ultraGeek

2002-03-01T10:38:00.000-08:00

Slashdot about to sink to new lows
Large format ads are coming to Slashdot. You know, the kind you get when you're reading Zdnet? The kind that take up half the page? And of course, you can PAY to get rid of the ads if you want, $5/1000 page views.
Best Slashdot comment? (No, I will not visit your motherfucking sponsor. If you're not in it for the love, and you can't figure out any better way to pay for your site than by slapping some ugly, corrupted banner across the top of your pathetic work, then fucking close up shop, kill yourself, and leave the Web to non-polluters).

2002-02-26T14:32:00.000-08:00

Googlebot
While I don't agree with the author's vision of Google's future, this is too funny to miss

2002-02-26T11:19:00.000-08:00

Jack Valenti still full of shit
Runny, brown, smelly shit. Check out this Register article about a recent letter to the editor of the Washington Post from him. (Jack Valenti is the president of the Motion Picture Association of America)
Update:Timothy over at slashdot must have seen my post, because there's an article about this on slashdot now.

2002-02-25T08:05:00.000-08:00

Prove it!
In an amazing turnaround, the judge in the Napster lawsuit has asked the music companies suing Napster to prove THEY own the copyrights to the music they sell, and prove those copyrights weren't used to monopolize and stifle the distribution of digital music. The judge showed definite disdain for the RIAA & it's members. I think this is just starting to get interesting.

2002-02-25T07:30:00.000-08:00

2002-02-24T14:30:00.000-08:00

Best.. Olympics.. Ever
WOOOO CANADA WON!!!!!!

2002-02-24T12:30:00.000-08:00

2-1 Canada...

2002-02-24T11:57:00.000-08:00

Go Canada Go!!!!!
Well, the game is just starting. And, no offense to my American relatives, but we are going to kick your pasty white asses!

2002-02-22T16:03:00.000-08:00

Pink hair baaaad
Morons.org has a link to a BBC article about a school in Suffolk who changed a girl's hair from pink to brown in her yearbook photo. The teacher says "fundamentally pink hair is not acceptable at Northgate", and "The school had high standards, which he intended to maintain": apparently this doesn't apply to doctoring photos and not letting the submjects of those photos know.
Also, note the english spelling of 'colour', which I find funny for some totally irrational reason.

2002-02-22T15:54:00.000-08:00

Bush nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Bush, the President that is, has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Apparently some people failed to notice the WAR he's fighting in Afghanistan? (war!=peace)

2002-02-22T15:48:00.000-08:00

Cool
Wal-Mart is going to start selling OS'less PC's. Let's see how long before Microsoft sues them, because of course, what else would you do with an OS'less PC than load a pirated version of Windows? Surely not load Linux?

2002-02-22T07:17:00.000-08:00

Nine seconds
BBC Has an article on how the web is affecting your concentration, changing your attention span to that of a goldfish- nine seconds. It looks like a good article, unfortunatley, I only read the first two articles before getting bored with it...

2002-02-20T08:13:00.000-08:00

Nolan Curtis - Bitter Tech Support Advisor
Cool 'article' on Bbspot but you probably have to work in tech support to get the full effect of it. I love the warning: *Warning: Toxic Levels of Sarcasm*

2002-02-20T07:29:00.000-08:00

Tea Room in space
Japan plans to build a 13 square foot tea room for the International Space Station, which they hope to launch in the Kibo laboratory module, which is scheduled to be launched in 2004. The only problem they haven't figured out is how to drink boiling hot tea in a Zero-G environment.

2002-02-19T06:23:00.000-08:00

Open Source Developer Stoned for Praising .NET
This is a JOKE, but it's quite funny

2002-02-18T09:59:00.000-08:00

Symmetry time
Check this out. It's about a special time on Feb 20, where something that has not happened for 1001 years, and will never happen again, happens.

2002-02-18T09:50:00.000-08:00

Look mommy, no cavities!
Researcher Jeffrey Hillman at the University of Florida in Gainesville has designed a genetically engineered bacteria which, when applied to a two year old child will take over the mouth and not let Streptococcus mutans the bacteria that causes cavities to enter. Of course, it's only been tested on rats, so it may or may not work on people. Think of all the dentists this could put out of buisness (seriously, I wonder if dentists will find some reason to convince people not to get this, as it really will put many of them out of buisness).

2002-02-18T09:46:00.000-08:00

The search for water begins
Mars Odyssey begins searching for Water on Mars this week. They're looking for water in places other than the poles, where we know there is large amounts, frozen as water-ice.

2002-02-15T07:47:00.000-08:00

Isn't it nice
Update: Woohoo, they got the gold medal they deserved!!
This is THE major news story in Canada: (how we were hosed out of a gold medal). I have no comment on this story, other than to say, isn't it nice we can finally spend our time on such insignificant things, since Sept 11? Remember all those news stories that just dissapeared that day and how nobody talked about anything other than the terrorist attacks for a LONG time after? I'm not saying we should just forget about them, but this has got to be one of the major signs that life is finally getting back to normal.

2002-02-15T07:29:00.000-08:00

Lego Loom
Better check this site out before somebody posts it on Slashdot. This person has built a loom using Lego Mindstorms. Source code included!

2002-02-14T11:13:00.000-08:00

Don't forget your baby
If you need this then you probably shouldn't be a parent anyway.

2002-02-14T10:04:00.000-08:00

Re-pet?
Researchers in texas have sucsessfully cloned a cat. The cat's name is Cc: (get the joke?) and is gentically identical to the mother. Only one problem, it took alot of dead cats to get one live one. the cat is the only surviving animal of 87 kitten embryos created by cloning.
Update:This article is on Slashdot now too, and this has to be at least the best comment i've heard this month:
by PowerTroll 5000 on Thursday February 14, @12:58PM (#3009329)
(User #524563 Info)
Why is it wrong to copy a CD, but not a living creature?

