A Liberally Blogged Education

2010-06-01T11:57:00.001-07:00

go palm!

2009-09-30T16:17:00.000-07:00

In just 5 months the palm pre has managed to snag 4% of mobile web use. A particularly great number seeing as it is a single device and the entire set of all andriod phones grew by only the same amount in that time. Nokias line of phones and devices droped 10% of mobile web usage also.

More ragging on apple.

2009-07-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

Qouting other sites makes me less biase looking, right?

The Onion takes a jab at apple... customers. Remember that story about the emporors new clothes?

I think it is absolutely impossible for apple to lose touch with reality.

2009-07-29T19:22:00.000-07:00

They lack a necessary state (click here for read link).

My favorite:

Let me get this straight… Keeping it ILLEGAL to jailbreak phones will dissuade terrorists and drug dealers from doing these horrible things that Apple claims could be done with their phones?

Really? So a terrorist who would bring down the Cell Phone towers, or a drug dealer who would sell heroin to children, is going to go, “Woah, dude… wait a minute… I’m not going to risk violating the DMCA!”

Apple Legal Team Fail.

Left 4 dead whats.... not really new.

2009-07-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

None of these are new game making, its a pretty expansion pack valve.

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/sdcc-09-left-4-dead/53359

my hero

2009-07-25T17:23:00.001-07:00

http://www.umpcportal.com/2009/07/awesome-wearable-computer-setup-is-powered-by-sony-vaio-ux-umpc

would you like some augmented reality with that phone today?

2009-07-25T11:26:00.001-07:00

It's true..

2009-07-24T14:28:00.001-07:00

Nothing to see here, move along....

2009-07-24T14:26:00.000-07:00

lol, it's really sad that our government is funny....

2009-07-22T12:48:00.001-07:00

For clarity's sake.

2009-07-20T23:41:00.000-07:00

I thought I should provide a little guide to not-watching things, just in case any of you were confused. There are many many techniques for not-watching, this is just a personal favorite of mine.

1.) Find something that is watchable, that is the only requirement, you don't have to worry about it being any good (it's actually easier if it isn't)
2.) set it up, as if in the sound belief that you will watch it, plump a nice pillow, adjust the volume, get comfortable....
3.) Attempt to synchronize your personal passage into sleep with the end of the intro credits.

There are many variations on this. two of my other favorites are identical up to step 3. simply replace that step with either "realize, if possible, suddenly, that you are late for the evining shift at work, leave." or "allow the forces of the universe to cause an emergency in the next room, a minor indoor flood or fire works well, proceed to act reasonable for such a situation."

with practice you can become an expert not-watcher like me.

"Of course it cannot be changed, else I will be known as the son of a tortoise"

2009-07-20T23:36:00.001-07:00

I have been not-watching things alot this summer. While I was looking for a show to not watch, i ran across this:

It is now my favorite show to not-watch. I think there is a lot of not-watching potential in all K-drama.

so true

2009-07-20T10:41:00.001-07:00

Can you guess my bais?

2009-07-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

A nice positive review of the palm pre.

An engadget editorial of how useless the Iphone is for actually working.

The dig

2009-07-08T14:58:00.000-07:00

I just want to point out that steam has the classic Lucas Arts title "the dig" for $5. If you have never played this, and are currently in possession of a soul, you should definitely go buy it now. With a story written by Orson Scott Card (yes, Scott Card, one of the best selling fiction writers of all time, the only man to ever with both the hugo and the nebula award two years in a row...) and produced by steven speilberg (yah... no introduction for him.) Nice (albeit aging) hand drawn art. and Myst like adventure mystery gameplay.... its worth it. Very much worth it.

this is real

2009-07-07T12:50:00.001-07:00

LINK

RELATED

two augmented reality videos

2009-07-07T12:45:00.000-07:00

One of these is already available for use.

TF2 ripoff

2009-07-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

This not yet released korean made title HAVE is an amusingly faithful clone of team fortress 2. The sad thing is, all else being held equal I would prefer this more justifiably cartoony premise and the more open (and therefore less team dependant) level design to TF2.

Anybody wanna hear how stupid Intel is?

2009-06-26T23:57:00.001-07:00

So I was sitting and wondering to myself why a 4 watt processor (intel atom) needs a large (ok, medium by normal standards, but you would think something with a 4 watt draw could run on a cell phone battery) LI-Ion battery to get the spiffy 8+ hour runtime that the best netbooks keep bragging about. There is one very simple reason. Intel stubbornly refuses to let anybody else make a GPU pairing with their processor (even though Nvidia is doing this, Intel has been attempting to stop them in court for months). Why is this relevant you ask? because Intels 945 chipset, the one that is univerally packaged with the Atom, has a power envelope of 22 watts, over 5 times the draw of the CPU. With all that extra power, Intel's integrated graphics are still the absolute worse graphics solution ever made. Generally they can be outperformed by ABSOLUTELY ANY DROP IN EXPANSION CARD DESIGNED FOR PCI-E. Stupidity.

LOL

2009-06-26T11:00:00.000-07:00

From engadgets forums:

"Kamil @ Jun 26th 2009 1:57AM

1) under $1500
2) GAMEing....

Mac fans feel threatened by these terms..."

The mac fans are coming! the mac fans are coming! run!!!

Track record

2009-06-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

While I was writing the augmented reality tidbit below I thought to myself: "how likely am I to be right about this?" (that augmented reality, including personal projectors and personal display units (probably heads up) will be commonplace in the future.

Well, two thoughts come to mind. One is an afternoon where Lucas and I (both fairly early palm pilot adopters) sat with our friend Jeremy in our highschool demonstrating the utility of a hand held device with video playback, document browsing, email, calander, and other PIM applications, and a good screen. I remember (and I'm sure they both remember as well (back me up in the comments guys) saying (though I was possibly a more avid apple hater then than now) that inevitably this would be a technology that apple (with there then shiny new expensive and bulky white ipods)would get into, and probably make trendy. 5 years later. Enter the iphone. (of course after such devices where readily available for 5 YEARS apple ended up not making a single real innovation, they made it shiny and the PUBLICIZED [and therefore took all credit] it, but did nothing new.... very annoying...)

Second example:
That could be all I say. But for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about. The picture is of the NEC mobile pro. Basically a netop that existed over 10 years ago. I bought one the summer of my junior year of highschool (for 79$ I must add) and ranted for a month about how everybody would want a small computer with a long battery life to carry around with them for all those little computer tasks we are so used too. If you somehow missed it, the netop market is the fastest growing sector of computer hardware for the last year.

So yes, I'm bragging. But my point is that I think augmented reality will be big, and I seem to have a decent track record.

more augmented reality

2009-06-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

Even people who have no interest in video games should look at this:

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/148251,altered-vision-researchers-making-augmented-reality-more-than-science-fiction.aspx

I'm confident everybody who reads my blog will use some form of augmented reality within the next ten years.

