A truly amazing world

It has been said that the world today runs constantly at a fever pitch. I can beleive that and I think this cartoon say it all.

A collection of videos of MIT lectures

Do you want to go to MIT but are to lazy or can't afford it? Well, I have some good news. MIT has put a huge collection of lectures online and they are free for the taking. The best part is that if you get bored during the lecture you can pause it and go do sometime fun for a while. Can't beat that.

Video lectures

Gamers are now considered on par with crack addicts by the news media

WGN has aired a story on video game addiction and prior to airing the story the anchorman said in the teaser that "video games can be more addicting than crack cocaine". This is the news media at is worst. It seems that anything you might enjoy doing is addictive any more. I agree that some people do play video games way to much and take them way to seriously. Myself I like playing games like Battlefield 2 or Grand Theft Auto for an hour or two after work. It is a great way to relax because you can take out your day’s frustration on people that are not real. This way no one gets hurt. Anyone that says that video games cause kids to be violent is completely full of it. I think it has the opposite effect. I have been playing video games for almost twenty years and I grew up to be normal, or at least close to it. In my opinion this is just another example of parents looking for an excuse as to why their kids are worthless. The apple usually does fall far from the tree.

Forensic images claim to 'show the face of Shakespeare'

Forensic experts claim to have proved a bust and a death mask are the exact likeness of William Shakespeare. They matched the forensic images with the Chandos portrait, the first picture bought by the National Portrait Gallery in 1856, which is believed to be Shakespeare.

Spokane, WA school bans the game of tag

Yep, that is what I said. An elementary school in Spokane, WA has banned the game of tag because a child just might get injured and then the school would be sued. It is hard to believe that the world is coming to these. Children today are being turned into little wimps and they will grow up and become big wimps. Kids today are being taught that no matter what you do there are no consequences. Everyone gets to bat, everyone gets ice cream whether you win or lose, and there are no wrong answers and so on and so on. Life is full of disappointments, loses and such. It will not always go your way no matter what your mother says. I think it is save to say that a good number of people experience failures throughout their lives more than anything else. Failure is the greatest teacher of them all. To quote a very wise individual, "Do or do not. There is no try." I think that the way kids are being raised in these days of "I didn't get what I wanted so I need to sue someone" could be to beginning of the end for this country. This truly frightens me. The text below is an excerpt from an article from Spokesman-Review. There is no direct link to the story because the spokesman-review website is horribly designed.

---

Tag, you’re it. No, you’re out. But not completely out.

Adams Elementary School in Spokane drew national attention earlier this month for telling parents and children that tag as they know it was no longer acceptable at recess.

“Due to the increase in student injury, fighting, and bullying reports, tag is an activity that will not be played during free play recess time,” Adams Principal Mary Perrizo-Weber wrote in a note to parents.

Tag moved from the free-for-all recess time to a P.E. class that uses Nerf balls to avoid student-to-student contact.

Perrizo-Weber’s decision made it on a local news channel, and the story evolved into one of those quirky tales that ran on TV stations around the country. “A principal bans tag,” is how it was billed.

“My sister called from Minnesota to tell me she saw me on TV,” Perrizo-Weber said. “It wasn’t a big deal in this community at all. … I’ve gotten some pretty nasty e-mails from around the country.”

Members of her family teasingly said they were buying her a shirt that said, “You’re it.”

What got lost in the story, Perrizo-Weber said, was how second- and third-graders were not feeling safe at recess when a pack of other students would run over, smack someone and yell, “You’re it.” She found 6-year-olds with zipper marks on their necks from having their hoods grabbed during tag.

Spokane Public Schools Superintendent Brian Benzel said, “We know that we (as a district) are often the target for torts and claims.”

Benzel said the solution Perrizo-Weber used at Adams was “elegant.”

“Recess in itself is one of the places where we have to be very careful,” he said. “Kids can get injured.”

It’s not like the ’50s.

“The world has gotten more complicated,” Benzel said. “It isn’t the informal world of the ’50s and ’60s. It’s the legalized world of 2006.”

Adams Elementary isn’t alone. Over the years, other Spokane elementaries have put restrictions on tag – though it went largely unnoticed in the outside community.

Madison Elementary has also asked students not to play tag as a free-for-all. Instead, they play what the school calls “circle tag,” which is played around yellow circles painted on the playground. The player who is “it” cannot leave the circle while trying to tag players outside the circle.

“It’s not so much that tag is a problem, but when you play it in a large area in the playground with 100 kids,” it can become one, said Madison Principal Brent Perdue.