There are much bigger ramifications in the latter type of "copying" than the former.

2002-02-14T06:33:00.000-08:00

My power company is robbing me!
Ok, I just recieved my power bill yesterday. I useed 259kWh (Kilowatt hours), at a cost of $0.061/kWh for a total cost of $15.60. That's not that much, you might say, and you would be right. The price per kWh has even went down from last year, when it was $0.11/kWh. But, there's also a $6.93 (yes, almost $7 just to send me a bill) "Billing and Administration Charge", a $1.70 "2000 cost recovery rider" (they charged too little last year, so they're taking it out of me now), a 3.98 "Wires Service provider charges", a $9.15 "Distribution access charge", and a $3.20 "Minicipal consent and access fee". (and $2.84 GST which is sales tax) Imagine going to a resteraunt and ordering a sandwich & drink for $7. You get the bill and find they charged you another $7 to bring it to your table, $2 to sit at the table, $1.50 because they forgot to charge you for your drink last time you were there, and $4 to print out the bill. That's a pretty expensive sandwich. All of the additions increase the cost of my electricity up to $0.17/kWh, almost 3 times the quoted rate. My effective electricity cost actually goes DOWN the more electricity I use! And why isn't anyone complaining about this? Well, the price gouging didn't just go through, it actually went through a year ago, but the province gave everyone a $35-40 monthly rebate on their electric bill, so no one noticed the difference. Now that rebate is gone, we're all being beaten by the power company, and it's too late to complain. Oh, my power company is Enmax, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

2002-02-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

10 million broken "CDs"
Midbar, the company that created cactus data shield, says there are over 10 million copy-protected "CDs" sitting on store shelves or people's homes right now. Make no mistake, these things are not CDs. They are optical disks, created using a broken CD-DA standard that just might play on your cd player. Even Phillips agrees that these are not real CDs and should not even be called cd's or be able to use the CD symbol.

2002-02-13T09:56:00.000-08:00

The death of goatse.cx
Kuro5hin has a story on the death of Goatse.cx If you haven't been there, you don't know what you're missing. My comment is the same as the author's: "the first (and only) picture I can recall which actually forced me to look away". So long goatse.cx, we hardly knew ye. (That link won't work, thankfully). Here's a link to the picture, DO NOT click on this if you are at work, and make sure you're in a safe place mentally before you click on it (really). www.hick.org/goat/ or web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.goatse.cx

2002-02-13T07:31:00.000-08:00

Warcraft III
Check out these juicy Warcraft III screenshots. Apparently it's going out to beta testers right away, so not too much longer to wait.

2002-02-12T07:36:00.000-08:00

Oops
Woman declared dead Saturday dies Monday. Woman mistakenly declared dead by emergency workers, manages to hang around an extra two days.

2002-02-11T08:02:00.000-08:00

Funny Outlook Exploit
This Outlook bug wouldn't be so funny, if it wasn't for Microsoft's response to it. The bug is basically that if you begin a line with 'begin ' and an octal number, Outlook will execute the rest of the message as UUENCODE'd data (like an attachment). Microsoft's response? No, it's not to release yet another security patch, Microsft suggests that you not begin sentences with the word 'begin', to always capitalize the word Begin, even when being used in the middle of a sentence, or to try to use a different word, such as "start" or "commence.".

2002-02-11T07:29:00.000-08:00

Wired Magazine
I just picked up this month's (Feb 02) Wired magazine, and it's amazing- it's about half the thickness of any other Wired. I'm at work, so I haven't been able to see wether they've cut down on their massive amount of ads, or if there's less content in it, but I'm willing to bet it's a little of both. I guess the advertising crash is hitting some magazines too. Not suprisingly, even though i'm getting about 1/2 the magazine, it's still the same price...

2002-02-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

'Star Trek' Crew to Compete at the Olympics?
Ok, this is probably just a publicity grab but you've got to admit, it;s pretty funny. "Enterprise crew Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Commander William Riker, Lt. Commander Data and Lt. Commander Worf will represent the United Federation of Planets at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City as a last-minute entry in the four-man bobsled competition." (quote from zap2it.com)

2002-02-08T09:25:00.000-08:00

Security for the Olympics
If this doesn't scare you, I don't know what would. Salt lake city is being blanketed by the military. More than 5600 military personelle there. "Starting Friday, airspace will be restricted in a 45-mile radius around Salt Lake City. All small aircraft will need special clearance to land there, and they will first have to travel to one of four nearby gateway airports and undergo security sweeps. " All air traffic will be suspended during the opening & closing ceremonies. They've installed special radar to watch for low flying aircraft & ground movment in the hills. Blackhawk helicopters will be patrolling key sites. Tell me the terrorists didn't achieve their goal- how much freedom are people giving up, for this percieved safety?

2002-02-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

Beam me up
New Scientist has an article about a discovery with quantam entanglement that could bring us one step closer to being able to teleport objects. I'm not smart enough to discuss it intelligently, so go read the article, it's very interesting.

2002-02-05T10:59:00.000-08:00

NASA to start research on Neuclear propulsion
NASA will finally begin research on neuclear propulsion techniques after being bitch-slapped in a White House review using the term "ineffective" to describe the International Space Station, the space shuttle safety upgrades program, and the proposed Outer Planets mission to the Pluto-Kuiper Belt and Europa. Sadly this research will come at the expense of the Europa and Pluto missions, funding to them has been cut. Despite the political problems, neuclear propulsion is a very important step on the road to sending out manned missions, so overall, this probably isn't such a bad thing.

2002-02-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

The public says: Go to Mars!
Remember that online survey I posted here a few days ago (Tell NASA Where to go and how to get there)? Well the results are in...Mars! (full results here)The first three destinations were: Mars: 91%, The Moon: 65%, Jupiter's Moon Europa: 62% (I would have switched the moon and Europa around, but otherwise they matched my picks). Hopefully, NASA will actually pay attention to these results.

