I didn't break the internet

Google was down today for about ten minutes. During this time I restarted my modem once and my router twice because I thought my router had crashed and I couldn't access the internet. The way I usually check if "my internet" is broken is pinging google. After I found out only Google was down I thought maybe an apocalypse had started and the whole internet would slowly start to crumble like dominoes. The good news: I didn't break the internet. I did notice during the down-time that Blogger was also down. Blogger is out of Google's standard 216.239.37.* ip range but its DNS settings still point to NS1.GOOGLE.COM through NS4.GOOGLE.COM.

On a Google-related note, I discovered Froogle wish lists today. I found this on the Google Blog. My Froogle wish list will supersede my ThinkGeek and other wishlists soon.

Wish I Was a Brit

Many things can only be done in Britain. Microsoft is adding to the list of strange British activities by allowing owners of pirated copies of Windows XP to trade in their copies for legal versions. Before all you Brits start downloading your own pirated version of Windows XP, realize that this only applies if you can show a receipt of your purchase. This means that if you are a British resident, you have legally purchased a pirated versions of Windows XP (or a pre-installed version), and you don't submit more than five pirated versions then you can get your own real legal version of Windows XP in a shiny new package with a shiny new legal serial number.... or you could just switch to Linux

Snap, Crackle, POP

Gmail has gone POP3. It was announced that Gmail would be POP-ing their users email accounts a couple weeks ago and I just realized that when I go into the Settings of my account there is now a Forwarding and POP link. This means that Gmail is just one step closer to going public and that Gmail invites are therefore one step more worthless. The most that anyone is bidding for one gmail account (customized ones are illegal) on ebay currently is $5.00.

There Are Games For Linux

At LANs I've been using Slackware (my main system) to play Unreal Tournament 2004 and a broken Windows 2000 system to play Quake III Team Arena and Counterstrike. I ordered a Linux version of Quake III Team Arena from Tux Games which I found from a friend (who never posts). I didn't receive it the first time they shipped it and after sending eight emails to them I received a message back stating that they weren't replying because they had significantly reconstructed their management and the shipping department had become very backed up.

I've finally received Quake III Team Arena and I actually got more than I expected because a Quake III Team Arena CD for Windows and a custom-made Linux version were included. I still have one problem: to install Quake III Team Arena you need Quake III Arena. I just ordered Quake III Arena from Tux Games and hopefully I get it before the next LAN.

On an unrelated note here is an article regarding food that is remotely related to Thanksgiving:
BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Can the planet feed us? which is part of the Planet Under Pressure news series.

Heavyweight in a Money-Driven World

Microsoft will always win a battle if its opponent can be bribed by money. They bribbed the kid who owns Mikerowesoft.com a while back and they just recently bribbed the Computer and Communications Industry Association. The CCIA has been fighting Microsoft for almost a decade and has recently given up their battle for almost $20,000,000. Almost $10 million of that went to the CCIA president, Ed Black. Nokia quit the CCIA after they made this agreement with Microsoft because "it was not handled in the proper order." Go Nokia!

In case you are curious, Mikerowesoft.com is now just a mirror site of Mikeroweforums.com, his new site.

Will-Spam

According to a Slashdot post Bill Gates is probably the most spammed person on earth. He receives about 4,000,000 pieces of spam per day. According to frugle's calculations Willy H. Gates' spam makes up about 0.03% of all spam on the internet. After the slashdoting I think he'll be getting even more though. The moral: if you get bored today you can always wip out the old anonymous email server and spam William Henry Gates III.

I get spam very rarely and when I do it is usually caught by Gmail's spam filters. If you want a Gmail account, don't ask me because I've been out of invites for well over a month now. I suggest gmail swap.

I want my mp3 ogg

I'm finally going to get an mp3/ogg player. I'm getting an iRiver h120 for Christmas. Luckily it supports both mp3 and ogg (go Canada!) so I can play all of my music. Unfortunately it doesn't support flac but that shouldn't really matter when you're using headphones because the quality difference isn't really noticeable. I have the first mp3-compatible cd player that Sony came out with a few years ago but it doesn't have a radio tuner and it only plays cds.