That and vuzix, (previously icuiti) the company i have been ranting about for years has just released the first information about their own augmented reality hardware (which is of course, awesome) http://www.vuzix.com/iwear/products_camar.html

Together those two products give you a true 3d (stereoscopic) heads up display with 6 degree head motion tracking and highres augmented reality oriented video. spiffy.

that is all.

2009-06-07T23:30:00.000-07:00

Cyborg Update

2009-06-05T09:41:00.001-07:00

Ok, just a quick one. Peregrine is actually releasing the glove I highlighted a year ago. http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/04/peregrine-wires-you-into-a-keyboard-we-go-hands-in/

Valve begins tradition of boring sequels

2009-06-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

Keep this in mind. Valve is without a doubt my favourite game company of all time.My freshman year of high school could be accurately described as this: Go to school, get together with Lucas, do homework, play half life, sleep, rinse, repeat. They just make good games. They made a great distribution system. They do something innovative every time. Actually.... No, they don't.

That's the sad thing. Starting with opposing forces and condition zero, through episode 2, and without doubt including what I have seen of the new Left 4 Dead. Valve has started a tradition of making really boring sequels. Obviously, I'm not speaking here of half life 2 (or for those of you who like it, team fortress 2.) However, there is nothing new in episode 1 and 2, people like the story, or they say that Alex is new and improved, but come on, it's the price of a new game! I expect new weapons, an improvement to the movement system, Something NEW.

Let me make my case with what I've seen of L4D2. From the videos released thus far. It may as well be called Left 4 Dead Racial edition. Other than adding a very lot of pigment to the characters skin however, it looks like they have added 3 melee weapons (which don't really do anything new at all....) a slight graphical facelift and flaming shotgun shells (which look like they defeat the purpose of a shotgun, at least in that video they have no stopping power and leave zombies free to run up and light you on fire.) That's it. The rest is level design (which valve has previously let the community augment for free.) I'm simply not paying for new maps. Not happening. Here is what I want to see in L4D2:

1.) Sprint
2.) Flares which attract zombies (especially witches) and give a large light radius.
3.) Level specific special zombies (like a hanging zombie, a hard to see (read, cloaking, or dark) zombie, an impersonating zombie, and a tiny (head-crab-esq) zombie.)
4.) NEW weapons, not remixes, not crowbars with axe and frypan skins. Where is the flame-thrower (gasoline + super soaker + lighter = zombie toaster). The one shot rocket launcher. The tesla coil. a high powered pistol. a crossbow. a chain?
5.) Drivable vehicles.
6.) The ability to shake off zombies (I know, I know, it's all in the name of team-play, but being stuck on the ground INDEFINITELY until people come and help you is implausible and LAME)
7.) Levels that require you to split into 2 groups of 2.

This list of features would take a team of decent amateurs (read, mod creators) less than a month of part time work to put together.

I'll give Valve one thing from the Video, I'm glad to see daytime levels.

EDIT: So I'm not the only one angry.
Apparently upwards of 5000 Valve fans took the time to verbalize there annoyance. They have the right idea, the additions we are seeing in L4D2 deserve to fall into the "content" update or "expansion pack" category. They simply aren't new-game-worthy.

EDIT2: If you're annoyed, join the L4D2 boycott group on steam (link in the article above).

giving the truth some facetime

2009-05-21T13:37:00.000-07:00

Ars technica has been letting cox and other ISPs use their site as a sortof forum. I dissaprove, so I want to do my meagre part to let DSLreports get some cross web coverage.

"Like every other cable executive, McSlarrow doesn't provide, and Ars doesn't press for, hard data justifying why a move away from the flat-rate billing model is even necessary in the first place -- given the costs to provide broadband are dropping, growth rates are easily manageable, and DOCSIS 3.0 upgrades are relatively inexpensive. We've repeatedly debunked the "Exaflood" as a public relations stunt by broadband carriers and their PR tendrils, yet Mcslarrow quickly trots it out as example number one as to why such "experiments" were necessary."

Take that cable. Now everybody go read the article. Because this will affect you within the year, and you will be lied too about it if you don't educate yourself.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Cable-Let-Us-Experiment-With-Pricing-Or-The-Internet-Explodes-102532

naughty intel

2009-05-13T15:30:00.001-07:00

The European Union fined Intel $1.44 billion today (well, technically they fined them in ”Europe money” but that means nothing to me.) for anti-trust violations. The violations cited are:

“[The Commission] said Intel gave rebates to computer manufacturers Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and NEC for buying all or almost all their x86 [processors] from Intel and paid them to stop or delay the launch of computers based on chips from AMD . . . Regulators said [Intel] also paid Germany's biggest electronics retailer, Media Saturn Holding — which owns the MediaMarkt superstores — from 2002 to 2007 to only stock Intel-based computers.
This meant workers at AMD's biggest European plant in Dresden, Germany, could not buy AMD-based personal computers at their city's main PC store.”

And
“AMD offered 1 million free chips to one manufacturer — which could not accept because that would lose it a rebate on many millions of other chips. It only took 160,000 free chips in the end, regulators said. . . . Intel's payments to manufacturers ordered the company to delay the European launch of AMD's first business desktop by six months. They were also paid to only sell the AMD line to small and medium companies and to only offer them directly to customers instead of to retailers.
Other manufacturers were paid to postpone the launch of AMD-based notebooks by several months, from September 2003 to January 2004 and from September 2006 to the end of 2006 — missing the key Christmas market.”

Intel is reported as having said: Company CEO Paul Otellini calls it "wrong" and says "there has been absolutely zero harm to consumers."

All taken from: http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16909

I’m not really sure how you can say that selling your products at a certain price if your retailers agree to not sell any competition is not wrong…

There is an identical investigation going on in the United states:

“Well, there is an investigation . . . at the [U.S. Federal Trade Commission]; there's also one in the United States by the New York Attorney General's office. Intel is fully cooperating with both of those . . . we're producing evidence, we produce testimonies, depositions, and so forth. The FTC has had a position on anti-trust which is very much comparable, I think, to the EU's, so we're actually being looked at under the same lens today by both parties.” Quoted at http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16912

Korea has already fined Intel $25 million in an antitrust case.

I wonder if they will get another round of slaps for their chipset bundling practices against Nvidia (who makes the ion platform for

Apple takes on the ultimate censorship role.

2009-05-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

"Apple's just reached a whole new level of stupidity in App Store approval shenanigans: the Tweetie 1.3 update was just rejected for displaying "offensive language" in its Twitter trend search view. Right, not for offensive language in the app itself, but for offensive language on Twitter -- an insanely strict new standard that could conceivably be used to reject each and every iPhone Twitter client out there. (And if you haven't noticed, there are quite a few iPhone Twitter clients.) Hell, Apple might as well reject the next versions of Safari and Mail, since they can display dirty words too -- and let's not forget the awful things people are doing with Notes and the camera. Better lock it down."

