New Speeds!

So Newegg’s been having networking gear on sale recently and I picked up:

D-Link DCM-202 Cable Modem
NETGEAR GS608 8-Port Gigabit Switch

There were a couple reasons why I decided to pick these up.

First of all, they were on sale. The NETGEAR Gigabit Switch featured jumbo frames and I wanted to see if I could get better speeds with my gigabit setup. Apparently not much. I was able to hit over 25% network utilization with the new switch, which leads me once again to believe it’s my RAID5 configuration causing the slowdown. I do however now have 7 gigabit ports instead of just 4 (1’s taken by the cross over connection to the router).

The reason I picked up a cable modem was I’ve been getting pretty crappy speeds with Comcast. I have a 8Mbps service which I pay $35/mo, but I usually get ~4Mbps. At first I thought it was my location, but after moving to my new house, it was still the same speed. I decided to get a new cable modem for 2 reasons: to see if it’s really the modem’s fault for the slow speed and to not pay the monthly modem lease fee of $3.95/month or something like that. Even if the speeds didn’t get any better, the modem would’ve paid for itself in 9 months.

Anyway, after calling customer support and switching my account over to the new modem’s MAC address, I did a speed test at Broadband Reports. Guess what! Instead of reporting 4xxx kbps down and 4xx kbps up, I’m got 7548 kbps down and 693 kbps up. So my modem was the culprit! I’m going to return this piece of crap RCA modem that Comcast gave me back to them later this week.

new gigabit switch and new cable modem

So Esca tried to help me with my Gigabit problem yesterday and made some suggestions. He first wanted to know if my switch supported jumbo frames, which is the reason I got the new Netgear switch. He had asked if I had enabled it on XP and if I recall correctly, Windows automatically detects what’s the best MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size to use. I’ve been blaming the slowness due to disk writes and RAID5 is notoriously slow for writing, but he suggested I try to grab some files over FTP and save into /dev/null. I went about this through cygwin as my Linux box doesn’t have a Gigabit adapter and was getting 26MB/s. I grabbed it several times hoping that the file would be cached.

Anyway, I ended up changing the MTU in the registry, rebooted my machines, and did a FTP transfer before starting any internet apps. I hit a sustained 33MB/s. Guess I’m happy now. Setting a MTU size was rather easy. Just open your registry and add a DWORD to HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters named MTU and set it to 9000 (decimal), 9000 being the packet size you want to use with Gigabit ethernet.

Mozy Remote Backup

Mozy Remote Backup – I first saw this ad on Ars Technica and decided to give it a test run.

First of all, let me try to explain to you what Mozy is (not sure if that’s pronounced like Moz-zy or Moe-zy). It’s a online backup service. What piqued my interest initially was they were giving accounts with 2GB of free space and so I did some more research. Indeed it is completely free, to let you get a taste of the service I guess. 2GB is plenty if all you’re going to do is backup documents and stuff.

After signing up, you download their software which installs a service and you can now configure what to backup. By default, it’ll select all your personal locations (i.e. My Documents and Desktop) and upload documents, photos, music, video, financial data, etc. I was shocked it even found my Quicken data files.

Next thing is privacy. By default, you can use Mozy’s 448bit encryption key to encrypt your data, but you can also provide your own key if you don’t trust them.

Finally, it’s setting when you want the back ups to occur. You can either set a time to run daily/weekly, or tell it to run when your computer is idling.

Here’s some reviews of the service:
PC Magazine
TechCrunch
enginerd

Since my home computer recently died and no one’s technical enough to fix it, my dad needed a new place for his backups. I decided to sign my dad up for this service at which point I noticed it asked for a referral id. I decided to input my own and it turns out it gives both people an additional 256MB to their account (4 referrals for 1 true GB), which I thought was pretty nice.

If you’re planning to sign up for this service, feel free to sign up under me to give me more space:
https://mozy.com/?code=9A22KF
Referral ID: 9A22KF

One thing to note is that files that aren’t in the current backup set will be deleted in 30 days. So in other words, if you don’t run your backup in 30 days, it’ll be automatically deleted.

