February 03, 2005
Open Source Wireless Software Available
I have been following the Muniwireless site for a short while and they have done a great job of reporting Municpal WiFi news and legalities. This is great news from the site:
"The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) has announced that its free open source wireless networking software is available for download. The idea behind this project is to provide a free wireless networking system that any municipality, company, or group of neighbors could easily set up themselves. Below is more information which I got from their press release (thanks to Sascha Meinrath for sending it to me)."
:Link:
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November 19, 2004
Microsoft Patents BASIC IsNot Operator
Unbelievable, MS has moved to actually patent the IsNot operator in BASIC.
Abstract
"A system, method and computer-readable medium support the use of a single operator that allows a comparison of two variables to determine if the two variables point to the same location in memory."
Posted by 0xFF3300 at 11:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 17, 2004
Motorcycling at the Playground
Look out, comin' through...
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August 25, 2004
Ojai, CA
So instead of talking about software development, I thought I might share my most recent trip to Ojai. It was time to get out of town for a little while and take a relaxing break. For those of you who aren't familiar with the place, Ojai is small town just north of Los Angeles. It's fairly close, as you can get their in about an hour and half from LA.
We stayed at a hotel called the Emerald Iguana. It's on a quiet side street surrounded by trees with a pool and jacuzzi in the center courtyard. No visit to Ojai is complete without dining at Suzanne's, it opened in 1992 and it's pretty much been going strong since. And of course since there is a winery in Ojai, we had to check that out to. The Old Creek Winery doesn't grow grapes anymore, but they do bottle the wine there. It was a free wine tasting which just helps you to spend more money on the wines, I picked up some of 2000 Cabernet, quite good.
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August 14, 2004
Onion Horoscope Feeds
Yes, The Onion has their very own horoscope feeds. If you aren't familiar with the Onion, the nation's top ;)newspaper you should have a look for yourself. It's for real, believe me!
A clip from the front page: WICHITA, KS—Delivering the central speech of his 10-day "Solution For America" bus campaign tour Monday, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry outlined his one-point plan for a better America: the removal of George W. Bush from the White House.
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April 06, 2004
Follow These Instructions
Chris found a fabric tag that reads "We are sorry that our President is an idiot. We didn't vote for him." Now if we could only get the American version of that tag. I wonder if Bush would even get it, at this point I am not too sure about his literacy skills.
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March 25, 2004
Microsoft Word, write letterz n...
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March 01, 2004
Music Industry Unveils New Piracy-Proof Format
Music Industry Unveils New Piracy-Proof Format: A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It
Music bosses have unveiled a revolutionary new recording format that they hope will help win the war on illegal file sharing which is thought to be costing the industry millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Nicknamed the 'Record', the new format takes the form of a black vinyl disc measuring 12 inches in diameter, which must be played on a specially designed 'turntable'.
"We can state with absolute certainty that no computer in the world can access the data on this disc," said spokesman Brett Campbell. "We are also confident that no-one is going to be able to produce pirate copies in this format without going to a heck of a lot of trouble. This is without doubt the best anti-piracy invention the music industry has
ever seen."
As part of the invention's rigorous testing process, the designers gave some discs to a group of teenage computer experts who regularly use file swapping software such as Limewire and gnutella and who admit to pirating music CDs. Despite several days of trying, none of them were
able to hack into the disc's code or access any of the music files contained within it.
"It's like, really big and stuff," said Doug Flamboise, one of the testers. "I couldn't get it into any of my drives. I mean, what format is it? Is it, like, from France or something?"
Invention: Teenage computer hackers struggled to access the new disc.
In the new format, raw audio data in the form of music is encoded by physically etching grooves onto the vinyl disc. The sound is thus translated into variations on the disc's surface in a process that industry insiders are describing as 'completely revolutionary' and 'stunningly clever.'
To decode the data stored on the disc, the listener must use a special player which contains a 'needle' that runs along the grooves on the record surface, reading the indentations and transforming the movements back into audio that can be fed through loudspeakers.
Even Shawn Fanning, the man who invented Napster, admits the new format will make file swapping much more difficult. "I've never seen anything like this," he told reporters. "How does it work?"
Pirates: Their days are numbered.
As rumours that a Taiwanese company has been secretly developing a 12 inch wide, turntable -driven, needle-based, firewire drive remain unconfirmed, it would appear that the music industry may, at last, have found the pirate-proof format it has long been searching for.
Posted by 0xFF3300 at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 07, 2004
Cheap DVD Burner
I've been looking around for the cheapest DVD burner I could find and I came up with the Pioneer DVR-106 CD/DVD±R(W) for $119 at hypermicro. Thanks
Cheap Bastard!
Posted by 0xFF3300 at 09:43 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
December 22, 2003
Big Ass Monitor
They always said bigger is better, and I would have to agree. I found this monitor and it's massive cousin at the L Store. Looks like we won't need glasses after all.
And if the Cinerama model is too small, you can always go Grand Canyon:
Resolutions from 5120 x 1024 pixels to 25X VGA at 6400 x 1200 pixels. Ouch!
Posted by 0xFF3300 at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)