Monday, January 31, 2005

Scary: Most High School students don't understand the 1st Amendment

Original Article: http://www.cnn.com/2005/EDUCATION/01/31/
students.amendment.ap/index.html



"[...]when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes "too far" in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories."

This scares me, ahhhhhhhh


"When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did."


"Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't."


I bet the half of students who said gov't can not restrict indecent material were guys who have looked up porn. :) j/k

Machine Learning: RPI using machine learning for DARPA

"Teaching Computers to Reason Is Next Big Test"
Associated Press (01/31/05); Hill, Michael

"Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professors Selmer Bringsjord and Konstantine Arkoudas have won a year-long contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a computer capable of learning by reading. For machines to successfully read, sentences must be rendered as formal logic equations or other computer-comprehensible formats, and the Rensselaer professors want to instill this ability--as well as the ability to reason--through algorithms incorporated into their "Poised-for-Learning" machine. Bringsjord expects artificial intelligence to evolve to the point where computers can read military plans or manuals and adapt on the spur of the moment in mid-battle, a capability that is currently lacking in today's systems. He foresees future AI robots that receive data input in real time either through reading or listening to spoken instructions. The approximately $400,000 DARPA grant could be extended to a three-year $1.2 million grant, and Bringsjord wants a Poised-for-Learning system that can read basic texts ready in three years. DARPA's Jan Walker says the grant is part of the agency's overall program to develop more advanced cognitive systems. Director of DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office Ronald Brachman envisions a "computer-permeated future" where systems will need to improve themselves over time by recalling previously accumulated knowledge. Meanwhile, Cycorp's Cyc project aims to build a repository of human knowledge capable of making intelligent decisions through reasoning."


Full Article:

http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg§ion=Business&storyid=106632

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Darwin: Slip Sliding Away

"8 September 2002, Italy) "Hey watch this!" A 53-year-old Glasgow man,
attempting what police describe as a bizarre stunt, attached a climber's snap
hook to an unused overhead tram cable and attempted to manually ride down the
mountain. But the mountain was steep, gravity was constant, and he was unable to
moderate his rate of descent. He accelerated out of control, and within seconds
crashed against the rocks, and proceeded to bash his way 200 meters down the
slope before impacting a pylon. Reports state that several people attempted to
stop him from riding down the cable. He should have listened to their advice.
When he came to rest, he was DOA
"




Source: http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2002-31.html

Hack: Make a digital camera take pictures automatically

http://digitalcameras.engadget.com/entry/1757766119821744/


Poltics: Blame Bush for Everything

http://blamebush.typepad.com/

I knew Bush was to blame for my lack of sex appeal. :)
Well, maybe not, but this website does show how left somebody can go to the extreme. It's only fair, since the right-wing does the same. They don't like to listen to reason and logic for some reason.

Saturday, January 29, 2005

Darwin: The Unkindest Cut

2001 Darwin Award Nominee
Confirmed True by Darwin

"Improper use of pruning shears can dull the blades."

(30 May 2001, Hillsboro, Oregon) Ismael, 25, was driving a Toyota truck when he lost control of the vehicle, which careened into a mailbox, collided with a utility pole, and flipped onto its side, knocking down high-voltage power lines in the process. At that point, Ishmael climbed from the truck and into the path of evolution.

He surveyed the situation with a pair of pruning shears in his hand. Police speculate that he reached up to clip the snaking, arcing cable lying across his truck, and was electrocuted when the shears touched the 7500-volt cable. A medical examination found that the current travelled across his heart and out his left foot. He was found lying motionless, face-down on the power line, with a pair of pruning shears in his hands.

His dazed passenger survived, only to be arrested on an unrelated warrant.



From: http://www.darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2001-23.html

Hack: RC Hummer and PC in One!! Yes you heard me.

It drives and games, what else do you need. Well- a girlfriend, a job, etc..., you get my point.

http://www.bit-tech.net/article/139/1

Need:
Motherboard: Mini ATX motherboard from ASUS
CPU: 3.0 Gig P4 Processor.
RAM: 1 Gig of Dual Channel Corsair Ram
HDD: 120 Gig Seagate 7200 RPM HardDrive
Cooling: Thermaltake Water-cooling Kit - have to keep everything cool and not much room for air cooling!
Video: 128 Mb Matrox Parhelia video card. Why Matrox? I do most of my design work on this computer.
Peripherals: Microsoft Wireless Keyboard and Mouse.
LAN: Wireless Network card USB
Mods: Crystal Fontz LCD Display for showing all my critical information.