2002-02-04T13:05:00.000-08:00

Mir 2?
Well not exactly, but the most recent problem on ISS Alpha is reminiscent of the problems Mir had- a guidance computer failure, causing the space station to not be able to track the Sun, and they've had to shut down "secondary equipment" to save electricity. And Here's a more in depth article from space.com

2002-02-04T11:14:00.000-08:00

So Dumb...
I got the following message via email this morning. I often wonder, if the people who get infected with the iloveyou or similar viruses would fall for this too? (I know it's a joke, but I know there are people out there who wouldn't be too sure)

> > WARNING!!!
> >
> > SEND THIS WARNING TO EVERYONE ON YOUR EMAIL LIST. IF A MAN COMES
TO
> >YOUR FRONT DOOR AND SAYS HE IS CONDUCTING A SURVEY AND ASKS YOU TO SHOW
HIM
> >YOUR BOOBS, DO NOT SHOW HIM YOUR BOOBS. THIS IS A SCAM, HE ONLY WANTS TO
> >SEE YOUR BOOBS.
> >
> > (I wish I'd gotten this yesterday. I feel so stupid.)
> >
> > Signed,
> >
> > The Blonde

2002-02-04T08:00:00.000-08:00

Oops
The US army may have attacked the wrong people. It sounds like they ended up attacking & killing Taliban who were being held prisoner by people on the US's side. Here's a quote from the article: "Local Afghans said that when the Americans burst into the school, they found Afghan fighters sleeping and began spraying the beds with gunfire. A guard named Hamdullah, who evaded the attack by hiding in a ditch, told Time he heard men inside the school plead, "For the love of Allah, do not kill us. We surrender." According to villagers, the Americans shot most of their victims at close range" and two, the article says, with their hands bound behind their back. Don't forget to check out the Kuro5hin.org discussion about it.

2002-02-04T07:21:00.000-08:00

Prosthetic Face?
Cnn.com has a cool article about a guy who had to have his face removed due to infection, and got a prosthetic one.

2002-02-04T06:26:00.000-08:00

Last LOTD
Today is a sad day. Today is the last List of the day on dilbert.com. They have a cheap Explanation basically saying they werent making enough money doing it. Now i'll have to find something else to spend my time at work on.

2002-02-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

No news... again
Well, it's friday and there doesn't seem to be any news. Here's two things that mildly interest me
Former mob boss John Gotti hospitalized. Can you say Karma?
And check out this Interesting post on Kuro5hin.org, garunteed to stir up controversy. I won't comment on it (enough other people have), other than to say I wish Signal11 all the best.

2002-01-31T10:25:00.000-08:00

Brave New World
New Scientist is reporting the the development of a chip that "automates the laborious process of nuclear transfer, the key step in cloning", which they say could allow the mass production of clones. I just started reading Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, and it's kind of scary, that's what they'ret talking about ih the book- mass production of human clones.

2002-01-31T09:38:00.000-08:00

Judge sticks it to Ford
Well, 2600 won this case- A Judge ruled that Emmanuel Goldstein did nothing wrong when he pointed the domain www.fuckgeneralmotors.com to ford.com. He said it wasn't trademark infringment, and it wasn't trademark dilution, and wasn't really an issue, because he didn't seek to gain commercialy from it. He also has other domain names like verizonreallysucks.com, verizoneatspoop.com & other fun ones. Verizon also tried to threaten him, but I don't think anything ever came of that one.

2002-01-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

Fight the good fight
Zdnet has an update on the 2600 DECSS case. As always, you can also get the lastest update from 2600's web site. It sounds like it's next stop supreme court.

2002-01-31T08:37:00.000-08:00

A very special New Scientist Article
New Scientist has an artilce on the GPL & Open Source, but it's an article with a twist. Unlike most of their articles, they have released the article under the GPL, so you are free to copy it, and make any changes you want to it, as long as you make it publicly available. It's a pretty good article too, they even talk some about OpenCola wich is open sourced cola.

2002-01-30T15:48:00.000-08:00

Tell NASA where to go and how to get there
Space.com has an article stating that NASA has requested for the National Academy of Science's National Research Council do a survey on what you think NASA should be doing. It's right Here but there's only 1 more day left. Make sure you let them know how important it is to send human beings to Mars! No word if you can fill out the survey more than once though...

2002-01-30T11:01:00.000-08:00

ULTIMATE MACHINE COMBAT
The creators of Junkyard wars have come up with a new show- Ultimate Machine Combat. It sounds kind of like a cross between Junkyard Wars & Robot Wars (or Robotica, or whatever else it's called). 3 teams have 30 days & a set amount of money (you can use your own money too it sounds like) to build a robot to fight other robots with. Sounds very cool...

2002-01-30T10:52:00.000-08:00

Stem Cells
New Scientist is reporting that some researchers may have found a stem cell in human bone marrow, that is able to differentiate into any other type of cell. If this turns out to be true, it means researchers can stop using stem cells harvested from dead babies (a good thing). They also have a discussion of why researchers would still rather use stem cells from dead babies .

2002-01-29T10:27:00.000-08:00

Interview with Rusty
Check out this Interview with Kuro5hin's Rusty Foster, there's some really great stuff in it, especially interesting to me was what he says about internet advertising adn the future of micropayment type schemes (& why he thinks they won't work). More and more, it seems that there is a revolution happening right now in advertising on the internet, with the battle between the big advertising companies and smaller, less intrusive advertising, and I think some really big companies are going to be left way behind when investors realize who's really making the money.

2002-01-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

The End?
Cnn.com is is reporting that Stephen King is quitting writing. They say there are only 5 more books coming from him, two of which are due in 2002. He basically says he's quitting while he's still writing good stuff, and he's running out of stuff to write about. So long, Mr. King, and thanks for all the books...

