Monday, June 30, 2003

Hydrogen powered laptops. I'm not sure if I should be intrigued or apalled by this development, its nice that there is active research into fuel cells....but in a laptop? That takes guts, I can't imagine how a company would choose to accept that much liablity for a product.

Saturday, June 28, 2003

Today's wonderful waste of time: http://www.i-mockery.com/PixelPals/1.asp

Friday, June 27, 2003

So how does one define corporate responsibility? While there are many examples of blatent irresponsability (love cannal, enron, worldcom) what about others like boeing who routinely goes through massive hiring and firing binges every couple years, or any oil company, any power company, or even the United States government. In terms of the legal system in the united states a company is treated as a single individual and subject to the same consitutionally protected rights as a single individual. In light of how so many companies work should we re-evaluate this treatment because a company can affect so many people's lives and forever change a location, and even the economy? We think of all the laws that protect the individual from a company but when it eventually boils down to it even those in reality create means to protect a company. In fact companies have so much power that every law created is somehow being pushed by and probably fought by several comapnies. The small guy can be so easily crushed beneith the wheels of the money machines that we can only hope that someone up somewhere realizes the damage they can cause and fight internally from doing so. Without sounding socialist I would venture to say that companies should feel obliged to use a certain percentage of their profits to do pure science and comunity service. If a company can be considered an individual the prime focus should be survival and the only way to survive for the long term is take care of those that take care of you, betterment of the human race is the only way the species is to survive and hence the only way the company will survive, why waste our future before we ever get to it?

Thursday, June 26, 2003

Okay so I didn't just finish (but post delayed due to blogger upgrade) but I finished reading a pretty good book, Relic by Doug Preston and Lincoln Child. It was a good thriller, in a Crichtonish way (okay so I've only read Timeline...maybe someday I'll read jurassic park). It did a good job of being graphic without being a horror novel. I'm not going to go in depth cause you could just go to amazon and read about it if ya feel like. I should really start doing a little more reading... I enjoy it so much but seem to so often to forget that and go for such long spats of time without. But again it was very good... made me jump a few times (yah I know it sounds weird but a good suspense novel does that sometimes)...read it :)


In other news... I have ice cream (B&J Brownie Batter...highly recomended...but not for the weak of heart) and steak (ooooo 5 lbs of ny strip goodness).

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

US/EU & Biotech You know there are a lot of things Bush does that I take issue with but in this case I have to definately say I'm with him in say that the EU can be stupid and irrisponsible world citizens. A little background with the problem: EU has banned genetically altered foods (yet isn't that what we've been doing with selective breed for centuries?) because they want to preserve their cultural heritage. But of course they can't grow enough to feed themselves so they have to turn to other countries. But they've banned gentically altered foods so they can't import from any of the large plentiful countries like the US or Canada but instead buy from little struggling third world countries in Africa. The Irrisponsible aspect comes in because the people in control realize they can make more money selling the products they grow to europe rather than use it to feed their own people. Also because these crops are so important (and could risk contamination if imported grain was used as seed) they refuse any aid from countries that produce way more food than required (US and Canada namely). Thus the EU is dirrectly responsible for starving people in africa because of their own stupidity, arogance, and inability to feed themselves. The ironic part is the FDA is the most powerful food and drug safety administration in the world, while things like the sleeping pill that cause massive birth defects was approved by europes safety agency it wasn't here, mad cow disese ran rampant in europe it never even started here.

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Okay so I borrowed a computer from D. to install smoothwall on and see if I could get the linux drivers for DirecWay working. It was a complete and utter failure as of right now. First the hardware is unique...wouldn't boot with my keyboard plugged in (as close genuine PS/2 as you can get...as in it says IBM PS/2 1984 on it). The next problem was some problem between either the linux distro (smoothwall) or the harddrive. I hope that installing a complete linux distro will be more successful. So am downloading the debian iso (which may be a better idea anyway if I decide to go for the xbox idea).

Saturday, June 21, 2003

Interesting waste of time: http://www.xgenstudios.com/castle/index.htm (thanks H).
Okay so a little movie review...The Hulk. I won't disguise the fact that I liked it. The movie never lost its focus or purpose and the dead spot in the middle of movies that are all too common. I have to commend the special effects group, the hulk, while looking a little cartoony in the previews, was very realistic, especially in extremely close scenes, the amount of emotion that they were able to relay through the hulks face was increadble. The film editing itself was also very cool, the use of frames and camera angles remind me exactly of looking a comic book page and letting your imagination go. Ang Lee didn't try to pretend the roots of the movie are in a comic book and was more than willing to remind at any chance he had. The results are amazing, action scenes which sometimes get dull in most movies became enlivend by this technique. I don't know if anybody else can pull it off but I wouldn't be surprised if others will try to mimic it. I don't know what the budget was but I doubt it was larger than the Matrix Reloaded but the special effects in The Hulk blended much better with the film. So I guess this gives Marvel yet another box-office win. (what is it now?.. seven?)

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

Due to my previous post and out of random strangeness I now posses the domain mildlyretarded.com.... hrm... now what to do with it....
Today I have decided that Microsoft ICS can be likend to a one armed, mentally retarded watchmaker with a sledgehammer. Thus one has to wonder exactly what kind of torture the poor packets have to endure.

Monday, June 16, 2003

well... after nearly 6 years... I finally fixed the usb on my computer... majorly annoying I must say. After lots of web searching and dead-ends I found an obscure comment that said to change the mps version from 1.4 (default) to 1.1... so my question is... what the hell does the multi-processors have to do with usb? But that means now I have internet to my desktop which is way cool. :) and hence downloading email... 1228 messages which takes approximately a half hour (joy of the rose email server).
Ever do something so incredably stupid that you can't believe you did it but if you had a chance to go back you would still make the same decision? Life is weird sometimes.

Friday, June 13, 2003

In other news... direcway...I'm reserving judgement for the moment, seems that yes it works, yes its fast, but no not good for a constant connection. It seems to disconnect rather frequently and take a little bit of time to re-establish. I wonder if has something to do with the tree....
When one thought the world couldn't get more tasteless some things like this occur: Pop Star Britney to Get Blow-Up Breasts in UK. Well I guess you just have to leave it to the brits.

Friday, June 06, 2003

Okay it seems that I haven't posted in an extremely long time. So maybe I need to make a life update post.

* I graduated from college (finally after 7 years).
* I moved to winamac indiana
* I have a job (which ironically for never getting interviews the four years I was at rose the job pays about 10-15g over this years EE average)
* I have a new car (the truck had problems in the cold, so....)
*

And I can't think about anything that has significantly changed since the last time I posted (hrm..3-4 months ago), although I have found it intriguing that now whenever I hop onto a messanging service I get all sorts of messages from people (of the missed you being online variety), which is unusual because I always figured the people on my list were just there but I wasn't actually on theirs (well I guess I was mistaken :)

Why does it seem like all my friends from college are on the east coast now? (granted its closer than the west...easier to visit...if I ever were) But it does seem kind of unusual to have such a large concentration in one area.

Hrm... I should also start finding blogs from those friends and post links so at least I would maybe read them upon occasion...but...that takes time...