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..:: Tables vs CSS Challenge - Round 1
I am one of the many coders who subscribe to the idea that web applications are best made through a nice balance of CSS and Tables. Whenever I hear someone touting a tableless CSS design, I cringe. This is the first in a many part series to prove that tableless CSS is simply fanboyish zealotry, if not completely moronic.
5 Comments, 294 Referrals since Thursday, 3 January '08 - 2:48:36 PM -0500
..:: Latin Phrases Everyone Should Know
Just a few things I thought were interesting
0 Comments, 52 Referrals since Thursday, 15 November '07 - 2:04:10 PM -0500
..:: MPAA Sues Kanye West and and 50 Cent for Intellectual Property Infringement
The Meat Producers Association of American has filed suit against rapper extraordinaire Curtis James Jackson, "50 Cent", and hip-hop mogul, Kanye West in an Oklahoma federal court on Friday, alleging misappropriation of trademarks, copyright infringement, invasion of privacy, and possibly patent infringement.
2 Comments, 264 Referrals since Sunday, 12 August '07 - 4:21:15 PM -0400
..:: Convertible and Tablet Notebooks Suck
I am constantly explaining this to people, and I'm keeping a running list (really, I just got tired to typing this entire thing out whenever someone on the gentoo forums said they wanted to get a tablet). I had an Averatec C3500 from about Feb. 2005 to Aug. 2007 and I have come to the inescapable conclusion: tablet notebooks and convertibles suck. And before you accuse me of judging all convertibles/tablets based on my 2 year experience with a single laptop, I can tell you that I've dealt a fa...
1 Comments, 231 Referrals since Sunday, 5 August '07 - 10:21:41 AM -0400
..:: A True Testament to Open Source
I often get a lot of people asking me why I defend open source. My dad doesn't understand how it gets done. But, as a testament to the power of open source, compare the open source compositing manager, Beryl, to Microsoft's closed source version, Aero.
0 Comments, 27 Referrals since Friday, 13 July '07 - 7:58:07 PM -0400
..:: Neo 1973 Promotional Videos
The Neo 1973 first generation is out. I'm currently waiting for Gen2 to come out so I can get it with the WiFi hardware, but I was looking for some reviews when I stumbled onto some promotional parody videos. If you didn't know, the Neo is the first phone ever to be completely open (it actually comes with an SDK). There are a bunch of videos, some funnier than others, but I've included a few of the better ones.
0 Comments, 116 Referrals since Friday, 13 July '07 - 7:44:34 PM -0400
..:: Joost Beta Reviewed
Today, my Joost Beta application was accepted. So, I went over to their installation page from the link in the email, with an open mind. I was excited. On paper, Joost looks like it may revolutionize the way we view media content. It's essentially a bittorrent client on a closed bittorrent network with a video player and interface built on top. Before I start, note that I am completely unaffiliated with Joost. I am just a regular computer geek exploring some cutting edge media software. N...
1 Comments, 1353 Referrals since Thursday, 5 April '07 - 10:27:11 PM -0400
..:: Dell Charges You 70 Dollars To Have No OS
Dell recently responded to the call of the Linux community by offering pre-installed Linux desktops. However, I'll show this was a joke by examining two different offerings: Buying FreeDOS uninstalled costs $70 more than getting Windows pre-installed. Buying Redhat pre-installed costs $100+ more than getting Windows pre-installed.
2 Comments, 870 Referrals since Saturday, 31 March '07 - 5:19:33 PM -0400
..:: The Current State of the US Patent System: Linked Lists Patented April 11, 2006
Various players in the industry disagree over whether software patents should be granted. Every now and then, a software patent is granted that is just so unbelievably ridiculous that it's not worth the paper that it's printed on. Linked lists are a common data structure, learned in every basic computer programming data structures class across the nation. So when the USPTO granted the patent for linked lists, the programming community was shocked.