2002-01-29T07:25:00.000-08:00

Fuel cell for laptop
Smart Fuel Cell, a German based company is releasing a Methanol based fuel cell this week! They say it will last for 10 hours, and recharging it will consist of refilling the liquid in the fuel cell, which can be done while the laptop is still on. Of course there's the non-trivial issue of distributing the actual fuel to users, although it only costs about 33 cents per gallon for methanol, they estimate a filled cartrige for the fuel cell would cost $3-5, which isn't too bad, but could get expensive if you use your laptop all the time off battery power.

2002-01-28T11:17:00.000-08:00

Mars or the Moon?
If you can stand the X-10 popup ads, check out This article from yahoo It's highlights from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on a discussion about wether it would be best to make Mars, or the Moon the next human based exploration subject. Of course, the answer is Mars, because of it's massive amounts of resources, water, 1/3 earth gravity (as opposed to almost 0 on the moon) and nearly 24 hour days. If you haven't read it, check out the book: A case for Mars (I think, i can't get to amazon.com right now to verify the title) by Robert Zubrin, it's a great explanation of why we can, and must for humanity's sake go to Mars, and how we can, in 10 years, for as little as 10 billion dollars(Bill Gates himself could pay for it!)

2002-01-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

New Virus
Well, it looks like there's a new virus making the rounds... My Party-A. It's actually quite clever, it comes through as a attachment called www.myparty.yahoo.com. Of course, most people think this is a link to a web site, but it's actually a .com file, just another type of executable file. I've always admired the amount of intelligence it takes to write a good virus, and this is a good example- it even includes it's own smtp client, so it doesn't have to depend on outlook to send infected copies of itself. Of course, I work in tech support, so i'll probably get to spend today cleaning up the mess this makes, but that's another story.

2002-01-28T09:02:00.000-08:00

I haven't forgot...
No, I haven't forgot about you, my faithful readers (both of you!). There's just no really interesting news so far today, or yesterday for that matter. But rest assured, as soon as it appears, I will post it here.

2002-01-26T21:15:00.000-08:00

Second annual Iternet-free day
An internet based charityDoBe.org is proposing that tomorrow (Sunday) everyone in the world not use the internet. They say it's ok to use the internet to arrange things to do with people, but to stay disconnected all day tomorrow. They're saying you should go outside. How 20th century. I just checked the weather over my internet connection and it's supposed to be snowing, with a low of -30 (celcius). Yeah, i'm going to spend the day outside, riiiight.

2002-01-25T09:54:00.000-08:00

Horizontal Snow
Um, yeah, it's been snowing since last night here (Calgary), adnt he wind just picked up about an hour ago and now the snow is blowing pretty good. Here's what The Weather Network says we're going to have for weather- snow until Monday, that sounds like fun. Someone remind me again why I live in Calgary?
Update: and, not suprisingly, Environment Canada has issued a Heavy snowfall warning

2002-01-25T07:48:00.000-08:00

Amibios or not.com
Check This page out. Just like Hot or Not but with more geek appeal.

2002-01-24T16:01:00.000-08:00

Porkach? Spork?
The BBC is reporting that Scientists in Japan have successfully crossed pigs with spinach. They hope the Pig/Spinach will have less fat than a regular pig.

2002-01-24T13:49:00.000-08:00

ultraGeek is over a year old
Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me.. oh wait, I can't sing. Ultrageek is over a year old. I never realized I started this blog so long ago... For history's sake here is the first post:
Welcome to ultraGeek. I plan on posting stories that I find interesting here, and I dont care what you think of them. Enjoy (and if you dont, I dont care!)
posted by David Holowiski at Saturday, December 16, 2000
Here's a link to the first month of posts which you can also access through the archives on the left. One thing I notice is that ultraGeek was alot more humour filled back then, and that's something I'm going to try to bring back.

2002-01-24T09:48:00.000-08:00

Spyware
Check out this Story about some scary new Spyware on Kuro5hin.org. (and an article on Wired)And while you're at it, you should download Ad-Aware from Lavasoft a great freeware program that will rid your machine of spyware. You'll be surpised at how much evil spyware you have installed.

2002-01-24T09:09:00.000-08:00

1,2,3,4...
Can't fall asleep? Try counting sheep, right? Nope. according to this article in New Scientist. A study of 50 insomniacs found that people who counted sheep fell asleep about as fast as the control group who didn't. They did find that another group who visualised relaxing scenes like a waterfall fell asleep about 20 mins faster than the rest. So i guess, sheep is out, water is in.

2002-01-24T08:19:00.000-08:00

Microchip gives blind chance of sight
This is the result of years of research, that I have been following from the first tests. Scientists are building microchips which can be interfaced with the optic nerve in the eye of blind people who have no nerve degeneration, in order to allow them to see. The first tests could basically only convey dark or light, but this report says they're now to the point where faces can be recognized and large print text can be read. In my opinion, this is the single most important area of cybernetics research, as they are the only group which has been able to interface directly with the brain, well enough to convey pictures. This is an area of reaserch I belive will eventually lead to the direct linking of computers into the human brain.

2002-01-23T07:19:00.000-08:00

The breeding place of violence... Internet Cafes?
California has placed a 45 day moratorium on new cyber-cafe's, after a fatal stabbing at one. The article goes on to state that there are known gang members hanging out at cyber-cafes. They are also limiting the hours that minors can be at the cyber cafes- no later than 8 pm unless accompanied by a legal gaurdian, and no later than 10pm on weekends.