Funny: Things to say when losing a technical argument


  1. That won't scale.
  2. That's been proven to be O(N^2) and we need a solution that's O(NlogN).
  3. There are, of course, various export limitations on that technology.
  4. The syntax is idiosyncratic.
  5. Trying to build a team behind that technology would be a staffing
    nightmare.
  6. That can't be generalized to a cross-platform build.
  7. Unfortunately, the license would contaminate our product.
  8. If we go with that idea, we're going to have Don Marti camped out in the
    front lobby with 300 angry software jihad supporters.
  9. Our support infrastructure simply can't handle the volume that change
    would involve.
  10. I had one of the interns try that approach for another project, and it
    scrambled the CEO's hard drive. So I think it's going to be a hard sell.
  11. Yes, well, that's just not the way things work in the real world.
  12. I like your idea. Why don't you write up a white paper and we'll review it
    at the next staff meeting?
  13. Unfortunately, we're an all-FORTH shop. Otherwise, it's a nice idea.
  14. I think you need to stop taking this so personally. We need to think about
    what's best for the project, not about our own little pet theories.
  15. Oh, I played with that approach back as an undergrad. Got a D, too.
  16. I was reading about that on BugTraq yesterday.
  17. Yes, I believe that's the approach Windows NT is taking.
  18. That's totally inefficient on modern hardware.
  19. Well, yes, but it really reduces to the knapsack problem in that case. Do
    you have some kind of heuristic, or are we dealing with an NP-complete case?
  20. Have you LOOKED at the number of I/O requests that will create?
  21. We can't afford the transaction overhead.
  22. Yeah, or we could all just plink away on Amigas or something.
  23. What? I don't speak your crazy moon-language.
  24. Hmm. Didn't they just go bankrupt? It's OK, I guess -- there's some German
    company who's picked up the existing service contracts.
  25. No, no, no. We're really working on an N-TIER architecture, here.
  26. No, no, no. It's fairly important that the database be in THIRD NORMAL
    FORM.
  27. No, that would break object encapsulation.
  28. I don't think that's altogether clear. Please write it up in UML for me.
  29. I think there's a problem with your drive geometry.
  30. Can you generate some USE CASES that would justify the change?
  31. How is that going to impact the schedule?
  32. RAM is cheap and all, but...
  33. It would probably be best if we deferred that until version 2.0.
  34. I like it, but it is too point-oh for my tastes.
  35. If you make this change, I will fork the code.
  36. Yes, well, unfortunately the economy is going away from anything remotely
    like that. Our investors would kill us.
  37. Jakob Nielsen wrote an interesting hit piece on that.
  38. Yes, yes, we've all read DJB's RFCs on the subject.
  39. This is all covered in Knuth, and we don't have time to go over it again.
  40. This one is in the FAQ: http://www.linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/#your_dumb_technology
  41. I don't have time for this extropian nonsense.
  42. Well, I guess we could start the QA cycles again from square one. That
    would require a press release, though.
  43. You used to program in Pascal, didn't you?
  44. Why don't we make a generalized solution including both options, and let
    the administrator decide with a config-file setting?
  45. You've obviously ignored the various namespace issues.
  46. I don't think you're considering the performance trade-offs.
  47. What kind of benchmarks have you been running?
  48. Let's table this for now, and we'll talk about it one-on-one off-line.
  49. This really doesn't jibe with our core competency.
  50. This sort of thing should really be outsourced.
  51. I remember that IBM had a project to do that back in the 70s.
  52. Um, hello? We're using VON NEUMANN MACHINES HERE.
  53. We need this to fit on a single floppy.
  54. Yes, but can this be embedded in a toaster, for example?
  55. We need something that my mom can use.
  56. Users won't want to click through that many layers of hierarchy.
  57. The packaging costs will be prohibitive.
  58. OK, but what about internationalization?
  59. Look, would you just get off your Be obsession for FIVE MINUTES and talk
    serious design with us?
  60. That's a good idea -- you should do that on your home page.
  61. Yeah, Linuxcare tried that with the Sourceror project.
  62. Ho, man! Are they still AROUND? That's so cool. I thought that whole idea
    was discredited years ago.
  63. What you're not seeing is the difference between an 'is-a' and a 'has-a'
    relationship.
  64. There is no hope for the widow's son, Boaz.
  65. Yes, but we're standardizing on XML.
  66. That doesn't fit into the MVC model.
  67. Well, that's great if you have an AI running the thing.
  68. Well, they're going to do that with the next version of Perl, so we should
    probably wait.
  69. Well, they're going to do that with the next version of OS X, so we should
    probably wait.
  70. I heard that the only real application for that technology was child
    pornography. How did you hear about it?



from: http://www.skirsch.com/humor/techarg.htm

Google: Search for Video

http://video.google.com/
This should be kinda cool. I just never bother to search for video, but why not start now.

Interesting: Outrageous Commericials

http://www.tvparty.com/emcomm.html

From the Flintstones selling cigarettes to other old commercials.



Darwin: Firefighter Ignite

http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-24.html

(15 July 1999, Tennessee) Seven firefighters from the Sequoyah Volunteer Fire Department, located in rural Hamilton County north of Chattanooga, decided to impress their Chief by surreptitiously setting fire to a house, then heroically extinguishing the blaze. The men apparently hatched the plan in order to help Daniel, a former firefighter, return to duty.
Unfortunately, Daniel's career plans were irreversibly snuffed when he became trapped while pouring gasoline inside the house. Surrounded by smoke and flames, he was unable to escape, and died inside the burning house on June 26.

His six accomplices are facing 87 years in prison for conspiracy, arson, and burglary.

One of our readers, Terry Boese, notes, "What makes me feel this is a genuine candidate, is that not only did he kill himself with an act of stupidity, but he is also no longer able to protect other would-be pyromaniacs from Darwin Awards. Had he been successful in his attempt to regain his position, he may have had a ripple effect in the gene pool."




Hack: Unlimited SMS Messaging for T-Mobile

http://www.uneasysilence.com/index.php?p=2079

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Darwin: Blowtorch and Gunpowder

I figured I'll add some stupid acts daily thanks to the Darwin Award website, which selects some of the dumbest people from news reports. Well here is today's Darwin Award.


"(8 July 2003, Moore Township, Pennsylvania) An unidentified 16-year-old boy was taken by surprise when a bowl of blackpowder blew up in his face, after being heated with a blowtorch. The inevitable explosion caused severe burns to his face, and he admitted to policer that he was suffering pain after the jarring incident.

