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Sometimes bitchy, sometimes gothy:

opportunitygrrl

spiritrover

I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.

* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary

I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.

* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary

I enjoy some blogs, although I have to admit that the signal-to-noise ratio is pretty bad. Here's a few which I personally find interesting and read regularly. I'm a neuro, space, and robotics geek, so the list is biased as such.

* Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) News: The most thorough spaceflight blog around, focusing on reusable systems.
* NASA Watch: A well-known site with regular critiques of NASA.
* Free Republic: Like slashdot, but for ultra-conservatives. I sometimes like to go there to get a better understanding of what goes through the heads of people who think differently from me.
* Alan Boyle's Cosmic Log: "Quantum fluctuations in space, science, and exploration"
* Democratic Underground: The extreme left's version of Free Republic.
* Instapundit: The slashdot-equivalent of political weblogging, with a somewhat libertarian slant. Known for causing "Instalanches" on innocent web servers, analogous to "Slashdottings."
* Daily Kos: Probably the most influential liberal blog.
* Transterrestrial Musings: a libertarian space analyst who helped me understand why it's possible to be intelligent and support the war in Iraq at the same time. He sometimes posts some fantastic satires.
* theferrett's livejournal: sometimes writes some very insightful and well-composed essays
* spacexploration livejournal community: Space-related miscellany and discussion.
* politicsforum livejournal community: Sometimes has some pretty intelligent political discussion.
* robots.net: Robotics news
* Space Politics: "Because sometimes the most important orbit is the Beltway"
* Rocket Man Blog: Rarely updated, but has very insightful and informed analysis of spaceflight and rocketry.
* Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Nanotechnology news and commentary

http://www.livejournal.com/users/sorpigal/10759.ht ml (a link that works).

It's hilarious how so many people (most of whom seem to live in San Francisco) think 14,000 feet is practically outer space. Here in Colorado people hang out on mountains over 14,000 feet all the time. Pike's Peak overflows with out-of-shape tourists (and concessions workers) who drove up and do just fine without additional oxygen.

Hell, people even climb Everest, K2, and many other high mountains without additional oxygen. The "danger zone" - the elevation above which the human body continually degrades and can't recouperate - is about 26,000 feet.

Here's a hilarious entry and comments in the infamous jwz's blog showcasing peoples' complete ignorance:
http://jwz.livejournal.com/381017.html

Only problem is that Opportunity is a hyperactive teenage girl

this dude downloads fast : http://www.livejournal.com/~usernotfound/

Well, kinda off topic... An InfoSec Christmas Carol - Tw4z t3h N1t3 B3f0r3 Xm4z #end shameless self-plugging #note: at least I'm honest

This

If you're too lazy to read the debunking, here's the rundown. You have to break your serial number sticker to even get at the screws to open the DS, and the pictures don't show a broken sticker. As for the screenshots with Pokemon running, they're taken using an emulator called Goomba. You'll notice that the game supposively running on the DS isn't colorized even though the GBA automatically colorizes GB games. Goomba doesn't.

Most damning of all, the connections this guy says he's making are actually on the the wireless adaptor, not the CPU.

If you're too lazy to read the debunking, here's the rundown. You have to break your serial number sticker to even get at the screws to open the DS, and the pictures don't show a broken sticker. As for the screenshots with Pokemon running, they're taken using an emulator called Goomba. You'll notice that the game supposively running on the DS isn't colorized even though the GBA automatically colorizes GB games. Goomba doesn't.

Most damning of all, the connections this guy says he's making are actually on the the wireless adaptor, not the CPU.

He came back with pictures after being accused of lying, but they have been debunked. Info avaialable here.

Link to the whole article about the hoax instead of just the one picture. Also the pictures in the GP link are the same ones as this debuffing the hoax link.

Yeah, update it with this link, which proves it's all just a hoax. C'mon people, if it was this simple Nintendo would've just built in GB/GBC compatibility in the first place.

It was reposted with pictures of it in action. Take a look.

I read this PR twice, convinced that I had read this wrong or that it was some kind of a hoax, thinking "can this mean what I think it means?".

This is bad. So very bad. If this is true (see above), this will essentially kill the football franchises of Sony/989 Studios, Sega, and Midway. It doesn't matter how good a game is -- without the license to use the official teams and players, you are toast.