2002-01-22T15:09:00.000-08:00

New Theories Dispute the Existence of Black Holes
Space.com has an article about a paper by two researchers who belive that black holes and especially the quantam singularity at the centre of them, do't exist; instead they form a gravastar, essentially a cold shell of matter, surrounding a huge area of something which is another state of space/time than we know. (the shell being the same location as a black hole's event horizon, and the other state of space/time being like a Bose-Einstein Condensate). They say that the theory of a black hole glosses over too many problems & mathematical impossiblities, and go on to describe a theory that proposes at least as many problems & impossiblities. This is hardly news, almost since the day that Einstein rejected the idea of black holes because nature would never allow something like that to happen, there have been all kinds of ridiculous theories as to what would happen instead of a black hole forming.

2002-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

Dam cold
Just wanted to let everyone know, it's dam cold here. (in Calgary). It's supposed to get down to -25 celcius (-13 farenheit), -38 (-36 farenheit) with wind chill. And that's nothing, it's supposed to get down to -33 (-27 f), -42 (-44 f) with windchill tonight in slave lake which is north of calgary!
Don't belive me? Calgary, Slave Lake

2002-01-22T10:28:00.000-08:00

Advertising
Is it just me, or in the past week or two, are ads on web pages getting even bigger than they used to be? I'm talking big. I've had half screen X10 pop-unders. Check out the ad on Zdnet running down the left hand side of the page. It's huge, and it's not even an animated gif anymore, they're using flash applets. If you use My Yahoo!, have you noticed the banner ads there have about doubled in size? And pop-ups, oh my god, have you ever been to Space.com? 2 popup ads opening the home page, and another one for each article you click on. Not to mention the ads on the page.
When will advertising companies realize that just being bigger and more obtrusive isn't going to work? I know personally, the more irritating an ad is (X10), the less likely I am to buy anything from that company (I actually have bought from x10 in the past). In great advertising crash of 2001 the advertising companies finally realized that they weren't getting their money's worth, but I think they still have more to learn. By just making the ads bigger and harder to ignore, they're only succeding in alienating their potential customers.
If you want to see how great, effective ads could be done, check out Blogger.com. You'll have to look hard to see the ad, it's along the right hand side of the page, it's labeled ad, and it's a total of 4 lines of text, about 6-8 words. they're selling them at $1.25(US)/1000 impressions, $10 minimum. They say they're effective (i'll be trying it out once I get a problem with my paypal account sorted out). I see that just today KaZaA has bought a ton of ads, so somene must think it's worth the (small) money.

2002-01-22T08:50:00.000-08:00

Sucks to be you
Sucks to be you (I know, I know)

2002-01-22T07:38:00.000-08:00

Earthquake in egypt
This is apparently non-news as I was only able to find reference to it on Gaurdian Unlimited's web page. There was a 6.4 earthquake centred in the Mediterranean Sea, which shook Cairo. If my theory of earthquake clusters is correct, we should be seeing a few more earthquakes in the next week or two, kind of like global aftershocks.
Update: Check out this cool site I just found: Near Real Time Earthquake List from the USGS

2002-01-20T18:15:00.000-08:00

Ewwww
Red hat is in talks with AOL to be bought by them. (as long as this isn't a fake story!)

2002-01-18T09:30:00.000-08:00

Kuro5hin.org speaks on slashdot
Well, I promised myself no more slashdot bashing this week, but promises were made to be broken. Kuro5hin.org has an Article on the slashdot censorship that I talked about yesterday. As with most articles on Kuro5hin.org, this one's a good read.

Update Jamie, one of the slashdot founders, has posted a comment on Kuro5hin.org about the story. Apparently he likes Kuro5hin.org better than slashdot too. Among his well worded, articulate comments were this one: "If you're so dumb that you post off-topic comments and think it's horrible, evil censorship when they get moderated off-topic, then great, please leave Slashdot. Go away. I'm serious. You're an idiot and you won't contribute anything of value anyway. "
Niiiice... now we know just how much they care.

2002-01-18T08:45:00.000-08:00

This should be headline news
But it's not. Why? Because it's not happening in the USA. If it was happening in Canada, it would at least make the first few pages of the newspaper. What's on the front page? Longer lines at airports because of new baggage check procedures. What should be on the front page? Congo volcano devastation mounts Mount Nyiragongo volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo is errupting. 45 have been killed already. It has destroyed several villages, and is now destroying the city Goma of about 500,000 people. 1/3 of the city is on fire, and at least 300,000 people have evacuated the city so far. The airport has lava running over the runways, and there are smoke-billowing cracks opening up in the roads.
But, nope, the media has decided, airport lineups are clearly more important.
Update: 02/22/02- of course, once people started dying, it finally became front page news...

2002-01-17T15:51:00.000-08:00

Dvorak is a dork
Oh, yes, finally someone agrees with me. . Kcgeek thinks "John Dvorak is a Big Fat Idiot" and I couldn't agree more. It's in reference to this article: The nine assassins of broadband I used to be an avid reader of Zdnet (until they got those huge ads & I quit), and Dvorak's collumn was absolutley hilarious. He has no concept of the industry, and was unable to even report the facts right. All I can say, is what a loser, and now I know someone else agrees with me.

