My rants/geeky doings/other shit

He was born in the U.S.

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:48:23 GMT

Or was he?
It remains an interesting mystery, and one that should be solved sooner rather
than later.

true or not?

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:29:16 GMT

If this video has some
truth to it, which I think it most likely does, then thungs are about to get a
whole lot worse, instead of better. Yay for headed down the shitter express!

U.S dollar headed down the shitter?

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:11:05 GMT

It looks like this is further proof. This
pretty much echos the editorial I linked to in a previous post; the faith-valued
dollar is fast headed down the path of no return, and back we go to the gold
standard. Can we say "history repeats itself?"

The Dell failtop

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:11:17 GMT

Because that is exactly what this thing is. First the cooling issues, and now I
find out that this machine may or may not have a bad PCI controller. First some
seemingly driver-related problems with communicating with my Cardbus wireless
card, and some kernel "PCI0xxx (where xxx is an I/O address) int A disabled"
messages later, it points to either the card itself getting flaky, or a bad
controller. Unfortunately for me, I won't know which it is until I get my new
laptop, since I neither have an Expresscard to Cardbus adapter to test the card
in Tracy's machine, nor a second Cardbus card with which to do some more
testing. So yup, up shit creek until further notice as far as that goes. Itunnel
works thankfully, well enough for me to establish an Edge/3G connection if I
need it whilst traveling.

Yeah, I caved in after all.

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:01:54 GMT

I restarted the BBS at lava-net.com port 23. Everyone come check it out! It has
some old popular favorites on it, including Kanons and Katapults, Barren Realms
Elite, and some others. If I find that the board is getting some traffic, I may
just add some more doors.

BBSs?

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 21:37:17 GMT

So I seem to have re-discovered BBSs apparently, along with most of the games I
used to play back in the early 90's. And, the Gameland BBS hadn't gone away, the
telnet port was just switched to 24. I wonder how long it will be before someone
throws me a bunch of chemical weapons in Barren Realms? Only time will tell. Not
sure if I should restart my BBS; I may just end up doing that.

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 22:24:17 GMT

Not entirely sure what to think of this. It
should be interesting watching regardless though.

I have finally done it!

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:47:28 GMT

So I have finally purchased my new laptop!
I did add the full HD 1920X1080 display, 5050 GB hard disk, and 8 GB of RAM. The
rest is as according to the base configuration. I can't wait to see how this
thing plows through building LFS and Gnome; hopefully Gnome doesn't take 15
hours to build, which is about how long it took on this old Dell I am currently
using.

linkage

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:13:56 GMT

And this is why the Flu
shot can be bad news. It really can't be good to injest something that
contains 25 times the amount of mercury that is even rated safe for human
consumption? I didn't think so. As a result, no H1N1 or Influenza vaccines for
me!

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 05:02:09 GMT

I
lol'ed over this one. So when is ISO coming out with the new standard that
is going to regulate the number of transistors that can be manufactured onto
next generation CPUs? Because holy shit, the world will end if there is a
0.000000000000001% chance of one of those transistors sparking and starting a
little fire. In which case, one should observe propper grounding procedures.

More govt crap

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 19:27:07 GMT

I am becoming increasingly against public, government perpetuated education. Here's
why. If that isn't socialist indoctrination, I don't know what is. Imo
education should be left to the private sector, so that as much choice as
humanly possible becomes available as a result. Do you want your kids to become
well versed in the ways of science in technology? No problem, just send them to
the local all-technical school. Or if militarism is your thing, just call the
local military emphasis institution. Etc etc. No wonder an increasing number of
individuals are becoming accepting of the current federal government and its
ways, it's all in how you present your propaganda. And, nothing better than to
have your children pass all the propaganda they get in public school to future
generations right?

</sarcasm>

. Until we get rid of this monstrosity
that steals our income, suppresses our ability to conduct freedom of expression
(puritanistic indecent exposure legislation anyone?), we will never truly be
free.
Edit: And as if the above news story isn't enough, Youtube video.

testing123?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:24:06 GMT

Yup, I am still alive. There hasn't been a whole much to report as of late;
consequently, I guess a lack of updatage. Random facts: I hope I can get my laptop
fairly soon. Beyond the base specifications, I will probably have a Core2 Quad
Q9000 put in, 8 GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and a 500 7200 RPM SATA hard disk. That should
make for a kickass Qemu virtualization machine, as well as anything else
CPU-intensive I plan on throwing at it. I am getting more and more fed up with
this Dell Inspiron 600M failtop by the day, mostly because of cooling issues.
Speaking of cooling issues, I am quite surprised that this thing still runs
properly, and yet here it is. I have started listening to Free Talk Live, and I rather like it so far. I
guess at heart I have always been a Libertarian, and I didn't really figure it
out until now. Robert Murphy's Politically
Incorrect Guide To Capitalism, helped push me in that direction (initially).
And in other random news, I hope this case
gets ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, given that the bank really did fail to
secure the online account access properly. Like Bruce Schneier says in his blog
post on the case, the key to eliminating this sort of fraud is to
authenticate the transaction, not the user. The major credit card companies
already do this, and the end result is a fairly low percentage of fraudulent
transactions. Why can't the banks do this? Oh I know why; it's because they are
too busy getting ass raped by big government bailouts, to where the customer is
quite secondary (in other words, they don't really give a shit anymore).
Seriously though, someone has to fix this problem, and the free market is the
best way to do it. I think I am done rambling for now though, I now return you
to your regularly scheduled programming.