He had first tried to light the powder with a grill lighter, but eventually decided a blowtorch would do a better job. About that, he was right: the flash was awesome indeed.

“He made a foolish decision and suffered the consequences,” said Police Chief Keglovitz, and this was not the lad’s first experiment with gunpowder. “He lost one finger,” a neighbor confided, to a firecracker accident a few years earlier.
"


Hack: Make your TIVO-like computer.

http://www.snapstream.com/Community/Articles/medusa/default.asp




1 - White Box PC (P4 2.4, 512mb, 40gb, Win XP Home) approx. $600
6 - Hauppauge PVR-250BTV $539.94
1 - Beyond TV 3.5 (Server) $69.99
4 Multi Tuner Licenses (Free with card purchase) $0.00

Approx. total: $1209.93

Funny: Forbidden Budweiser Ad

http://www.budweiser.com/wardrobe_malfunction.html


Funny: I'm 100% sure the Bin Laden is Dead or Alive, because CNN told me so. So :P


Anime: Don't watch InuYahsha? Well here is the gist of it.

http://www.deviantart.com/view/13034303/

Computer Science: World Programming Competition

http://campus.acm.org/public/membernet/storypage_2.cfm?ci=January_2005&story=5&CFID=36935290&CFTOKEN=50209978

"The teams at the world finals have five hours to solve eight or more complex, real-world problems. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. World finals programming language tools include Java, C/C++, and Pascal. Students are given a problem statement and an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges' test data and acceptance criteria. Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. The team that solves the most problems with the fewest attempts in the least amount of time is declared the winner.

The highest scoring team receives the World Champion cup and plaque, and is awarded $10,000. Teams finishing in second through fourth place receive gold medals and $3,000 each; fifth through eighth place receive silver medals and $2,000 each; and those finishing ninth through twelfth place receive bronze medals and $1,000 each. Champions for North America, Latin America, Europe, the South Pacific, Asia and Africa, and the Middle East will be presented with plaques.
"

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

Hack: Etch A Sketch with a mouse.

http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/
FinalProjects/s2004/jml66/EAS_final.htm



What!?!?! : You Smoke = You're Fired

http://www.channelcincinnati.com/news/4125477/detail.html

This is so wrong... To me it's the same as a company firing people who have unprotected sex. This is just so stupid.

Funny: Cops

New Sobriety Test:
http://64.29.138.105/bc/games/18932_sobrietytest.wmv

Bad Cops:
http://www.moronland.com/media/videos/appealticket2.wmv

Poltics: Another--What is your political stance?

http://www.theadvocates.org/quiz.html

My Score:

Machine Learning: Learning by sight and sound

"Machine Learns Games 'Like a Human'"
New Scientist (01/24/05); Knight, Will

"Researchers at Britain's University of Leeds have developed a computer system that uses observation and mimicry, as humans do, to teach itself to play the children's game "scissors, paper, stone." The system, dubbed CogVis, constructs its own "hypotheses" about the rules of the game by studying video and audio input of human players for specific patterns. The system watched people playing the game with cards marked with scissors, a piece of paper, or a stone; the players were instructed to announce when they won or when the game ended in a draw. After several hours of observation, CogVis was able to successfully call the outcome of each game. CogVis team member Chris Needham explains that the system's visual processor deconstructs action into periods of movement and inaction, and then distills color- and texture-based features; the addition of audio allows the system to formulate theories about the game's rules via inductive logic programming. CogVis was demonstrated in December at an event sponsored by the British Computer Society, and won the prize for Progress Towards Machine Intelligence. "A system that can observe events in an unknown scenario, learn and participate just as a child would is almost the Holy Grail of AI," notes the University of Leeds' Derek Magee. Portsmouth University researcher Max Bramer thinks machines could one day use CogVis technology to learn to control maintenance robots or spot intruders on video, while Imperial College London AI expert Stephen Muggleton says enabling the system to learn more complicated games such as tic-tac-toe will be a major challenge."



http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6914

Poltics: Losing protected wildlife land for oil, whatelse is new from Bush

"The Bush administration plans to open up thousands of acres on
Alaska's North Slope for exploratory drilling (http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/01/22/
us_to_allow_oil_exploration_in_protected_area_of_alaska/
)
-- an area that has been protected for decades as a critical wildlife
habitat.
"

Monday, January 24, 2005

Saturday, January 22, 2005

Weird: Text to Ascii

http://www.network-science.de/ascii/

Weird: Amazon book review

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0833030477/qid=1106422025/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-3957020-1056104?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Check out the book first, then read the funny reviews.

Hack: RC Plane

http://www.rc-cam.com/microszr.htm

Turn a mini RC car and a cheap plane into a RC Plane.

Poltics: Religous Right vs. Sponge Bob Square Pants?

RELIGIOUS RIGHT -- STOP SPONGEBOB:

"Alas, five years after Jerry Falwell threw down the gauntlet and demanded Tinky Winky stop "damaging...the moral lives of children," (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/276677.stm) a new threat to America's youth has risen. "Does anybody here know SpongeBob?" James Dobson, the founder of Focus on the Family, asked members of Congress and fellow conservatives at a black-tie dinner on Tuesday. Conservative culture warriors say SpongeBob Squarepants, the popular children's cartoon character, has been enlisted in a "pro-homosexual video" that seeks to " indoctrinate children to accept homosexuality (http://www.theconservativevoice.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1771) ." The video maker's lawyer says the critics "need medication." The New York Times reports that the movie, which will be distributed to public and private elementary schools nationwide through a partnership with FedEx, doesn't even mention sexual identity (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/20/politics/20sponge.html?ex=1107245126&ei=1&en=4e89a43dfb650f14) , though there is a music video to teach children about multiculturalism."

