I'd throw in a quick environmental blurb about what to do with your old ones. Most of the major manufacturers will pickup your old PC and recycle the hazardous and reusable parts of it. Then you can enjoy your new computer with the piece of mind that your old one isn't poisioning wildlife or taking up landfill. You can participate in
Dell's Recycling for a fee, and
Gateway will even give you a credit toward your next purchase. Or just check the
computer recycling directory for a location. Don't you feel like a better person now? I know I do.
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