2002-01-17T13:50:00.000-08:00

Slashdot hits a new low
Ok, I didn't intend to spend the week bashing Slashdot, but the 'ask slashdot' i just saw was amazing! Where Can You Buy Jumpers? You know, like HD jumpers, or the jumpers used on motherboards? What kind of stupid assed question is that? as was pointed out in the ensuing discussion, it takes all of 15 seconds to find a ton of places that sell them, just by searching on Google. Not only that, you can walk into Radio Shack and buy them.
If you're looking for some intelligent conversation, try Kuro5hin.org

2002-01-16T18:39:00.000-08:00

Censorship on Slashdot
Slashdot you say? That open, online community, where users are encouraged to discuss issues? Yup, that's the very one. Well... someone posted an article on slashdot about Oracle not being breakable afterall. Well, someone posted, an admittedly offtopic post, intelligently explaining how the moderation system is flawed. Well, it was modded up. Clearly alot of people thought it was important. 43 people replied to the post. 71 people moderated it. It was bouncing up and down, but when I left for home from work, the thread was at +5. I got home, and the whole thread, all 43 posts, all moderated to -1. The only way this is possible is for CmdrTaco, or someone else to edit the database, and exercise 'the ultimate control' which they have admitted that they hae the power to do. I've pasted his comments below, just incase it gets deleted off of slashdot. The first Slashdot troll post investigation (Score:2, Interesting)
P.S. My comment was one of the ones summarily modded down to -1, becuase I refused to post as anonymous coward

Update 1/17/02
Well, the editors must have felt bad, & let this post be moderated again. It's up to +1, with 106 moderations used on it. Of course, now it's off the front page, so it's too late for most people to read it...

by negativekarmanow tm on Wednesday January 16, @04:29PM (#2850660)
(User #518080 Info | http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: Wednesday January 16, @07:29PM)
The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon on slashdot.org. In order to do this as thoroughly as possible, I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:

More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up. Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post [slashdot.org]. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions)
Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore. This means a logged in user can keep on trolling as much as he (or she) likes, without risking a ban to post on slashdot. When trolling as an anonymous user, every post starts at score 0, and you will be modded down to -1 ON EVERY POST. When you are modded down a certain number of times in 24 hour, you cannot post anymore from your current IP for a day or so. So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever [slashdot.org], funny [slashdot.org], etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic. Now, on a news site like slashdot, where the number of different topics of discussion can be counted on 1 hand, I must say I quite like the distraction these posts offer. But no, when the topic is yet another minor version change of the Linux kernel [slashdot.org], they only expect ooohs and aaahs about this great feat of engineering. Look at the moderation done in this thread [slashdot.org] to see what I mean.
Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll [slashdot.org], which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.
Feel free to use this information to your advantage. I thank you for your time.

2002-01-15T08:14:00.000-08:00

I stole a book last night
No, I didn't go into my local book store, pick up a book, stick it under my jacket, and walk out of the store with it, I downloaded it, from the Internet. The book, was Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley. Sure, I could have bought it at the book store, but it is $27.50, for the paperback! version. And, I don't feel the least bit guilty about it. Why? The author, Aldous Huxley, has been dead for almost 40 years. The original intention of copyright law was to give authors/artists/etc. works a certian amount of protection, so that they could sell their works and make a profit, without having to contend with other people selling exact copies. The intent was to give the author/artist/etc. incentive to continue producing works, because they knew they could continue to profit from them. The problem with copyright law, is that it's been twisted & warped far from it's original intent, so that it's nothing more than a tool for the mega-corporations to make more money.
I'll leave you with these questions to ponder...

How in the world does someone who'se been dead for almost 40 years profit from the sale of his book, as opposed to having it freely avalible to anyone who wants it?

What should the intent of copyright law be? To provide incentive for artists to continue their works, knowing they can profit from them, or to allow big buisness to make a few more buck? Remember, laws are made by the people, for the people, and if you don't like them, you can change them (well, it's not exactly that easy, but you get the idea)

Once the author/artist can no longer profit from his work (ie: dead), what benifits humanity more, to have the photograph/painting/story/music/etc. available freely to anyone who wants it, or only available to those who can afford to pay the price?

P.S. I also stole 1984 and Animal Farm by George Orwell, last night. I guess my next update will be from Jail...

2002-01-15T07:18:00.000-08:00

Get ready for the Olympics

Mike Manwaring, a graduate student at the University of Utah produced 3.4 millimeter across Olympic rings, out of living nerve cells. Cool, Eh?

2002-01-11T15:51:00.000-08:00

Pea soup for the Cynic's soul
Ok, so I know this isn't really news, but no one reads this site anyway, so... This is a hilarious site. Here's the description, shamlessly stolen from their page: "In today's bright and sunny times, with benevolence and good will so plentiful and cold misanthropy so hard to come by, it's enough to make a confirmed cynic downright cheery. But now there's Pea Soup for the Soul: vignettes carefully selected to warm any caustic heart with the gentle hopeful reminder that there's still good reason to be bitter after all. "
Enjoy.

2002-01-11T07:34:00.000-08:00

The universe is turquoise
Well, if you took all the light in the universe and put it together, that is the color you get, so says this BBC Article. They say the universe began blue, and will eventually turn red. How interesting!
Heh, I just thought of something, that turquise box is the first image ever in a post on UltraGeek. What a boring first.

2002-01-07T15:45:00.000-08:00

Google H4x0r
I've said it before, I'll say it again, Google is cool. Check out this Google H4x0r page!

2002-01-07T08:40:00.000-08:00

Embedded chips in Euros, coming soon
This article tells of the European Central Bank's plans to introduce RFID (radio frequency identification tags) in Euros by the year 2005, in order to make counterfiting more difficult. The article talks of the diffuclty in getting the chips down to about 5 cents/chip which is about what it would make it cost-effective.

It's not mentioned in the article, but it sounds like, and makes sens that, each chip will have a serial number, the same as bills have serial numbers. The only difference is it would be alot easier to get the serial number from the chip. Think of this- You get some Euros from the bank machine. The bank keeps track of what serial numbers you were given. Then you use one of those bills to buy some 'adult' items. They scan the bills at the register. It would probably be easy enough to scan all the bills, no matter how small the denomination, the cahsier could even wear a wrist-strap that would scan the money when he/she takes it from you. Of course, they keep track of the serial numbers as well, for 'marketing' purposes. Imagine these two databases (the bank's, and the store's) fall into the hands of one company (or the police, as they most certianly will). No more anonymous cash. Records of everything you spend, available to the highest bidder.

That being said, Europe generally has better privacy laws than we do in Canada or the US, so maybe it's not so bad as it sounds.