I'm not going to say anything more...

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/10/apple-stupidly-rejects-tweetie-1-3-for-foul-language-in-twitter/

Thank goodness

2009-05-04T16:45:00.000-07:00

People aren't as stupid as I had feared. Here is why:

"Despite 3.79 million iPhones that Apple sold during the first quarter of the year, RIM doubled Apple’s iPhone sales"

In the fourth quarter of 2008, AMD reportedly had a 17% market share to Intel's 82.1%. But last quarter, Mercury says AMD managed to secure 20.9% of the market—and Intel's piece of the pie shrunk to 78.2%.

9.04 NEWBUNTU!

2009-04-17T15:17:00.001-07:00

If you don't know what ubuntu is... nothing to see here, move along folks...

there is no bluetooth.... because we broke it on purpose

2009-03-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

from dailytech http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Reveals+It+Intentionally+Crippled+Bluetooth+in+iPod+touch+2G/article14611.htm

" Apple insisted at the time that Bluetooth was not on the iPod touch and that Nike+ didn't use Bluetooth.

Teardowns late last year, though, told a different story. The teardown revealed a Broadcom Bluetooth chipset with support for 2.1+EDR. The chipset, not listed on Apple's spec sheet, was apparently being used to implement Nike+. Some argued that there must be some hardware difference; Apple wouldn't just lock out working functionality.

Well, they were wrong -- during a Q&A session at the iPhone/iPod touch OS v3.0 press event this week, Apple let slip that Bluetooth is indeed on the iPod touch and that it intentionally crippled it.

Some are accusing Apple of intentionally crippling this key piece of iPod touch hardware as a ploy to sell its new OS. Apple is charging iPod touch customers $9.99 to upgrade and receive the complementary Bluetooth unlock.
"

AMD gets a little review love.

2009-03-18T12:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a couple of months since a major review site let slip a generally positive comment about an entire lineup from AMD but on Techreport.com:

"Generally speaking, AMD's Phenom II X4 processors appear to be slightly better deals than the Intel Core 2 Quad equivalents. Not only are they great performers for the money, but the Socket AM2+ and AM3 platform has a better upgrade path than Intel's soon-to-be-retired LGA775 platform. The Phenom II X3 720 is more of a mixed bag, since it's the top performer neither in single-threaded tasks nor in heavily multithreaded ones. However, the 720 is still a good middle ground between cheap quad-cores and high-end dual-core CPUs."

200th post, Natural Language Engine

2009-03-10T13:17:00.000-07:00

Don't know what a natural language engine is? Natural language means nothing more than the way we speak to one another. When you ask a person what there maiden name was. That person parses that question into its ideas: I the subject's, last name prior to name changes associated with marriage. It sounds simple but its a hard thing for computers to do.

"Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions -- like questions that have factual answers such as "What is the location of Timbuktu?" or "How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?," "What was the average rainfall in Boston last year?," "What is the 307th digit of Pi?," "where is the ISS?" or "When was GOOG worth more than $300?"

Think about that for a minute. It computes the answers. Wolfram Alpha doesn't simply contain huge amounts of manually entered pairs of questions and answers, nor does it search for answers in a database of facts. Instead, it understands and then computes answers to certain kinds of questions."

see: http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/16550 for more.

Intelligent computing

2009-02-26T15:17:00.000-08:00

Its all about the interface O_o
LINK ( http://www.engadget.com/2009/02/26/intelligent-siftables-blocks-get-even-more-face-time/#continued )

Siftables Music Sequencer from Jeevan Kalanithi on Vimeo.

Just because I hate Apple inc.

2009-02-23T16:50:00.000-08:00

This from Daily Tech: LINK

Now another significant landmark has been passed by Apple,... In January, for the first time in almost a year, total Windows PC sales growth surpassed that of Apple. Apple sales and revenue dropped 6 percent and 11 percent respectively during the month of January compared to December.

Windows PCs, on the other hand, saw sales increase by 13 percent.

Lets see them keep singing to the tune of "We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk." It's too bad that it seems everybody else does Apple...

Also, if you think apple will live up to their threats on palms pre interface think again. Engadget.com did a nice little comparison of pattent infringments between the two devices (remember, between their many devices since 1992 palm has made something with pretty much every feature the Iphone has...)

If you're going to say that the Pre crosses the boundaries of Apple's spring-back edge scrolling patent, you're really not in a position to say that the iPhone doesn't similarly ape Palm's call-management patent -- or the brightness patent, or the contacts patent, or the dim-during-sync patent, or... you get the idea. Apple might be the more infamous IP juggernaut, but Palm has literally hundreds of patents of its own, and we managed to dig up four that seem to directly implicate the iPhone in just a few hours of searching. Imagine what Palm's lawyers could do, armed with their actual knowledge of what Palm owns and the motivation of some serious hourly fees.

Speaking of tidy sums, we haven't even begun to talk about the money involved here, and it's a lot -- enough to seriously tip the scales. Let's say Palm were to win: not only might Apple lose its patents, the court would at the very least award Palm royalties for the patents the iPhone infringes, and at over 16m iPhones sold so far, even a few percentage points adds up fast -- we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. If Apple wins? Well, Palm hasn't sold any Pres yet, so its exposure to royalty payments is much lower -- and potentially losing some older patents it may or may not even be using doesn't seem like a terrible punishment.

Augmented Reality

2009-02-21T17:04:00.000-08:00

This is a direct continuation of my emphatuation with Personal Video Displays:
http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/

Possible best single download ever

2009-02-05T16:06:00.000-08:00

http://www.technibble.com/computer-repair-utility-kit/

Some software CAN'T BE PATENTED

2009-01-28T15:47:00.000-08:00

"With the US Patent Office and courts cracking down on software patents, Ars takes a close look at the Supreme Court's software patent decisions. Yes, the highest court in the land really did say that algorithms can't be patented. And in spite of the fact that their rulings have been functionally ignored for almost two decades, the tide may be about to turn."
Full Story

A definite addition to my "I want to be a cyborg" list

2009-01-12T16:30:00.001-08:00

Throat mic
Throat mics use the vibrations directly from your voicebox (or rather the skin around it) to pick up your speaking, as a result they get almost zero background noise and can pick up a whisper. $30 is unheard of in the past for these things, i dont know if this is a good one though.

