Curing Cancer? I don't think so.

Ahh, first post on Christmas day... I hear someone moving downstairs but I'm not going to look into it. It might be Santa.

I love this: A 1.2-Megaton Anti-Cancer Missile was unveiled recently and has been proven effective in destroying 100% of all cancer cells within a 35 mile radius. It has been tested vigorously and is guaranteed to completely and effectively wipe out cancer cells. Oh, and almost forgot to mention this little tidbit: "The only side-effects is that it also incinerates all life within a 35 mile radius." This actually caught my attention because, like so many other Americans recently, I flocked to the movie theaters recently to see a screening of "I am Legend," a movie about a dystopian future where a cancer "cure" created by bioengineering a virus mutated and became some sort of evil vampire/zombie creating virus that infects 99% of humans and turns a good bit of them into "nightwalkers," nightmarish things that hate sunlight and have some sort of mindset to kill anything they see that happens to move and isn't another one of them. *gasp* Sorry for the long sentence, but I just had to make the point that this movie isn't really anything new, its just the old being looked at from a different perspective (in this case, Will Smith's). The movie gets interesting when you find out that Will Smith, or should I say, "Robert Neville," is somehow a Colonel in the army and some sort of bioengineer at the same time. Of course, he does have his trusty dog Sam to keep him company in the otherwise desolate New York City where the only semblance of life are manikins which Robert enjoys talking to. The movie wasn't terrible, however: Set design was amazing (they somehow managed to clear out large sections of Manhattan and fill them with cars), and you actually become attached to the dog. It also is jacked up on suspense, terror, and zombie vampires, if you're into that sort of thing. Regardless, its worth seeing if you have spare time (you better be done with Christmas shopping by now). And no I'm not telling you the ending.

Holiday!

On behalf of myself, I'd like to wish everyone reading a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a great holiday season (if I missed your holiday). May your holiday season be filled with joy, happiness, and good food. So, eat up, sleep well, and take a load off... you deserve it.

Oh, I'll be cutting back on the posts until after New Years Day... I need my rest too.

Is "is" dead?

Facebook has now removed the “Is” part from the status messages.

Finally, Facebook has removed its annoying "is" from the status area in Facebook profiles. So instead of confining yourself to statuses like "Salem is not liking the rain right now" you can freely express your hatred towards unfrozen precipitation by saying "Salem hates rain." Nice job, Facebook. I commend you for this one step in the right direction. Now to change my profile...

" Flock - the browser for people who like to be connected. Get ready to meet your new favorite browser!"

Today I thought I'd introduce readers to the wonderful world of Flock, the self-proclaimed "social web browser." It seems as though the developers took Firefox, added on integration for popular sights such as Facebook and Youtube, and gave it a new name. The browser itself is great, featuring a nice RSS feed manager, blog post creator, user account management, and a lot more. It also tries to make browsing easier by including an "internet clipboard," which lets you copy more than one thing to your computer at a time. However, viewing the things on your clipboard becomes limited to a few thumbnails that can only be enlarged by reopening whatever it is you copied in its original location on its website. This gets frustrating. Your home page consists of a list of favorite websites, updates to your RSS feeds, and even your favorite media from flickr or youtube. The browser has a "media bar" that lets you browse through media from various media-hosting sights without leaving the current page.
The browser includes a large variety of search engines, with the ability to add more from various sites. Personally, I added a youtube, facebook, and blogger search engine. However, unlike firefox, typing a topic in the address box will not pull up the most relevant page (which I miss). Instead, it will search the topic in a yahoo search and display the results. I personally hate yahoo and think google is every way better than it, so this became rather irksome rather quickly.
Although they copy a lot from firefox and are likely to get sued for some reason or another, its not a bad browser. Not great, but worth trying out. Who knows... maybe one of you yahoo disciples out there will nominate the developers for some "software of the year"award.

With Friends Like These, Who Needs War?

It's been more than 60 years since the end of World War II, and this month a group of U.S. war veterans who served in the Pacific -- men now in their 80s -- took part in a historic battle with their Japanese counterpoints, in the shadow of Pearl Harbor.

