A great laugh

Do you fear that you may be falling into the sinful nature of thinking for one's self? Read this link and be healed! Hallelujah!

http://gracepages.blogspot.com/2005/01/tips-for-struggling-with-intellectual.html

Heh, I'm still laughing from this one...

Woot! I'm older!

Man, nothing is better than turning 18. Too bad that was like 6 years ago. 24 is kinda lame. So I have a year of my life for each hour of the day... Blah.

Was planning to have a quiet night tonight and finish my report and do some studying but then the guys came over... and then the beer came out... and well... let's just say I still have a report to finish and studying to do. But I did kick butt at Winning Eleven 8 and Burnout and won a few times on Nightfire... so it was all good.

I am dying to hear the rest of the new Nine Inch Nails album. I scored two leaked tracks from it: The Hand that Feeds and The Line Begins to Blur. Hand that Feeds is really upbeat and poppy, almost could be played on Z if the program director wasn't looking. Line Begins to Blur is more traditional NIN, but still has traces of hope in its melon collie tone. I really connect with the lyrics on that track. Anyhoo, hopefully the rest will get leaked out soon. I don't think I can wait until summer.

Alright time for bed. Hopefully I can get my emails done and study some tomorrow before the Oscars. Oh sooooooo busy it hurts...

Fear of a MS Planet

So I think I am finally at the breaking point. I have learned a great deal about computers and programming from school and have actually started to experiment with Linux more seriously. What is the motivation on this? I guess you could label it paranoia, but I prefer to think of it as preemptive precautions.

Microsoft has dropped the gauntlet finally on home users without a genuine copy of Windows. The new policy hasn't become enacted quite yet, but it would be foolish to assume that it will simply "go away." The plan is to require digital verification of genuine MS software before any non-security updates will be allowed to be downloaded through Windows Update. I'm not sure what will constitute non-security updates, but I would figure that anything that is not directly responsible for stopping a specific virus or backdoor issue would be unavailable to non-legit users.

What does this mean to Joe Public who doesn't have the $300+ to spend on an OS? Well, you can stick with the baseline releases that you can download via torrent/p2p and hope MS doesn't see you. I would not advise this as word on the street is that MS has taken an active interest in torrents pertaining to their software. So beyond making a copy of someone else's disc and then using www.astalavista.com to get a crack or key-gen you are pretty much obliged to become a legal citizen and buy software. In all honesty, I would figure paying for the most critical piece of software on your computer shouldn't be a big deal. If the price was lower I'm sure it would be more feasible for people.

Anyways, what I wanted to get across here is that if you want to go legal but stick to an invisible budget, it is time to explore what open source can offer you. If you want to just dable in a bit at a time, try using some open source products that have been compiled for Windows and see if you can honestly see yourself using them. OpenOffice is a near clone of MS Office and has gotten better with each release. FireFox is stealing away users of Internet Explorer in droves and sports some excellent plugins for ease of use. Gaim can handle all of your chatting needs for all protocols that deserve recognition. And if you want to do programing, you should be aware of gcc and the limitless possibilities of developing on a Linux system.

Everything is there except for one thing. Experience. I swear, the only thing that stops me from using Linux and never looking to windows again is lack of experience. I don't know how to do what I can do in Windows. When it takes me 1 hour to pull off a 2 minute task in Windows, I get angry. But no pain, no gain. The only other thing (and this is SUCH a pansy reason) is that I have become spoiled. MS has a very clean and elegant interface and I like pretty icons. Alot. So much so that I get annoyed in Linux that things aren't "pretty" enough. I'm sure thats from my lack of experience... but meh. It's time to start moving over since I'm not going to cave to MS and play the game their way.

Canada (heart) Monsanto

This was forwarded to me by my activist buddy Chris. Mandatory readying.

Canada Backs Terminator Seeds
By John Vidal
The Guardian U.K.
Wednesday 09 February 2005

An international moratorium on the use of one of the world's most controversial GM food technologies may be broken today if the Canadian government gets seed sterilization backed at a UN meeting.

Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all governments to accept the testing and commercialisation of "terminator" crop varieties. These are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds which farmers cannot replant.

Jointly patented by the GM company Monsanto and the US government, the technology was condemned in the late 1990s by many African and Asian governments who called for a permanent ban.

Monsanto and other GM companies which were developing similar technologies voluntarily pulled out of research after concerns were also raised about the "terminator" genes spreading to non-GM crops, and international outrage that poor farmers would not be able to use seeds from their crops, as they have always done.

But leaked instructions to Canadian government negotiators at the Bangkok meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, a group which advises the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity, show that Canada will request today that all countries open their doors to the technology.

The papers, leaked to the environment group ETC, also show that the Canadian government will attack an official UN report critical of the potential impact of "terminator" seeds on small farmers and indigenous peoples. The report recommends that governments prohibit the technology.

The Canadian government team in Bangkok was last night unavailable for comment.

Super Bowl Sunday

Well, its 10:18 pm and I'm definately buzzed. It was a good day today as the turnout for my Super Bowl party was quite good. Had about 10 people at the peak time (near halftime) and some stragglers showed up as the game went on while others left. The game was very entertaining but I was rooting for the underdogs so I was sad the Eagles lost. But, they were playing sloppy at times and that's when the turnovers came. Oh well.

The Simpsons episode following the game was one of the best episodes I have seen in a long time. This season is reafirming my faith in the series as the last 4 episodes have been hilarious. I think that they picked up some of the Futurama writers after that showed was pulled off the air. The wit and zaniness is in full form now and I'm sure they could turn in a great season this year.

American Dad followed and was okay at best. I did laugh out loud a great deal (especially at the Chenny joke!) but it was hardly sustained. It seemed like the gags were distanced by a large amount of filler that was trying to be funny but wasn't. The good news is that the newer sequences that were done after the 5 minute preview was created were hilarious so there is a chance it could rise to the challenge of following the new Family Guy episodes.

Anyhoo, time for bed now. I think I'll sleep in tomorow and ditch first class. Mmm sleep.

Cheers