0 Comments, 14 Referrals since Tuesday, 20 March '07 - 6:27:05 AM -0400
..:: The Seven Rules of Trade Practice for Web Publishing
Every now and then, someone who has no idea how the Internet works comes along and files a lawsuit at one of the backbones of the internet that would set horrible precedent. The latest debacle is the woman who sued Archive.org, one of the top mirroring sites. The fact that she knows how to install a basic web publishing program neither makes her an authority on the internet, nor an expert web publisher. Apparently, Mrs. Suzanne Shell has no idea how the internet works. Please note that thi...
1 Comments, 492 Referrals since Monday, 19 March '07 - 2:25:09 AM -0400
..:: Why Internet Radio is in the Emergency Room
If you've been reading up on your news aggregator, you've noticed that internet radio costs skyrocketed. What you may have wondered is why? I've thrown together a few theories as towards why. Essentially, it all comes down to various corporations lobbying politicians with hidden motives to stomping out fair use, anti-piracy, and anti-competition.
30 Comments, 11866 Referrals since Monday, 5 March '07 - 8:36:16 PM -0500
..:: The Myth of Secure WiFi
Every week, there's another article on digg explaining how to either hack a wireless router, or secure a wireless router, or some story of some guy bragging about the wireless router he just hacked. The purpose of this article is to outline how easy it is to hack onto a wireless network, and the most effective ways to protect against it. I'm not going to give a line by line description of how to use some of the networking tools, but I will explain what can be used. Note that in many jurisdict...
1 Comments, 1255 Referrals since Thursday, 22 February '07 - 6:59:07 PM -0500
..:: An In Depth Look: DRM is About Far More Than Piracy
DRM isn't about piracy at all. Multiple ars technica articles have discussed this to no uncertain end. I once attended a DRM negotiation where an MPAA vice-president said, "Watching a show that's being received in one room while you're sitting in another room has value, and if it has value, we should be able to charge money for it." Siva Vaidhyanathan calls this the "if value, then right" theory -- if something has value, someone must have a right to sell it. So while you might be accustomed...
2 Comments, 43 Referrals since Saturday, 10 February '07 - 8:59:54 PM -0500
..:: Exploit: T-Mobile Gives Free Wi-Fi to Everyone
This guide is not to meant to be used in cheating anyone or stealing anything. It is specifically for programmers and security consultants to know about exploits that may be encountered on their systems. By reading or attempting this exploit, you agree to hold yourself completely liable for your actions. Actually performing this exploit for any gain whatsoever is probably illegal, but this exploit is all over the web. It is very important that admins don't rely on something so easily spoofed...
0 Comments, 7 Referrals since Friday, 9 February '07 - 7:39:07 PM -0500
..:: Supercooled Liquids
Want a new party trick? And now done with water... This is called supercooling. The best [non-physicist] explanation for this comes from Digg user Devon: The dissolved particles in water lower the freezing point. (This is why you put salt on ice during the winter to melt the ice.) When you open the bottle, the concentration of dissolved CO2 changes because the bottle has been opened/depressurized. The loss of pressure causes CO2 that has been forced into to solution to escape fro...
0 Comments, 20 Referrals since Friday, 9 February '07 - 7:06:36 PM -0500
..:: Comparison: iPhone vs A1200 vs Neo1973
I'm getting a lot of emails requesting comparisons for the iPhone, A1200, and Neo1973, so I figured I'd throw together an extensive writeup. While none of these three are the One Handheld to Rule them All (tm), they're still the closest on the market. In my rating system, I award +1 for a feature included, a partial point for a feature that can be implemented by a user or a feature that is slightly hindered, +0 for an absent feature, and -1 for a feature that takes a step back from the stand...
22 Comments, 957 Referrals since Monday, 29 January '07 - 4:47:49 PM -0500
..:: Rant: Bluetooth is Horrible - How Wireless Data Transfer Should Be
I've been looking around at specs and drivers and software to get my A1200 to work with a PC over Bluetooth. I have all these ideas on implementing amazing features, but Bluetooth just can't support them without investing major time and money, and some features are just completely impossible with Bluetooth. I'm a fan of complete transparency, and Bluetooth just doesn't hack it. Here are the features that I want, and why they're not transparently possible yet.
