I was gone for a few reasons, namely vacation+work+school+disrupted net connection (thanks Verizon) etc.
It was nice that some people noticed my absense, and that somebody suggested I was dead.
Not far from it--I almost got killed just yesterday at a shopping center. A friend and I were leaving a pizza store, and a bunch of black gang members followed us to the car, demanding money. We barely got in & locked the doors before they tried to pry them open. The guy to my right (I was in the passenger's seat) was about to pull out something like a gun, when we sped off to the nearest copstation (where we filed a useless report). For the record, this is a middle-class suburban neighborhood and such occurences are uncommon here.
The good news is: I'm ditching Verizon ADSL (640/90kbps) in favour of Speakeasy.net SDSL (384/384kbps), which reportedly produces 10-20ms ping and is ideal for running a server. I will upgrade to 768/768kbps in the future, and plan to start my own website with a dedicated Linux server (which I'll build soon also).
Recently, I was outraged by a number of things, briefly:
* The loss of the 2600.com vs. MPAA lawsuit, making it illegal to write undesirable programs, or link to undesirable websites. And the corresponding loss of "fair use" for digital media. BTW I wear the DeCSS T-shirt. (link: http://www.2600.com)
* The corporate control over mass media and Presidential debates--which locked Ralph Nader out of media coverage (despite 8% and rising support) and the Presidential debates (Ralph Nader IMHO is by far better/smarter than Gush/Bore). (http://www.votenader.org)
* The despicable privacy violations of various closed-source software (including MS software). I'm migrating to Linux, and plan to make it my primary OS in 1-2 months.
*The rumour of Willie requiring a huge heatsink and special PSU suggests we're entering an era of overclocked, overheating, power-hungry CPU's being sold as desktop CPU's. Then again, Chipzilla isn't doing well lately (for the last year or so
), and my next upgrade is an AMD T-bird 800 which I'm getting soon.
+The upside: looks like the tide is turning against our friend RAMBUST!
I look forward to hearing what the rest of you are up to!
--Leo V
It was nice that some people noticed my absense, and that somebody suggested I was dead.
Not far from it--I almost got killed just yesterday at a shopping center. A friend and I were leaving a pizza store, and a bunch of black gang members followed us to the car, demanding money. We barely got in & locked the doors before they tried to pry them open. The guy to my right (I was in the passenger's seat) was about to pull out something like a gun, when we sped off to the nearest copstation (where we filed a useless report). For the record, this is a middle-class suburban neighborhood and such occurences are uncommon here.
The good news is: I'm ditching Verizon ADSL (640/90kbps) in favour of Speakeasy.net SDSL (384/384kbps), which reportedly produces 10-20ms ping and is ideal for running a server. I will upgrade to 768/768kbps in the future, and plan to start my own website with a dedicated Linux server (which I'll build soon also).
Recently, I was outraged by a number of things, briefly:
* The loss of the 2600.com vs. MPAA lawsuit, making it illegal to write undesirable programs, or link to undesirable websites. And the corresponding loss of "fair use" for digital media. BTW I wear the DeCSS T-shirt. (link: http://www.2600.com)
* The corporate control over mass media and Presidential debates--which locked Ralph Nader out of media coverage (despite 8% and rising support) and the Presidential debates (Ralph Nader IMHO is by far better/smarter than Gush/Bore). (http://www.votenader.org)
* The despicable privacy violations of various closed-source software (including MS software). I'm migrating to Linux, and plan to make it my primary OS in 1-2 months.
*The rumour of Willie requiring a huge heatsink and special PSU suggests we're entering an era of overclocked, overheating, power-hungry CPU's being sold as desktop CPU's. Then again, Chipzilla isn't doing well lately (for the last year or so
), and my next upgrade is an AMD T-bird 800 which I'm getting soon.+The upside: looks like the tide is turning against our friend RAMBUST!
I look forward to hearing what the rest of you are up to!
--Leo V
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