The immediate effect of this will be price. When Sega slashed it's sports line to $20, EA followed suit by dropping it's sports titles to $30. Think that will happen when EA has no competition? Quality will be the next to go -- what will be EA's motivation to innovate? When SCEA first released NFL Gameday for the Playstation, EA cancelled it's Madden because of its inferrior quality. They came back the next year with a much-improved offering. Without compeition, what will stop EA from shoveling out complete garbage? There wasn't a lot of year-on-year innovation in the first place, but now I'll be surprised if they do little more update the team rosters.

Oh, and doesn't easpouse's husband work for EA Tiburon? I guess that situation isn't going to improve. "Where else are you going to work? Sega? Bwah hah hah hah!". Guess I better figure out how the BCS works... damn you EA!!!

it would appear that the community mod deleted the post. however, in the meantime, the original poster has submitted photos and a link where you can read the text of the original mod instructions, along with extra photos.

it would appear that the community mod deleted the post. however, in the meantime, the original poster has submitted photos and a link where you can read the text of the original mod instructions, along with extra photos.

Follow the thread...

I don't want to hear any more non-sense about DS being able to be modded to play GB/GBC games. This is nothing by krap. Why? Well, grounding an already grounded wire and grounding the antenna isn't going to get you anywhere my friends. the pictures where taken from http://www.lik-sang.com/news.php?artc=3530. The voltages do not match between the DS/GBA and the GB/GBC. Remember how the GBA units had a physical switched that was pressed when you inserted a class game? This switch turned off the ARM7 CPU, turned on the Z80 CPU, upped the cart voltage from 3.3v to 5v, and changed the wiring configuration used on the link port. Grounding an already grounded pin on the cart and grounding the DS's antenna, how exactly will that accomplish all of this anyways? ITS NON-SENSE!!!

While I like very much the concept of PayPal - which allows me to quickly send money without revealing my CC number, they do behave like nasty monopolists and terminate accounts without telling the reason why.

Look what they did to Clay, the artist of Sexy Losers - they terminated his account just like that, without explaining anything besides claiming he violated their TOS.. and they did that to many other people.

Main advantage of database abstraction is that HotSync could incrementally backup and synchronize your data without knowing about its internal structure. In cases when it should know about record structure, it could be extended on PC-side by something called "Conduits" - essentially plug-ins responsible for synchronizing certain kind of database records.

In more recent versions of Palm OS they realized that they could not get away without good old file system abstraction (for example for accessing network drives or compact flash cards) and they introduced Virtual File System manager, in short VFS. VFS is certainly step ahead, but data stored on VFS does not have advantage of HotSync - it is not backed up, not synced on per-record basis, not purged then application owning it is deleted.

Other systems, like PocketPC and Symbian already have just one data storage model - File System. PalmOS now have two, incompatible ones.

VFS abstraction is more flexible than database, since it offers multi-tier data organization (nested directories) versus two-tier in database (database and record). Interestingly, old model could be mapped into VFS model. One could write VFS library representing databases in main memory as VFS directories. Each record will be shown as file in appropriate directory. This would allow to access with old data structures via new API. Databases modified via this VFS API are still valid PalmOS databases and could be backed up via HotSync. Now developers could gradually shift to new VFS API and old database API could be eventually phased out.

I hope somebody will develop such VFS implementation.

(copied verbatim from my june 2004 blog entry)

her live journal user entry: link

> See Joe's head explode.

Please see The Oxford English Dictionary for correct spelling.

Here's a livejournal entry about working at EA, and it's pretty revealing.

Also, I worked in Austin for Origin Games, until EA slowly strangled the company to death, so I'm no fan of EA either (although their Hockey on Sega was the bomb in the day)

CB

Why the links to "every other blog"? Those are not blog sites, just links to blogging software. More appropriate links would have been to sites like these.

http://www.livejournal.com/

For those that dont know, here for about this 'EA controversy':

http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/

• Your own hours, of course, and generally more time with the family.
• You aren't roped into working overtime w/o being paid for it, a la EA_Spouse.
• You get your own health insurance, something not lame & skin-flinty. Check out NASE and their indemnity option, which covers any doctor anywhere.
• Instead of grinding away at precisely one thing for a significant portion of your life, you get to mix and match. This is particularly good for me because I like to design, code, and do biz dev, and as an employee, you're pressured into a focused role.
• It's a phenomenal networking opportunity.
• For some reason, your opinion as a contractor is worth (marginally) more than your opinion as an employee.
• Often, when hired to do a job, you feel lame if you're not qualified to do a piece of it. As a contractor, you can simply subcontract the piece you suck at. You might make a little less, but you deliver more complete solutions, which in the long run will make you more successful.