1 Comments, 11 Referrals since Wednesday, 24 January '07 - 8:55:38 PM -0500
..:: MS Vista DRM: Just as Bad as You Heard, Straight from MS
On a Vista blog, a member of the Vista team bounces around Vista DRM. He's probably referring to this famous Vista DRM article which totally blasts MS for all the content protection that will be forced down users throats, and how those who are not even using content that "needs" protection will suffer. Over the holidays, a paper was distributed that raised questions about the content protection features in Windows Vista. The paper draws sharp conclusions about the implications of those feat...
1 Comments, 53 Referrals since Tuesday, 23 January '07 - 6:30:48 AM -0500
..:: Code: Bash Script to Change Gnome Background Randomly (Ubuntu)
This code uses a backgrounds folder, set as $bg_path at the beginning of the script. Just drop it in your cron.hourly folder and let it run. It will change your background (on all desktops) every hour. The script supports PNG, JPG, and GIF images (and you can add more by just changing the extensions variable at the top).
9 Comments, 80 Referrals since Sunday, 14 January '07 - 7:08:41 PM -0500
..:: FHA (Loan Organization for Katrina Aid) is Uneducated... Maybe
This story has been floating around emails, and I figured I'd post it. I'm not sure as to how true it is, but it's definitely amusing. A New Orleans lawyer sought an FHA loan for a client who lost his house in Hurricane Katrina and wanted to rebuild. He was told the loan would be granted if he could prove satisfactory title to the parcel of property being offered as collateral. The title to the property dated back to 1803, which took the lawyer three months to track down. After sending the i...
0 Comments, 6 Referrals since Tuesday, 9 January '07 - 11:27:51 AM -0500
..:: Principled Technologies' Aero Report Reaks of Shenanigans
Principled Technologies released a case study [ pdf ] concluding that Vista's Aero doesn't significantly slow down the computer. Our results showed that Windows Vista Aero had little or no negative effect on Windows Vista's performance. Of the 192 measurements each the average of five runs), only 4 were more than a tenth of a second slower with Windows Vista Aero enabled, only two were slower by half a second or more, and five were faster. None was over a second slower with Windows Vista Ae...
4 Comments, 7246 Referrals since Thursday, 4 January '07 - 9:27:56 AM -0500
..:: How-to: Ubuntu and Your Digital Camera
Linux is not hard. In fact, your digital camera is probably supported in Ubuntu, but you probably don't know how to access it. We're going to use a pretty program called "digikam".
1 Comments, 35 Referrals since Wednesday, 3 January '07 - 9:07:50 PM -0500
..:: Review: Motorola H700 Bluetooth Handset and Motorola A1200 Ming
I picked up the Motorola H700 Bluetooth Handset to pair with my Motorola A1200 Ming. The nice thing about this is that it's the smallest one they had at the store (which shall remain nameless). It's incredibly light, but unfortunately it doesn't feel substantial (like much of it is hollow or something). It uses an internal rechargeable battery that uses the same 4pin usb cable (included) that the Ming requires to charge. This headset has a boom that swings out. When open, the headset is on,...
2 Comments, 146 Referrals since Monday, 1 January '07 - 9:17:28 PM -0500
..:: How-to: StreamRipper and StreamTuner to Download Free Mp3s Legally (for now)
Internet radio is well... all over the internet. Shoutcast and Live365 are two huge players, while digitallyimported was my first taste of trance. These are always on internet based radio channels, many without commercials. Not only can you listen to these stations, you can also download the songs into split mp3s. If you can see it or hear it, you can save it.
6 Comments, 155 Referrals since Thursday, 28 December '06 - 11:50:47 AM -0500
..:: Farecast: the First Novel Software Patent I've Seen
Farecast is a jewel in the sand. What Farecast apparently does is store tons of data on airline fares based on times. Then Farecast turns around, and after you submit a flight destination, return, and dates, will tell you whether you should buy your tickets now, or wait a week. While this is simply an algorithm of customized sorts, the novel part is the insurance concept that is combined with it. After giving a prediction, the company then backs it with a sort of "insurance" policy. If you ...