It’s not just tag. Perdue’s school created rules for games such as four square, wall ball and hopscotch, because most playground conflicts came from arguments over how the games are played.

Mary Seeman, principal of Spokane’s Franklin Elementary, allows tag and even snowball-throwing, as long as rules are followed.

Tag can only be played with rip-away ribbon belts traditionally used for flag football. Snowballs can only be thrown at easels set up at the edge of the playground. Students used to throw snowballs at a plywood clown, but “we need to have a new one made,” Seeman said. “We cannot find the doggone clown.”

Karen Cowan, Spokane Public Schools coordinator of K-12 health and fitness, laments the changes. She has little authority over principals’ decisions to safeguard their playgrounds.

“Do we want children to do free running on the playground at recess? I would. I want them to run and play and laugh and be excited about movement,” Cowan said. “I think having a lot of restrictions is sending a very mixed message to kids.”

Being active comes with the occasional accident, Cowan said.

“I think it’s unfortunate we can’t allow kids to move. It’s a different day and age.”

---

South Korean gamers stage online massacre of Chinese

In Lineage, which has more than 3m subscribers, players in the form of knights, wizards and elves chase monsters who drop money and other valuable items that increase players' strength, such as swords and medicine. These items can be sold for real money through online trading sites. However, there is an etiquette to be followed: players interact along the way, but you are not supposed to take things dropped by someone else's monster.

Read more

Astronomer announces shortlist of stellar candidates for habitable worlds

In the search for life on other worlds, scientists can listen for radio transmissions from stellar neighborhoods where intelligent civilizations might lurk. Out of an initial catalogue of 17,129 "habitable stellar systems" a handful of stars are considered the best bets, based on a variety of screening criteria.

Department of Homeland security urges DRM rootkit ban

US government officials took Sony BMG to task over its controversial use of rootkit-style copy protection at a security conference this week. If the technology proves harmful to consumers, tougher laws and regulations might be proposed, a senior Department of Homeland Security exec warned. "Legislation or regulation may not be appropriate in all cases, but it may be warranted in some circumstances," said Jonathan Frenkel, director of law enforcement policy with the DHS's Border and Transportation Security Directorate, PC World reports. Government officials are concerned that the rootkit tactic, if repeated, could leave consumers' systems open to hacker attack. The DHS lacks the power to push through laws itself, but it does have the ears of legislators, if not all the elements of the entertainment industry.

Mac users face first Apple virus

Users of Apple computers were today being warned to protect themselves after the existence of a new kind of worm virus emerged. The Leap-A worm, which spreads through instant messaging program iChat, is thought to be the first virus for the Apple platform. It poses as a series of pictures which, when opened, allows the worm through a security loophole in order to implant itself in other programs. Experts say it is easy for users to protect themselves, but that the arrival of malicious code should be a wake-up call to Mac users, who have been unaffected by viruses until now.

How to protect yourself

New washing machine washes, dries, and irons

This thing is being touted as a housewife's dream, but I think a lot of you single guys would appreciate it more.

read more | digg story

College dropout Bill Gates says: a get degree!

Bill Gates, the richest college dropout in the world, offered high-school students some career advice last week: Get a college degree. This sound like it would fall under the hipacritical category.

read more | digg story

Firefox finds cracking the corporate market to be a challenge

The open-source browser is making inroads at companies like Boeing and Fidelity, but most IT shops are sticking with Internet Explorer as their browser standard. The Boeing has been discreetly providing feedback to the Mozilla Foundation for the past year on features that might encourage enterprise adoption of the Firefox browser.

read more | digg story

Nerd TV

NerdTV is essentially Charlie Rose for geeks - a one-hour interview show with a single guest from the world of technology. The most recent episode has Bob Kahn who is best know for co-writing TCP/IP.

Churches to mark Charles Darwin's birthday on evolution sunday

Nearly 450 Christian churches plan to celebrate the birthday of Charles Darwin on Sunday with programs and sermons intended to emphasize that his theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science. This is confusing. I didn't think these two things got along.

read more | digg story

'Lost' science manuscript found in cupboard

A "lost" science manuscript from the 1600s was found in a cupboard in a house during a routine antique valuation. The hand-written document - penned by Dr. Robert Hooke - contains the minutes of the Royal Society from 1661 to 1682, experts said. It contains more than 520 pages of script and some drawings, and scientists believe it could be very valuable to the world of science.

read more | digg story

Al Michaels traded to NBC for... Oswald the Lucky Rabbit?