This post brought to you by random linking.

600613 j00z0red j00 D0od!

A friend of mine - who reads it more and comments on it less than anyone else - recently noticed that when you change your search preferences in Google to Hacker Google adds an interesting message to searches that render 0 results. If you search Google for 600613j00z0redj00D0od! the resulting page displays the following text:

j00r 534r(h - 600613j00z0redj00D0od! - d1d n0t m4+(h 4ny d0(um3n+5. J00z0red!
n0 p4635 w3r3 f0und (0n+41n1n6 "600613j00z0redj00d0od".

What is j00z0red supposed to mean? Is j00z0red even a word in 1337 5P34K? What does it mean and is it a reference to the jewish race or does it translate as "you"zored? The most interesting thing about this is that when searching google for j00z0red the only result is a Netherlands website quoting a Google search. Also, in a week my page will also be displayed when searching for anything mentioned in this post so I cheated by adding an &num=0 to the URL of the Google search link above to make search 0 results are displayed.

What to do about FreeSoftwareReviews.com

I own FreeSoftwareReviews.com but I haven't updated it in a long time because I've been using Linux and using software that many Linux users know about. I could post reviews for liferea and some of the other lesser known Linux programs but I have lost faith in the website. No one really submitted enough good freeware for Windows and there is barely any good freeware for Mac. No one ever really checked the site for Linux software, it was mostly just for Windows software because its difficult to find good freeware for Windows. I haven't decided what to do with the website but I'm currently using the FSR server to host my blog and a few other things. Since my current hosting isn't very good I'm thinking about switching to Oktagone or Powweb.

I think FSR would be a success if I set up a system for automatic posting so I don't have to filter and post each review manually. The CGI-based rating system I made seems to work well. People seemed to be discouraged to sign-up/login to write reviews or rate programs though. Also I think there should be some reviewers that are regulars and tend to write reviews for lots of programs. I don't know where I would find people willing to do this though. I made deals with a few people a while back so that they write reviews for my website and I promote their website but it got to be a hassle. I need to somehow find submissive freeware-loving robots that could write good reviews using proper english whenever it was needed.

Upgrade Upgrade Upgrade

First off, for those Fedora fans out there (Jeff/Mike) Fedora Core 3 is out. There was an article on Slashdot today regarding whether or not Fedora Core 3 is worth the wait.

While I'm talking about upgrading OSs, I'll say that I'm going to be upgrading our home entertainment system from GeeXboX 0.98 to the pre-0.99 20041020 version. 0.99 isn't quite ready to come out but its getting close so I thought I may as well try to speed up the process by beta testing it.

The reason I hadn't posted in a while is because we had a LAN party last Fri/Sat (2004-11-12/2004-11-13), I had to help set-up on Thursday, and I was busy all day/night Wednessday. I think I made up for it by posting three days in a row last week though. Maybe I'll make up for it again this week.

On a random side note, the new search bar on the side that is powered by a perl script using Google API seems to have fixed itself, besides the fact that the tabled layout is messed up due to something with the bottom cell (colspan probably).

Piracy = Sampling

I got this idea from a convo I had today about old music and "The Lovin' Spoonfuls", which no one has heard of. I realized that many people know that I am at times an active pirate, especially in music. Everyone should also know that I don't piratate music for nothing. I pirate music, listen to it for a long time, then if I like the band I buy lots of their albums. I currently own Steppenwolf's 16 Greatest Hits, White Stripes' White Blood Cells, A Dead Giveaway (local), and Garage Band Heros (local bands). I'm also planning to get about 5-10 albums for Christmas. I need a Steppenwolf album with "Wherewolves of London", I love that song.

Note that when I buy an album I almost always buy it used or for discount because I still think that the RIAA inflates prices way too much. The artist should get more profit and the Recording Industries should get less! Down with the RIAA!... I mean go artists! I think this was one of the first posts that I rambled on so much. Thank you Anna and Taylor for getting me thinking about old music enough to write a post about it.