0 Comments, 3 Referrals since Wednesday, 27 December '06 - 10:01:40 PM -0500
..:: HD-DVD and BR-DVD Encryption (AACS) Hacked
Plenty of corporate execs said it was unhackable. Well, they were wrong. You'll have to find the source/executable elsewhere, seeing as linking to it is most likely illegal. From a forum post, the cracker writes his log: The Saga of decrypting an AACS protected movie, by Muslix64. December 6: I just bought a HD-DVD drive to plug on my PC, and a HD movie, cool! But when I realized the 2 software players on windows don't allowed me to play the movie at all, because my video card i...
0 Comments, 7 Referrals since Wednesday, 27 December '06 - 9:24:09 PM -0500
..:: Content Delivery - Current COMDs are a Failure
Four months ago, I wrote about how the content industry lacks a proper Commercial Online Media Distributor (COMD). Recently, a consumer and retail study by NPD found that piracy wins hand down, which is exactly what I said then. The RIAA didn't exactly win against Napster and Kazaa, as they have been replaced by the vastly greater torrent networks. The NPD study found that TV shows account for 20% of P2P piracy (while porn accounts for 60%). The truth of the matter is that the TV studios a...
1 Comments, 36 Referrals since Wednesday, 27 December '06 - 6:26:18 PM -0500
..:: How To: Get Your Blog Into Social Bookmarking Sites
If you blog, either you've at least heard of the social bookmarking sites, or you live under a rock. This is in reference particularly to digg, reddit, del.icio.us and stumbleupon. I decided to add these as I'm a regular reader of digg, and I have been receiving a few hits ehre and there from del.icio.us and stumbleupon directly from user submissions, and some of my articles have popped up in digg comments. The question is how to set up your articles to make it easier for visitors to submit y...
2 Comments, 129 Referrals since Sunday, 24 December '06 - 11:42:49 PM -0500
..:: One Handheld to Rule Them All (tm)
Right now, the Motorola A1200 Ming currently has my vote on the best handheld available. However, this does not mean it couldn't be better. In fact, I personally think that these devices are moving at a crawling pace, often in observance of market interests. Regardless of the economics, the tech of the One Handheld to Rule Them All (tm) is a simple concept - converge all the small devices you could possibly think of. There must be some considerations made for cramming this into one device, a...
3 Comments, 262 Referrals since Wednesday, 20 December '06 - 12:31:48 AM -0500
..:: Online Voting
In my undergraduate studies with University of Florida, as Technology Cabinet Director in Student Government, we made strides to increase the movement for online voting. MacKenzie Moritz, a recent presidential candidate, noted that university wide voting for approximately 45,000 students costs $22,000 for paper ballots, as opposed to online voting which comes in at a staggeringly lower $2,000. At University of Central Florida, online voting increased turnout by 13%. In fact, a simple google s...
0 Comments, 49 Referrals since Sunday, 17 December '06 - 1:42:03 PM -0500
..:: Review: Motorola A1200 Ming Handheld
NOTE: THIS REVIEW IS NEARLY TWO YEARS OLD. BETTER PHONES HAVE COME OUT IN THE PAST TWO YEARS. This is being left up for archival and informational purposes only. The Motorola A1200 Ming is a Linux based handheld -- handheld, because it's not really just a phone. It's a handheld computer that happens to have a phone. It's Motorola's customized Linux, and it has a touchscreen interface that changes depending on the application currently in use. I picked it up this summer after my MPX200 got...
46 Comments, 1662 Referrals since Friday, 15 December '06 - 8:28:48 PM -0500
..:: Motorola A1200 Ming Hacks
The Motorola A1200 Ming is a great phone, but there are many hacks, some not for the Feint of Mind (tm). This is a consolidation of many how-tos, and my own personal work. Info here is licensed under the GNU GPL, the GNU FDL, and Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 where applicable. DISCLAIMER & WARNING: The information contained herein is provided without any implied or expressed promises or warranty (without even the implied warranty of merchantibility or fitness for a particular purpose) Som...
