World's Largest Swimming Pool

This is one pool, where swimming 1 lap would be more then enough of a work out. This pool, found in Chile, is 1 Km long and 35 meters deep.

 

 

Technorati Tags: world,largest,swimming,pool

Flight canceled other then weather? Invoke rule 240

This is just a good FYI found on http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22900119/.

"Rule 240 — which states that in the event of any flight delay or cancellation caused by anything other than weather, the airline would fly me on the next available flight — not their next available flight, which might not leave for another 24 hours.
[...]
Of course, in today's deregulated environment, when airlines no longer have to post tariffs, the argument can be made that Rule 240 therefore no longer exists. Officially, that's true, but in practice a majority of airlines still honor the old rules, 240 among them. The newer carriers — those that do not have interline agreements with the major legacy airlines, like JetBlue, Southwest and Air Tran, never had Rule 240 to deal with, and thus don't, as a matter of company policy, endorse tickets over to other carriers (although JetBlue has been known to outright buy tickets on other carriers to accommodate some of its passengers).
[...]
United Airlines changed its language to say that in the event of a delay or cancellation, it would still fly you on a competitor, but not necessarily in the same class of service as on your original United flight. Delta still has a Rule 240 in its contract of carriage, but conveniently omits the section in which it used to say it wo[u]ld fly you on another carrier in the event of a "flight irregularity." American only promises to get you out on one of its own flights. Alaska and Northwest airlines have stayed with most of the original paragraph 240 language. "

 

I really like the idea that the old airlines still honor this. 

 

Technorati Tags: rule 240,airline,travel,delayed,cancel

Anonymous Hackers vs. Scientology

The past week or so there has been many stories about a group of hackers attacking scientology web sites. This is becoming very interesting and epic with statements from Anonymous.

"By now you have certainly become aware of us and our actions"

"We have commenced our assault upon your institution and would like to take this moment to enlighten you. We are Anonymous, you might now think of us as merely a hacker group, but we are much more. We are the protectors of knowledge, we are the '[I]nternet hate machine'."

 

 

ANON?MOUS

Propaganda. EST 2008

Hello. Scientology. We are Anonymous.

Over the years, we have been watching you. Your campaigns of misinformation; suppression of dissent; your litigious nature, all of these things have caught our eye. With the leakage of your latest propaganda video into mainstream circulation, the extent of your malign influence over those who trust you, who call you leader, has been made clear to us. Anonymous has therefore decided that your organization should be destroyed. For the good of your followers, for the good of mankind--for the laughs--we shall expel you from the Internet and systematically dismantle the Church of Scientology in its present form. We acknowledge you as a serious opponent, and we are prepared for a long long campaign. You will not prevail forever against the angry masses of the body politic. Your methods, hypocrisy, and the artlessness of your organization have sounded its death knell.

You cannot hide; we are everywhere.

We cannot die; we are forever, We're getting bigger every day--and  solely by the force of our ideas, malicious and hostile as they often are. If you want another name for your opponent, then call us Legion, for we are many.

Yet for all that we are not as monstrous as you are; still our methods are a parallel to your own. Doubtless you will use the Anon's actions as an example of the persecution you have so long warned your followers would come; this is acceptable. In fact, it is encouraged. We are you SPs.

Gradually as we merge our pulse with that of your "Church", the suppression of your followers will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Believers will wake, and see that salvation has no price. They will know that the stress, the frustration that they feel is not something that may be blamed upon Anonymous. No -- they will see that it stems from a source far closer to each. Yes, we are SPs. But the sum of suppression we could ever muster is eclipsed by that of the RTC.

Knowledge is free.

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

                                                                    -- Anonymous

Its a little fun to watch with a touch of scariness. Anonymous reminds me of the group in the 12 Monkeys who went around setting animals free from the zoo, or better yet Fight Club. I guess you could of seen this coming -- two awesome (geek favorite) movies. 

