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Charlie Brooker [Jan. 29th, 2010|10:37 am]
Charlie Brooker explains how to report the news.


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This Made Me lol [Jan. 25th, 2010|05:30 pm]
[info]bialogue:

Please be aware that [info]cyrus_of_persia has a hatred of bisexual/fluid/pansexual people and follows us around Livejournal trying to get any topics we post deleted and our Id Banned.

This posting is an invitation to any of the members of this community that may be interested in joining an International LGBT Academic and Research list. Unlike [info]cyrus_of_persia the list specifically does not discriminate and in fact is hoping to attract a diverse group of people from a wide variety of disciplines, countries and backgrounds.

In particular the group is hoping to attract those from undeserved communities whose voices are sometimes overlooked in international discourse, the Islamic Community sadly currently being among those in some settings.

If you have any further questions or comment, please do not hesitate to ask. However we will simply delete any of the usual flaming and hate speech.

I guess I have a hatred for bisexual/fluid/pansexual people? Should I even bother?
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Excerpt from an IRC chat [Jan. 13th, 2010|05:43 pm]
I was talking with someone about the telephone industry and The Bell System earlier on an IRC channel. I really like this guy:

(Him) deregulation
(Me) One would think that in America, that would rub shoulders with anti-trust legislation
(Me) lol "rub shoulders" Who the fuck says that?
(Me) Ugh...I hate people who speak metaphorically.
(Me) hate them so much
(Him) should speak ancedotally instead.
(Me) They should just confine themselves to Starbuck's where they can talk all the garbage they want.
(Me) hahaha
(Him) express yourself thru short story and interrpeteive dance.
(Me) That would go well for the IT industry
(Him) yea, i suppose youre right. too many intraverts.
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Wiretaps [Dec. 3rd, 2009|09:29 am]
[Current Mood | pissed off]

Usually when I hear about government supported wiretapping, I tend to roll my eyes and think "Okay, it's business as usual for the government." But based on what I read on cryptome.org last night, I grew concerned. The story was linked to a blog belonging to Christopher Soghoian, a privacy analyst. In it, one finds:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

That's roughly eleven months, and yet Sprint Nextel provided customer information to the government over 8 million times.

Verizon is in on it too.

"First, Verizon revealed in its letter that it 'receives tens of thousands of requests for customer records, or other customer information from law enforcement'...Assuming a conservative estimate of 20,000 requests per year, Verizon alone receives more requests from law enforcement per year than can be explained by any published surveillance statistics. That doesn't mean the published stats are necessarily incorrect -- merely that most types of surveillance are not reported."

Being that these telcos received hundreds of subpoenas per day, what are the odds that a phony subpoena (sent by say...a jealous stalker) might be submitted to one of these organizations? Further, suppose one of these phony subpoenas slip through the cracks and begins to reveal personal information about a subscriber?

Even so, this is a disaster for privacy rights.

I guess that amounts to nothing in spite of government immunity for telecoms involved with illegal wiretapping.
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dB [Nov. 17th, 2009|09:48 pm]
Some of the stuff I studied for the test was difficult. Granted, it doesn't take a Carl Sagan to figure some of this stuff out, but enter the decibel (dB).

The formula for computing it is such:

dB = 10 log (power ratio)
dB = 20 log (voltage ratio)

Amplitude is also given in:

LdB = 10 log 10 (A21 / A20) = 20 log 10 (A1 / A0).
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Verizon Building [Nov. 9th, 2009|02:11 pm]
I took a stroll around South Philadelphia today, and noticed the Verizon Building off Broad Street. I took some pictures. Too bad I didn't have my camera with me, so I had to use the cell phone camera. I was curious, because I didn't know what the red device (in the picture) with the dangling coaxial cable was. What is this?

Photobucket

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Google is Funny [Nov. 6th, 2009|10:24 am]
[Current Mood | giddy]

This made me lol

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Philly [Oct. 25th, 2009|10:50 pm]
I'm moving to Philadelphia.
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House [Oct. 20th, 2009|10:43 pm]
I was telling some of my friends that any show with the word "house" in its title sucks. For example:

1) Full House
2) House, M.D.
3) This Old House
4) Tyler Perry's House of Payne (not totally though - there are pockets of funny in it)
5) Little House on the Prairie (perhaps past my time)
6) Desperate Housewives

The list goes on...
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Went To The Mall Today [Oct. 12th, 2009|10:31 pm]
I went to the mall today in order to meet a friend, since we made plans to go shopping together. Unfortunately, I was running low on battery power on my cell phone, so I couldn't make a call to him. I was waiting and getting impatient.

Rather than sit around waiting, I decided to give him a call. I didn't want to use a payphone and pay $2.00/minute just to call a cell phone, so I went to a large retail store and used their in-store phone used to contact the billing office. Without going into too many details, let's just say I managed to op-divert and was able to contact my friend through the in-store phone belonging to this large retail store. It turns out that he was still at work and couldn't meet me.

Anyway, I managed to pay off my Macy's card! ^__^
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7-11 [Oct. 4th, 2009|11:28 am]
7-11 Rules
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Scalia: 'We Are Devoting Too Many of Our Best Minds to’ Lawyering' [Oct. 2nd, 2009|10:49 am]
Maybe this is the first time I agree with Justice Scalia. He made a few jabs at the quality of lawyers.

Well, you know, two chiefs ago, Chief Justice Burger, used to complain about the low quality of counsel. I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise.

