And Now For Something Not At All Unusual

Students hate RIAA puppet company, Napster. What a surprise.

While several Universities have taken on Napster in an aim to provide a legal alternative to file sharing for students, according to a survey conducted at the University of Rochester, not a single student admitted purchasing a song through Napster during the Fall Semester of 2004.

That's right. No-one's buying, because Napster is full of DRM, only allows use under Windows, and won't allow purchased music to play in the iPod - the most popular MP3 player by a mile. What a great idea, RIAA - tell your company to make SURE it will fail, by totally refusing to do anything your customers want. That way, you can place EVEN MORE blame on the file-sharing networks, instead of your crappy business models and ongoing mismanagement. Woohoo!



Sony & Nvidia, sitting in a tree...
Sony and Nvidia claim their partnership will run deeper than PlayStation 3. What does that mean? Who knows? But it does indicate that Sony is unlikely to have the difficulty making future consoles backwards-compatible that Microsoft has. (With the Xbox 360, Microsoft changed from an Nvidia graphics chip to an ATI one, a move which makes it very very expensive to make the console backwards compatible with original Xbox games. They've dealt with this by licensing the drivers, etc. for "the most popular Xbox titles," which means if you want to play a lesser-known title, you're out of luck. Way to go, M$.)
I see a bright future: PlayStation 4, 5 years from now, able to play my PS1 games. You go, Sony & Nvidia.


Fujitsu has invented e-paper. That's right, e-paper. What I mean is, imagine a flexible screen that wouldn't lose the image if the power turns off, won't lose the image if the screen is bent, and is very, very thin - like, paper-thin. Right now, their prototypes can only display up to 512 colors, but still, man, this is 80's sci-fi territory here. How cool is that? Fujitsu rocks.


Sadly, the Pentagon's Super Electric Death Ray is on hold, along with all the other "directed-energy" projects. No money, apparently. Huh. This is actually kinda sad; some of them are really cool, in a very geeky sorta way. This one guy, Peter Bitar, has invented one that can throw a bolt of lightning, accurately, up to 28 feet - and can be set to feel like "broom bristles," or can flat knock your ass out. Now all they need is to figure out how to make it smaller. I mean, how cool is that? No darts - on - wires, no close range, just ZAP! I mean, you can throw LIGHTNING at someone. Dude, we need to give the science wonks more money to play with. They come up with some cool crap.


Ok, so if you're a landlord, and you realize that your one apartment is getting mail for 82 different people, what do you do? Why, call the INS, of course. Or, if you live in North Carolina, call the cops, who will bitch at you for opening other people's mail. Just like they did to Carol Chapman.

"I called the Elizabeth City Police Department and the first words out of their mouth was, 'Why are you opening mail that doesn't belong to you?'" Chapman said. "I told them, 'These people are using a fake address to get driver's licenses and insurance. This is the way terrorists got into New York, have you forgotten?'"

Way to investigate really obvious crimes, Elizabeth City. You have skills.
No, really.
You do.
I mean it.






Ok, I don't. You suck.


Note to self: If you ever decide to rob a bank, La Salle, Illinois is the place to go. Some guy DROVE UP TO THE DRIVE-THRU LINE, passed a note through the vaccuum tube to the teller saying the bank was being robbed, NEVER SHOWED A GUN, and drove off with 56,000 dollars. I sure hope the teller was fired. I mean damn.


Oh, and if you were worried about buying a Dell, because you'd heard bad things about their customer service, this will make you REALLY bite your nails. Dell apparently got tired of customers using their support forums on their website to ask questions like "why won't you fix the defective power supplies on this model?" and "why won't anyone help me?!?" so they just closed the support forums.
That's right, they just stopped taking complaints. If you bought a Dell, I hope you aren't having any trouble with it; be aware that their policy seems to be "too bad, foo!"


On a personal note, my fiancee and I are moving in the next couple of weeks - again - and so updates will be - how can I say this - spotty, for a few weeks at least. Then I will be back with full force and unendurable vitriol for anyone who thinks they can rip out a leopard's tongue without me knowing about it.