When you look at it, most people fighting each other in the various would probably really like each other had they not been given guns and told to kill each other. Recently, World War II veterans that fought in Pearl Harbor, both Japanese and Americans, met in Pearl Harbor to view memorials, cemeteries, and to play softball. Although language barriers were a slight problem, everyone seemed to enjoy each other's company. None of them seemed to feel any anger towards each other; on the contrary, they seemed to agree that they found newfound friends in their old enemies. If people would do that more often, why would people want to fight? In my opinion, I think that wars are started because of lack of intercultural understanding and social collaboration, rather than political bargaining and government alliances.

Myspace Murder

The tragic story that began with a sick joke on the Internet is coming to a close as a Riverhead, New York, jury deliberates the fate of 53-year-old John White, on trial for killing a friend of his son.

There is no such thing as going unheard in today's society... a perfect (if not upsetting) example is this case, in which a boy, Aaron White, was threatened by another student, Daniel Cicciaro, after a friend of Aaron's sent a joke regarding rape to one of Daniel's friends through Myspace. Do not expect anything to be taken lightly online... simple text can never fully convey emotion like actual conversation can. In this case, it proved to be fatal: Daniel Cicciaro was killed by Aaron White's father (John White) after Daniel had threatened Aaron. The internet can be a scary place... lets try to cut back on our Myspace fatalities.

"Sorry, gents..."

Sorry everyone, no posts today... although I have two favors to ask anyone who's reading:
Number 1: I need a new title for this blog... the current one isn't as great as I'd like it to be.
and...
Number 2: If any readers could pass on information about this blog to friends, that would be great... my trafic rank isn't as high as I'd like it to be...
Thanks to all the readers.

Because it's great

I think it's illegal to not share stuff like this.

Online and Anonymous

Thanks in large part to the internet there are now tons ways to get hacked, infected, spammed, tagged, traced, keyed, and scammed on the internet. Luckily, there are also a bunch of ways to make internet a lot nicer. For free. No kidding.

Anonymizers
Your IP address is gold: its like your computer's social security number. So, you use things like proxies to do all the work for you: you simply send what you want to do to the proxy, it does it for you, and it relays all the information back to you without ever letting a website catch your IP adress. But you have to be careful: some proxies are set up by hackers and will extort personal information rather than protect it. To be safe, use Proxify. It has a great reputation and is perfect for people who are new to this sort of thing. If you know your IP address, set up a proxy and go to www.whatismyipaddress.com to make sure your proxy is working: if it doesn't display your IP address, then you're set. The only "side affect" is that websites may take a little longer to load. But if you're going to a questionable site, using a proxy is definitely worth it.

Email
There's nothing more annoying than finding a website that looks great and might be a little bit fishy and then have it ask for your email before you find out if the site is legit or not... Luckily there are ways to get around this. 2Prong is a nice site that automatically creates a new email account whenever you visit it and, given that you don't delete your browsing cookies, it will show any and all emails sent to the email address given to your new fake email. You can revisit an email account by going to http://2prong.com/[your fake email]. Its actually really simple and effective.
Another great site is Spambox, which creates a random email address and forwards any emails that it receives to your real email address. However, it comes in handy because if you start receiving spam, you can simply cancel your spambox account and kiss the spam goodbye. In addition, it also features a "timed delete" feature that lets you specify how long you would like your spambox account to remain active. This makes staying anonymous really simple.

Tor
Another great way to stay anonymous is through a simple program called (or formerly called) Torpark. It has since been renamed to xB Browser and now looks different but it's still the same program. Instead of sending requests directly to web pages, it instead channels them to a remote server which sends the requests through a random port. Then the information is sent to your computer, completely anonymous. The company that programmed xB Browser, called XeroBank, also offers a ton of other programs, most of which you have to pay a fee for. However, xB Browser works great, and will keep you safe.

