This is just sad.

Student senator Jill Edwards, according to minutes of the student government's meeting last week, said she "didn't believe a member of the Marine Corps was an example of the sort of person UW wanted to produce."

Well Jill, you've probably already heard this and will probably never read this blog... but it is because of members of the Marine Corps, and the Navy, Army, and Air Force that allow you to say what you did. And the fact that you said it shows that you are not the highly educated, civicly responsible person that UW (or any school for that matter) should want to produce.

HD = No More Fair Use

Here is a pretty good blog post that sums this up nicely.

What this all boils down to is that the movie studios will now be able to regulate which plugs you use to connect your tv and your HD movie player.

The component cables which were the early HD standard? Analog so they will play back your HD movie at 1/4th the possible resoution (you'll get 100 more lines than DVD as opposed to 600 lines more).

DVI cables? Digital with no copy protection (even worse in the movie studio's eyes)...

HDMI (The current top of the line)? Eh depends on if your TV maker had the foresight to include all the copy protection stuff that this standard allows for... if not oh well your screwed...

So whats this boil down to?

If you want to use a first gen HDTV you're screwed (no digital/copy protected inputs).

Want to use your computer? You're screwed... unless it was built by an OEM that ensures that the data in encrypted from Disc to motherboard, decoded in the processor, the reencoded by the video card... Oh and you need one of those HDMI cables for your monitor (which I haven't seen as a standard feature on any monitors in my price range).

So yeah, I'm normally an "early adopter" but I'm not touching this stuff with a 10 foot pole. I just hope that alot of other people realize how much the movie studios are trying to screw us over and are atleast asking "Do I get lube with this?"

Reason #487 to switch to Linux.

I don't know if I should be angry or scared....

Ok a little (overly simplified) background for the non-techies in the audience. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers or ICANN is a group that for all intents and purposes has complete control over establishing and maintaining what are called Top Level Domains or TLDs. TLDs are the .com, .net, or .uk at the end of the names you punch into your browser. They then have deals with groups called registrars. In some cases a registrar is run by the country that the TLD represents, or in cases like .com, .net, .org they available for everyone to use. Enter VeriSign... This company basically runs the TLD servers for .com and .net (the servers that tell you how to get to google.com for example). A couple of years ago VeriSign ran a program called Site Finder. What this boiled down to is if you entered a domain that didn't exist it would forward you to VeriSign's site where they would try and sell you the site and other services (and some people claimed they tracked the traffic to this site and if warranted raise the price of that name). ICANN didn't like this and order them to stop, so VeriSign sued ICANN. ICANN is trying to settle and here is where the current problem begins:

As part of VeriSign's new contract with ICANN, VeriSign would have more control over the .com TLD including a "presumptive right of renewal," meaning if they want to keep control they can without any bidding for the contract (this contract would require renewal in 2012). VeriSign will also own ALL expired domain names, be able to raise the prices of registration by 7% a year for 4 of the next 6 years (with compound interest that's about a 31% increase in cost), and access to all traffic data on domains.

So if your domain name expires it becomes the property of VeriSign who can then sell it to whom they wish (not necessarily you)...

They get to raise prices while the cost of bandwidth, storage, and computing in general is decreasing...

And they get traffic data on ALL domain names (including unregisted domains), which is as bad as Site Finder in my opinion.

The Register Article

Linux as a Desktop OS

So I'm going to try to use Linux as my primary operating system again. Of course this isn't a good test of if its ready for prime time since I use Linux at work and have tried this before and each time I try it it gets easier (I think partly because Linux has gotten better and partly because I've gotten more used to it).

So far I've found 2 problems:
1) Games! They still don't work very well (even with Cedega)... I'm going to try regular Wine and see what happens with that...
2) GAIM and the current incarnation of Google Talk don't play well together sometimes. (When you IM someone it seems to prefer using their Gmail Chat window instead of their Google Talk client... It would be nice if you could choose where to send it...)

On the plus side I like my desktop alot better than windows. I've got some really fun widgets and stuff to satisfy my techno geeky self. Plus the icons (for the most part) are scalable vector graphics (svg) which means that the icons actually scale with the resolution you are using and you can zoom in on them with out them getting blury or pixilated (its a small thing but it makes the whole desktop look much cleaner).

