Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Boring

Well, I went to sleep pretty early last nite. About 9pm or so. So, only naturally, all nite long I kept waking up for stupid reasons such as: it's too hot, I haven't changed sides in 5 minutes and so on. Close to 5am or so, I was exhausted from having stayed up most of the nite because of stupid reasons, so I really fell asleep.

This means that in the morning, I was late for work. Of course. No surprise there. Just one of those givens in life. Taxes, blah blah and being late for work. It's all just so.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Skinny London House on Sale for $933,000 - Yahoo! News

Skinny London House on Sale for $933,000:
LONDON - This thin house requires a bankroll that's fairly fat. A home in London that measures just over 5 feet at its skinniest and 9 feet, 11 inches at its widest is up for sale for $933,868, estate agents said Tuesday.

The narrow home is spread over five levels and used to be a hat shop before being converted into living quarters.


Now that's a cool house. The price is a little steep but since this is in the area where a lot of media professionals buy, it should be easy to afford for most people interested in buying a house there. :)

My Opera Community

http://my.opera.com/community/party/

Sounds Fun. :)

Monday, August 29, 2005

WinFS 101: Introducing the New Windows File System

Release news at: http://blogs.msdn.com/winfs/

WinFS explanation at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwinfs/html/winfs03112004.asp

WinFS 101: Introducing the New Windows File System


Well, so then the WinFS is out.... today.... in beta.... so.... good.... then.

Friday, August 26, 2005

'Men cleverer than women' claim

From BBC NEWS Education 'Men cleverer than women' claim

A study to be published later this year in the British Journal of Psychology says that men are on average five points ahead on IQ tests.
<snip>
There were twice as many men with IQ scores of 125, for example, a level said to correspond with people getting first-class degrees.
<snip>
At scores of 155, associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman.


Well, she is just smart enough to know how to control him. :)

You see, one doesn't have to have all the knowledge stored in their brain all the time. You can however know how to locate useful information quickly. With the Internet becoming more ubiquitous, it is better to know how to locate needed information faster. Similarly, other sources of information are more readily available today.

Thus it's better to not _be_ the encyclopedia but to know how to use it best for your purpose.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Google Talk

Google Talk

Ah, the Google Talk. It's the IM from Google. Works over existing open-source IM protocols and can work with multiple existing clients.

Currently works with,
  • Google Talk
  • Adium
  • GAIM
  • iChat
  • Miranda
  • Psi
  • Trillian Pro


  • Been using it all day. Didn't miss Yahoo messenger. Yahoo is good at what it does. But it's cluttered with the Radio, news, weather stuff, games, and so on. Google Talk is a simple client - to the point. Allows simple one click access to Gmail Inbox and allows emailing contacts with one click.

    I'm pretty much thinking about moving to this client exclusively. :)

    Tuesday, August 16, 2005

    Sky News : iPod Licensing Lapse Lets In Microsoft

    Sky News : iPod Licensing Lapse Lets In Microsoft

    Computer firm Apple may have to pay Microsoft £6 for each iPod it sells after a huge licensing lapse.

    Lawyers at Bill Gates' firm filed a patent for technology behind the hugely successful digital music player two months before Apple.


    The US Patent Office has ruled that Microsoft has the right to charge competitors a licence fee for each iPod sold.


    Brilliant, just brilliant!

    Friday, August 12, 2005

    What a bunch of losers!

    Quote:

    Anonymous said...
    Feeling lonely? Hook up with Real Singles now for $4.99 to connect, and only $0.99 a min. A true match is only a phone call away. Give it a try 1-800-211-9293.

    8:20 AM


    This is a comment someone left on my blog at: http://broccoli-guy.blogspot.com/2005/08/cnncom-career-workplace-gender-gap.html. As if it wasn't enough that these morons are spamming the email inboxes of thousands and millions of users. Now the idiots will start spamming people's blogs. It's because of scums of the earth like these that people will force all anonymous communication to be banned eventually.

    I will be changing my blog to only allow registered users to comment. I would have liked to get comments from anyone but hey whatever!

    Thursday, August 11, 2005

    BWired News: Furniture Causes FedEx Fits

    Wired News: Furniture Causes FedEx Fits

    Great minds think of how to sue anyone for any reason. Well, good going!

    Most of us have been there. You can just barely afford to pay the rent. But forget about buying furniture -- not if you want to eat, anyway.

    Jose Avila recently found himself in just that predicament. Although he has a good job as a software developer, he's locked into two rents after moving to Arizona, and has no extra cash for an Ikea shopping spree. But instead of scouting street corners for a ratty, unwanted couch, Avila got creative and built an apartment full of surprisingly sturdy furniture -- out of FedEx shipping boxes.

    Fanciful as his creations may seem, FedEx is not amused. The shipping giant's lawyers have sent Avila letters demanding he take down the site he created to document his project, invoking, among other things, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (.pdf), or DMCA.

    Avila has outfitted his entire apartment with FedEx box designs, including a bed, a corner desk with wall shelves, a table, two chairs and a couch. Drawing from architecture and drafting classes he took in college, Avila has designed pieces that are surprisingly un-boxy.

    He was blindsided by the cease-and-desist letter from the company to which he proclaims long-standing loyalty.

    "I was surprised, actually," Avila said. "One thing I’ve always stood behind is I'm pro-FedEx. I ship stuff with FedEx all that time and I feel more comfortable shipping with FedEx because their boxes are stable and sturdy."


    Quote from the link.

    Sunday, August 07, 2005

    Top 10 dot-com flops - CNET.com

    Top 10 dot-com flops - CNET.com

    Well, the bubble burst and it left a big mark on the IT history of the world. More on the United States economy than anything else. But nonetheless the world learns its lesson from this. Or I hope so.

    Tuesday, August 02, 2005

    BitTorrent moving uptown - Yahoo! News

    If I don't copy the whole article, it will disappear off of Yahoo in a couple of weeks. :)


    BitTorrent moving uptown - Yahoo! News: "Bram Cohen arrives in San Francisco's Mission District, his hair disheveled, his face stubbled with a day's growth of beard and his black BitTorrent T-shirt proclaiming him for what he is -- the poster boy for a popular and disruptive Internet file-swapping technology.
    ADVERTISEMENT

    Time was, guys like this would be found hunched over a computer keyboard in a distant Baltic republic, working anonymously for some offshore corporation.
    But now that the Supreme Court has clarified the do's and don'ts of file-sharing, the creator of BitTorrent -- which allows video and other large files to be quickly downloaded -- has no reason to hide. Indeed, Cohen, 29, recently relocated from Seattle to San Francisco, and he and his chief operating officer are making the rounds on Sand Hill Road looking for venture capital for their new company, BitTorrent. They've forged a partnership with paid-search provider Ask Jeeves, and recently the duo flew to Burbank for high-level talks with the Motion Picture Association of America.
    BitTorrent already has struck deals with video game publishers to distribute games with its technology.
    Cohen's bid to commercialize BitTorrent is a measure of how far the entertainment industry has come since the late 1990s, when Napster introduced millions of people to the power of peer-to-peer technology for downloading songs -- and mobilized scores of lawyers to shut it down.
    The recording industry continues its legal campaign to crush the once-wildly popular Australian-based Kazaa file-sharing service. But the studios are now moving to embrace BitTorrent technology -- which gracefully and cheaply distributes giant files -- even as they sue those who use it to trade bootlegged movies, TV shows or video games.
    ``We have no aversion to peer-to-peer techn"