yay! cornell made the list of stupid brain farts of 2003! go big red! the cnn business article compiles a list of dumb moments in technology from the past year, and last year had some pretty interesting fuck-ups. notables from the list of 12 moments of dur…

In February, Cornell University sends out an e-mail to incoming freshmen that begins, “Greetings from Cornell, your future alma mater!” The message is sent to all 1,700 students who applied for early decision, including the 550 who’ve been rejected.
all the cows and pastures and trees make people do strange things…

In February, Cornell University sends out an e-mail to incoming freshmen that begins, “Greetings from Cornell, your future alma mater!” The message is sent to all 1,700 students who applied for early decision, including the 550 who’ve been rejected.
all the cows and pastures and trees make people do strange things…

After SunnComm Technologies rolls out new CD copy-protection software in September, a Princeton student figures out how to disable it. The devious hack: holding down the “Shift” key.
they went on to sue him too, but eventually dropped the case because they realized their underwear was on backwards.

> dumb moments in tech (via cnn)

[ current selection | the beatles – penny lane ]
[ feelin’ | need….lunch ]

yay! the digital divide is widening! according to a ny times article today anyway about how the technologically savvy are getting fed up fixing the problems of the technologically stupid. this digital divide has become even more prevalent recently as the mydoom virus is tearing thru peoples emails. “hmm…look honey, three emails from bob saying “hi!”, and hes added an attachment! i wonder what it is dur dee dur dur…” while i dont profess to be all tech-knowing, i do get the occasional question from friends and family to help with problemos, which i still gladly do. but ive been there before yo…its pretty easy to become frustrated at how being technologically unsavvy can equate to lacking common sense. i was “fortunate” enough to be a computer lab monitor during my semester in roma…watching over old-school powermacs. wow, that was fun. fyi, you might want to read this post. anyhoo, i was all cheery and helpful the first month or so. when we werent out getting trashed, we were in the studio/lab (long story…another day)…so id even help out when i wasnt on duty. over the months tho, impatience and intolerance slowly took over, and i started getting miffed at the endless stream of retard questions i was getting daily.

“yea, when it says to load paper…you might want to you know, add more paper.”
“no, you only have one mouse button.“
“stop using the cd tray as a cup holder.” (and people thought that one was just a myth…)
“yea, you can use your zip disk more than once…were you serious?“
“no, you cant change the desktop wallpaper.“

it got to the point where i would literally have a sign over my computer announcing that i was not on call and that i would hurt anyone who asked me questions. this was all compounded by the fact that we were using out-dated powermacs (we had g3’s back on campus), and an equal number of photoshop questions were tossed my way. new versions of photoshop + old powermacs are not a pretty site. 15 minute filter renderings rock.

so anyhoo…after all that, i personally share the view of the article that instead of always relying on “that friend” or whatnot to fix your problems, to at least try and learn how things work…and accordingly, how to fix your own problems. people like miriam tauber, who was quoted as saying, “There are these MP3’s and PDF’s and a million other things that you don’t even know what they are…I don’t feel like I need to figure out computers, because my instinct is there’s just no way.” have absolutely no hope. theyre like evolutionary speedbumps. cripes woman, try a little.

> learn or log off (via ny times)

and in a brief follow-up to last fridays post about the prankster who irked the democratic republic of apple, wired posted an article about the prank with even more notable quotes and excerpts from some of the fun email the prankster received.

Andy (the prankster) said his e-mail inbox quickly filled to capacity, with more than 1,300 messages, and an unknown number bounced. The mail he did receive was full of nice, kind thoughts like death threats, insults and all kinds of colorful invective.