So anyway this is probably just my first post in a series as I find stuff I like and stuff that I dislike about Linux as a desktop OS. And just for the record I happen to love Linux as a server and embedded OS, I think the desktop is really the only thing that Linux isn't great at yet.

My Kinda Girl

Rose: must find cheaper lotion that makes me smell like pie

Ya know...

Most people would be upset that they had to stay at work till 7 on a Friday night... I guess I just need more of a social life.

Yet something else to share with the world

So here is another way to share your life with people on the internet. It's called Last.fm. Basically you instal this plug in to Media Player or what ever player you use... or you could use XBMC like me... and it tells Last.fm what your listening to... The advantage of doing this is that last.fm can then take the music your listening to compare it to what other people are listening to and it can match you up with songs or artists that you didn't know about... Kinda a neat idea. Oh and if your curious my Last.fm profile is here.

Theodore must be spinning in his grave...

So Bush is going to sell off lots of national forest lands. Just because Congress didn't pass all of his budget... what happened to conservatives being the fiscally responsible ones?

Good Weekend...

Last night I went out to happy hour with Kristen, Jen, Ben, and Mike. We had lots of fun at Woodrow's north... I didn't even know it existed till last night. Its a nice place off of Parmer. Then we went to Kerby Lane for dinner. It was fun... its nice to have friends :)

Today I went to Fry's and bought Disney's Robin Hood... it's been a long time since I've seen this movie... Its so great.

And the protests will begin in 5,4, 3, 2, ....

Mohammed Dance

Aggie Happy Hour!

So I went to my first Aggie Happy Hour tonight, and it was awesome. It was at this place called Donn's Depot down on 5th Street. I got there alittle bit early and the regulars were sitting at the bar watching Jeopardy, it was fun. Then the Aggie's stared to show up. I talked with my buddy Derek for a while until he had to leave then I met lots of really fun people. Like this girl named Sueann, who is in between jobs right now. She is in charge of the Austin Muster and somehow I think I volunteered myself for it.

Anyway as the night progressed I met this guy named Ben, and two girls who were suite mates their freshman year at A&M named Jen and Kristen. They were all class of '04 and alot of fun to hang out with. When Aggie happy hour broke up we organized a group to goto Little Woodrows down on 6th street. We sat around there for a couple of hours and talked and we decided that we're going to hang out again on Friday.

It's good to have friends....

I can take comfort in that I'm not this geeky

I can see why his wife left him... wow.

I finally feel like I'm moved in

I've got almost all my furniture now. You can see pictures here.

I'm still waiting on a coffee table and an end table and I need to get a table and chairs for my "dining room." Feels good to be moved in.

Mwahahaha! Excellent!

How evil are you?

And yes I didn't try to get this it is my actual result.

Another A&M grad making us all look bad...

So this A&M grad who was appointed to NASA decided to take the Big Bang is just an opinion stance. All we need is media attention about how our grads don't know their science.

I'm also kinda upset that this guy gets a science appointment without a science background. He was in the "war room" of an election campaign.. it seems like he'd be more at home in the presidents spin group... not in a science position. But then again Bush's administration doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to science.

So where are all the cute geeky women?

This was a cute comic but I don't think I've ever actually met anyone like the girl in the comic. Don't get me wrong I know cute geeky women, but their geeky about stuff that I'm not really interested in... so where is this fabled woman that is a geek like me, that is attractive, and finds me attractive... I seriously doubt this more and more hypothetical woman exists...

Wow

Just wow....

In the most expensive Turkish movie ever made, American soldiers in Iraq crash a wedding and pump a little boy full of lead in front of his mother.

They kill dozens of innocent people with random machine gun fire, shoot the groom in the head, and drag those left alive to Abu Ghraib prison - where a Jewish doctor cuts out their organs, which he sells to rich people in New York, London and Tel Aviv.

Bush's antiscience agenda

So in last nights state of the union. Bush stated

Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.

This basically implies no animals with human genes. Which forbids research like this.

Or creating embryos? Creating embryos could probably lead to some very interesting research. However, since Bush already wants extracting cells from aborted fetuses... so if we can't get embryos from children that were aborted for whatever reason (they're dead shouldn't some good come out of their death?) and we can't create new sources of embryos... I guess we're supposed to fall behind the rest of the world in medicine as well as technology...