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

Interesting: How to be like a American

http://www.edupass.org/culture/

There are a lot of nuances to life in the US that you can only learn by living here. Nevertheless, we will try to introduce you to some of the more important cultural differences.


As a previous Resident Advisor we were forced to learn and talked about the cultural differences, especially between India and America. It interesting to see how our culture is totally different from others sometimes.

Hack: Put a PC into a NES

http://www.junkmachine.com/forum/kb.php?mode=article&k=11



Sunday, January 16, 2005

Cool: Wrongly fired Wal-Mart employee plays pranking revenge

The reason I like this story is because it sounds like something I would do if this happen to me. I have been known to pull some very awful revenging pranks.

http://www.zug.com/pranks/walmart/

Cool: Police Auction website.

http://www.stealitback.com/

Very Cool, this stuff is cheap. Buy land for under $1000 and other great steals. It's even better if you live near LA county, since most of this shit is from their. You can drive down and pick it up, especially if its a large item.

If you had stuff stolen you can also reclaim it, if you have the serial numbers.

Hack: Over clock your TI - ?? Calculators

http://richfiles.solarbotics.net/Turbo.html

Can't wait to try this hack sometime in the future. My TI-92 just sits around doing nothing for me, since I haven't taken a Calculus class in 4 years. Now that I'm not in school it is almost pointless now.

Cool: Tons of Old School Video Games

http://www.everyvideogame.com/

It has Nintendo, Gameboy, Sega and Arcade games. Some of them seem not to work or somewhat buggy, but then again some do work. Its a worthy site to check out.

Saturday, January 15, 2005

Hack: Unsecured webcams via Google

Here are the search terms to use:

inurl:”ViewerFrame?Mode=Refresh”
http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:%22ViewerFrame%3FMode%3DRefresh%22

inurl:"axis-cgi/jpg"
http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:%22axis-cgi/jpg%22

inurl:"axis-cgi/mjpg"
http://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:%22axis-cgi/mjpg%22

inurl:"view/index.shtml"
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=inurl%3A%22view%2Findex.shtml%22

liveapplet
http://www.google.com/search?q=liveapplet

Comp Sci: Machine Learning helping the elderly.

"Learning Machines"
O'Reilly Network (01/12/05); Oram, Andy

"Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility member Andy Oram believes robots could play a major role in boosting productivity for a rapidly aging population. But making robots capable of such a feat is a formidable challenge, as Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) research scientist Geoffrey Gordon indicated recently. The university devotes a lot of research to helping robots perceive their surroundings via distributed machine learning, a process that can be very complex because of the power requirements for robot-to-robot data transmission, as well as networked sensor nodes' fragility and susceptibility to interference in real-life environments; determining the most durable network scheme with the lowest transmission costs requires knowing the quality of links between nodes. Mesh networks--relatively looser systems with multiple redundant links--are widely hyped, but researcher Carlos Guestrin prefers a hierarchical tree architecture that delivers better scalability and gives each node a fairly accurate projection of environmental activity, though rapid self-reconfiguration is a must. Oram reports that Gordon appreciates commoditized technology for robots, and notes that CMU robots regularly use off-the-shelf Pentium chips running the Linux operating system. Gordon told Oram that predicting the emergence of major breakthroughs in robotics and artificial intelligence is difficult, because research often turns out to be a tougher prospect than originally assumed; "Progress tends to affect some deep aspect of the problem," Oram observes. The author details robotics research geared toward aiding disabled people, such as a sensor network that could perhaps detect a person in trouble and stage an intervention. Meanwhile, some research focuses on making robots capable of comprehending and responding to people's psychological states."

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6213

Politics: More lost of PRIVACY!!

"Brave New Era for Privacy Fight"
Wired News (01/13/05); Zetter, Kim

"Privacy proponents are concerned that the erosion of civil liberties will continue in President Bush's second term through a combination of surveillance legislation and commercial technologies and services. In addition to a renewal of Patriot Act provisions urged by Bush, civil libertarians are expecting the administration to promote new Patriot Act II prerequisites; one of the more hopeful signs for privacy advocates is the introduction of the Security and Freedom Ensured Act of 2003, which revises some of the Patriot Act's more intrusive surveillance stipulations. The issue that privacy advocates believe bears the most watching this year is data-mining collaborations between the private sector and government agencies. There are no legal barriers to the government's purchase of information on individuals from commercial data aggregators, nor is there any legislation restricting how such data may be used by federal agencies; conversely, few laws are in place to regulate private companies' disposition of data provided by government agencies. Another concern for privacy advocates is Congress approving the standardization of all U.S. driver's licenses to include machine-readable, encoded data by the end of next year. The provision gives the secretary of transportation, in consultation with the Homeland Security secretary, carte blanche to determine what kind of data to include within 18 months, leading critics to fret that such data could be linked to a national database of citizen profiles accumulated from other sources. Other issues raising civil libertarians' hackles include the deployment of radio-frequency ID tags to track consumers beyond the purchase of retail items, and a possible national adoption of California's DNA Fingerprint, Unsolved Crime and Innocence Protection Act, which authorizes the collection of DNA samples from anyone arrested for any crime even if the person has not been charged or convicted."
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,66242,00.html

Comp Sci: XML popularity = increase traffic, solution - Binary XML?

