Beeeeer

Read the rest of this entry »

Alright, I made the modifications I told you I’d make. Kind of cludgy but it works. Here are the changes:

1. if you provide the nick of a registered user, it will override the capitalization of the name, e-mail address, and URL of the posting. Future Update: A trigger that will update the all the comment posts when you make a change in your profile, but haven’t got that far.
2. When someone posts on an article, everyone one who has posted on the article and the author will receive an e-mail notifying them of the post. There are some modifications that should be done, but I haven’t got around to them yet. As of the moment if you are _not_ a registered user, it will _not_ notify you if there is a post made. I order to do this I need the UNION command which is only in MYSQL 4 which I’m not currently running. ARGH!

In any case, if you have further modifications, don’t hesitate to ask

I’ve been looking into Mesopotamian/Sumerian/Akkadian (5000 BCE - 1 CE) mythlogies for my new naming scheme and still agree that the Underworld pantheon of this collection of gods is right. Hell, there is a gatekeeper named Nuti, and seven _named_ doorman of the gates. That gives me eight names alone for firewalls. Then there are others but I’m getting off topic. I was looking through the myths of creation and it mentions this one story (dates to ~20th century BCE) about Enlil, the god of wind, storms, and rain. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t believe this! Terminator 3, which was rated PG-14 here, is fine for teenagers to watch … but Morgui (see right) is not?! It seems Morgui has been given an 18A rating, meaning that people under the age of 18 can not see him without permission from their parents. Since Morgui’s goal is to see how people will deal with robots, this is a major blow to Kevin Warwick, it’s designer. You might remember him best for his cybernetic implant a couple of years back. In any case, what is wrong with people?

Since we are on the topic of Robot Masters, ever heard of CEATEC 2003 (Combined Exhibition of Advanced Technologies)? I ran across a link to this article in the New Scientist on Slashdot. The article deals with all the robots presented at CEATEC. IMO, the coolest would have to be Morph3. Morph3 is a human-like robot about 30-centimetres tall developed by researchers at the Chiba Institute of Technology in Japan. It can perform back flips and karate moves thanks to 138 pressure sensors, 30 different onboard motors and 14 computer processors.

BRAAAAAAAINS! BRAAAAAAAINS! BRAAAAAAAINS!

Ever wonder why you should never ask USENET for help with your homework? Here’s why. ROTLMFA.

Shock: “What? G4s in the iBooks?
Denial: “This must be some poorly researched article on /.”
Bargaining: “Maybe I can return my Powerbook and get an iBook…”
Fear: “What if Apple won’t let me return it because its a build to order?”
Anger: “Those SOBs knew and didn’t tell me before I spent all that money!”
Despair: “Now my Powerbook will have no resale value when I have to eBay it for the new G5 laptops!”
Acceptance: “Wait a minute — this this Powerbook kicks ass! The girls want to be with me, the guys want to be me, and I consistently get benchmarks higher than a dual 1 GHz G4 Powermac. The Airport Extreme rules, the battery life is lengthy, it runs nice and warm and winter is coming! I guess I did OK…”

Shamelessly stolen from Slashdot, only with grammar added.

Update: Works better if one posts story to Publish, not Private.

“Dear Corporate Masters,

I thank you for packaging up my childhood and selling it back to me at today’s inflated prices.”

I can’t recall where I first saw that letter, Penny Arcade I’m thinking, but it really fits. Beyonds stuff I’d buy just because of nostalgia, Thinkgeek has a lot of other neat and modern stuff I can drool over.

The only problem with their business model is it relies heavily on the “impulse” buy mentality that I often fall pray to. Take this blanket for example. Right now I’m going, that’s sooo cool … but at the same time I’m thinking, this blanket, which is based on Megatokyo, another of my favourite online comics. But if I get both of those, I need some pillows … and then there is floating globes. I love floating globes. Oh Oh , or how about The Red Swingline Stapler?! Huh Huh! “I’m going to burn the building down!” Or how about the Circuitboard Coasters? Or how about the #include 12 ounce beer glasses?! Or the Programmable Smart Mug which will keep the liquid to the temperature you set it to (include car adapter)! Or better yet, the clear coffee mug with caffeine molecule emblazoned on the side! Oh Oh, or the posters they carry like the one on idiocy, or mediocrity, or cluelessness? Then there is all the tech gizmos like the green laser pointer or the usb watch or the 5x LED Flashlight! Or how about the shockproof lighter which can light in 80mph winds and in the rain? They have everything … even Squid LED Lamps.

They even have computer moded equipment like this mini P4 case. Neat, but at the same time expensive. Anywho, enough drooling from me. I’m returning to reality and it really does suck.

w00t! Let the age of electronic book piracy begin! Amazon’s new book search function, announced today, has the ability to search inside the books. Amazon does this by having the entire book on hand in electronic text format, and it displays the two pages before and after plus the page with the text you searched for (five pages total). It apparently isn’t supposed to let you view more than 20% of the book, but if you have five accounts on Amazon’s system, you can view the entire thing, or so claims the Author’s Guild. In any case, I fail to see how this is of any use to me, I still can’t find the book with the song:

“The dogs upon their leashes
Are hunting door to door
For poor and honest simrick(sp?) men
Their silence to ensure
But when the doors are broken in
There’ll be no heads to crack
For Captain Jack has got their first
And snuck ‘em out the back!”

And that is all I remember about it! *sigh* I’m never going to find it!

So is Bill Tauzin going to be the new head of the MPAA or is Jack Valenti hanging in? This question has arouse since Valenti’s (apparently bad) decision at the end of September to ban all screeners. On the 24th of this month, he compromised by letting academy voters have access to coded VHS tapes, but no DVDs. The problem is it excludes the voters from the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) who have their own awards show and to be put it mildly, SAG is less than pleased. So last friday, it was announced that Louisiana congressman Billy Tauzin is expected to take over running the MPAA by the end of this year, but then today the NY Post posted another story which states that Valenti isn’t being forced out the door and he could hold onto power for another year or more. Which is it folks? Not that I overly care but a new head of the MPAA might be a good thing (or it might be horribly bad if the replacement is a Zealot).