Better than Radio? Slacker.com

"What do you get when you take the ex-CEOs of Musicmatch, Rio, and iRiver America and lock them in a room with a stack of data about the digital-music landscape?"

In the world of online radio (sights such as last.fm and Pandora are good examples) Slacker has really made a name for itself. Unlike Pandora, in which you create online playlists or "stations" based off of favorite artists or songs, you can simply browse through lists of playlists, create your own, or select a genre and view available songs. They also have lists like "Today's Top Hits" and "Slacker Spotlight" that showcase specific music, letting you stay in tune to whats new. Of course, you can create your own station, but you can also choose to make it more specific than Pandora's radio by selecting specific artists to include. Slacker also has a neat player download that plays MP3's, M3U's, and WMA formats and still provides all the functionality of the online player. Best yet: they have a portable device that updates with new music every time you walk into a wifi hotspot. That is amazing. It comes in 3 sizes: 15, 25, and 40 station capacities. My only complaint: I can't embed Slacker stations into this blog. Oh well, I'll live. Slacker, keep it up.

Another thing I like about New Jersey

"Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed into law a measure repealing New Jersey’s death penalty on Monday, making the state the first in a generation to abolish capital punishment."


Back Story With The Times’s Jeremy W. Peters

Well, its about time. The death penalty was finally repealed in New Jersey, which had been practiced since 1982, 6 years after the Supreme Court allowed the killing of prisoners legal. It took a little under 2 weeks for this bill to be signed by Gov. Jon S. Corzine. After reading my last post on this bill's progress, I hope you can tell that I am quite happy. I think I'm beginning to like New Jersey. According to the New York Times, the bill progressed at a rapid pace, moving to replace "state-endorsed killing" with life in prison with no chance of parole. While America has made steps towards reducing the death penalty, this is the first time it's been completely removed since it was declared constitutional. I really hated the idea that the government was essentially killing people to teach them not to kill... Hopefully the progress in New Jersey will help the rest of the country to follow suit.

Is Google the new Big Brother?

In a report Sunday, the Pew Internet and American Life Project said 47 percent of U.S. adult Internet users have looked for information about themselves through Google or another search engine.

Apparently more and more people are unexpectedly finding themselves turning up on popular search engines because of newspaper quotes, self-published websites (or blogs for that matter... i feel like such a hypocrite) or online communities. People should periodically do this because otherwise you have no idea what there is about you. Of course, there is a good chance that somewhere in the world there is another person with your exact same name, but there still is that chance that there is important information about you. There are websites out there with the sole purpose of collecting and sharing information on people, some of which can be malevolent (you have but to type "find social security numbers" in Google to come across a few bad ones). Just do yourself a favor and find out what's out there on the web with your name on it. In some ways this is a good thing: apparently more and more companies are hiring people with a strong online persona (according to the article on Yahoo), which may be a reason why people under the age of 50 were found more likely to actually search their names. Another interesting bit of information: contrary to popular belief, teens are more likely to limit public access of their Myspace or Facebook accounts than adults.
Final thoughts: let internet grow. Just don't forget to grow with it.

(P.S. Google is still a great search engine so don't let this stop you from using it.)

Game Review: Soldat

"Soldat is a unique side-view multiplayer action game. It takes the best from games like Liero, Worms, Quake and Counter-Strike and gives you fast action gameplay with tons of blood and flesh. Soldiers fight against each other on 2D battle arenas using a deadly military arsenal. This is what multiplayer was invented for."

There was a time when the definition of a "really good game" was a game that took years in the making, cost a decent bit of money, and was advertised until its final release was more of a national holiday *cough cough*. Now, however, you can find amazing, clever, and free (or pretty damn cheap) games that are highly praised by the people who have played them, few as they may be. Soldat is one of these games. Soldat (french for "Soldier") is an online, 2D multiplayer 3rd person shooter. Now we all know thats like saying "I took the most idiotic idea of a game and decided to market it," but before you stop reading altogether, I thought it would make you all feel better if an actual company rated this game. That being said, let me continue.