"Putting XML in the Fast Lane"
CNet (01/13/05); LaMonica, Martin

"As Extensible Markup Language (XML) increases in popularity, the increasing traffic burden is prompting calls for binary XML and other solutions. Compressing XML into a binary format would dramatically streamline the abundance of XML communications and especially benefit performance-sensitive applications or XML applications on mobile devices, where processing power is limited. Sun Microsystems has launched an open-source project for binary XML called Fast Infoset Project that is focusing on a compression method standard already used in the telecommunications market; Fast Infoset pilots have found that XML applications run two to three times faster with the binary standard, but Sun software executive and XML co-inventor Tim Bray worries that any move to binary XML could result in incompatible XML implementations. XML compatibility has been a great success so far, and its text-based nature allows anyone to inspect the message easily in Notepad, says Bray. "If I were world dictator, I'd put a kibosh on binary XML, and I'm quite confident that the people who are pushing for it would find another solution," he says; however, binary XML that goes through standards bodies and is open source would be acceptable to him. Some of the biggest proponents for binary XML are consumer electronics firms such as Canon and Nokia, which argue that binary XML would ease the transfer of large files to mobile devices. But such industry-specific advocacy could foreshadow vertical-market binary XML applications. IBM information management general manager Janet Perna says increased XML loads are a problem, but can be solved through processing and networking advances; she points out that people thought e-commerce would overload the Internet, but those fears proved unfounded."
http://news.com.com/Putting+XML+in+the+fast+lane/2100-7345_3-5534249.html

Friday, January 14, 2005

Theme: Stupid Students

Essay paper on Oedipus:
Real Funny must read
http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/image/essay/1

Highscool student Peter Nguyen:
http://img140.exs.cx/img140/9001/whitman5th.jpg
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen2.jpg
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen3.jpg
http://img20.photobucket.com/albums/v60/profmadhatter/nguyen4.jpg


Lets smash some boards:
http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=7625

Admission:
http://www.washingtonfreepress.org/10/Humor.html

Chemistry Exam:
http://www.enzine.net/exam/

uh oh, Rome, NY in the news -- not good.

When Robert Moran drove back to his law offices in Rome, N.Y., after a plane trip to Arizona in July 2003, he had no idea that a silent stowaway was aboard his vehicle: a secret GPS bug implanted without a court order by state police.

http://news.com.com/Snooping+by+satellite/2100-1028_3-5533560.html?tag=nefd.lede

I don't like the idea of the police sticking GPS tracking material onto our cars. To me its the same as bugging a phone. We keep losing little freedoms here in America, which will just snow ball to losing all freedom. It will end up to be a domino effect. Here in California, we are already watched via traffic cams and now with DNA being taken from us even if we are not convited of a crime. America needs to wake up.

Hack: Create a altoid MP3 player

http://web.media.mit.edu/~ladyada/make/minty/index.html


Thursday, January 13, 2005

Poltical Cartoon: Bush buying press


Toogle: An example

So, Its been talked about on the internet for the past few days, another Google invention called Toogle.

Original Image found on my website, from my school ID card blown up:


Goto Toogle: http://c6.org/toogle/
and enter search query. In this case it was: andrusw "Me.jpg"

You will get a text version with color depicting something like the original image:




http://c6.org/toogle/index.php?phrase=andrusw+%22Me.jpg%22

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

Poltics: Girlie Govenator targeting the poor.

BUDGET -- ARNOLD BULLIES THE POOR:

"Film star turned politician Arnold Schwarzenegger has detailed a second wave of budget cuts in as many weeks (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-health11jan11,1,5600438.story?coll=la-headlines-california) , and, as usual, the sequel is no better than the original. The California governor's new budget calls for hundreds of millions of dollars in cuts to social spending, the Los Angeles Times reports, including rollbacks on welfare, health and dental care. Especially hard hit are members of CalWORKs, the state's welfare-to-work program. Schwarzenegger proposed a 6.5 percent cut in benefits and wants to 'make it harder for the poor to earn money on their own in low-paying jobs without losing their welfare benefits' (apparently Arnold wants California to be more like Wyoming (http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0111/p01s01-uspo.html) ). One college student named Ursula described the impact of the new budget plans on her and her 2-year-old daughter: 'If they cut my check it's going to hit things I need, things like food, milk, diapers, shoes,' she said. 'I'm not going to let my daughter live without, so it will be my shoes, my food that I'll miss."

How To: Hack a Coke Machine

http://www.i-hacked.com/Misc/Random-Stuff/Hacking-Coke-Machines.html

Summary:
COKE MACHINE::::::
$1.00 -------
-------------
[ Coke ] <-- Hit this button last
[ Coke ] <-- Hit this button second
[ Diet Coke ] <-- Hit this button third
[ Sprite ] <-- Hit this button first
[ And so on ]
-------------

You get an error then:

NAVIGATION
To navigate from option to option (What they are is next section), remember the numberings we gave the buttons. They work as follows:
Button [ 1 ] - Exit/Back
Button [ 2 ] - Up
Button [ 3 ] - Down
Button [ 4 ] - Select

OPTIONS
Depending on the age of the machine, you will get a varying amount of default options available.
On older machines: SALE, VER, EROR, and RTN
On newer machines: CASH, SALE, EROR, and RTN

CASH - Machine Earnings Display
The CASH option will display how much money is in the machine currently. It generally takes a second or two to load. From here, you can scroll up and down through 12 or 16 different options, depending on the machine age. These other options display how much money was spent on each individual item, classified through its button (or slot, as I like to call it) number.
A neat side note about the slot numbers is that there are more slot numbers than there are actual slot, so usually the last 4 buttons contain zero money. This could be so that the same OS could be used on bigger machines, but the newer machines have even more slot numbers.