 

Some Sources:
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showpost.php?p=57816&postcount=1
http://img253.imageshack.us/img253/424/anonymoussp5.gif
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23107452-5014239,00.html
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3993733/

Just go to Digg for many many more interesting stories about this.

Image Recognition Search Engine

I thought this would be cool to develop, if I ever had time to do the coding and research.

 

Concept:

Upload an image to the search engine, in which it would gather all the main points of the image and run a image recognition search. The search engine then would display back in a list from most to least relevant matches.

 

How this can be used:

New companies: Do a search on potential logos, making sure not to infringe on other companies.

 

People searching: Find all pictures of yourself or someone else taken from other people. Maybe even find yourself walking in the background of someone else's pictures.

 

Location searching: Find all pictures of some popular spot, like the Eiffel Tower. 

 

So I did a search on Google to see if there is anything out there yet. I did find something about Google inquiring Neven Vision & Image Recognition which also had another great idea of using cell phones because most of them already have cameras built in.

I'm a little sad and happy now. Sad that I can't make millions now, like that would of happen. I just can't wait until this becomes real. They had some other cool and interesting ideas on how this could be used as well.

For example, I take a photo of a cute girl, or group of people at a bar. And what does Google now know about these people?

*Which bars or restaurants they frequent?
* Where is the location of that bar?
* Whether they prefer beer, wine or liquor.
* What kind of clothing they purchase & wear?
* Whether or not they smoke.
* Do they wear eye glasses or not?
* Who are they connected to in the real world and what is that connection?
* Which college did they attend?
* What sports teams do they follow?
* How much makeup do they wear when they go out?
* Whether they use tanning lotion or not.
* Do they have a full head of hair, balding or bald?

 

Good resources for Computer Science students

This site gives some good sites to use, if you're a computer science student. http://www.virtualhosting.com/blog/2008/50-killer-online-resources-for-computer-science-students/

The site categorizes the information into the following sections:

• Advice
• Money
• Organizations
• Careers
• Artificial Intelligence
• Hacking and Security
• Programming
• Information Sources
• Tools & Assistance

 

Here are some of my favorites:

http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~bthom/advice.html has some nice advice if you are considering graduate school, and the truth about job searching for unemployed students.

 

http://dobrev.com/AI/definition.html a nice write-up from PC Magazine on what is AI.

 

http://www.acooke.org/andrew/writing/lang.html  a really nice read on the several must know terminology found in the world of programming.

 

http://www.99-bottles-of-beer.net/ a humorous and interesting concept. Instead of a list of "Hello World" in every language, this site writes out the lyrics to the song.

 

http://www.nist.gov/dads/  a dictionary of computer science terms, algorithms, and data structures.

 

http://www.geocities.com/ikind_babel/babel/babel.html - list of acronyms, because in computer science we just love making new ones all the time just to confuse people.

Who Calls Me?

I just received a phone call from a country code of 851
(851 961 8531). I looked the number up and see that it is not even registered with any country (any more - used to be with Italy).

 

I then, hoped with luck, just Google it and came up with this site: http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/8519618531, where other people also complained about being cold called from this number.

 

Just wondering how they got my number, or they using a machine to cycle through and see if there is an answer for use later on?

What technology should teachers know?

An interesting article http://www.thethinkingstick.com/?p=614 show some questions that should be asked during interviews for teachers interested in teaching at a 21 centaury school that has some focus on teaching technology to their K-12 students.

Each question goes into detail on why the question is being asked. The first few questions are just to get a ball park area of knowing what experience the teacher has using a computer. Have they used a program on a computer before? Have they use Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, e-mail, etc....

Other questions basically look to see if they know how to do research on the Internet, if they read blogs, belong to online communities, etc...

I'm glad to see that technology is playing more of a role in the school.

 

What about Computer Science in the Classroom?

At my schools K-12 the computer was hardly ever used as a teaching instrument, but this was before the popularity of the Internet. I was unfortunate to go to a school where they did not teach any programming classes in the high school, so about time I started programming in college I had no experience compared to others. This at the time made me a little jealous, since I had to start from scratch.

