Monthly Archives: March 2003

Live Video from the War Zone

VIDEO
Al-JAZEERA LIVE
Al-JAZEERA LIVE BACK-UP FEED 2
REUTERS LIVE RAW VIDEO
LIVE CBS RAW FEED STREAM FROM BAGHDAD , REAL VIDEO
LIVE RAW FEED STREAM FROM BAGHDAD 1, REAL VIDEO
LIVE RAW FEED STREAM FROM BAGHDAD 2 REAL VIDEO
LIVE NEWS TV STREAM FROM IRAN IN WINDOWS MEDIA
LIVE IRAN TV CH.1, REAL MEDIA
LIVE IRANIAN NATIONAL TV, HIGH SPEED WINDOWS MEDIA
LIVE BAGHDAD TV IN WINDOWS MEDIA
LIVE TV STREAM FROM PAKISTAN IN REAL MEDIA
LIVE SAUDI TV HIGH SPEED, WINDOWS MEDIA
LIVE KURDISTAN TV FROM KURIDSTAN IRAQ, HIGH SPEED WINDOWS MEDIA
LIVE MSNBC BATTLEFIELD CAM, This is a live camera attached
to tanks and army vehicles in the field in Iraq. Sometimes image will be black
when camera is not in use.
LIVE NEWS FROM TURKEY, WINDOWS MEDIA
BBC NEWS: LIVE STREAM, REAL VIDEO, LOW SPEED
BBC NEWS: LIVE STREAM, WINDOWS MEDIA, HIGH SPEED

AUDIO
Live Military Radio Middle East: You may hear a secret coded message here. MAY BE OVERLOADED AT TIMES.
BBC World Service

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A World Gone Mad

“You know the world is going crazy when
the best rapper is a white guy,
the best golfer is a black guy,
The Swiss hold the America’s Cup,
France is accusing the US of arrogance,
and Germany doesn’t want to go to war.”

-Author Unknown

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.Huh?

“One question might be, and I’ll be as direct as I can be about this, what is .Net? Unlike Windows, where you could say it’s a product, it sits in one place, it’s got a nice little box. In some senses, it’s a very good question.”

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, at a Microsoft .Net briefing day in July

“We don’t have the user-centricity. Until we understand context, which is way beyond presence — presence is the most trivial notion of context.”

– Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, on the same topic at the same briefing

“Our biggest problem was policing the use of .Net. Things like .Net Enterprise Servers. That’s a great example of where the confusion came from, because it looked like we were slapping .Net on a bunch of random products.”

– Charles Fitzgerald, general manager of Microsoft’s platform strategy group, in August on ZDNet News

“It’s about connecting people to people, people to information, businesses to businesses, businesses to information, and so on. That is the benefit.”

– Steve Ballmer, trying again, in an October interview with News.com

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The Dell Inspiron 8200 Saga cont.

I have a real love/hate relationship with my Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop. On the plus side, it’s powerful, convenient, and solid (ie. not cheap plastic). On the negative side, a motherboard problem was causing it to overheat (it ultimately needed a new mobo) and the video drivers provided by Dell and NVIDIA *suck*.

The drivers are old and lack many of the added features that more recent NVIDIA drivers provide. They also cause the laptop to crash 3-4 times per day. At first, the driver would go into an infinite loop. causing a BSOD. At Dell’s suggestion, I formatted the hard drive and reinstalled the OS (oh joy of joys) and also flashed the latest version of their BIOS. The crashes changed from BSODs to sudden slowdowns, where the icons on my explorer bar would start to turn black and the system would become unresponsive. 75% of the time I could hit Fn-ESC and go into standby mode. Bringing it back from standby would “fix” the crash. But 25% of the time the system would be dead. The screen would just lock up and I would need to cold boot, which is a real pleasure when you’re in the middle of coding.

So, since Dell’s tech support was useless and could provide no further help in the matter, I went to Dell’s Community Support forum and found a suggestion that seems to have “fixed” the problem. It’s been three days and the laptop has not crashed. I was directed to a web site that provided “hacked” INF files for NVIDIA’s drivers for the GeForce2Go and GeFore4Go cards. All I had to do is download a standard driver package from NVIDIA’s web site, unpack it, replace the INF with the hacked version, and then install.

At first I tried version 41.09 of their drivers, but it still locked up (albeit slightly differently – this time with the red line/blob that many people complained about on the forums). I then uninstalled 41.09 and tried an older set, 40.72. Sure enough, no crashes at 1600x1200x32. Next I’ll try 1920x1440x32 on an external monitor and see if it’s still stable.

—-

[Additional info]
Sure enough, after running at 1920x1440x32 for 15 minutes, it crashed. Looks like I’ll stick with 1600x1200x32 for now…

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SETI@home finds 150 possible alien signals

Three members of the SETI@home team will head to Puerto Rico this month to point the Arecibo radio telescope at up to 150 spots identified as the source of possible signals from intelligent civilizations.

Read the press release, help out and install the software.

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US Propaganda Leaflets

The US military has been dropping propaganda leaflets in Iraq.

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"A" is for Amy…

…who fell down the stairs.

Edward Gorey’s “The Gashlycrumb Tinies” are now online.

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Cows

DEMOCRAT: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. You feel guilty for being successful. You vote people into office that put a tax on your cows, forcing you to sell one to raise money to pay the tax. The people you voted for then take the tax money, buy a cow and give it to your neighbor. You feel righteous. Barbara Streisand sings for you.

SOCIALIST: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor. You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

REPUBLICAN: You have two cows. Your neighbor has none. So?

COMMUNIST: You have two cows. The government seizes both and provides you with milk. You wait in line for hours to get it. It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow, which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE: You have two cows. The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other, pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the 2 cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION: You have two cows. You go on strike because you want three cows. You go to lunch. Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION: You have two cows. You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains. Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows but you don’t know where they are. While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman. You break for lunch. Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION: You have two cows. You count them and learn you have five cows. You have some more vodka. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows. You count them again and learn you have 12 cows. You stop counting cows and open another bottle of vodka. You produce your 10th, 5-year plan in the last 3 months. The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION: You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two. You don’t milk them because you cannot touch any creature’s private parts.

POLISH CORPORATION: You have two bulls. Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

FLORIDA CORPORATION: You have a black cow and a brown cow. Everyone votes for the best looking one. Some of the people who like the brown one best, vote for the black one. Some people vote for both. Some people vote for neither. Some people can’t figure out how to vote at all. Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which is the best-looking one.

NEW YORK CORPORATION: You have fifteen million cows. You have to choose which one will be the leader of the herd, so you pick some dumb cow from Arkansas named Hillary.

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Once every hundred years…

Happy 03/03/03!

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