Yay for Google API

I used my Google API and SOAP::Lite to make a perl script to search my website via google and stay within my website. The new search box is over on the right. Unfortunately right after I added the right side menu and made it update via a layout page the search capability stopped working. On the upside, it looks great... the whole searching feature isn't quite working again yet though. I'll fix it later. I have to fix a script that accesses a mySQL database from perl while I'm at it. I also have to make an email submission form for our club website. Meaning, I may finish the search box sometime in the future.... possibly.

The Easterner Online - New bachelor degree approved for EWU

7/5 of the world doesn't understand fractions...

#2600 room on irc.2600.net:

(19:52:32) piranha: Ok, so. When you have a foo to bar ratio of baz:quux, you have baz foos for every quux bars, correct?
(19:52:52) piranha: foo to bar == foo:bar == foo/bar?
(19:52:59) deadk0de [~deadkode@synkd.msns.sm.ptd.net] entered the room.
(19:53:20) tutwabee: right
(19:53:25) Bakslash [~Bakslash@CPE000f3d36e002-CM0011ae8a75aa.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com] entered the room.
(19:53:46) piranha: Well then apparently I want to go to EWU. They'll have a teacher to student ratio of 18:1 for their EE program.

The Easterner Online - New bachelor degree approved for EWU: "The first graduating class will be in 2007, and they will have a teacher to student ratio of 18:1"

I don't know which is funnier, the fact that someone can't do ratios or the fact that there could be really 18 teachers to 1 student. The students would not be able to remember who was who and the teachers would get paid 1/18 of the normal salery.

November 9th!!

I can't wait till November 9th! November 9th is the day that... Firefox 1.0 will be released.

Although most people will be celebrating the release of Halo 2 on November 9th, I will be downloading Firefox 1.0 final. I donated to the Firefox NY Times ad campaign and I support the Mozilla foundation in their many causes. I have been using Mozilla regularly since 1.6, I used Fire(fox/bird) regularly from versions 0.6 to 0.8. Before that I was using Mozilla along with IE. I switched to Mozilla because I used to use Mozilla Mail (I switched to thunderbird for a long time then switched back).

I no longer need Mozilla Mail or Thunderbird since all I need is a usenet reader without POP3 (I use pan). I also no longer need Chatzilla (I use xchat). This means that I may be permanently switching back to Firefox 1.0 and importing all of my settings into it, which I have seen is very easy in newer versions.

Wikipedia has a list of famous events that occured or will occur on November 9th.

Killing The F Lock Key

Microsoft Multimedia keyboards are going downhill. I have had a wireless Microsoft Natural Multimedia Keyboard for at least two years now and I've always been annoyed by the fact that to get the functions keys to actually function you have to press the F Lock key. The main function of the functions keys on many modern Microsoft keyboards are various ridiculous driver-dependent functions such as Undo, New, Open, Close, Reply, and Print.

In Windows I always used to use Jason Tsang's F Lock Key Eliminator. In Linux I had to fend for myself. Sometime in the beginning of this year I made a shell script that fixes the problem in most Linux systems. The shell script must be set to run when the computer starts by adding it to ~/.xinitrc. After installing Slackware about a month ago I found that the my shell script did not work in Slackware. I found a second way to fix the F Lock problem.

The second fix involves adding the following lines to /etc/X11/kkb/keycodes/xfree86 and commenting out all other lines that contain set a key to 187, 136, 135, etc.

<FK01> = 187;
<FK02> = 136;
<FK03> = 135;
<FK04> = 119;
<FK05> = 120;
<FK06> = 121;
<FK07> = 122;
<FK08> = 194;
<FK09> = 195;
<FK10> = 163;
<FK11> = 215;
<FK12> = 216;

Tutorial I wrote on this At LinuxQuestions

Vorbis Makes the World Go 'Round

CBC switched to an ogg vorbis stream rather than their old wma! This doesn't really mean anything to me since I'm not Canadian and I don't listen to CBC but it is another step in converting the whole world to ogg.

Remember kids, if you want to grow up and be strong and the Canadian Parliament use ogg vorbis!24ND01V1