I have gone the way of the Apple.

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 16:59:47 GMT

At least for now, that is. I have obtained an IPhone 3GS, so that I can see how
I like it, and consequently if I decide to keep it or not. So far, it has
provided a very unique experience, with regards to gesturing in order to
efficiently navigate the screen. And then I think to myself; if I wave at the
phone, can it make my coffee? I think not, but one can always dream anyway.
Sending SMS messages is still not something I have mastered yet, mostly due to
the fact that I haven't quite memorized the keyboard orientation yet. I still
have the N73 in case I decide to ditch the IPhone, but for now I'm playing with
it, and seeing what comes of it.

Metered usage is stupid

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 19:24:30 GMT

Was talking to a few friends/acquaintances of mine yesterday about the
possibility that all ISPs will eventually have implemented usage-based billing,
and their thinking is that this will be the case in about 5-10 years, including
on dedicated links. On the other hand, I do not possess this belief. While I can
see this somewhat making sense in the case of shared media i.e., cable
connections, this really does not technically make sense when applied to a
dedicated link. In the case of such a connection, the ISP provisions you at a
given maximum rate that you pay a flat fee for, you only send and receive data
at a maximum of said rate, and that's it. The only additional costs incurred in
this case would be maintenance, and overall constant costs associated with
running the overall network infrastructure. You wouldn't have the problem that
is all too often experienced on shared cable networks, where one of the users
can use all available bandwidth on the link constantly, and the ISP would need
to allocate more bandwidth to the rest of the customers on that node, in order
to increase throughput for the customers that are using somewhat less bandwidth,
but still want their page loads to remain relatively fast. This sort of network
management does incur additional costs, which is why I can somewhat understand
the rationale of the cable companies; on the other hand, if their reasons are
purely based on pushing non-TV customers to their cable TV offerings by metering
their internet connections, that in my opinion is a death sentence for them. If
it doesn't affect them at present, it will definitely start affecting them in
the future. They will eventually have to face the fact that they are in the
business of bit delivery, not content. A couple of links that can demonstrate
the above points are this, and this.

Happy mother's day?

Sun, 10 May 2009 20:30:07 GMT

I was sitting online, and amaena pointed me towards this. I haven't
stopped laughing yet!

Lol

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 18:37:43 GMT

How stupid can it
get? Apparently, it's not over yet; rather amusing nonetheless though.

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:33:24 GMT

I lol'ed at this. Perhaps if
I lol enough, I might be able to turn it into something useful.

Can hardware really sing?

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:10:57 GMT

Apparently, yes they can. I was talking to garrettk17 yesterday, and
he found some quite amusing Youtube videos. Here is one rendition of
Starwars by a floppy disk, some Bethoven as performed by
an HP Scanjet, and a
singing Commodor 1541 floppy drive. And what do you know? Easter eggs on Easter!

Yay network outages...Not.

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:36:30 GMT

I haven't been up to much lately, except having to deal with these intermitent
network outages; fortunately, they are not on my end. Some stuff at the local CO
seems to be having issues (perhaps it's a wavelength card gone bad or
something), and a Verizon tech told me today that they should have everything
resolved by tomorrow morning. Hopefully my server doesn't disappear off the net
again, but it could happen.

update

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 06:14:27 GMT

Yup, because I am oh so creative when it comes to subject lines. Not a whole lot
has been going on lately, except work pretty much. Although, I have been on
rather something of a programming craze lately; I started reading through a C++
tutorial, and sort of re-learning what I started learning of X86 Assembly back
in 2002 or so. I probably won't be doing a lot of major coding in Assembly, but
imo it's good to still retain the knowledge when or if it becomes necessary to
use it at some point. Plus, I get to play around with it if I get bored
sometime. Hey, it might be fun to write to random memory addresses, to see what
I get.

We did it!

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:12:23 GMT

19:12:36 up 200 days, 4:23, 10 users, load average: 0.17, 0.08, 0.02
Now hopefully we don't get any 7 hour plus power outages, which would drain my
batteries completely.

Almost at the magic number, can we do it?

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:05:13 GMT

19:02:44 up 199 days, 4:13, 10 users, load average: 0.06, 0.03, 0.01
About 19 hours to go, until the server hits 200 days of uptime. It's quite
amazing really, since the only access to it I have is remote, and the fact that
all sorts of stuff has been moved around in that basement as of late. I guess
the parents are trying to make sure nothing happens to the machine or its
connectivity, since it means them not getting online for a while if something
does happen.

Here come the capacitors!

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:07:50 GMT

We've probably already seen the patent; I am rather
guilty of not having read it, but that's not the point is it? I hadn't thought
we'd be seeing a device with one of these capacitor-based batteries until who
knows when; however, I have been proven wrong. ANd now, the world's first ultracapacitor-based electric
screwdriver. It charges in 90 seconds, you get 30 minutes out of it, and
these batteries last far longer than conventional lithium ions. I might get one
of these, just to have. Here's to hoping I'll be using a capacitor-based battery
in my laptop soon.

Cloning RFID passports

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:54:19 GMT

Not that this is anything new, but
this is yet another case demonstrating that this sort of thing is still
possible, and that having RFID chips in any sort of sensitive personal document
is a really bad idea.

DRM is dead

Mon, 26 Jan 2009 06:12:15 GMT

It's about time DRM died for stored
content. I guess it remains to be seen how long it stays around in streams.