One thing I did find extremely annoying (probably won’t affect 99% of you out there) is the fact that the client has to be ran as an administrator. Since my default account is a non-admin, when I ran the client software as an administrator, it detected the wrong personal folders (it found the admin’s personal folders instead of mine). If I ran it as myself, I get a MozyClientError6:

Mozy Client Error

Code: MozyClientError6

Problem:
You haven’t configured your backup client, so there is nothing to back up.

Solution:
Right click on the Mozy in your tray icon and select ‘Configure’ and select some files for Mozy to back up. Visit http://mozy.com/support/manual for the instruction manual on how to set your Mozy up.

which probably meant the configuration/settings I made weren’t able to be saved, which probably means the settings are somewhere in Program Files or somewhere I don’t have write access to. I guess if I wanted to, I can set it up on my admin account once and the settings will then be preserved.

I also forgot to note, that you can only install the client on 2 machines, but if you really wanted more, you’d probably just create additional accounts.

Music from The Inner Life of a Cell

If you’re looking for the mp3, please see this entry. The mp3 I have is scattered with the phrase “massive productions”, but if you’re okay with that, you can download the mp3 there.

So I’ve been trying to find out what the music from The Inner Life of a Cell (sometimes referred to as The Inner Life of the Cell). I’ve been searching online with queries involving soundtrack, music, audio, background, but with not much luck.

However, I did find the lead animator John Liebler (who goes by the alias Manfrog on these forums). I sent him a PM and left a message on the thread: Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell and here’s his response:

Hi Krunk!

Thanks! The music was composed, performed and recorded by Matt Berky. His company is called Massive Productions. Check him out at:

http://www.massiveproductions.com/

He does most of the sound work for XVIVO. He always does an amazing job!

You can also visit John Liebler’s homepage: MESHandBONES.com

Visiting Massive Productions, I find that the piece used in the video has already won an award with that animation:

Massive Productions Wins 2006 Telly Award
Judging has been completed for the 27th Annual Telly Awards competition and Massive Productions was selected by the judges to receive a 2006 Telly Award for Best Music Composition for a Non-Broadcast Film or Video. The piece of music was written for a three minute medical animation produced by Harvard Bio-Science. The 27th Telly Awards Competition received over 12,000 entries from the finest ad agencies, production companies and corporations in the world. It is a tremendeous achievment to be selected for recognition.
Below is a short segment of the award-winning piece…

Download: Harvard.mp3

Unfortunately, it’s just a 48 second segment, but still good nonetheless. They don’t seem to be selling the music unfortunately. I’ve sent them an email and hopefully I’ll hear good news.

Gigabit

So a few weeks back, Fry’s had gigabit hardware on sale, and I decided it was time to switch from 100Mbps to Gigabit (1000Mbps). That way transferring files from my desktop to my file server would be a *snap*. The items on sale included:

For only $37, it seemed like a cheap upgrade. Unfortunately, Fry’s was out of the switch and I got a raincheck instead. For the next few weeks, I ended up calling up every other day to see if there was more in stock. Always was told to call back next week. Finally, on this past Friday, they told me it was finally in stock, so I headed over after work and picked up my switch. I ended up setting it up when redoing my office layout.

A preliminary test transferring large files through FTP netted in ~18MB/s, a somewhat disappointing figure, but I believe it may have to do with a RAID5 hard drive limitation rather than the network limitation.

Random Crap:

Since most of my photos of my office was taken at night, I thought it’d be nice to show you what’s actually outside my windows. Here’s one in the late afternoon:
window lookout from new office setup

  1. (img) リアル – Real – real Donkey Kong platform
  2. (img) アメリカのファッションマガジン. フレア マガジン(FLAIR Magazine) 広告 – American Fashion Magazine (FLAIR Magazine) Ad* NOT WORK SAFE!!! * Because woman have their own logic. a list of “positions” and how many calories you burn per minute.

Kitten and his box (from Cari) – an awfully cute video of kittens trying to squeeze into a box.

Cambodia passes adultery law, opposition walks outIn the last 7 years, at least 108 cases were reported of women being attacked by acid, some left horrendously scarred, usually by an outraged wife, the Licadho human rights group says. At first I didn’t understand why the women were being attacked by acid from their wives, but Tera pointed out, it wasn’t the women’s wives, but the mistress.