SALE - Total Sale Count
The SALE option displays how many drinks have been sold out of the machine. This tends to be cumulative, but not on all machines. The stock guy is probably supposed to reset this each time he re-stocks. Also, this has the same sub-options as the CASH option, where you can scroll up and down and see how many drinks have been sold from each slot.

VER - System/Machine Version?
This option will cause a large alphanumeric string to scroll across the LCD. The number looks very much like a serial number, but doesn't vary from machine to machine. It is most likely the OS or machine version number, but of the older machines that have the option, I haven't seen one that doesn't have the same number.

EROR - Error Log
There are 8 different types of errors - COLJ (Column Jams), VEnd (Vend Mechanism), door (Door Switch), sels (Select Switch), CHAR (Changer Errors), acce (Acceptor Errors), StS (Space-to-sales errors), and bVal (Bill Validators). The separate types and actual errors are useless, as you assumably can't get inside the machine, BUT(!) you can clear the errors. Hold the enter (Number 4) button down for about 2 seconds, and it should clear the error.

RTN - Return
This is simply the return option. Selecting this will exit the debug menu. On newer machines, pressing the BACK button at the main menu will not exit, and RTN must be selected.
A side note: The menu can also be exited by pressing the coin return button.

EXTRAS
By holding in the coin return button and not releasing, on the newer "big-button" machines, this will display the internal temperature in Fahrenheit, as in "42F".

**Update**
There are many more menu options that are only accessible if they've either been enabled from the computer inside the machine, or on the internal computer behind the door (Probably not feasible for you to access).

CPO - Coin Payout Mode
You can can dump coins from the coin mechanism, and the various menu options allow you to choose which type of coins (Nickels, dimes, etc.) are dumped.

tVFL - Tube Fill Mode
This is useless to you. This allows you to load coins into the coin tubes, which you can't do from the outside.

TEST - Test Routines
This allows you to test the following various routines:
SE Allows you to test the buttons. Will give you number
of button when you press it
SP Sold-out paddle test. Not quite sure, most likely internal function.
Su Sold-out switch test. Same as paddle.
CO Motor test. Will run various column motors.
Cn Coin test. Put in a coin and it will tell you what kind of
coin it is.
nA Note acceptor test. Same as Cn, but for bills.
dSP Display test. Will illuminate various LEDs.
vErS Rattles off version number.

RELY - Relay test
This tests the relay electronic control of various parts. Do not do, as it will cause damage if various internal parts are not unplugged before usage.

PASS - Password
This is not normally accessible, but allows you to change the menu password from the 4-2-3-1. Whoo!

PrIC - Price Setting
Used to set the price for a drink. Not sure how to work it, but it seems simple enough.

StOS - Space-to-sales routine
Lets you change the STS routine and other options. This means that various buttons will all mean the same thing, i.e. the 6 coke buttons don't actually vend from 6 different columns, but vend from one (changing when one runs out of course).

COn - Machine Configuration/Permissions
This is the machine config menu that decides what of these options you are allowed to access through the outside panel. This is probably only accessible with the door open. I won't go into detail, but I'll list the Config numbers and what each do: C1 sets price menu on, C2 sets special (manufacturer) options on), C3 disables the "ICE COLD COKE" message. C4 is autoviewing of menu when door is opened, C5 is door switch status, C6 is mysteriously reserved for "future use", C7 determines whether your money credit stays in for 5 minutes or indefinitely, C8 is Force Vend, C9 allows multiple vends without putting in more money (i.e put in a 5 and get 3 cokes and then your change), and C10 is Escrow Inhibit.

CCoC - Correct Change Only Control
Adjusts Correct Change only rule to your liking.

TIME - Time Adjustment
Allows you to set the machine's local time.

LANG - Language Selection
Not sure how many languages are supported, but there are apparently more than just English.



USEFULNESS
Unless you can get behind the door, there's little you can do with this except impress your friends. However, if you're able to set the C-switches properly, you'll be able to manipulate the machine in any way you want, get free drinks, change the price, set up cool buy-one-get-one-free deals, etc, etc :). Not to forget, knowledge is power. One step closer to free sodas!

Weird: Power Pizza

http://www.humanbeans.net/powerpizza/

Daily Grill: To buy or not buy the media? That's the question.

"I'm not aware of any other arrangements of that nature."

-- White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, on whether Armstrong Williams was the only journalist being paid by the administration, 1/10/05 (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2005/01/20050110-8.html#4
)

VERSUS

"This happens all the time...There are others."

-- Armstrong Williams
(http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=2114) , to Nation Columnist David Corn.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005

Politics: Lawnmower Drag Races and Bush buying the press.

DAILY GRILL

"I wanted to do it because it's something I believe in."
-- Armstrong Williams, on why he accepted $240K from the Bush administration to promote No Child Left Behind (NCLB).

VERSUS

Zero.
-- Number of times Armstrong Williams wrote about NCLB in his syndicated column, according to the Townhall.com archive (http://www.townhall.com/columnists/
armstrongwilliams/archive.shtml
) . After signing the contract, he wrote five columns.


DAILY OUTRAGE

The State of Texas used federal money allocated for homeland security "to buy a trailer that was used to haul lawn mowers to ' lawn mower drag races (http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&u=
/ap/20050108/ap_on_re_us/
terrorism_spending_2&printer=1
) .'"