2002-01-07T07:46:00.000-08:00

The lioness and the oryx
Adding to my streak of totally un-geek like news... BBC Has an article on a lioness who adopted a baby oryx (they usually eat them) & cared for it. Warning: the story has a sad ending. The lioness became weakened while caring for the baby oryx & fell asleep while she was accompanying it to a river for a drink, and the baby was eaten by a male lion. It's really kind of a touching story.

2002-01-04T07:50:00.000-08:00

Mmmm, slashcode update
Slashdot has updated their slashcode. Normally this wouldn't be newsworthy, but they have a cool new feature- friend or foe. Basically, when you are reading comments, you can make a person a friend or foe, and a red or green circle appears by their name next to any of their comments. Really, it's cool! If you use slashdot, don't forget to mark me as a friend (or foe, although I can't understand why anyone would want to do that), my id is anon757.

2002-01-03T08:21:00.000-08:00

Former first dog Buddy killed by car
It's been a slow few news days. This was all I could find: Bill Clinton's dog was run over by a car. Now, I know this isn't really geek news, and has nothing to do with science, but for some reason it stikes me as funny, and I just can't understand why. It sounds like they have ruled out terrorism, as they mentioned that Buddy's death was "purely an accident".

2001-12-31T14:12:00.000-08:00

Ahahahahahahaha
Excuse me, but this is just too funny! The fast and the furious soundtrack, that was released with Cactus Data Shield (CDS) copy protection technology is a joke. You're supposed to only be able to play the music on it through a special player when you insert it in your computer, and of course, not be able to rip it to mp3's at all. It turns out that some DVD drives just don't see the copy protected part, and all they see is a regluar audio cd, fully playable and rippable (except for track 1). How many hundreds of millions of dollars did they spend, only to be thwarted by a $59 DVD player?
(This article originates from The Screensavers, a truly great geek TV show, if you can get it, and a truly great web page too.)

2001-12-21T10:33:00.000-08:00

The year in review, from Google
Google's press centre has a cool article on 2001 in review that has all kinds of cool stats on top search terms, including a 2001 timeline. Mmmm, google good...

2001-12-21T09:54:00.000-08:00

Weird
Ok, it's a slow geek news day. Here's the results of two strange but true, slightly morbid studies.
Oscar winning screenwriters have shorter lives than nominees. That's right, the winners die sooner than the losers. Winning an oscar seems to cause a 37% relative increase in death rates in the winner over the loser. Subsequent wins were found to increase the increase in death rates by 22%. The study also points out that it doesn't seem to be because of any obvious reason.
Heart deaths increase on 'unlucky' days. Quote from the article: "Chinese and Japanese people are more likely to die from heart disease on the fourth day of the month because the number 4 evokes superstitious stress among this group, finds a study in this week’s Christmas issue of the BMJ". Death rates increase 7% on that day.

2001-12-20T09:13:00.000-08:00

Global Warming
To those who still have their heads in the sand and don't belive in Global Warming, 2001 is set to be the second warmest year in recorded weather history(which goes back 141 years), 1998 being the warmest, and 9 of the 10 warmest years in the last decade. What the real discussion should be is wether we are causing the global warming, wether it's just natural cycles that the earth is going through, or both. It's undeniable that the climate in many areas of the planet is changing, and the sooner we acknowlege it, the sooner we can start adapting to it.

2001-12-20T07:44:00.000-08:00

RIAA is Evil
It turns out I may not be the only one who thinks the RIAA is evil. Such famous artists as Elton John, No Doubt and the Eagles seem to agree with me. They are planning a concert to raise money for battle against record companies. Also, check out the Recording Artists Coalition's web page. While you're at it, you might as well check out the RIAA's web page.
This information shamelessy stolen from Slashdot
Update:
Check out this old (June 14, 2000) article by Courtney Love on Salon, it's unbelivable. She's definetley against, music piracy, but it's not Napster & Gnutella she hates, it's the RIAA!. Check out this quote from her: "There were a billion music downloads last year, but music sales are up. Where's the evidence that downloads hurt business? Downloads are creating more demand."

2001-12-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

IBM uses 10**18 (a billion billion) molecules in quantam computer to factor 15
This article details how IBM built the worlds largest quantam computer, a 7 qubit quantam computer consisting of a billion billion custom designed flourine/carbon molecules, programmed by nuclear magnetic resonance. The answer they found? The factors of 15 are 3, and 5. The important thing about this, as stated in the article, is once they can scale this up to several thousand qubits, they can use it to factor very large prime numbers, which will make breaking encryption very easy.

2001-12-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

Bizzare
Zdnet is reporting that criminals may have had advance warning of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and used the time between when the towers were hit and when they crashed to the ground to do more than $100 million worth of illegal credit card transactions. They figure the criminals thought all the evidence would be destroyed when the towers collapsed. They're using Germany based Convar to recover the data off of mainframe HD's. They say there was considerable fire and smoke damage, but they are able to read the data off the HD's using a special laser scanning technique. They expect to be able to recover most of the data, and to be able to catch the criminals.

2001-12-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

More copy protection madness
Universal Music Group has plans to release copy protected CD's in the U.S.. The first one will be ``Fast & Furious -- More Music'', and you will not be able to play it on Macintosh computers, DVD players and game consoles, and some audio CD players. (I'm not sure why there's no mention of not being able to play it on a PC?). It will be distributed with a warning sticker, and the music stores have been told to "cheerfully refund the consumer's purchase price", even on opened CD's.
So, here's what to do. Buy the CD, open it, then return it, if possible, use your bank card or credit card to buy it. What does this accompish? It costs the music store money to charge your bank or credit card. It costs them time and money to re-shrink wrap the CD & put it back on the shelves. If they don't make any profit on the cd's, you can bet they aren't going to sell them any more. Also, if a large number of people return copy protected cd's, hopefully the music industry will get the point that this is not a technology that consumers want

2001-12-18T08:41:00.000-08:00

Wil Wheaton
Remember Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Genration? If you do, chances are you didn't like him. Many people hate him, and in turn, hate the actor who played him, Wil Wheaton. There's even a whole newsgroup dedicated to him: alt.wesley.crusher.die.die.die. You may be suprised then, to find out he is just a regular geek, who didn't think too highly about Wesley Crusher himself. He's intelligent, well spoken, and even codes his own website www.wilwheaton.net. Check out this Bbspot interview, and This interview from that lesser known news site, Slasdot. Both interviews are garunteed to change your mind.
Also, look forward to seeing Wil in Star Trek 10, which is either filming right now, or starting filming soon.