On that note

2009-01-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

SanDisk -- the leader of flash memory's public image for years and years -- is toting new SSDs*
Click here for the full article.
Though I know most of you wont read/understand/care about that article so here are the highlights.
1.) They are using Toshiba developed 43-nanometer Multi-Level Cell (MLC) flash memory. Which is a good thing.
2.) They are priced to compete with normal hard drives (current SSDs in this class cost $700-$1500) "For example, the 32GB modular SSD is priced at parity with 2.5” HDDs in OEM quantities." (from the above article)
3.) VIA likes them, and I think VIA has always has had a good grasp of the mobile market. “SanDisk’s Gen 2 pSSD drives have the best combination of capacity, performance, weight, pricing and power advantages to really excite designers, manufacturers and users of netbooks,” said Richard Brown, VP of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc"

* SSDs solid state disks are a really exciting technology posed to replace HDDs (Hard disk drives) though technically solid state is a sub-species of hard drive. They are solid because they have no moving parts. They are also generally lighter, smaller (though some are put in casings the size of a hard drive to make them compatible with existing devices) and in many cases more power efficient, they are MUCH MUCH faster (and this is the kind of faster that makes windows boot faster, Firefox open fast, and word not take 12 minutes to save that 2000 page action report with all the cool tables and graphs I know your writing. As apposed to when we say a processor is faster, which for the most part means video, games, rendering and a little of the above load times are faster

Net books

2009-01-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

You will probably all see a rash of pro netbook touting from me in the next few weeks. Those of you who have lived with me, and realize I'm more likely to carry my desktop to a friends house than buy a netbook right now are probably thinking "hypocrite".
First, this isn't actually true, I bought one of the worlds first netbooks, the NEC mobile pro 770, which was made in 1999 (Although the price point of $1200 -- read $1480.50 adjusted for inflation -- prevented me from buying one until 2005, when they dropped to just $99).
The real reason I won't be buying a netbook right now is usage. Netbooks are targeted at people who need a computer they can take with them easily everyday from when they leave the house. Primarily they are targeted at light file toting, web browsing, word processing, and limited media playback. They emphasize small size, light weight, and a long lasting battery. The reason I think they are great is that this specification envelope is perfect for 80% of Americans and they are CHEAP compared to a full blown laptop of similar quality, which they will probably outperform in most of the above listed tasks (especially battery life.)I simply wont be buying one because about 300 days of the year I am either on my college campus, within 500 feet of my dorm room, office, or the library, and 20 feet of a power outlet 99% of the time, or home, working 7 minutes from my house. With that kind of mobility, I classify devices into two categories, those that fit in my pocket, and those that don't.
So I'm not being hypocritical if I spend the next month or so trying to convince everybody who doesn't already have a recent laptop that they need a netbook.

yAyMD

2009-01-06T09:31:00.000-08:00

AMD might be getting ready to kick butt in the ultra portable market. check out this http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-10132097-64.html if your thinking of getting a netbook and want performance capable of more than just web browsing.

About time

2008-12-31T11:12:00.000-08:00

Now I'm going to alienate the vast majority of my readers by highlighting a video game. but as the title suggested, its about time there was good sidescroll-platformer game.. http://www.shackvideo.com/?id=13387

watch this.... hybrid cars! or not...

2008-12-29T18:24:00.001-08:00

Thank you too Lucas for the link.

global warming makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside

2008-12-24T14:17:00.000-08:00

Senator James Inhofe, ranking minority member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said, "The endless claims of a consensus on man-made global warming grow less and less credible every day". Click for a link to the story

Some reminders for everybody

2008-12-17T11:51:00.000-08:00

Points of interest:

Don’t use internet explorer
Back up your files
Get/update/change your anti-virus.

Microsoft has announced its own little holiday present to the world, (or at least the world of hackers and credit-card fraud). In security advisory 961051 (do they get a prize when they hit 1 million?), Microsoft stated: “Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution” This should be read as: third-parties can use internet explorer to get your login/credit card information from websites, even trusted websites. So use a different browser (Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, etc…)

Back-up your files. Especially if you’re working on anything important, I would keep your most updated copy in at least two locations -- two physical locations, not “My Documents” and the Desktop. A good choice in addition to your hard drive would be a flash drive, or other removable storage, or your web-based email.

If you have an Apple computer and think you’re virus-proof, you might want to read bellow. I have things to say about Macs and viruses but it will have to wait until after finals. If you have a PC and Windows, you probably live in perpetual fear, running anti-virus nightly. If you don’t, you should. (This statement is only true if you believe me, in which case you are the kind of computer user who does actually need anti-virus.) There are a plethora of good, free anti-virus programs available online. There are also a host of viruses passing as anti-viruses because they appreciate irony. If you don’t know what you’re doing, stick to this list:

AVG-Free – this was, hands down, the best free anti-virus this time last year. Unfortunately while other programs moved forward towards faster less intrusive virus protection, AVG 8.0 went decidedly backwards. It still works however, for the most part. Download at http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/ on the right.
Avira, the company that makes the scanner software behind Lava-softs Ad-Aware makes an anti-virus called Free-AV found at http://www.free-av.com/
Avast makes an effective, if slightly bloated free anti-virus found at http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html
Finally, if you used AVG free for a while and think that you have moved into the world of responsible computing -- that is, if you know what a high risk activity looks like and don’t need a program that runs automatically -- Clam-Win is the program for you. It doesn’t run in the background but provides a best-in-class on access scan under the GNU free license. http://www.clamwin.com/
If your looking for a paid solution, see my blog for a retraction of all the nasty things I have said about Norton. Norton 2009 is a viable anti-virus (but not any previous version).

Tis the season to be... virus-ed?

2008-12-17T09:39:00.000-08:00

Ok, so its full on December. Your online for your holiday shopping, your online to spread Christmas cheer to friends, your online to look up recipes for drinks and dinner, maybe your even online to write blog-posts about viruses. One way or the other, your likely to use your computer, online, alot, and thats likely to be the same machine you keep your pre/per/post-holiday pictures, which you didnt back up yet, did you? So it would be a really bad time to experience the total data loss that a virus can bring, wouldn't it?

I've toted the same line for years. Viruses rarely result in data loss, especialy if you back up regularly (you do back up regularly, don't you?) *listens to the sounds of many feet scampering for external hard drives. Basically if you keep your files backed up virus's have three symptoms: performance hits, constant nagging, and a major inconvenience in the removal aspect. On these three principles I have always said, to many people's surprise, dont bother with anti-virus. The logic went like this: Viruses happen occasionally, and result in those three symptoms. Anti virus happens all the time, and it does the same three things, nags you, slows your computer down, and getting it on and off and updated to your system is a royal pain. So the smart choice was the virus, at least it takes a break.

I'm changing that line. The current generation of anti virus is smart, fast, easy to install, and once its there, you shouldn't notice it unless it really needs you, or you want too.

While im on that note, I feel I should retract statements i've made generaly about norton. Norton was the worst of the last generation of anti virus, but it might well be the best of this generation. http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/review-norton-antivirus-2009-20081215/
notably: "LiveUpdate is no longer a separate component" (see that Apple, you don't need an entirely seperate program for updates)
"The installation was absolutely painless and AV 2009 was running without so much as a reboot." (oh my goodness, its like linux from... forever ago, no reboot!)
"during general desktop operation the system consumed 10% of resources while Norton accounted for 1%. Overall its demands were quite limited, with the installation being about 47MB and under 8MB of memory used during normal activity" (I'm not going to mock that, I'm going to take my hat off and stand at salute, because that is the what it is to be of good software.)