NBC traded a cartoon rabbit named Oswald the lucky rabbit to ABC for the rights to sign Michaels to join John Madden for NBC's sunday night football. My question is who in the world is Oswald the lucky rabbit? This will make good bar trivia someday.

read more | digg story

Antitrust concerns over Vista are raised

Several companies are talking to state and federal prosecutors about antitrust concerns they have with features in Microsoft's upcoming Windows Vista operating system. Come on people, the OS hasn't even been officially released yet. If you don't like it then don't use it. It is really that simple.

read more | digg story

French police force to ditch Internet Explorer

French police are abandoning Microsoft's Internet Explorer and will go for Firefox because of security issues. Their IT director says that 70,000 desktops will be using Firefox by the end of the year. This is another little step towards 100% market share.

Superbowl Ads

Google has post all the superbowl ads on their video site. There are evening a few that were not aired for whatever reason. They even have four GoDaddy commercials that were not approved. I honestly don't know why. Everyone seen to still be way to uptight after the "wardrobe malfunction". I think the commercials this year were average considering that a thirty second spot cost over two million dollars. My favorite commercial was the Bud Light secret fridge.

List of commercials

Bud Light - Hidden Bud Light
Bud Light - Save Yourself
Bud Light - On the Roof
Bud Light - Secret Fridge
Budweiser - The Wave
Budweiser - Superfan Cowboy
Budweiser - Clydesdale American Dream
Blockbuster Online
Burger King - Whopperettes
Cadillac - Escalade
Degree - Stunt City
Dove - Campaign for Real Beauty
Emerald Nuts
FedEx - Stick
Ford - Escape Hybrid
Full Throttle Energy
GlaxoSmithKline - Jerome Bettis for asthma control test
GM - Live Green Go Yellow
GoDaddy - Steamy Car Wash (Not shown on television)
GoDaddy - Window Washer (Not shown on television)
GoDaddy - Can't Refuse (Not shown on television)
GoDaddy - Kissing Booth (Not shown on television)
GoDaddy - Approved Superbowl Ad
Honda - Ridgeline Mudflap
Hummer - Monsters
Michelob Amber - Touch Football
MLB - World Baseball Classic
Nationwide - Gondola
Nationwide - Swing
Nationwide - Proposal
Pepsi - Hip Hop Can
Pizza Hut - Jessica Simpson
Poseidon
PS - Best Defense
Scott Tissue - Mike Ditka Halftime Flush
Shaggy Dog
Toyota - Camry Hybrid
United Airlines - Dragon
V for Vendetta
Vault - Field of Dreams
Vault - Scarecrow
16 Blocks

New technology could head off bird flu

A new microarray can, within hours, pinpoint pathogens that can infect humans. The technology is widely available to researchers for free.

read more | digg story

The sounds of a hard drive

Do you or someone you know have a hard drive that is making these sounds? If you do, sorry about your luck.

Head damage

More head damage

Even more head damage

Just one more

A slow spindle motor

The head stuck to the platter

Karate experts hired to control marauding parrots in New Zealand

Organizers of a vintage car rally in New Zealand have hired karate experts to protect vehicles from marauding native parrots. About 40 members of a karate club have been enlisted to protect some 140 classic cars due to visit an alpine village near Mount Cook on New Zealand's South Island on Sunday, the New Zealand Press Association reported.

read more | digg story

Launching a Denial of Service attack in the UK is set to become a new offence within the year

Launching a Denial of Service attack in the UK is set to become a new offence within the year. The Government included updates to the country's main cybercrime law – with new offences and stiffer penalties . Launch a DoS attack and you could get 10 years.

read more | digg story

Remembering the Columbia disaster

I can hardly beleive that three years have passed since the shuttle Columbia disaster. It truely seems like it happened only a few months ago. I must be getting old because time really seems to be flying.

read more | digg story

British school bans students from raising their hands

I know this is non tech but this is just weird. A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class and teachers from calling on students with their hands raised. Also, to spare embarrassment of the students who do not know the answer, the school has incorporated a "phone a friend" system.

read more | digg story

A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class

I know this is non tech but this is just weird. A school in London has banned children from raising their hands in class and teachers from calling on students with their hands raised. Also, to spare embarrassment of the students who do not know the answer, the school has incorporated a "phone a friend" system.

read more | digg story

Google readying its own Google OS

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business - desktop software. A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as 'Goobuntu'.

read more | digg story