An Animation Company takes Harvard University Students on a 3D Journey (from /.) – I didn’t really bother reading the article, but it’s an awesome animation from SIGGRAPH 2006. Titled The Inner Life of a Cell, it features a 3D animation showing the inner workings of a cell, with an awesome background music. I’m no bio major and don’t think I can even point out more what 2 or 3 things are, but a couple of my bio friends are like, “Ooooh! That’s a _____. Ahhh! That’s a _____.” You can watch the animation (higher quality) in your browser or directly download the flv file and watch it in VLC or FLVPlayer.

Do you know what’s the worse thing about soundtrack music? No lyrics! Not that it makes the soundtrack bad, but it means there isn’t a easy way for me to search for what the song is called. If anyone knows what music/audio/soundtrack the above animation video clip is using, I would sure love to know. Please drop a comment if you do. Thanks! You know me, I love soundtrack music.

Stolen lunches? Substitute cat food for tuna on wheat (from /.) –

The nonteam players

It’s the other two who are not part of the team who can be a problem and are the likely culprits when confronted with the vast richness of the “office Serengeti,”as Buffini describes it.

Sometimes they’re angry in a passive-aggressive way and act out by sabotaging the personal property of others, Buffini said. Others take lunches as a way to be funny or provocative.

And then there’s a group that lacks integrity, rationalizing that there’s no name on the bag or that the owner is overweight and could stand to skip a meal anyway.

So which department is most likely to steal a lunch?

Accounting, Buffini said, drawing on his experience with personality traits at work. They have to do things by the book, but they’re often mad in a passive-aggressive way.

Another likely candidate is the customer-service department, because personnel there are under constant pressure and have to handle angry people, he said.

As for the least likely lunch bandits, Buffini said, it’s managers because of the scrutiny they’re under from all sides, as well as “hero” departments like information technology, which come to your aid when you’re down.

And the mellow marketing folks get so many gift baskets that they’re not interested in someone else’s tuna sandwich, he added.

Woman crashes when teaching dog to driveA woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday.

Overweight? Asthmatic? Australia’s army wants youAustralia will likely lower recruitment standards to let overweight people and mild asthmatics join up as it tries to boost troop numbers to combat regional instability, the nation’s top soldier said Sunday.

Switch off TV and switch on your memoryTurning off the television, picking up a crossword and eating more fish could be the key to a better memory, an Australian survey has found.

xkcd – A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language – COMPLY (from Tolik) – a funny webcomic for nerds. A couple funny ones:

Only women need apply for traffic policeThe male-dominated traffic police routinely forgive traffic violations in exchange for bribes. Many believe this culture helps make Russia’s roads among the world’s most dangerous: about 35,000 people are killed in accidents each year. We need more of those male traffic police here in Washington!

Brothels take the sting out of pump pricesBrothel owners claim the system works much the same way as supermarkets which offer shoppers discounted gas prices by presenting their grocery bills when they fill up their tanks. “If you come in and spend time with one of our lovely ladies, we’ll give you a discount of 20 cents a liter,” Kerry, manager of Sydney brothel The Site, told Reuters Wednesday.

Bartender gets $10,000 tip on $26 tabKienow, a bartender at Applebee’s, got a $10,000 tip from the man — for a $26 meal — on Sunday.

Nepal boy claims to be shortest in worldKhagendra Thapa Magar, 14, is only 20 inches tall and weighs 10 pounds.

Money more important than looks in a manWomen regard healthy finances as more important than good looks in a man, according to a survey on Friday. Almost half (45 percent) said a healthy bank balance is more significant than physical attractiveness in a potential partner, according to National Savings & Investments’ (NS&I) latest quarterly savings survey.

FaxZero

Found this pretty neat service: faxZero (from B$). From their main page:

Free!
Ad on the cover page
Fax 1 document—maximum 3 pages
Maximum 2 faxes per day

It’s nice to be able to find a free online fax “sending” service. There’s a bunch of free fax receiving services like:
K7 Unified Messaging
eFax

K7 is located in seattle and you can get a 206 number. eFax gives out random #s and if you pay, you can choose a local number. I don’t believe K7 has a limit, but eFax limits you to receiving 20 pages of fax a month. If you go over, your account gets cancelled.