2001-12-17T11:11:00.000-08:00

Soooo tired...
I am so tired today I can hardly think. Don't expect any intelligent posts from me today. Hopefuly I'll be more rested up tomorrow, and will be able to get back to some serious geeking.

2001-12-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

2 Quickies
Actually, I'm just too lazy to comment on these right now, but they are too interesting to leave out:
IVF technique may increase birth abnormalities is another one from the "Maybe nature had it right in the first place" files
and "No medical explanation" for near death experiences is a good one from the "things that make you go hmmm..." files.
Enjoy!
P.S. New Scientist is a trusted scientific publication with a printed magazine as well, not some fly by night wacko web site.

2001-12-14T08:28:00.000-08:00

CD Copy protection

Copy protected cd's are starting to pop up like crazy.There are two types of copy protected CD's. One is protected with Macrovision (the same company that does the protection VHS & DVD's use) which causes massive hiss & static in ripped MP3's. The second, more Evil type, makes it impossible for a computer to even recognize the audio cd. This protection may either hide the cd's table of contents, so it looks like a blank or unformatted cd, or introduce garbage on the beginning of the cd, which causes the CD-ROM to think the CD is bad. Normal audio cd players, just ignore that stuff and are (usually) able to play the cd's. This means that in the near future, and now for many cd's, you will NOT be able to play them on your computer The RIAA is basically taking your fair use rights and flushing them down the toilet. Not only will you not be able to play cd's on your computer, you won't be able to burn compilation cd's from cd's which you have legally bought, and you won't be able to create mp3's from legally bought cd's to transfer to your MP3 player.

For people who work in tech support, they will have to explain to users (over, and over again) that there is not a problem with their CD-ROM, it's actually a problem with the CD, even though it plays fine in their audio CD player. One has to wonder how many CD-ROM's will get replaced because of people thinking they have a bad CD-ROM...

Of course, there is a simple solution to this. Just download one of the peer to peer file sharing programs and use it to download mp3s and burn them to CD (a cd burner costs $210 or less in canada, and cd's are less than $1). No pesky fair use issues, and you're showing the RIAA what you think of their copy protection by voting with your wallet.

If you want to learn more about CD Copy protection, here's a Pre built Google search that should get you most of the articles ever written about CD copy protection. If you're mad as hell and want to do something about it, then check out the EFF's page- Campaign for audiovisual free expression. and Join or Donate to the EFF

2001-12-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

Lots of water on Mars?
NASA has convincing evidence of what many of us have thought for a long time: There may be a large amount of water (most of it water-ice) on mars, much of it close to the surface and easily accessable. To be clear, they only detected the presence of high amounts of hydrogen, but the most likely combination of hydrogen on mars is H2O (water). Add to this the fact that Mars may currently be undergoing global warming, and certianly has enough CO2 to do it, and you have a planet ripe for terraforming. Assuming, that NASA regularly reads my blog, I'll make the request again- NASA, we NEED to send humans to Mars, and we need to do it soon!

2001-12-11T12:36:00.000-08:00

Ultrasound scans may disrupt fetal brain development

New Scientist is reporting that scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden belive that Ultrasound scans may disrupt fetal brain development. The study found an increased number of left handed men in a group of people who had two or more ultrasound scans. This is of concern because "It's commonly known among neuropsychiatrists that right-handed people can become left-handed by slight damage to the brain." (quote from NewScientist).

Once again we are suprised to find that it is better to leave nature alone than to interfere...

2001-10-27T10:10:00.000-07:00

I love being right! There was a 2.6 earthquake in new york this morning. Ok, it wasn't major, but I think it's good evidence that large explosions or things that cause the earth to shake, can cause earthquakes to occur as far as several months away. The relatively low (compared to neuclear weapons) stress that the world trade centers collapsing caused, seems to have caused a relatively low grade earthquake. I think we should be looking for a bigger earthquake somewhere in europe or the middle east, in the next several months.

2001-10-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm back. Long time, no blog, i guess you could say. I plan to contue commenting on news stories, but do alot more ranting too. The world can never have enough ranting.
Also, I'm going to make a prophetic prediction: Somewhere in the world is in for a big earthquake, in the next month or two. See one of my previous rants for an explanation of why...

2001-05-25T14:36:00.000-07:00

How much is a life worth?
A BMJ Study shows that Death after discharge from intensive care may be reduced by 39% if at risk patients were to stay in intensive care for another 48 hours . Of course, this would require a 16% increase in intensive care beds. So, the hospitals are faced with a difficult decision... spend money & decrease the death rate by 39% or save the money and let the extra people die. It's not hard to figure out what their decision is going to be.

2001-02-09T09:48:00.000-08:00

Genetic screening
Someday in the future, Insurance agencies will use genetic screening to determine who is eligible for insurance, right? Nope. They're doing it right now. Norwich Union Life has admitted to doing unapproved genetic tests for breast and ovarian cancer. This is happening now. How much longer before you're asked for a blood sample during a job interview? It'll happen alot sooner than you think.

Best (scariest) quote from Slashdot? "apparently, it's not just coming, it's already here". Sad, but true.