SO, designate a driver for your parties, and get some anti-virus.

Data

2008-12-02T13:23:00.000-08:00

It's more and more common to see computer applications asking you to allow them to send nonpersonalized data to their creators to "assist future improvement".

I would love to see in the comments who checks these boxes. Personally:

I send Valve data all the time because they send me interesting statistics back (thereby enlarging my ego)
I send Microsoft data in hopes that someday they will fix all these crash reports.
I send google data because I think they actually use it.
I hope dearly that the complete lack of software/hardware I have purchased from Adobe, Apple, and Symantec is telling them what I think of thier products.

Mac, meet virus.

2008-12-02T12:46:00.000-08:00

Apple has enjoyed a pleasant lack of any real attention in the virus department for years, mostly due to their insignificant market share (historically less than 8% and thats in the united states where their sales are strongest.) Well, as market share rises, it turns out that the virus resistance Mac always bragged about was mostly accidental. Mac support has officialy changed their stance

"Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. Here are some available antivirus utilities:

Intego VirusBarrier X5, available from the Apple Online Store
License: commercial
Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 for Macintosh, available from the Apple Online Store
License: commercial
McAfee VirusScan for Mac
License: commercial

In addition, Mac ads claiming that mac didn't need anti-virus have quitly dissapeared from apple, and possibly at their request, youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYPWFF9Sty4

Poor rockstar

2008-11-29T11:18:00.000-08:00

Rockstar games produces the well known grand theft auto series. They have a habit of releasing games for PC followed by disappointed press statements about how poorly they sold because everybody just downloaded them. This article describes the steps they are taking to ~~punish their legitimate customers~~ prevent this.
http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/934/934268p1.html
The important point to note is this:

"GTA IV PC also requires a number of software installations, including Games For Windows, Adobe Flash, Internet Explorer, SecuROM and our Rockstar Games Social Club application."

For those of you who don't know how to interpret publisher jargon that should be read "GTA IV PC also requires you too introduce slow downs and insecurities to your computer"

Excuse the bad pun, but personally I don't think Rockstar has thought their game-plan through very well. They create a game themed towards GENERAL RULE BREAKING, SPECIFICALLY THEFT, and GETTTING AWAY WITH IT. Then they publish it at the largest and most resourcfull crowd of security breaking guru's around. They impliment security that this crowd will easily circumvent but which will annoy their legitimate users nearly too death. Then they idiotically show up on the news going "we just don't understand why people don't buy our games..."

This means war.

2008-11-14T13:45:00.000-08:00

Rising prices is one thing. Car makers going out of business eh....

But Mothers cookies!!! http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/smallbusiness/0811/gallery.victims_of_the_crash.smb/2.html

Thats it... the end is near.

Where will we get our funny circus animal shaped artery clogging palm kernal oil frosted cookies?

What will the obama supporters do?

2008-11-06T12:50:00.001-08:00

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

one debate was more than enough

2008-11-01T23:03:00.000-07:00

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Three videos

2008-11-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Windows Users Anonymous

2008-10-28T18:58:00.000-07:00

"Hi, my name's Patrick and I've been microsoft-free for two weeks."

Two weeks ago today I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on my laptop (with vista still intact) thinking "Maybe I'll use it for fun." The irony. I haven't booted windows since that day.

GAH, JOURNALISM!

2008-10-22T16:27:00.000-07:00

This article is WORTH READING. It is written by Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's game (which is on my top ten best books of all time list)

http://www.ldsmag.com/ideas/081017light.html

Isn't it refreshing when somebody that clear puts the honest truth into print?

ubuntu

2008-10-22T15:16:00.001-07:00

too true.

2008-10-13T16:36:00.001-07:00

Microsoft did something cool!

2008-10-09T13:26:00.001-07:00

I was browsing Microsoft knowledge base and I ran across this message. I want a T-shirt that says this.

Gahhh! Everything is Bloteware.

2008-10-06T14:34:00.001-07:00

I went to update Shockwave player.... Downloaded the installer, looked at the check boxes for components.....

Unchecked the box to install Google toolbar.....
Unchecked the box to install Norton PC checkup.....
Wait....
What?
What do those two have to do with Shockwave? All three of them are from different companies. The only relation they have is THE INTERNET.

Nvidia's drivers come with portal download links.

Lenovo's desktops come preloaded with trails of Office that ACTUALY BREAK YOUR SYSTEM.

For once I would like to download a program and get only that program.

Would you like a free blender rental with your car purchase today?

Gesture Controll

2008-09-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

If that kind of thing interest you, check out uMouse by Larry. http://larryo.org/work/information/umouse/index.html
Very promising and free. Larry had a hard drive failure this week and could probably use a nice encouraging email if your interested in his software. i@larryo.org

the real amazing shaddow puppets video

2008-09-12T22:26:00.001-07:00

it comes ever closer

2008-09-09T16:11:00.000-07:00

Piracy: Freemarket Evolved Part.II

2008-08-22T00:43:00.001-07:00

I think others are starting to see the light.
http://www.joystiq.com/2008/08/22/peter-moore-doesnt-want-to-punish-pirates/

Thanks to nick for the link

2008-08-20T16:07:00.000-07:00

CARMELL DANSEN!!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA

Piracy

2008-08-17T14:16:00.001-07:00

http://kotaku.com/5037902/indie-dev-asks-why-and-pirates-reply

I think that's a pretty novel approach. The game designer really hit the nail on the head. There are three companies who's games I've always actually bought (also, those three companies combined make up at least 85% of all the gaming i have ever done in my entire life.) those companies are squaresoft (sorry, havn't played any of their games since they merged with enix, just havn't had time) Blizzard (from whom i have purchased starcraft 3 times... because its worth the 10$ they want for it now just to replay it for a month and the CD's keep going missing.) and Valve.

These three completely support the points in the above article.

1.) They all make consistantly QUALITY games. I don't ever have that nervous feeling i have going to the movies that "i know this is not going to be that good, why am i wasting my time" feeling.
2.) The are reasonably priced. Sure, squaresoft used to charge 50$ for its games, and that made me buy alot less of them than i would have if they were cheaper, but they were worth it. in an age when most games where little indei productions square was making 4 disk long behemoths that lasted me a year; full of epic video footage and cutting edge new effects. they honestly outperformed everybody at their peak. As for blizzard, they CONSISTANTLY CUT THE PRICES OF THIER GAMES OVER TIME. Thats a strategy i can go for. sure, i dont buy their games when they are new, but when they drop down to 15$ i'm glad to pick them up. and that gives their games alot of longevity, that and the lasting quality of them all. then thier is valve... the half life games have the best value of any digital entertainment on the planet. for the price of any one source engine game you get access to a limitless online experience, free downloads of the games as often as you want (And this will be mentioned inthe DRM section) and literaly DOZENS of developer assisted free modifications that completely change the game. its like buying a car and getting free gas, a motercycle, a driving simulator, a jet pack and a thousand friends to go driving with for free.
3.) DRM (digital rights manangement, though nobody who doesnt know that has read this far.) is EVIL. I laugh my head off when developers use it. I'm sorry, but compared to the pirates, these guys are novices at security. So what ends up happening is EXACTLY what is said in the article. the legitimate users suffer from the DRM, and the pirates effortlessly sidestep it. So the people stealing the game, end up with a higher quality experience. very poor marketing choices.
blizzard has recently removed the CD check from their own games with a series of updates. i commend them.
Valve has by far the best aproach to this though. Yes, they are using a form of DRM. digital distribution. the results? epicly low piracy rates. one simple reason. they are the only company on the face of the earth that is actualy providing their product in a better package than the pirates are. thats right, it takes me 15 seconds of actualy work to pirate a game and i never have to leave my house. it takes 10 seconds to log into steam and download one. Their distribution method is the best anti piracy measure ever.