272 Comments, 30553 Referrals since Friday, 15 December '06 - 8:28:44 PM -0500
..:: Google Patent Search
The USPTO UI isn't too bad, but it does have some usability issues. While I don't think it's too difficult to throw together an advanced query, sending a link for a query is pretty nasty, and many patent searchers don't exactly have much training in very customized database queries. This results in patent searches taking a lot longer than they really should, and not being as relevant as they could be. Further, once you've picked out a patent, the USPTO site is pretty slow to use with certain ...
0 Comments, 4 Referrals since Thursday, 14 December '06 - 9:36:41 PM -0500
..:: Code: class.mysql.cpp (CPP); mysql database driver
I started coding (substantially) in C++ yesterday (outside of regular class assignments), and as I looked through a lot of the database driver classes, I couldn't find any that could compare to the ease of use of current php based database drivers. I coded in C in undergrad in my OS class, but dealing with 30 year old minix code is worthless for the purpose of learning C. Comparatively, OO is incredibly new, and this ease of usability is incomparable to the jumbled mess in minix. This is test...
0 Comments, 1 Referrals since Wednesday, 13 December '06 - 7:09:13 PM -0500
..:: How Microsoft can get me to come back from Linux
A few months ago, I primed Linux on my laptop. I was previously dual booting it, but priming WinXP because I didn't know Canonical fixed suspend support for my laptop in Ubuntu. I was later discussing with some geek buddies about what it would take for me to switch back to Windows. Here are my feature requests, in no specific order.
5 Comments, 145 Referrals since Tuesday, 12 December '06 - 4:39:20 PM -0500
..:: How-to: Ubuntu Edgy and MythTV and Hauppauge PVR-150
The purpose of this install guide is to install MythTV on Ubuntu Edgy, using a Hauppauge PVR-150. Some linked docs here may help you, but this guide is to achieve that purpose with minimal work. Most of the other Edgy tutorials leave off a significant amount of information, and are specifically only usable with cards compatible with DVB (for the nova-T line of cards), but the Hauppauge PVR-xxx line is not compatible at the moment. This is not for the Feint of Mind (tm), so your grandma will p...
37 Comments, 3424 Referrals since Tuesday, 12 December '06 - 3:15:12 PM -0500
..:: Don't Drop Out of High School: Verizon Has No Idea What .002 Cents Means
A consumer has some mobile data transfer plan. In the US, his plan is unlimited, so for the most part he doesn't care what's his usage is. However, when he travels to Canada, his payment plan for data is by the kB. When he signed up for the plan, he asked specifically what the rate was for off-network usage. When the Verizon salesman said that the rate was .002 cents per kB (so 500 kB = 1 cent), the consumer had the salesman specifically write that on the agreement. Later, the consumer trav...
0 Comments, 6 Referrals since Monday, 11 December '06 - 8:55:46 PM -0500
..:: Amazing Interfaces
With Vista's Aero and the Beryl Project moving along, user interfaces are clearly the next arena of improvement in the computer industry. Beryl and Aero are the newest breed of UI advances to hit the general public, and are what's called a composite manager. Here's a video of some of the effects that Beryl can do (Aero's features are similar).
0 Comments, 38 Referrals since Saturday, 2 December '06 - 11:13:32 PM -0500
..:: Recommendations to Make Digg Better
Game: verb; the art of promoting articles on digg via manufactured methods, rather than real social trends. Tenses: gamed, gaming Gaming frequently leads to blog spam, and worthless trash (read my comment as to why) and in general is bad for the community. Even still, gaming is not the only problem on digg. The mob mentality often takes over, and illogically promotes poor quality submissions. So, I have a few ideas on how to fix both.
0 Comments, 125 Referrals since Wednesday, 29 November '06 - 11:17:22 AM -0500
..:: How-to: MPD, Music Player Daemon
Since MythTV's music player has an incredibly embarassing interface, and I still like to use my stereo system for my music, I clearly had a problem. The solution is MPD: Music Player Daemon, as suggested by Kevin72594, from Gentoo OTW. MPD is a service that accepts various clients and plays music files on the host computer. This is NOT a program to stream media to the desktop which you're using. It is designed to control a central server. The particular client I'm interested in was a web ba...