Random Crap:

sig sauer p228
a hilarious safety, instructions, and troubleshooting pamphlet for your Sig Sauer P228 gun (from Artemyst)

adobe photoshop twain documentation used as computer backdrop in anime
I forget which anime this is from, but upon closer look, you’ll realize they’re using the Adobe Photoshop / Twain documentation as the computer backdrop

thin ice
Thin Ice! Pretty funny sign to post near a frozen lake.

azumi unsheathing sword and battle stance
Click image to start the animation or view it in the gallery.
Azumi unsheathing sword and battle stance

As a big fan of Pablo Francisco, I found this video Pablo Francisco: little tortilla boy amv to be hilarious. It’s a remaking of his Little Tortilla Boy skit with scenes from GTO (Great Teacher Onizuka) and NGE (Neon Genesis Evangelion). If you haven’t seen him before, you should watch his Comedy Central Stand Up Fix.

Are you SURE you want to remove that?An Indian businessman born with two penises wants one of them removed surgically as he wants to marry and lead a normal sexual life, a newspaper report said Saturday. The 24-year-old man from the northern state of Uttar Pradesh admitted himself to a New Delhi hospital this week with an extremely rare medical condition called penile duplication or diphallus, the Times of India said. “Two fully functional penes is unheard of even in medical literature. In the more common form of diphallus, one organ is rudimentary,” the newspaper quoted a surgeon as saying. Trying to imagine that is quite scary…

SUPER FUNNY VIDEO COMPLETE WITH DARTH VADER – Hilarious parody with scenes from Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children remade with completely new lines, songs from Evanescence and Pokemon, and even has the voice of Darth Vader.

Man trapped waist-deep in chocolateIt might sound like a chocoholic’s dream, but stepping into a vat of viscous chocolate became a two-hour nightmare for a 21-year-old man Friday morning. Darmin Garcia, an employee of a company that supplies chocolate ingredients, said he was pushing the chocolate down into the vat at Debelis Corp. because it was stuck. But it became loose and he slid into the hopper.

Another Microsoft Blunder

Apparently when displaying their new voice recognition software that’s coming with Vista (accessibility application), everything goes wrong again.

Here’s the video of what happened: Windows Vista Speech Recognition Demo Gone Awry (MSN Video link)

According to Rob Chambers, the reason for the demo failure was because:

As I posted yesterday, I got a chance to check out the machine that Shanen used for the Financial Analysts Meeting demo. I confirmed that it was just what I suspected: An audio gain issue.

If you watch the video clip on MSN Video you can see in the speech user interface that the microphone “volume” is very high. It pushes up into the red frequently while Shanen is speaking to the computer. That’s caused by the fact that the audio sub-system wasn’t respecting the audio gain settings we’ve asked it to use.

This is a known bug in current builds, and has already been fixed by the audio team in their private builds in preparation for RTM.

Here’s the transcript (from /.):

Microsoftie says this
Speech recogniser hears types this

Dear mom
comma

Dear aunt,

[laughter]

Fix aunt
Let’s set

Delete that
Delete that
Delete that

so

I think it’s picking up a little bit of echo here
Delete… select all

double the killer delete select all

[laughter]

Final Text: Dear aunt, let’s set so double the killer delete select all


Random Crap:

Female impersonation tarts up online games (from /.) – Kathryn Wright, WomenGamers.com’s consulting psychologist, earlier this decade found that 60 percent of male players who don female avatars, or on-screen personas, do it to gain an advantage in game play. An enthusiast with the online handle Jackpot649 nailed the zeitgeist in his response to the About.com query: “I’m a guy, but if I gotta look at an avatar all day, I’d sooner look at a female avatar. Plus, people give you more free stuff.

Naked women leave police speechlessPolice only watched … they could not approach the tourists because they spoke no English,” a local newspaper in the southern Albania coastal town of Sarande said. Haha! What an awesome excuse. I don’t know about you, but doing charades or pictionary could’ve easily gotten message across that they couldn’t be topless. But can’t speak English, I’ve got to remember that one for when I get ‘in trouble’.