To sum up, Quality is the issue. I'm not going to get into a debate about the morality of piracy. I'm just going to say that the only legitimate view for a product designer to take is that its thier job to make a game thats worth buying, and sell it in a package thats easy to buy. its the same struggle that marketings always had. and its the same solution that the united states stands for in the world. i think we need a new slogan.

PIRACY, Freemarket Evolved.

The one apple product debut to rule them all, and in the darkness, bind them.

2008-08-06T22:27:00.001-07:00

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

mozilla can see the future.

2008-08-06T00:11:00.001-07:00

http://adaptivepath.com/aurora/

everything you need to know about the large hadron collider

2008-08-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

Thanks to david for the link

very clever

2008-08-05T14:05:00.000-07:00

The best kicks of all time!

2008-08-04T13:55:00.000-07:00

Or at least the most cheesy.

calvin and steve jobs.

2008-08-02T12:57:00.000-07:00

TV free week.

2008-07-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sure people get tired of hearing me say I don't want to have a TV. After all, I was raised that way. But this guy ( http://www.marcandangel.com/2008/07/28/40-positive-effects-of-a-tv-free-week/ ) wasn't, and here's his list of 40 great things that came about from turning the TV off for a week.

“What could you accomplish if you stopped watching TV? What would you do with all the extra time?” My wife asked me these questions two weeks ago. After a short discussion, we decided to find out for ourselves. We completely eliminated television from our lives last week. It turned out to be an incredibly rewarding experience. We now have a plan to drastically reduce our future viewing habits.

Here are 40 positive effects from our week without television.

Wrote 4 blog posts. – I usually only have time to write 2 articles a week.
Made it to the gym 5 times. – I went Monday through Friday for about 45 minutes, hitting every major muscle group.
Increased household communication. – TV kills the flow of household communication. We both noticed that we had a lot more time to talk.
Read a novel cover to cover. – I read the short novel “Siddhartha” by Herman Hesse. It’s a powerful story about the importance of life experiences as they relate to approaching an understanding of reality and attaining enlightenment. I highly recommend it.
Caught up on current events twice as fast. – I typically waste a good hour everyday watching CNN. This week I grabbed my news off the web. It took me significantly less time to scan CNN.com.
Enhanced focus on everything. – TV is a huge distraction, even when you hear it from the other room. It’s so much easier to concentrate when you don’t have a TV yapping at you. I had no idea how much if affected my ability to concentrate until it was gone.
Learned a few new skills. – I took my own advice and learned how to change the oil in my truck… pretty darn easy.
Spent more time with friends and family. – We invited Angel’s sister and some friends over for a mid-week dinner party.
Cleaned the house. – Something Angel and I habitually evade by watching TV instead.
Learned new recipes and prepared 5 home cooked meals. – We cooked large portions so we could have leftovers for lunch every day.
Spent more time enjoying simple pleasures. – Deep conversations, long walks, telling jokes, etc.
Finally trimmed the hedges in our front yard. – I always put this off because I am tired after mowing the lawn. This time, however, I did it on a totally separate evening. It only took me 30 minutes.
Cleaned out the garage and sold 2 old dehumidifiers on eBay. – We setup a 5-day eBay auction and got $65 for each one of them!
Took 2 evening strolls around a local park. – We hadn’t been to this park in years… there’s only 1 reason why.
Saved money on our electric bill. – Our power company’s website allows you to check your daily usage. Sure enough, less TV equals less electricity usage.
Burned more calories. – We were off the couch moving around.
Backed-up critical files on both of our laptops. – Transferred them all over to our Iomega 500 GB external drive.
I played my guitar. – …for the first time in a year. I’m hooked again!
Found 2 news bands I like. – I used online music comparison services to find 2 awesome bands with similar music styles to my favorite band, Counting Crows.
Listened to more music. – In addition to finding new bands, I had more time to listen to my favorite music.
We stargazed in our backyard. – …for the first time since Angel and I first started dating. It was blissful.
Caught up on times with an old friend. – I hadn’t spoken to my buddy Jon since my wedding a year and a half ago. We had a pleasant 30 minute conversation on the phone.
Handled basic household maintenance. – Replaced the AC filter, applied pest control spay, replaced fire alarm batteries, etc.
Took Angel out on a romantic date. – I took her to one of our favorite Italian restaurants and then out to a local pub where we slow danced to a live music.
Finished up a little DIY project. – I’ve been stalling on staining, sanding and hanging a certain wooden shelf for nearly 6 months.
Updated the photo frames throughout the house. – Sometimes it’s nice to mix things up. We spent some time sorting through our digital photos and replaced a few photos in various photo frames throughout the house.
Played racquetball. – Great 2-person sport!
Organized my monthly planner. – Entered all my known commitments into my planner and did a little time planning each night.
Reviewed our long-term goals. – Angel and I had an open discussion last Tuesday night about our goals for the next 3 – 5 years.
Setup recurring automatic payments for most of our bills. – Now our electricity, phone, insurance and cable bills are automatically withdrawn from our account each month. This basically buys me 30 additional minutes of free time every month.
Updated my resume. – It only took me 45 minutes.
Quiet relaxation. – Instead of clicking on the TV, I spent some quiet time gathering my thoughts each day when I returned home from work.
Intelligent conversations at suppertime. – Quite frequently we eat supper in front of the TV. Since there was no TV watching this week, Angel and I had some really interesting conversations instead.
Hit it off with our new neighbors. – We spent more time outside and ended up running into our new neighbors. They seem like pretty cool people. There’s certainly the potential for friendship here.
Exchanged back massages. – It sure beats canned laughter.
There was more time for “quality time”. – You know… just me and her and some classical music in the background.
More real life experiences. – Because we were off of the couch, actually doing something.
Watched 1 quality movie. – Instead of watching whatever was on, we went to Blockbuster and selected 1 quality movie to rent.
Ironed my clothes each weeknight before bedtime. – …since I had more free time in the evenings. It made my mornings less stressful.
We got more done. – Because we had so much more time to do it all.