The game starts up and has you select an account (you can make more than 1 by paying $10 to "register the game"). Once thats done, you simply join a server or make your own (and yes you can also change game options too). The game looks like a cross-breed between Super Mario Brothers and Team Fortress 2. But the real beauty of the game is the fact that it gives you things you wouldn't expect in a 2D side-scroller shooter: jet-boots, flamethrowers, and invisibility are a few. There are the typical modes of gameplay: CTF, Deathmatch, and Team Deathmatch, but they also added a few new ones like Infiltration, in which one team has to successfully infiltrate an enemy's base and steal their flag (like a one-sided CTF). The game is rather violent: there are times in which I've seen my character's head fly around the map as I waited to respawn. It seems as though the whole 12-year-old "I like watching bloody stumps of flesh" mentality really shoved the game along. Also, my character will, on occasion, fly through the bottom of the map (and subsequentially die) as a result of an explosion, which gets aggravating. However, the addicting gameplay and almost limitless available maps (they hav a nice mapmaker) make up for the problems. Its worth getting. Seriously, go do it. Unless you're busy.

Oh and I don't personally like the game's trailer... I just put it there so everyone could at least see some gameplay.

With Regards to Vista

Regarding Vista...

Just as a warning: I wrote this to be my first in-depth review of anything this big. I'm not here to bash the daylights out of Vista, just to point out where it can become annoying. Its not a bad operating system, it could just use some work. Or a nice big update.

I bought my laptop this over 6 months ago
and was rather pleased to say that it had Vista pre-installed (as
opposed to "Vista Ready!" or "Free Upgrade to Vista!"). So, I took it
home, booted it, went back to the store, reminded the geniuses at Best
Buy that computers were typically packaged with power cords, and
returned home.


Upon booting it, everything was like a breath
of fresh air covered in some sort of shiny gloss. Everything looked
great and visually, it impressed me. Then I installed my stuff onto it
(Firefox, Pidgin, and an assortment of games) and THAT is when I
noticed Vista's "advanced security features" which basically boil down
to asking if it can do pretty much everything from running a program to
changing your wallpaper. I finally got mad enough to shut off the
"Advanced Security Features" and continued to install my old programs.
Contrary to popular belief, old programs DO in fact work on Vista:
however, the computer will occasionally block the program from
accessing important files and asks you to "run it as an Administrator."
Then, because you see it on all the Vista adds, I tried the whole
"Aero" thing that lets you do cool stuff like flip through windows in
3D. Its great, but rather useless especially on slow computers that
enjoy taking their time flipping through each and every window.


Another new feature to Vista were its ReadyBoost technology, which
allows you to plug in a flash drive and use it to boost the amount of
system resources your computer has available. This became an immediate
waste of hard drive space as most of the cheap flash drives the average
person buys "don't meet the minimum requirements needed to run it as a
ReadyBoost Drive," namely speed. While I'm ranting, I might as well add
that Vista will try to "scan for errors" whenever you plug in a
portable storage device like an iPod or a flashdrive. Being the naive
idiot that I am, I immediately plugged in my flash drive and had it
"scanned and fixed," at which point I was told that my flash drive had
no problems. And then it told me that it would not work with my
computer and that I had to buy a new one. *sigh*



An annoyance that became increasingly... well,
annoying was the fact that every network you ever connect to is saved
under the "Connect to a network" screen. For instance, say you have a
laptop and walk into a Starbucks. You immediately get an icon on the
taskbar of your computer saying "Networks have been found" and you
click it to select a network. So then, a window pops up showing you a
huge myriad of networks, some which you happened to connect to as you
parked in front of a Barnes and Noble in the middle of nowhere, and
Windows leaves it to you to sort through the networks and pick the one
you want to connect to. This tends to get annoying.