I mean there’d be a, you know, a defense or public defender from Podunk, you know, and this woman is really brilliant, you know. Why isn’t she out inventing the automobile or, you know, doing something productive for this society?

I mean lawyers, after all, don’t produce anything. They enable other people to produce and to go on with their lives efficiently and in an atmosphere of freedom. That’s important, but it doesn’t put food on the table and there have to be other people who are doing that. And I worry that we are devoting too many of our very best minds to this enterprise.

And they appear here in the Court, I mean, even the ones who will only argue here once and will never come again. I’m usually impressed with how good they are. Sometimes you get one who’s not so good. But, no, by and large I don’t have any complaint about the quality of counsel, except maybe we’re wasting some of our best minds.

Interesting. True, they certainly don't produce anything.
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Wi-Fi [Oct. 1st, 2009|12:04 pm]
I suggest that Starbucks should rethink its Wi-Fi usage policy for its customers, given that Borders is now offering it completely free. For instance, at Starbucks, one has to jump through several hoops in order to get on the web.

Also, read the Starbucks FAQ section on how to get internet access at their locations.

What do I need to get online?
To get your AT&T Wi-Fi account, you simply need a Starbucks Card that you have used in the last 30 days, and agree to receive up to four emails per year from AT&T [- my underline]. As long as you continue to use your card at least once a month (make a purchase or load a balance) you’ll continue to enjoy up to 2 hours per day of complimentary Wi-Fi access in any U.S. Starbucks store which offers Wi-Fi.

Why do I need two accounts?
After completing this special signup process, you will have both an AT&T Wi-Fi account and a Starbucks.com account. We’ll try to make these accounts as similar as possible, and will only ask you for information one time. You will enjoy all the benefits of having a registered Starbucks Card and starbucks.com account, including balance protection and other great rewards – see starbucks.com/card for more details. The AT&T account you create will be used to access Wi-Fi in our stores. You’ll be able to manage this account with AT&T separately, if you choose.

Suck on my tall grande, Starbucks and your shitty demographic. I'm going to Borders for WiFi.
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FreeBSD [Sep. 29th, 2009|03:11 pm]
This is so cool. Now I can look up man pages through the web without opening up the terminal. It has man pages for other Unixes too (Unices? - I don't care).
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Ubuntu [Sep. 17th, 2009|01:03 pm]
I think I might switch over from Fedora to Ubuntu. Judging from the next release on October 29th, Ubuntu claims to support it until April 2011. You don't get that kind of support with Fedora. When a new release comes out there's no longer any support: The plug is simply pulled.
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Video Editing [Sep. 16th, 2009|01:35 pm]
[Current Mood | amused]

And the Livejournal video music award goes to..............[info]rob_t_firefly whose edit of Kanye West's stunt at the VMA is as follows:



Gosh Kanye is a major egotistical douche.
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[info]anti_feminism [Sep. 5th, 2009|06:55 pm]
I'm getting so tired of all of the bickering in [info]anti_feminism. Is there any other way of taking one's anger at feminist theory and using it in a more 'constructive' manner?

I've seen some of the posts in there. They make me blush.
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Red Light Cams [Sep. 1st, 2009|12:41 pm]
Here's another reason why I don't want to travel to Newark: Red Light Cameras.

Check this out too:

In Newark, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., a company based in Phoenix, will spend $100,000 to $150,000 per intersection to install the cameras, and then will receive $34 of each ticket paid. The state will keep some of the money from the ticket, and the rest will go to the municipal courts and the city, Nata [Newark's Traffic and Signals mgr.] said.

I would go on about the ineffectiveness of the timing mechanism/calibration behind Robocop photo-enforcement, but then I'd start to sound deranged. I don't trust computers in situations such as this.

Lame.
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Tone Generator for Sale [Aug. 21st, 2009|12:18 am]
I'm selling my old tone generator. It's a TraceTone model: It comes with a set of RJ-11 alligator clips (not shown in the pics). $25 and it's yours.

This device was useful, though. It's fun for games such as "guess that line". hehehehe

TraceTone 1

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Fallacy of Composition [Aug. 9th, 2009|10:23 pm]
[Current Mood | blah]

I think the fallacy of composition has reared its ugly head into cyberspace. The fallacy of composition is, writ largely, subsumed under the heading “Fallacy of Distribution”. This type of fallacy is more so inductive. That is, based on a few instances of x, one might conclude that x is true of all instances.

To give an example or two:

(1) I have met two men inside this crowded room so far. They are both Republican. Therefore, all men inside this crowded room are Republican.

(2) I have only been in this town for one hour. Twice I’ve been greeted by Jehovah’s Witnesses. It follows that everyone in this town is a Jehovah’s Witness.

Online social networks, I would say, are guilty of promoting this, since some preselect ideal candidates for someone’s friendship, based on a few scant characteristics of a user’s personality. That is, since two-thirds of Facebook users on Marco’s friends-list are Christian, it follows that everyone on his friends-list may be interested in purchasing a Bible.

And, yes, it even goes on LiveJournal.

Another example:

Jones and Robinson are on Smith’s friends-list. Jones and Robinson are smart. Thus, everyone on Smith’s friends-list is smart.

It’s kind of cute watching people on LiveJournal act like this. I would even say it’s absurd of online social networking in general, since it fails to take into account individual instances which aren’t necessarily indicative of the whole.
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