“I hope your PC blows up and leaves your miserable face disfigured forever,” read one. “You will surely burn in hell for an eternity for this one.”
Another said Andy should be hung by his testicles and set on fire. (still one of my personal favorites)

“Turning a perfectly good dual G5 into a crappy PC was the ticket that got you to hell,” wrote another, citing the common eternal damnation theme. “And if you were in front of me I’d pop a corn-born Teflon bullet from my Glock in your fucking face.”

that last one was oddly detailed in its description of its non-lethal firearm. very considerate of them. i think the prankster said it best when he stated that “mac users are nuttier than a fruitcake…people have an unnatural emotional attachment to object(s) like computers. for some, their reaction was akin to me butchering their parents or a beloved pet.” which you know…is a pretty apt analogy. some people still dont believe it was a prank, and that andy claimed it was just to save his own ass. save his own ass? ok then. i mean, if i really had that kind of money to toss around…would i go out, buy a dual processor g5, gut it clean, and convert it into a (superior) dual pc just to get a reaction out of mac fanatics? fuck yea i would…but im also an asshole. whether it was a prank or not (im sure it was)…you still rock in my book andy.

> dont piss off mac fanatics or they might get humpty on you (via wired)

[ current selection | daft punk – aerodynamic ]
[ feelin’ | feh ]

step 01 > open up your case
step 02 > rip out the mac components
step 03 > slap in pc components
step 04 > get dirty looks from mac fanatics…

bwahaha. coo article from marisol about g5 killer, a kid who got a g5 for christmas, decided that he’d rather have a pc, gutted the g5 case, installed pc components, and earned the hate of the entire mac community. ha! first, a foreword. those who know me know that im anti-mac (hi betty!). not (primarily) because of its performance, which rocketh much…except gaming, which sucketh much. and not because i have an undying love of pcs and microsoft. i dont use macs because ive been using pcs since people still had to decide between xt and at, because i like my pc and am quite adept at using it, and shit…because people expect me, as a graphic designer, to automatically love and use macs. people should never “expect” me to do anything. before i was a graphic designer, i was a computer geek…and i was proficient enough to manipulate and enhance my computers. old habits die hard, and i still sport a pc that eats comparable macs for breakfast. but you know, macs are quite pretty…their design is very very swishy, and apples ideology is actually quite honorable. macs even blaze thru many (but not the majority) of the programs i use. you know what does it in for me tho? its the mac fanatics that make me not want to use macs. ironic, no? fanatics of anything turn my stomach. fanatics in the sense of just blindly following and praising the glory that is whatever it is theyre following. pish. as for pcs, i think its their “fallability” that make people want to continually enhance and customize their pcs. open useability.

which brings us back to g5 killer. the whole thing about gutting the g5? it was actually a prank that he played on a mac-lover friend. before the admission tho, he received thousands of hate-mail from the aforementioned fanatics about hanging him by his testicles and setting him on fire. how eloquent. gotta love them mac fanatics…

> how i pc’d an apple g5

btw, i always thought it was funny how macs were originally targetted towards the masses of everyday computer users (and pcs were the realm of computer geeks)…and now apple commands an intimidating 3% of the market. odd how that worked out.

[ current selection | underworld – born slippy (NUXX) ]
[ feelin’ | hooray! ]

always wished you could control your dreams? according to a bbc news article, a japanese company has invented a machine…the all powerful yumemi kobo (dream workshop) that allows you to control your dreams.

“Prospective dreamers are asked to look at a photo of what they would like to dream about and then record a story line into the Yumemi Kobo, or “dream workshop”. The machine uses the voice recording, along with lights, music and smells, to help them direct their own dreams during periods of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, Takara Co said.“

and theyve said that its apparently worked for many of their test subjects! rock! but now we have to approach this from a moral and ethical standpoint. is humanity ready for this power? what the hell does freddy krueger think about this? b/c now we can just focus on a picture of a sawed-off shotgun or a bfg before we go to sleep and not worry about some toasted tart trying to scratch our eyeballs out.

freddy > weeelcome to my nightmare…
you > nice mariachi outfit.
freddy > *looks at self* i…what…wtf?
you > just kidding…now youre a pirate. going limp?
freddy > haar!!! wait…wtf is going on?
you > righty-o then. say hello to my lee-tle friend.
*atomizes freddy in a poof of smoke*

the rest of us however could find better things to do with such a device. no, you dont really have to stretch your imagination there much…

> the dream workshop (via bbc)