Giant dead eel tossing contest canceledFor more than 30 years, crowds have flocked to the small English fishing village of Lyme Regis to watch an annual tradition — two teams of fishermen standing on wooden platforms as human bowling pins, hurling a dead giant eel at each other. But the ritual was abruptly abandoned after an animal rights activist threatened to draw negative publicity to the latest tournament, organizers said Saturday. The practice, known as conger cuddling, is the annual highlight in the small coastal town about 155 miles southwest of London. The object of the game is to knock the opposing team off the platform by swinging a 25-pound eel at them. That sounds like such an awesome game!

Police arrested over sweets theftThe confectionery at Hailsham Police Station in Sussex operates on an honour system and officers help themselves to candy and drinks before leaving money in a tin. Maybe they should’ve implemented the ‘eye system‘ (from my previous entry).

Woman in doghouse over Jehovah’s Witness signA British woman has been ordered by police to take down a sign on her garden gate which read “Our dogs are fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses.” Such an awesome sign. Sucks that she took it down. Maybe she could put up a new sign that says: Our dogs were fed on Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Photo Tourism: Exploring Photo Collections in 3D (from Ars) – Photo Tourism is a system for browsing large collections of photographs in 3D. Our approach takes as input large collections of images from either personal photo collections or Internet photo sharing sites, and automatically computes each photo’s viewpoint and a sparse 3D model of the scene. Our photo explorer interface enables the viewer to interactively move about the 3D space by seamlessly transitioning between photographs, based on user control. Looks neat!

Free WinRAR 3.51 – Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, they were giving away WinRAR 3.51 for free for only 24 hours. That has commenced a couple hours ago and the site is getting hammered. To register for the free software, submit your information through this form. Apparently, they’re using this attempt to force you to subscribe to their newsletter. Good thing I have email addresses to spare ;).

Anyway, after you register, you get a email with the following:

Dear User,

Thank you for filling out our small questionaire.

In order to receive your license key file for the WinRAR 3.51 non upgradeable version, please click on the following link or copy and paste this link in the navigation/address bar of your Internet browser:

http://www.win-rar.com/bestoverallutility/download.php?id=13698

IMPORTANT: You only have two attempts to download the key using this link.

The download contains a RAR archive, including your license key. Please SAVE this archive to your disk. By opening it with double click on it’s icon, WinRAR registers your version automatically and you get the information:

“Correct registration: Thank you for support”.

For further information please read the readme.txt

Please remember that your license key file is valid for the WinRAR 3.51 non upgradeable version of WinRAR only. We recommend making a backup copy of your key file as soon as you receive it. Although we can recover lost keys, there may be a small charge and delay involved in recovering any lost key files.

Stay informed about future WinRAR releases, WinRAR news and technical tips.
Sign up for the WinRAR/RAR newsletter at

http://www.win-rar.com/newsletter.html

If you face any problems applying the registration information or keys, or if you have any other questions, please check our “Knowledge Base” at

http://www.win-rar.com/knowledgebase.html

It contains all kinds of information about WinRAR/RAR. If you can’t find a solution there, you can contact our support staff directly at support@rarlab.com.

Please feel free to send us any suggestions so that we can continue perfecting our software according to your needs.

Enjoy using WinRAR.

With kind regards,

win.rar GmbH
Unser Lieben Frauen Kirchhof 10
28195 Bremen
Germany

The link above will download a registry key you import into your system which will basically register you unlicensed version of WinRAR 3.51. I registered a couple more times to see if different people got different registry keys, but although the download link id is different (the above id has been modified), the file you download and the registry key inside is completely the same. If the link above fails, just try random ids: 13xxx or even 1xxxx and you should be able to hit one that hasn’t been used twice.

Now that you have the registry key, what do you do? Well, of course you need the software itself, which you can download at RARLab: WinRAR 3.51

Free WinRAR 3.51

Only from Sunday 12:00am on 7/30 to 12:00am on 7/31. Here’s the thread WINRAR 3.51 Free Sunday July 30th 2006 (from B$):

To Say Thanks and to Celebrate: Get the Winner WinRAR 3.51 for FREE on Sunday In order to thank everyone who voted for us and made it possible for us to win this prestigious award, we are offering the WinRAR 3.51 single user license non upgradeable version this Sunday the 30th of July 2006 from 00:00 until 24:00 CET for absolutely FREE. Please click the following link which will become active on Sunday. Fill out the form on that page in order to receive further information via e-mail about how to get your FREE version of WinRAR.