Sunday, January 09, 2005

Cool: Packet Sniffer TV

http://www.packetsniffers.org/

Well I have watched the first 2 episodes. Its not to bad, didn't really learn anything new or interesting. But hey they talk about hardware hacks and stuff, its always good to see something different.

Friday, January 07, 2005

Funny: Masturbating boys cause havac for one women.

Please read this story it is so funny and weird (or disgusting):
http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1644249,00.html

Heres a summary of the story:

A girl wears next to nothing see through clothes and mini-skirt. A group of 14 year old boys follow her. They pull out their *slongs* and start masturbating. (With me so far) Everybody is watching and she feels embarass. She tells police and they say: Sorry, its not like they raped you. Witnesses of this act applaud the boys, and believe that she should get rape.

Another Good Political Flash Cartoon (Tsunami Aid)

How to Argue With Females

How to Argue With Females
Comedy Article by www.pointsincase.com
Full Article at: http://www.pointsincase.com/how_to_argue_females.htm
By staff writer Justin Rebello

"Step 1. Abandon all logic. Girls don't use it, and you certainly shouldn't allow it to handicap you.

Step 2. If you believe strongly in something, do NOT give in to any aspect of it. Compromise is useless against girls, because they will rationalize that if they can get you to concede to one element, they can get you to quit on the whole fuckin' Periodic Table. (Nothing like a little chemistry humor, right?)

Step 3. Don't be afraid to take cheap shots. Ever argue with a girl about something and they randomly insult you with something that has no relevance to the argument? That's their way of trying to wear you down and push you off-topic. Fight fire with fire, I say. Tell her she has a fat ass, small boobs, an ugly face, disorienting facial hair, unwieldy hips, and is a genuinely awful person.



Step 4. Cite precedent. Girls have no concept of historical factors relating to the current situation. Most girls reading this just went over to dictionary.com to see what "precedent" meant.

Step 5. Interrupt her. Don't let her talk. Girls hate that like they hate other girls. It's hilarious, too. They get all frazzled.

Step 6. Don't take her seriously. Laugh at every point she deems serious in nature. Fart, if possible. Derail her emotional train.

Step 7. If the argument escalates, cut off all communication with her. If a girl can't find you, she can't continue arguing about bullshit. Change your phone number, relocate, and get a name change if you must.

Step 8. Don't be fooled by "Let's stop arguing please." That's their way of making you let your guard down, so they can swoop in after you're worn down. Instead, say something like "Yeah, all this being right is exhausting for me." Pisses them off. Just trust me.

Step 9. Compare her unfavorably with another girl. This is especially effective if the comparison is with a girl that they simply abhor. Tell her something like, "Lisa is so much more compassionate than you." Girls hate other girls, like a deer hates a shotgun. And how do you take down a deer? Exactly.

Step 10. Don't be intimidated by the water works. That's their ultimate contingency, knowing that guys can't deal with a crying girl. Stay strong, don't let yourself get emotional, just think of something funny. Replay scenes from "Office Space" in your head if you must.

Step 11. Bust out, "I don't feel like fighting. I've proven my point." Then stop. Leave the argument. It pisses them off because a guy's natural reaction is to resolve, whereas a girl's is to continue forever and ever until the end of time until they hear that they are right. If a guy decides that he is right and won't budge, their whole concept of male-female relations is shot to shit. Again, mind games.

Step 12. Ask her if she's on the rag. Self-explanatory.

Step 13. When all else fails, tell her she's just like her mother. It's an ace-in-the-hole and will emotionally cripple her to such a degree she may even forget her whole argument.

Remember, girls are the less intelligent of the genders. All throughout history men have out-thought, out-invented, and out-created women in every facet of existence. Isn't it about time we won an argument for once? Gentlemen, that time is now."


Funny: Pregant Women Smoking (Hows that funny?)


Less money for education in Cali thanks to the Govenator

"ARNOLD TERMINATES FUNDING: California students had better work on their bodybuilding physiques, because they're about to have the state's busted budget hoisted onto their shoulders. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has announced plans to gut spending on K-12 education and community colleges by $2.2 billion (http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-budget6jan06,0,3554091,print.story) when he presents his budget Monday, the Los Angeles Times reports. Schwarzenegger also will weaken a proposition which guaranteed funds for education even when the state faces serious fiscal woes, meaning '[s]chools, like all other programs, would endure large, unanticipated reductions if the state budget falls out of balance.' California's Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell "called the spending proposals 'devastating' and education groups immediately began mobilizing to fight the governor.'"

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Alan Turing's prediction of true A.I. closer then I thought

"Welcome to the Next Generation of Robots"
Guardian Unlimited (UK) (01/04/05); Arnot, Chris

"European robotics researchers plan to create machines that replicate human functions, including hearing, seeing, learning, answering questions, and manipulating objects. The technology to build robots with human-like capabilities has been advancing rapidly in isolation from each other. By combining new voice recognition and machine-learning technology, researchers will be able to take robotics development to a higher level, says Birmingham University computer scientist Aaron Sloman. Speech recognition is one field that has improved rapidly in recent years, allowing people to interact with computer systems via telephone. Computers ability to generate inflections while talking has improved as well, making their speech sound more natural. Sloman and colleagues are working on a project to build Explorer, a walking conversational robot that can guide visitors through an office. The project is led by a robotics researcher in Stockholm and funded by the European Union. Explorer can differentiate between permanent obstacles like walls and temporary barriers, such as a pile of books, says Birmingham University researcher Jeremy Wyatt. While computer speech and speech recognition technology allows machines to converse, teaching computers the meaning of what is being said is much more difficult. Another European Union robotics project is Playmate, which pairs a robot head and arm, and could help elderly people to live independently longer. Sloman says such technology could take away jobs currently done by humans, but that it also has the power to enrich people's lives. Sloman also says robotics research poses little threat to humanity, because robots are unlikely to treat people as badly as people treat each other today."