You haven't heard? letting the world see your journal is the cool thing now.

Another quality offering from our favorite game publisher.

Buy your copy today, while supplies last.

The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.

The big problem for me was texture corruption. I'd have random colored triangles on apparently random textures. Finally tracked down a fix - turn off "Catalyst AI" in the Catalyst Control Panel (apparently it's an ATI-only problem), which required that I *get* the Catalyst Control Panel.

Bah.

On the other hand, I just finished the game, and it rocked. If anyone wants to read my review it's here :P

From the guy who brought you the AK-47: Kalashnikov Vodka

a friend of mine recently put up a discussion of vodka on his lj, and it's worth a look
Vodka 101
Here's the short version:
1. Don't drink anything that comes in a plastic bottle
2. If you must drink domestic Vodka, make it Skyy
3. Priviet is awesome if you can find it, and not very expensive

Substituting Beer for water.

It didn't go very well.

You tell me about Ohio?

I smell a rat.

Now, it seems, is the "real" crunch, the one that the producers of this title so wisely prepared their team for by running them into the ground ahead of time. The current mandatory hours are 9am to 10pm -- seven days a week -- with the occasional Saturday evening off for good behavior (at 6:30pm). This averages out to an eighty-five hour work week. Complaints that these once more extended hours combined with the team's existing fatigue would result in a greater number of mistakes made and an even greater amount of wasted energy were ignored.

Enjoy...

EA treats their workers like slaves. The following article lays bare what EA is really like, what they do to their own workers and why they are evil.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.htm l

The interesting thing about this is an assumption that most of the employees seem to be operating under. Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal.

Hey EA guys. McDonalds employes lots of people at worse hourly rates than you're getting; even counting the "long" days.

The ea_spouse article covers this:

"Whenever the subject of hours come up, inevitably, it seems, someone mentions 'exemption'. They refer to a California law that supposedly exempts businesses from having to pay overtime to certain 'specialty' employees, including software programmers. This is Senate Bill 88. However, Senate Bill 88 specifically does not apply to the entertainment industry -- television, motion picture, and theater industries are specifically mentioned. Further, even in software, there is a pay minimum on the exemption: those exempt must be paid at least $90,000 annually. I can assure you that the majority of EA employees are in fact not in this pay bracket; ergo, these practices are not only unethical, they are illegal."

Grinding your workers down with twelve hour days/7days a week for months at a time for low pay so that just a few people can reap the millions of profit shows an unfortunate reality. The widening gap between the richest and the ever poorer middle class will only stir up discontent. Sorta reminds me of America's revolution against the British for taking all the riches of the promising new frontier for themselves. Boston Tea Party, anyone?

Even assuming your defeatest attitude is right, the workers are correct to exercise their rights. What's the point of having a job if it destroys your health and personal life? Not to mention the fact that the illegal and immoral practices the workers are just now fighting against result in (according to yesterday's article by an EA employee's spouse) 50% turnover, meaning the average worker has a 50-50 chance of leaving the company anyway. In short: the current conditions arn't tenable; ridding the US of such labour practices, either by offshoring or improvement, is necessary.

http://snarkyspot.blogspot.com/2004/11/ea-spouse-s peaks-out-against-game.html At last count, there were over 770 comments on the EA Spouse post on LiveJournal. The full letter was posted recently about the pending lawsuit: http://www.livejournal.com/users/ea_spouse/274.htm l?thread=197138#t197138

We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback, then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team.

I'm sure they do...

Perhaps inspired by ea_spouse Joe Straitiff weaves a personal story of what happened around him and his project prior to his dismissal. If this stuff doesnt make you cringe I dont know what will. And trust me folks, I work for EA, stuff like this does happen.

i don't expect Livejournal will be affected by the slashdot effect... stats

Looks like they've added a gazillion LiveJournal pages to their index. I used to have a Google search box on my LJ that didn't throw up relevant results until last week or so. Now it works perfectly, just like builtin search (like what you see in MT and WordPress).

Because running up the totals in a few large States does not prove that you'll be the best president of all 50 States. States are different, geographically and socially, and have different concerns. Thus being able to carry a large-ish number of the States is also a good criterion for being president. The Electoral College does an admirable job of balancing these two concerns. The federal nature of the US is one of its greatest strengths.