The last feature that was supposed to "enhance my user
experience" was the Bitlocker Drive Encryption, which apparently is
used to encrypt your ENTIRE HARD DRIVE. Everyone was just fine
encrypting important files and letting everything else be, but
Microsoft had to go the extra mile and make a program to encrypt everything.
After encrypting, i noticed a large drop in speed (which really hurts
since Vista is slower than XP in the first place) because everything
had to be decrypted before I could use it. The only reason I can see
someone using this is if they work for a monstrously important business (say, oh... the CIA) or tend to connect to remote networks from their
laptop. However, seeing as laptops are generally slower than PC's,
sacrificing performance for security might not be admirable.

Overall, Vista isn't bad. Not great, but not as terrible as, say,
Hitler. It looks great, organizes your files easily, and includes a DVD
maker (finally) as well as a better Microsoft Paint (that can actually save .jpg pictures) and a screenshot-taking program called the Microsoft Snipping Tool. Though I can't
compliment every aspect of it (as all things are bound to have
problems) I can say that it does its job, and it looks rather pretty.

Cat Alarm Clock

Is your cat like this?

*sigh* and the word of the year is...

One of these words is not like the others:

• democracy
• blog
• truthiness
• integrity
• w00t

Top to bottom, those were Merriam-Webster’s words of the year from 2003 to 2007.

As society progresses, so does its language. This is quite apparent from Merriam-Webster's word of the year: w00t. Evolved from the modern gaming community's phrase "we owned the other team," w00t is used to express joy or pleasure, particularly after a victory or completion of a difficult task. Sadly, Merriam-Webster Online didn't have an entry for their word of the year which left me feeling a bit angry. So, I instead linked the picture (over there ==>) to its Wictionary page. *sigh* Yes its on Urban Dictionary. So for all you die-hard nerds out there who think that the Earth may finally be on the verge of a cultural breakthrough, congratulations. For everyone else, I can't wait to see next year's.

Oh, almost forgot... last year's runner up was google.

Zero Punctuation

This week on Zero Punctuation, Yahtzee gaily shreds Guitar Hero III.

Zero Punctuation, written by Ben Croshaw, aka "Yahtzee," is one of the most hilarious game reviewers I've had the pleasure of listening to. Ever. He is to the point, has a cool hat, and never lets anything pass without a large helping of destructive criticism (with the exception of Portal, reviewed in The Orange Box). Accompanied by a still-frame video, he has tortured a good dozen games to the point of submission, including The Orange Box, Bioshock, and of course, Halo 3. He also creates rather addicting adventure games (I posted about his "Art of Theft" yesterday) and works for the Escapist magazine. He started out reviewing games on youtube and running his own website (full of comics, articles, and his blog) but apparently was spotted by the Escapist and hired to do editorials. He also has his own website, lives in Australia, and enjoys making fun of people. Watch his reviews... its worth it.

CD: Amon Tobin

"Much better than I expected. No where near as jazzy as his older albums, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. One of the year's best releases so far!"

"Not Tobin's most accessible album but a real grower. Beautiful stuff."



Amon Tobin – Always
Amon Tobin – The Killer's Vanilla
Amon Tobin – Foley Room
Amon Tobin – At the End of the Day

Recently I started listening to "Foley Room" by Amon Tobin and I must say... its definitely something new. At first it seems almost hard to listen to, but if you sit with it and play it from the beginning to the end you hear things that really open up your ears to new sounds. His music is like a mix between electronica and grindcore... like techno and tabasco sauce. At the End of the Day is by far my favorite... it has a great underlying string melody with a great beat... its nice walking music. I included embedded samples of my favorite tracks... last.fm provided me with the html and the reviews (its worth checking that site out).
The album is great: its something new, its a work of art, and although its a bit hard to get into, it'll be on my iPod for a LONG while. (buy it from iTunes here)
8/10

No death in NJ: Almost there

"The New Jersey Senate voted Monday to make the state the first in the country to repeal the death penalty since 1976, when the United States Supreme Court set guidelines for the nation’s current system of capital punishment."