I strongly recommend a week without television to everyone. You’ll be amazed…

A hint from the firefox Agent training manual.

2008-07-27T22:28:00.000-07:00

So your reading an article and you have no idea what the word antimacassar means.... your first reaction is to google it. Good reaction. But then everything goes horribly wrong. You reach for your keyboard. With the gas prices as high as they are you dont have money for mountain dew to burn on useless movements for your keyboard. Stick to your mouse.

FIREFOX 3 Quick Search procedure:
1.) highlight the word.
2.) click and drag it up to the search box at the top right.
3.) read
4.) use the back button built into your mouse (WHAT? you don't have a web ready mouse!)

go ahead. try it out: antimacassar

Thats efficiancy. you can use all those extra movements you just didnt do to utilize a setup like this:

Yay, more Apple hate.

2008-07-26T12:40:00.001-07:00

I'll admit that I don't always have concrete reasons for my tech choices. I'll stick with AMD to the end, even if their CPUs under -perform Intel simply because I like their company.
Similarly, I don't care how great ipods are, or how cool the new iphone 3g is. I think that apple is a company of glam craving, secret-society-wanna-be like numskulls and I've simply never liked their products. They are a sterile company, removing the need for a community by simply making idiot proof, overpriced, fashion-centric products, they make up for the fact that none of their features are actually new by having a stupid consumer base* and advertising like they are the first to do things when they never are.

So I'm always glad to see the worlds most consistently respected source of tech news (wired digital is a conglomeration of ars technica, wired magazine and reddit) point out that apples losing their clean cut image and their "it just works" theme and publicly becoming the money grubbing-Microsoft-like-entity that i always thought it was on the inside.
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/07/has-apple-bitte.html

* I know plenty of smart people that own a mac, but im sorry, the majority of thier sales are made on the fact that most people care more about how shiny and white something is than its price point or its featureset.

the most clever video ever made,

2008-07-22T16:35:00.000-07:00

possibly.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

ebooks and video game

2008-07-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Two arguments Ive had with a selection of my friends over and over again concern wether or not ebooks will replace books as the norm within our youthful lifespan (I'm argueing within the next ten years... though i started this the year i read 100 books on my palm pilot so that was already over 5 years ago.) and that, in fact, girls do play video games.

Well the mighty digg.com community saw fit to put two articles back to back today. The first, anouncing that thanks to their kindle device (which is selling so fast they cant keep it in stock) amazon (aka, the worlds largest online retailer) is making 12% of books sales directly to the kindle (that means not just ebooks, but ebooks on a single device.)
the other article you can read for yourself. or just read the headline ESU study: 40% of US gamers are women

Why was this not on the news?

2008-07-17T13:59:00.001-07:00

I honestly cannot fathom why this got zero news coverage... Here is a partial Quotation of Judge William Young's ruling on the terrorist Richard Reid.
(full transcript found on CNN http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/01/31/reid.transcript/ )
"You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.

And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists.

We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.

So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.

In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and you said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.

What your counsel, what your able counsel and what the equally able United States attorneys have grappled with and what I have as honestly as I know how tried to grapple with, is why you did something so horrific. What was it that led you here to this courtroom today? I have listened respectfully to what you have to say. And I ask you to search your heart and ask yourself what sort of unfathomable hate led you to do what you are guilty and admit you are guilty of doing.

And I have an answer for you. It may not satisfy you. But as I search this entire record it comes as close to understanding as I know.

It seems to me you hate the one thing that to us is most precious. You hate our freedom. Our individual freedom. Our individual freedom to live as we choose, to come and go as we choose, to believe or not believe as we individually choose.

Here, in this society, the very winds carry freedom. They carry it everywhere from sea to shining sea. It is because we prize individual freedom so much that you are here in this beautiful courtroom. So that everyone can see, truly see that justice is administered fairly, individually, and discretely.

It is for freedom's seek that your lawyers are striving so vigorously on your behalf and have filed appeals, will go on in their, their representation of you before other judges. We care about it. Because we all know that the way we treat you, Mr. Reid, is the measure of our own liberties.

Make no mistake though. It is yet true that we will bear any burden; pay any price, to preserve our freedoms.

Look around this courtroom. Mark it well. The world is not going to long remember what you or I say here. Day after tomorrow it will be forgotten. But this, however, will long endure. Here, in this courtroom, and courtrooms all across America, the American people will gather to see that justice, individual justice, justice, not war, individual justice is in fact being done.

The very President of the United States through his officers will have to come into courtrooms and lay out evidence on which specific matters can be judged, and juries of citizens will gather to sit and judge that evidence democratically, to mold and shape and refine our sense of justice.

See that flag, Mr. Reid? That's the flag of the United States of America. That flag will fly there long after this is all forgotten. That flag still stands for freedom. You know it always will. Custody, Mr. Officer. Stand him down."

sometimes i see video i just have to post.

2008-07-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

I think he Can Dance - Watch more free videos

You can be in the best shape of your life!

2008-07-13T19:50:00.000-07:00

I've seen lots of diet and fitness programs advertisements. I can't help but feel that they're missing the most obvious thing in the world.

I know what it is. I can tell you how to make weight management easy. You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want. Fitness? You'll grow muscle over night without even trying. and the best part is, its free, you don't have to sign up for anything.

Want to know the answer too all of this?

BE 18 YEARS OLD.

video games make people deranged?

2008-07-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Jack thomson, probably the most well known anti video game advocate of all time, has been bared from practicing law for 10 years and is charged with 25 charges of misconduct. He probably doesn't feel that bad though because he knows we all care, look at the truck load of flowers we (being the internet, yes I did donate, it was too funny of an idea to resist.) sent him two years ago.

I just want to highlight one of this "great" mans endevors. Jack Thomson pledged that he would donate $10,000 to a childrens charity if video game makers would make a game based on a scenario he proposed. The game was made and jack coped out of making the donation. When our beloved penny arcade stepped forward and made the donation in his stead Jack Thomson did not even wait a day to attempt suite (and yes, arrest) against its members. (full story available, of course, at wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Thompson_(attorney) )
Guess the last bit doesn't apply anymore O_o

I'll leave you all with a few words from the man himself.
"The moral midgets like the computer geeks at Penny Arcade think that I am some sort of pixelated piñata in a game. I'm not. Gabe [the in-comic alter ego of Penny Arcade artist Krahulik] decided to go after me, and he chose the wrong target. I've been at this longer than he has." yah jack, penny arcade is out to get you. If you think web comics are real i can see where you would worry about video games.

Want to know what fuels the housing markets decline?

2008-07-09T13:04:00.001-07:00

PEOPLE BUYING HOUSES THEY CAN'T AFFORD.
Here is a comic explaining what this leads too.... (strong language warning)

I will be a cyborg yet!