WinRAR Homepage


Random Crap:

Stop-Motion Human Space Invaders (from MS newsgroup) – I had posted the Human Pong in one of my previous posts, but this is 10x better with more people and more action. The movement is also a lot faster and the game lasted longer. Both apparently are directed by Guillaume Reymond.

Someone posted this link: www.ie7.com and guess where it leads. It was just hilarious.

FREE Appetizer at TGI Friday’s (coupon from SD) – enjoy!

In2TV – AOL Television (from RayAlome) – I was just watching a couple cartoons on this and the quality’s not bad. They even have Beetlejuice and Animaniacs. Only bad thing is that it uses some weird Active X thing that requires you to watch in IE and there’s 4 commercials stuck inside 1 episode. RayAlome tells me that they change often and episodes disappear and new ones appear.

puppy fluffiness
Taken from Cute Overload (from Cari)

AIM Pro

So AOL is releasing a new IM client for their AIM services called AIM Pro. It’s targetted for businesses, but it’s still free, works with the regular AIM network, and comes with automatic encryption with anyone else that has AIM Pro. If you’re going to use a new AIM client released by AOL, don’t bother with Triton as AIM Pro is a gazillion times better. There’s no more ads and even integrates with Outlook to notify you of meetings.

One thing it still lacks is logging chats, though it does have the ability to save up to 30 days of history (wonder why they couldn’t make it infinite). I’ve given it a shot on my laptop (which doesn’t even have the basic AIM client) and my home computer which had Triton installed (was really happy to uninstall it) and I’ve got to say, it was a lot cleaner than what I would’ve expected. I haven’t tested its integration with Outlook yet (don’t plan to either), but if you do, let me know how it goes.

Apparently, it’s tied up with WebEx to provide solutions to online meetings and web conferences.


Random Crap:

Which New Browser Is Best: Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7, or Opera 9? (from /.) – this review done by ExtremeTech is a really well researched article that compares the top 3 browsers of today. Definitely worth a read to see how well they fare against each other.

Bicycle donuts (from Cari) – You know, not everyone can afford to waste tires by doing donuts in the parking lot using their own car. For that matter, not everyone can afford a car. Those lacking the funds to drift and do donuts all day long in their daily driver may want to check out this video. It’s cheaper, safer and a much better workout than inducing your car to oversteer from the comfort of your Recaro. Haha.

Gaming Goodness for the geek in all of us! (from Tera) – On Sunday, Samantha and I went to check out a store I had been told about by one of my students. I was told it sold a “few” second hand games and cd’s. Armed with a well drawn map (thanks Saori!), we traveled 3 stops from Oami on the Togane line to Gumyo. After walking for about 30 mins in sweltering humidity, we came to our destination. 2 large black shops loomed in the distance. From the outside, it looked like one of those stores where you purchase goods aimed at, shall we say, the more mature market. Upon entering the store, I was transported into what can only be called the “Nerd Nirvana”. WOW, a few second hand games I was told! What stood before me was a massive collection of second hand games, CD’s and Manga. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I didn’t know where to start. The store is just amazing! Though the Xbox section does seem a bit small…

JAJAH

I first read about this on SD. JAJAH is a web activated telephony that works by dialing both parties phone numbers and connecting the two of you. What’s interesting is that they’re having a promo where registered users get free phone-to-phone calls between Jajah users. At first, that may sound like any other service which provides free chatting between 2 registered users, but you have to remember, Jajah works by connecting 2 real phone numbers. So as long as you and the person you want to call (either land line or cell phone) is a registered user, you can have Jajah connect you for free for BOTH local and international calls.

Also, if the person you’re trying to call isn’t “registered” per se, you can always “help” them register. ;p

Though someone did mention that they may be harvesting your phone numbers to resell to telemarketers, so you’ve been warned. I personally haven’t tried it yet, though I have registered my phone number.


Random Crap:

Password-protected bullets (from /.) – The way to make firearms really safe, says Hebert Meyerle of Germany, is to password-protect the ammunition itself. Meyerle is patenting a design for a modified cartridge that would be fired by a burst of high-frequency radio energy. But the energy would only ignite the charge if a solid-state switch within the cartridge had been activated. This would only happen if a password entered into the gun using a tiny keypad matched one stored in the cartridge. This sounds rather stupid… “Dude, we’re under fire!” “I forgot my password to unlock the bullets!”