It would seam as though the "Capital/Corporal Punishment" debate is making some headway here in the states... they finally are thinking about dropping the whole "I'm killing you to teach you not to kill people" method of punishment for one that doesn't involve... well, killing people. I say, if they did something that bad, they can die in their own good time in jail if that is deemed the only alternative. New Jersey senator Raymond J. Lesniak, sponsor of the bill, presented it to the New Jersey senate yesterday, where it received the bare minimum number of votes (21 to 16) to pass. 3 senators apparently did not vote. Personally, I'm crossing my fingers.

art of theft: addicting download

"The Escapist is pleased to present The Art of Theft, the latest game from Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw."

There is something highly addicting in 2D action/adventure games infused with wit, skill, and a really cool umbrella. The newest game by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, editor for The Escapist and creator of the amazing "Zero Punctuation" reviews, features Trilby, a professional thief, who must sneak, rob, and electrocute his way through a whole myriad of levels in an ultimate attempt to steal from rich people, and along the way, escape from "The Company." The game play is rather simple: sneak around and steal various objects, hide from guards and cameras in the shadows, and return back to your entry point. You achieve extra skills by triggering fewer alarms, zapping fewer guards, and earning more money per heist. The plot line is great too and keeps you wanting to play the levels (no, i'm not going to tell you what the plot line is. go download the game yourself.) My only complaint about the game, because I can be a stupid git about these games, is that choosing upgrades becomes annoying. Some upgrades make certain levels monstrously easy, while others aren't even used for a good bit of time. This isn't a bad thing, just a little annoyance. However, this barely detracts from the game play at all, so if you like, you can forget I even said that. For being a damn good game, I'm giving it a
9/10

free music the legal way

"Over 1,000,000 songs and videos to play on your computer and mp3 player"

there is finally a way (for all you who didn't already know) to get free legal music downloaded to your computer or mp3 player. spiralfrog allows its users to download as many songs as they want for free, paying for them with advertisements. they have a decent collection of both videos and audio, so almost any song you can think of is represented on their site. however, all their songs are downloaded and saved as encrypted .wma's, which simply means that they do not work on iPods. Also, they completely leave out any "download entire album now" feature, meaning that if you want to download an album, you have to sit there and click through a few pages and make sure everything is working before you can leave. This site has the makings of the next youtube-grade craze, but with these bugs (I happen to own an iPod) I can only fairly give it a
6/10

in rainbows

"The download area that is 'In Rainbows' will be shutting its doors on the 10th December 2007."


Radiohead's "in rainbows," which was released a while ago, is closing up its online download center tomorrow after making huge profits from its "name your own price" system. its an amazing album in my oppinion, and is worth getting now before it's taken down. they're still planning on selling their disk boxes on w.a.s.t.e. until all are sold. sadly, no plans have been made to produce any more copies.

for the time being, anyone who wishes to buy the cd from a store need only wait a few weeks: december 31st 2007 marks its release in traditional outlets.
I'm going to start rating things I review in my blog. After sitting down, closing my eyes, and playing the CD on my laptop (for better sound quality, of course), I have to say but this: their music is new, different, and really amazing. They don't stick to the classic "she dumped me i'm going to write a song about it" garbage and instead start the CD off with a piece done entirely in a 5/4 beat. While their vocalist may be hard to understand at times, the CD tries something new, not only in the way it sounds, but by the way it's sold.
Congrats, Radiohead: its my first review ever and you've hit up at a smooth
9/10

internet

"A cyber attack reported last week by one of the federal government’s nuclear weapons laboratories may have originated in China, according to a memorandum."


the internet is the new bullet in today's society, seeing as every year more and more cyber attacks occur and how cyber-terrorism seems more like a joke now, but if an attack such as the one mentioned today would manage to invade a nuclear weapons laboratory, one can only wonder what would happen.

Startling

bar none XKCD is one of the best web comics there is. albeit a bit nerdy, it makes sense and has people thinking
"wow. thats so true"
(click on the picture to see the full comic)

check out a random comic

Hello world

my first blog post... rather exhilarating. this blog is dedicated entirely to little things that don't really get noticed by the general public or by the uninterested... things like XKCD or Spiralfrog that could make each day a little bit more fun. So read often... I'll keep you posted.