[ current selection | dashboard confessionals – hands down ]
[ feelin’ | …close to vacation ]

yumm…on todays menu is genmai-cha, fishes favorite green tea and my second. i lean more towards hoji, but to be completely honest, the two kinda taste the same. *shrug* this bit of news is equal parts funny and disturbing. according to this article from silicon.com, a man trying to order from the drive-thru at a burger king in troy, michigan was told he was too fat and didnt need a couple of whoppers. others had similarly been told that the burger king didnt have any food, or were just cursed out. eh? it turned out that it wasnt some disgruntled employee waiting to piss into the meat patties, but actually a group of hackers who hacked into the radio frequency of the drive-thru intercom. i didnt even know you could do that…hmm. thats kind of disturbing if you think about it…not knowing whether the person on the other end is who you think it is. ok yea, and its kind of funny…just a little bit. it was (and still is) pretty easy to do similar things over the internet. back in high school, 3 of us pretended to be a hot lesbian over compuserve…and got a girl(?) we were chatting with to call scotties phone. scottie wasnt impressed. and back in my icq days (before some turkish prick stole my 6-digit account…add 706542 to ur list and bitch them out), whenever i got bored of a conversation, id have my then-roomie greg pick up the conversation while i went to get a snack or take a dump. yea…you heard right. if you msg’d me back then, there was a good chance you were having a nice conversation with the cribb-meister. ahem…anyhoo, watch out for those evil drive-thru intercoms…

> hacked drive-thru (via silicon.com)

current selection | dubpistols – pick it up
feelin’ | dry and chapped

the new vaio x505 is finally available…yum. first and foremost, i never understood people’s predispositions to all things apple…making it seem as if they were the last word in design. now while the ibooks powerbooks are pretty swishy (hi betty!), i wouldnt say that the design is really kicking everybody elses ass…maybe in their dominating 3% market share. sony however has always been kicking ass in the other 85% market, and their viciously cool x505 is the most badass laptop at this time. at 0.86 inches thick and less than 2 lbs, the x505 comes in two flavors…one encased in a nickel-reinforced carbon molding (?…sounds badass), and the higher end in space-age carbon-fiber. if you wanted to, the laptop doubles as a shuriken…sneaky ninjas like to roam the halls. it hasnt really been determined whether the x505 would be entering the u.s market…but dynamism already has it from japan. christmas is right around the corner. fuck, hannukah is even closer. *cough buy-me-one cough*

> sony vaio x505

current selection | garbage – world is not enough
feelin’ | hungry

first…the obligatory recap of my absolutely fascinating life which you are currently reading about but are not necessarily excited by. had din with joyce last nite at l’express…calamare ala plancha and roast chicken, yum. then we had coffee at 71 irving. contain yourself.

theres an interesting article today in scientific american in response to the forthcoming poop that is timeline, based on the 1999 michael crichton novel. they have an interview with michio kaku, a string theorist who goes to lengths to explain the evolution of time travel theory. one excerpt reads…

“In 1963 Roy Kerr, a mathematician, found that a spinning black hole collapses into a ring of compressed matter, not a dot. If you fall through the ring, you could wind up backwards in time or perhaps on another universe. The mathematicians call [such spaces] multiply connected spaces. The physicists call them wormholes.“

maybe there will be another universe where george and barbara decided to indeed use prophylactics. kaku goes on to elaborate about general time travel questions, such as paradoxes and time machines, and newer fair such as quantum teleportations, negative energy, and biff tannen.

> scientific american article

current selection | fatboy slim – the sound of milwaukee
feelin’ | party-like

very spiffy ride concept (via #!/usr/bin/girl) from bombardier (sea-doo, the new nyc subway cars, etc…) its a one-wheeled bike/segway/thing that, like the segway, uses gyroscopes to balance it. unlike the segway however, you dont actually look like a mook when seen in public. the thing actually reminds me alot of the bike from vampire hunter d: bloodlust…the one-wheeled thingy the girl speeds around on. whether or not it gets past the concept stage however, is in question. its still pretty coo tho.

this is just ridiculous. damn you sony!