2D Transformed (from RayAlome) – Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new method of converting a single 2D image into a 3D scene. Do check out that video as it’s pretty neat!

A Rubik’s Cube solving machine (finishes one in 54 seconds) (from RayAlome) – this amazing machine can solve a Rubik’s cube just by snapping some photos and then calculating the moves needed to solve it. Sigh… I still have yet to master the Rubik’s cube.

Teen burns down house over test gradesA Japanese boy burned down his home, killing his stepmother and two younger siblings, for fear his parents would find out he had lied about his score on an English test. Sigh… I wonder what the father would do now?

Quote from /. (#15610682):

The story I heard was that he was arguing before the court that some invention was not obvious. He placed a raw egg on the bench in front of the judges, and challenged the judges to make it stand on its pointy end. They tried balancing it, shaking it to break up the yolk, spinning it, and finally declared the task impossible. Mr. Edison took the egg and crushed the pointy end of the eggshell down on the bench, where he easily stood it on its end. One of the judges said “well, that’s obvious.” Mr. Edison pointed out that, not thirty seconds prior, they had declared the task impossible but now it’s obvious. And that’s why his patent should stand.

However, the real story is called the Egg of Columbus: In the story, Christopher Columbus attends a dinner which a Spanish gentleman had given in his honor. Columbus asks all the gentlemen in attendance to make an egg stand on end. After all the men tried and failed, they stated that it was impossible. Columbus then placed the egg’s small end on the table, breaking the shell a bit, so that it could stand upright. Columbus then stated that it was “the simplest thing in the world. Anybody can do it, after he has been shown how!”

10 people who don’t matter (from /.) – Not everyone with a fancy title really counts. From Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on down, here are the people you can safely snub at conferences.

The Making of a Motherboard: ECS 2006 (from /.) – ever wonder what how it’s like to create a motherboard. This little tour will give you the insight of an ECS factory that builds motherboards. Pretty fun… well if you’re a geek like me.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (from RayAlome) – In 1969 the US Senate had a hearing on funding the newly developed Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The proposed endowment was $20 … all » million, but President Nixon wanted it cut in half because of the spending going on in the Vietnam War. This is an video clip of the exchange between Mr. Rogers and Senator Pastore, head of the hearing. Senator Pastore starts out very abrasive and by the time Mr. Rogers is done talking, Senator Pastore’s inner child has heard Mr. Rogers and agreed with him. Enjoy. It’s so sad that Mr. Rogers is no longer with us… I remember watching that trolley and always wondering where it’d go.

Falling Japan birth rate due to lack of sex“Japanese people simply aren’t having sex,” Dr. Kunio Kitamura, director of the Japan Family Planning Association, was quoted as saying by the Japan Times, an English language daily. An association survey of 936 people between the ages of 16 and 49 showed 31 percent had not had sex for more than a month “for no particular reason” — a condition known as “sexless.” “As much as subsidies and welfare programs are important, sexlessness is also a critical issue in this problem.”

Parents pinch pennies from piggy banksOne in four Australian parents regularly “borrow” money from their children’s piggy banks to pay for anything from bread to luxury holidays, a survey said Wednesday. Mums are more than twice as likely to raid their children’s savings than dad, with 35 percent of mothers confessing to the crime compared with 16 percent of fathers.

Ed Helms’ on-scene report (from Microsoft College Careers and MS newsgroup) – a hilarious video of what it’s like to work at Microsoft.

Man who can’t motivate police to investigate a break-in reports a more serious crime instead. (from MS newsgroup):

How to call the Police…
True Story From the Meridian, Mississippi STAR

George Phillips of Meridian Mississippi was going up to bed when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the garden shed, which she could see from the bedroom window. George opened the back door to go turn off the light but saw that there were people in the shed stealing things.

He phoned the police, who asked “Is someone in your house?” and he said no. Then they said that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be along when available.

George said “Okay,” hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again. “Hello. I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now cause I’ve just shot them all.” Then he hung up.

Within five minutes three police cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up at the Phillips residence. Of course, the police caught the burglars red-handed. One of the policemen said to George: “I thought you said that you’d shot them!”

George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”