2008-07-08T23:00:00.001-07:00

I deeply wish i had sufficient funds to acquire the absurd array of near-cyborg-making electronics and software (list will be updated, check back too see more.)

Hardware: The top of the list is inovative and awesome, the bottom is necessary for real portable computing

To start out small... a finger mouse. $29.99
Streamlined VGA HMD (Head mounted display) $299.95
Facial muscle/Brainwave input band. $150.00
Nice 2.0MP motion tracking webcam $111.99
A finger ring keyboard.
A miniature projector.
A nano-ITX form factor ATOM based personal computer with at least 5 hours of battery, 10 should be feasible in a backpack form factor. Estimated ($800) **
A mobile hi-speed EVDO or other Cellphone network internet card.
GPS
Parabolic microphone (preferably small enough to be head mounted)

*(for facial recognition, im never going to forget another name once I get this set up.)[oh yah, and seing backwards... always wanted to do that. or with extensible base, over crowds.]
** rather than a laptop because the screen would be a waste of space and the nano-itx build would be much more easily augmentable.

Software:

Dragon Naturally speaking voice recognition software.
facial recognition software

Just a little hint.

2008-07-08T21:25:00.001-07:00

Need more hard drive space? I doubt you can find a better performance/price ration than this drive. LINK (at least for the next week. but thats how computers go.)

Yawn

2008-07-04T16:09:00.001-07:00

Because there were comments about no pictures of us. (on a post where I'm in the third picture).
here is evan and I, tired, becuase we just spent 3 hours walking through artists alley where evan bought a print.

anime expo Day 2

2008-07-04T14:19:00.000-07:00

So we're back for more. The convention center is even more crowded today. I don't know how many people come to this but I'm guessing its in the tens of thousands over the 4 days.

Even more cosplay. Including me with my friend matt and his brother mike.

wow..

2008-07-04T01:53:00.001-07:00

This is disturbing to read... Think your sunscreen is protecting you?

http://www.newsweek.com/id/33384

It's not just the otaku.

2008-07-03T23:48:00.001-07:00

That are genderally confused that is...

Anime expo day 1

2008-07-03T15:05:00.000-07:00

so we went to a ton of booths and got enough free posters to cover every room in my house. Now were watching an anime in a theatre that's running them 22 hours a day through sunday.

more cosplay atached

This years anime expo theme is "can you guess that gender?"

2008-07-03T11:32:00.000-07:00

EDIT: if you are confused as too what the above are dressing up as... see some of these videos click here

So were at the expo. The cosplay abounds. More later.

new speeds

2008-07-01T15:52:00.000-07:00

Just because i can....

Now i understand my coworkers

2008-07-01T12:54:00.001-07:00

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/today_now_how_to_pretend_you_give

Long live PC games!

2008-06-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

It seems that the attraction to a special breed of casual gamers* that consoles have has made them look like the future savior of gaming. In comes Gabe Newell to defend the future of PC gaming.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=160866&page=1

*That is... 5-12 year olds who don't have the practice to keep their computer running properly and older games who want an out of the box solution

eat scathing hate Mac OS.

2008-06-26T16:21:00.000-07:00

ok, the title might be a little over the top. Personally the only thing i have against macs are their price tags, difficulty in user upgrades, major lack of games and the failure to support 80% of the hardware and software on the market. Ok, that was not a list that should be prefixed with only, basically they meet almost none of my needs. I guess over the years I've been pretty mean to Mac users.

So as an apology, and to prove that I'm completely open to other peoples way of thinking. That you are all perfectly free to chose what OS you like. Here is another persons completly different reasons for hating Mac OS. :P and you thought i was gonna give the mac people a break.

http://gizmodo.com/5018985/why-i-still-use-windows-despite-the-peer-pressure

wow, i love these people.

2008-06-26T16:12:00.000-07:00

http://torrentfreak.com/joss-stone-piracy-is-brilliant-080625/

and of course Orson Scott Card. Who originally released Ender's game for free online (till his publishers hassled him out of it, but i appreciate the thought.)

I love XkcD, sometimes it scares me though.

2008-06-25T11:21:00.000-07:00

and now all you people know why i randomly jump out windows. O_o

wow

2008-06-21T16:44:00.000-07:00

This is beautiful... Not only is it the most clever WOW thing ive seen... note the "vegito.... ITS OVER 9000!" dragon ball Z qoute worked in and the Counterstrike Source Office level use....

WeGame.com - WoW Videos

astonishing, all that stuff we invented actualy works.

2008-06-21T16:14:00.000-07:00

Don't take this article the wrong way. As always I'm really glad to see technology advancing, especially when its advancing in the areas that happen to overlap high high end gaming with life saving medical modeling abilities, and the (sometimes life saving) most accurate weather reports to date. so my point isn't that any of this is any less great. I'm just a little confused. at this point, probably so are my readers. (except nick, he's already figured it out and is cross referencing with the nvidia press release)

The recent bit first. Technology news the past week has been flooded with stories (which im too lazy to reference, take my word for it, or look it up, or dont.) about new "single machine" super computers. they explain that protein-folding-scientists/financial-analysts/supercomputer-labs/video-game-designers have made amazing 100X improvements overnight in computer technology simply by utilizing the core processor design built into modern graphics cards.

This is all true, its the overnight part that loses me.

what actually happened is this. about 10 years ago a couple of big computer companies (namely AMD, IBM, Toshiba, and Sony) realized that the smaller faster processor architecture had logical limits too it. So they figured they had better find a different branch for computers to improve by. Years later, about the same time Intel was catching up with the realization (which is amazing since they brought the most competitive product to the marked, admitadly 2 years after the viable cell processor.... and at least a decade after the first ARM processors.... but thats not really relevent.) anyways, what intel and these other companies came up with was the idea of multi core processors. not the dual processor or quad processors of the late 90's. They had thought of putting hundreds, maybe even thousands individual logical units on a chip. (and in computer history, saying numbers this early in the game is always a bad idea, so ill say it now, yes, someday a processor may have a million cores on a single waffer.)

So thats the history lesson, and anybody who owns a modern console, or a core2 or X2 or cell processors, is using the results. so why didn't every dual core processor have these results? Well, simplifying a lot, nobody was really ready for their programs to work with multiple processors, in most cases this meant that buying a dual core processor (assuming that it runs at a slightly slower speed than a single core of the same cost would and has less cache per core) would actualy run... almost everything slower.

All these breakthrough technologies have accomplished is speaking to the new processors in a way they understand and can excel at.

Yes, its great that were finally seeing the results we expected... but didn't i already pay for that?

Further proof that half life 2 is awesome

2008-06-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

Bellow is a rube golberg device designed completely within the half life 2 game engine.

WeGame.com - Garry's Mod Videos

2008-06-13T20:17:00.001-07:00

Credits to XKCD.

and just to make myself the king of piracy, here, i steal their Legal Disclaimer.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.
This means you're free to copy and share these comics (but not to sell them). More details.