Full Article: http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/news/story/0,9830,1382653,00.html

Wednesday, January 05, 2005

The F-word said on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno

http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/clips/TonightShowFword.wmv

Karthik Rajarman: Photo Album of his recent trip of Asia.

His trip was to: malaysia, japan, korea, taiwan and hong kong. Mostly business, so he didn't do a lot of site seeing.

Here is the photo album: http://au.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/karthikrajaraman/my_photos

Some Interesting Pics from his trip:
The building here is from Tokyo, where I know the locals call it the "big turd"


Just funny to see karthik dressed up on a fake horse.


Buddha must of went on a diet, peer presure from jesus probably.

Bullshit: Creationist Museum of History?

Adam and Eve may have feared God but according to right-wing revisionists, Tyrannosaurus Rex may have been the more immediate danger. With scientifically inaccurate exhibits showing man roaming freely amongst dinosaurs, the $25 million Museum of Creation opening this spring in Kentucky (http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/01/02/weden02.xml&pos=portal_puff3) is being billed as a prime tourism destination for fundamentalist Christians. Other displays blame disease and famine on " mankind's sin ," homosexuals for AIDS, and evolutionist teaching for the 1999 Columbine tragedy.

That's what the hicks in the south need, a museum showing how idiotic their beliefs are, and blaming non-christians for any weird stuff happening in this world.

I just got this one statement:

Where is all the inbreeding happening? The southern states like alabama and kentucky. We know inbreeding just spawns retards, this just shows us what happens after 100 years of inbreeding does.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Some interesting websites:

A guy who stacks cards very well:
http://www.cardstacker.com/gallery.html



Some winners of the "I Look Like My Dog":
http://ganns.com/Humor/ILookLikeMyDog/



Jenny, are you there? This guy calls 867-5309 in all the area codes looking for Jenny.
http://danstheman.com/Jenny.htm

Monday, January 03, 2005

"'TaskTracer' to Revolutionize Computers"

KVAL 13 (OR) (12/20/04); Woodward, Dawn Marie

"Oregon State University (OSU) computer scientists have devised a new "TaskTracer" system that automatically organizes all the materials required for various projects using artificial intelligence and machine learning so that users can continue tasks effectively even after being sidetracked. "Our whole idea is to create a list of tasks you are working on at any one time, organize everything around those tasks and let you reclaim your desktop computer," notes OSU computer science professor and TaskTracer co-developer Jon Herlocker. TaskTracer enables the computer to constantly monitor the user's jobs, taking note of spreadsheets, emails, Web pages, folders, and other relevant materials, as well as identifying and furnishing access to materials employed in previous jobs that might be applicable to the task at hand. TaskTracer co-developer Tom Dietterich says the current system is chiefly compatible with PCs, but envisions a system that could be integrated with a phone and caller ID in the future. He says the system also features speech recognition software so that the outgoing side of phone conversations can be recorded and recovered, although the incoming side is not recorded due to legal and privacy issues. Such a system will be valuable to people in professions where multitasking is important, and OSU researchers believe TaskTracer will help boost productivity, lower stress levels, and guarantee that less information is lost as jobs continuously shift. "Ultimately, the computer itself will learn your operational approaches and you'll need to tell it less and less," Herlocker predicts. The researchers say TaskTracer will come with privacy interfaces and data encryption tools in order to shield personal information."

Full Article: http://www2.kval.com/x30530.xml?ParentPageID=x2649&ContentID=x48585&Layout=kval.xsl&AdGroupID=x30530

"Robots Are Learning, But No 'Terminators' Are About to Appear"

Investor's Business Daily (12/31/04) P. A4; Isaac, David

"Machine learning--the ability for a machine to expand its intelligence through experience--is making great strides, but a "Terminator" scenario in which the machines take over will not arrive anytime soon, according to researchers. Machine learning is a much more efficient and practical alternative to coding every circumstance a robot might have to contend with via programming. Tom Mitchell with Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Automated Learning and Discovery is using machine learning in an attempt to determine what kinds of neural activity take place when a person is reading, and he believes such research could delve into how the human brain organizes conceptual categories; at the same time, Mitchell cautions that machine brains cannot equal human brains, noting that the human mind's architecture is much more distributed than that of a computer. "We are frequently assured by the popular press that we are on the verge of having household robots that will do all of the housework, baby-sit our children, amuse us with lively conversation, and take care of us in our old age," explains philosopher John Searle, who dismisses such visions as "nonsense." Still, parallels can be drawn between machine learning and human learning: One such case is reinforcement learning, in which a reward impulse encourages proper behavior. Mitchell says that in much the same way the chemical dopamine "rewards" the brain with a pleasurable sensation, so does pressing a green button indicating good behavior reward a robot for proper responses or actions. Applied Perception research scientist Mark Ollis says the biggest challenge for robots is interpreting the things they see, and he is developing a self-navigating robot for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). IRobot, meanwhile, is working with DARPA on swarm, a project involving the development of hardware and software for robot communities; swarm technology would enable robots to communicate and learn from one another as they move, and be an ideal application for pinpointing an object's location."

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Funny: Pics from Moronland



Got a Happy New Year email from Karthik Rajaraman

Well I received a email from Karthik wishing a Happy New Year with his wife in the picture:

Saturday, January 01, 2005

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!