February 2010
16 posts
No, I'm Not Canadian
and yes, I like curling. I don’t remember when I started liking curling. I think it was the Calgary Olympics in ‘88 where I first saw the sport. I watched it because it wasn’t hockey or figure skating, and back then we didn’t have Hulu or Netflix.
Immediately I felt drawn to the sport. The physics, the skill, the mad sweeping of brooms. When I first watched, I...
CSE Majors Cheating →
I can’t say I’m surprised that CSE majors are the ones who cheat the most. Most computer nerds (and if you’re majoring in CSE, you meet the requirements) know all about Google, and this whole “copy” and “paste” thing (something that I’ve had to explain to friends and family way too often.)
Take that, and the fact that writing even a short program...
Dear Bill O'Reilly
I just watched about 2 minutes of the O’Reilly factor (the most I could take) and saw that Billy-boy was complaining that a recent Gallup Poll didn’t define socialism. He claimed that this lack of a definition resulted in people “falsely” believing that our government wasn’t moving toward his hated socialism.
So I looked it up for him. Here’s the correct...
286 DVDs
I just took a look and I have 286 movies and series set in my NetFlix queue. Now at first this looks like a lot I mean a ton of things to watch. Then I started really thinking about it.
I go through (at least) 4 DVDs per week with NetFlix. That means I’ll be done with all of these movies in a little over a year. Then there’s the fact that more and more of these films (most of them...
"Heroes" Belong in Spandex
I’ve watched the show “Heroes” since its first episode. Even today, I await Tuesday mornings to fire up Hulu and watch the prior night’s episode. (I work nights so I can only watch most shows during the day.)
The first season was great. They had an over-arcing story that drew the entire season together and had a good final outcome. Since then, though, it’s been...
Marketing and "Minority Report"
When I first saw the film “Minority Report” with that Tom guy, I wasn’t all that impressed by the multi-touch floating computer interface. To me this technology was a given and bound to happen soon (or soon enough.) Unlike my friends, I was more impressed with the eye-scanning advertisements that appeared on every flat surface.
These advertisements scanned your retina and...
"Lost" in a Time Loop
A great man named Miles O’Brien once stated, “I’ll never understand temporal mechanics.” Poor guy, especially since he was stuck in an unending time-loop when he said this.
I, on the other hand, have a sadly strong understanding of temporal mechanics (and stellar dynamics, and string theory, but not the math behind any of them, go figure.) So since I’ve already...
You're Not a Terrorist, Fight ACTA
The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement is a treaty that is trying to be passed by the U.S. and other countries that will basically create a 3-strike rule for Internet users. In the words of the act, if you are accused (not convicted) of sharing files illegally, you will be placed on a blacklist and denied Internet access from any and every provider out there.
To read more on ACTA go to eff.org...