The thing is I became the best in the class real fast and ended up help the professors in giving more complex examples of programs. Before becoming a computer science major I was a math major; which at first did not have much in common other then some discrete/finite math. The thing is many computer science professors believe the use of a computer to teach computer science is actually a hindrance.

I believe that computer science should be a new curriculum in K-12 school. Computer science is an excellent example on how math and physics are used in the every day real world, and should be taught without using computers.

The students can learn how binary, cryptography, sorting, etc.. works without a computer. Here is a video showing how this might be done.

 

Game Reviewers

Finding a good game reviewer is just as difficult as finding a good movie reviewer who is not pretentious (Ebert & Roeper) or idiotic (A. O. Scott from the New York Times ). I've been playing video games, religiously, since Atari 2700 and been a big fan ever since.

The problem is, most games these days are crap and can't hold my attention (ADD?) span long enough for me to crave it. The thing is that I'm not the only (28-33 year old gamer) who thinks this way. It just apparent to us, that most games these days are mind numbing boring.

I take home Halo 3 expecting to be a game that can hold my attention, only to find that I can beat it in one day. Mario Galaxy did a decent job, but after a week I got bored of jumping from planets to planet collecting stars and shit . 

That last good game that I've played was World of Warcraft, but I forced myself to give that up since it was too addicting and was all that I can think about. 

Now, some of you might think, "Awww, Willie is growing up and doesn't like games any more", HELL NO!!! this is not the case (Peter Pan Syndrome?). I just need a game like Counter-Strike (circa 2001), but more modern graphics to hold me off.

Anyway, I really like the game reviewer "Zero Punctuation! (AKA Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw)" at Escapist Magazine. His reviews, so far, are dead on and funny -- even with a British/Australian accent. I think his review of Assassin's Creed hit every nail on the head

 

Potpourri of info:

IE 7 Pro

http://www.ie7pro.com/ 

[A] must have add-on for Internet Explorer, which includes a lot of features and tweaks to make your IE friendlier, more useful, secure and customizable. IE7Pro includes Tabbed Browsing Management, Spell Check, Inline Search, Super Drag Drop, Crash Recovery, Proxy Switcher, Mouse Gesture, Tab History Browser, Web Accelerator, User Agent Switcher, Webpage Capturer, AD Blocker, Flash Block, Greasemonkey like User Scripts platform, User Plug-ins and many more power packed features. You can customize not just Internet Explorer, but even your favorite website according to your need and taste using IE7Pro.

A nice add-on. Just glad to see that there is scripting on another browser.

 

Wall-Socket PC

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39272166,00.htm

A interesting concept developed in the UK and it doesn't run on Linux. For £209 without a monitor and keyboard, you get a computer that runs on 5 watts and the following:

• Windows CE
• IE 6
• 500MHz AMD RISC processor (~1.2GHz  x86)
• 64MB of flash memory
• 128MB of RAM
• 4 USB 2.0 ports
• 16 bit audio
• 24 bit color with 1280x1024 graphics
• wireless connection

New Years Resolutions

1. Lose weight (obvious) - start running and staying at the gym longer while eating less.
2. Get Microsoft Certifications
3. Save more money for raining days.
4. Stop being lazy!!!!! Get up and do some work for god-sake.

Life Videopedia

5min - Life Videopedia - a really nice site for viral tutorials ranging on several subjects. I watched several on making sushi, and think I'm ready for it now. :)

Facebook Statistics

Some interesting statistics found on http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/01/02/2008-statistics-on-american-politics-on-facebook/

 

• 8% of the adults in the U.S. are on Facebook.
• 47% of the adults in Washington, DC are on Facebook.
• Of the American adults on Facebook, 40.9% call themselves liberal, 28.4% moderate, and 30.7% conservative.

 

It is always obvious to me, that most tech-savvy sites like Facebook, Digg, etc... are going to be over whelming liberal. Too bad a 8% sample is a very poor bias sample of the population of the U.S. in this case.