Category: Geeky

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Charged with mooching

You could do this virtually anywhere, and I’m guilty of doing this more than a few times. This might make you think twice. It helps to know the local laws, no matter what country you’re in.

A Vancouver, Wash. coffee shop tired of seeing a 20-year-old man mooch off their free wireless Internet access called the police, who charged him with “theft of services.”

Smith allegedly parked his truck in the parking lot to use Brewed Awakenings’ wireless access.

County deputies charged Smith with theft of services after returning to the parking lot after they told him to stop. The crime, which covers such crimes as bypassing a utility meter, stealing cable, and leaving a restaurant without paying, has been used in the past to prosecute hackers who have accessed a computer or network without paying for it. “It’s something that is borderline creepy,” Pranger said to KATU. [techweb]

If he could afford a laptop and a truck, then why couldn’t he handle going in for a coffee, juice, or even a muffin? I mean, come on. Everyone loves muffin!

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Hello, nurse

All of the sudden, Stephen Hawking[wiki] has been all over the news with not just theories about physics, but also the future of humanity. It has a lot of people talking, and rightfully so.

Hawking is not talking through his hat when he says the survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe, because there’s an increasing risk that humanity could be wiped out by a disaster. [indiatimes]

Stephen HawkingWhat I’m trying to sort out is his appearance at the String Theory conference in China[xinhuanet]. In a packed house of scientists, aka uber-geeks, was anyone paying attention when Hawking’s nurse was on stage?

I had a professor in college that told me numerous times that it pays to be a nerd some times. Of course, that professor was a female who preferred the comfort of fellow females, so I’m thinking this isn’t what she meant. However, I do beg to differ.

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The Bill Gates bomb just went off

Suddenly the richest man in the world wants to step down from his throne at Microsoft and the world erupts in a gasp. That might be overkill to say, but checking my RSS feeds yesterday and today, news of Bill Gates departure[googlenews] by 2008 was the headline all over the place.

Taking billions from his empire and applying his efforts towards his foundation is a very respectable move. I could say something about this being good for his company, but I won’t. It’s about time some one with influential power did something good for the world, and PC operating systems won’t solve those problems.

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The numbers have me

I have to give more credit to The Reverend for telling me about numbers stations[wiki] some months ago, but recently they have been moving from the airwaves to VoIP telephone numbers.

For decades, intelligence agencies have been sending secret messages to their agents in the field using shortwave numbers stations broadcasting encrypted messages for all to hear and puzzle over. Now someone is putting numbers stations on VoIP telephone numbers for anyone to call, and posting messages to Craigslist to alert the recipients to the existence of their messages. One of them went up last month and now a second one has appeared. Will there be a third? Who’s behind them? And can you crack the code? [slashdot]

They’re very strange to listen to, and this method of sending secret messages is as old as wireless communication has been in existance. I plan on using this as a topic in an upcoming episode of the podcast. You’ll be able to hear examples of numbers stations there.

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A Reason To Fly JetBlue?

In addition to having some of the lowest fares for flying, JetBlue[wiki] hopes that WiFi on their planes will make their airline even more appealing.

JetBlue Airways Corp. won a wireless license to offer high-speed Internet and other communications services on commercial aircraft in a U.S. Federal Communications Commission auction that ended on Friday. [reuters.com]

It seems like there are two types of people when it comes to JetBlue; those that think it’s the worst airline and those that think it’s one of the best. Their record doesn’t help them too much either, but this is a boost for those business travelers out there.

Among 19 carriers reporting to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, JetBlue had the lowest on-time arrival rates in January, according to the Department of Transportation’s Air Travel Consumer Report for that month. The popular upstart airline landed on schedule just 70.6 percent of the time. Hawaiian Airlines was best, with a rate of 95.9 percent, and other airlines arrived promptly 78.8 percent of the time.

The report is more bad news for JetBlue, which lost $42.4 million during the fourth quarter due to fuel costs, and it plans to raise fares to improve profits. But it did have one of the lowest rates of canceled flights, at 0.2 percent, which could be tied to its many delays. Other airlines would rather cancel a flight than hurt their arrival rates. [abcnews.com]

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Russia On the Download

Wired.com is running an article about Russian websites where you can download music in mp3 format at rock bottom prices. More so, the concern about it is coming from “U.S. trade and music industry officials” stating that continued operation of the site is a direct obstacle for Russia joining the WTO.

“The United States is seriously concerned about the growth of internet piracy on Russian websites such as AllofMP3.com … the world’s largest server-based pirate website,” Neena Moorjani, chief spokeswoman for the Office of the United States Trade Representative, said Friday.

“Russia’s legal framework for intellectual property rights protection must meet WTO requirements…. In that context, we continue to call on Russia to shut down websites that offer pirate music, software and films for downloading,” she said. [wired.com]

You would think that this would be about oil, or something more precious to daily survival, and not piracy of music. That’s all it takes to stop your country from being apart of the WTO club. I would imagine that the pressure from the U.S. government is heavily influenced by lobbyists for the music industry, working the playground method of a little bullying to keep them from hanging out with the rest of the cool kids. The argument makes sense for both parties, but I keep coming back to this feeling that the music industry needs to stop fighting this and start to undermine these things to take advantage of it in some way.

This also made me curous about another Russian download site, mp3search.ru. The site appears to still be up and running. I gave that a shot and experimentally dropped twenty bucks on the site to see what it had to offer. For the most part, it’s good source with some reservation, but this was just over a year ago that I last did anything with it The selection was still growing, and bit rates of the mp3’s averaged around 192k. However, sometimes you would download a bad rip of an album that had lots of gross errors in the audio. At nearly $.10 a song, you get what you pay for.

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28 Days Slater

28 Days SlaterHilarious! I watched so much Saved By The Bell[wiki] in my lifetime, including some of The College Years[wiki] and The New Class[wiki]. Can’t forget those middle school years with Ms. Bliss either.


28 Days Slater[teamtigerawesome] is freaking funny, I kid you not. They are up to episode three, and I hope they keep going all the way to twenty-eight. Even more creepy is that Rebecca just turned the TV on and Saved By The Bell is on right now. Too weird…

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Nike+iPod=Neat

I’m liking the Nike+iPod concept, even though there might be a better name for it, a lot. The more I hear about it, the more I find myself thinking how cool it would be to own such a device. Sure, it’s uber geeky overkill, but that makes me want it even more.

With a sensor in your shoe and a receiver on your iPod nano, your run takes on a whole new dimension. See the minutes tick by. Watch the miles unfold. Hear real-time feedback. All to your favorite music — including the one song that always gets you through the home stretch. [apple.com/ipod/nike]

The patent[hrmpf] for the product is pretty interesting. Essentially, the little thing you clip on your shoe not only updates information about how far or fast you are running, but your nano will play songs that match tempo to your running pace. I like this concept as sometimes when I’m heading into a burst of speed, something a little more kick ass is nice to have pumping through your ears, even when Bjork mysteriously pops up on the playlist you made for when you go running.

I do love my mini, and it does brilliantly when I go running around Vancouver. However, this would make me think about getting a nano, easy to scratch screen or not.

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10 Things I Hate About Commandments

I love the trend of remixing movie trailers to be completely different from what they were originally intended to be.  “10 Things I Hate About Commandments”[youtube] is just that.

“Ten Things I Hate About Commandments” is a mash-up trailer for a John Hughes style teen comedy, using footage from the Charlton Heston version of The Ten Commandments. It’s masterfully done, and milk-out-the-nose funny. [boingboing]

Priceless.