7 Comments, 213 Referrals since Wednesday, 22 November '06 - 10:22:37 AM -0500
..:: Linux Tutorial
This was previously a consolidation of many guides on the web including some stuff from ubuntuguide. Ubuntuguide is now a wiki, so for basic ubuntu tricks, head to there. This is now a haven for intermediate to advanced linux tutorials, although they generally favor ubuntu. Info here is licensed under the GNU GPL, the GNU FDL, and Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 where applicable.
2 Comments, 3532 Referrals since Sunday, 5 November '06 - 12:41:13 PM -0500
..:: Code: splitall.sh (bash); a cue file mp3 auto-splitter
The purpose of this script is to take all cue files in a directory and split all mp3 files with matching names to the cue files into smaller mp3s based on the title and times of the mp3 in the cue file. since some DJ's actually use the PERFORMER tag in cue files, the script automatically looks for the performer tag and adjusts as necessary. For example, I download DJ GT's latest release from generation trance. His latest release might be comprised of 3 or 4 sets. If I burn the mp3s straight t...
0 Comments, 11 Referrals since Thursday, 28 September '06 - 7:47:51 AM -0400
..:: Code: ObjectList (Java); simple java data structure
I wrote this class in undergrad as a basic data structure. It's one of my more impressive solo works from undergrad (because all the really cool stuff was group projects), and I see understanding this as yet another milestone towards greater programming. ObjectList.java package djlosch; /* ObjectList is an extended version of the common arraylinearlist, but without hashing. It supports a large amnt of functions that common ALL's have and a few other. This implementation does requ...
0 Comments, 3 Referrals since Thursday, 28 September '06 - 6:34:17 AM -0400
..:: Code: FileIO (Java); simple java IO handler
I also wrote this little object back in undergrad to help fix up the read/writing of files. FileIO import java.io.FileReader; import java.io.BufferedReader; import java.io.File; import java.io.FileWriter; //creating a buffer every time you want to read or write a file can get quite //tedious. what my class does is read a file and return the file as an //objectlist based on linebreaks. it's not incredible code efficiency, but //it definitely shows benefits of oo. public class Fil...
0 Comments, 9 Referrals since Thursday, 28 September '06 - 6:33:14 AM -0400
..:: Code: Errors.java (java); a simple java error handler
After learning PHP and seeing the different levels of error reporting, this was an early attempt at a similar system in Java. I didn't actually implement different levels at this point - just a debug flag. Errors.java //designed as a debugging utility, later versions will support multiple levels //of debugging similar to php5's error report design public class Errors { //Attributes private boolean debug; //Constructors public Errors() { //basic constructor ...
0 Comments, 2 Referrals since Thursday, 28 September '06 - 6:32:26 AM -0400
..:: In God We Trust
Last year, I wrote this article for my law school paper, Plead the Fifth, and interestingly enough, was nominated for the ABA Law Student Divison National Awards for Best Editorial. I didn't win, but that's still an enormous honor just to be nominated. IN GOD WE TRUST is a reminder of our American heritage that is stamped onto every coin and bill distributed by the Federal Reserve. However, Michael Newdow, the attorney of California who previously attacked the Pledge of Allegiance for bein...
0 Comments, 106 Referrals since Tuesday, 19 September '06 - 10:02:07 AM -0400
..:: Font Bot
This is a bot designed to crawl 1001freefonts.com pulling all the windows fonts. This was my first bot, and I wasn't really big in linux admin so it's incredibly crude. REQUIREMENTS wget: almost every linux distro has it php: most bigger distros have it. check php.net to get it if you dont. Here's the code. It's a little messy, but it works. It's easiest run as php cgi, but if you want to go through all the hassles of permission, you can execute it with apache. Expect it to be ported...
0 Comments, 58 Referrals since Monday, 18 September '06 - 4:10:47 PM -0400