Happy Valentines Day!
MSN.com rendered in bork-speak
If you haven’t heard, Opera software announced that in retaliation for MSN sending them a bogus HTML style-sheet they were going to release an “Opera: Bork-Speak Edition” of their web browser that rendered the MSN.com website entirely in the language of the Muppet’s Swedish Chef. I downloaded the web browser and saved off a screenshot at the link above. Enjoy. 🙂
Today’s current terror level:
Hehe.. this raises a good point however: What good are the “terror levels” anyways? What can you and I do about it other than live in more fear than before, suspect anyone that’s not anglo-saxon-protestant, buy more bottled water, and stock up on gas? (consume! consume!) I know some people at work that are network administrators, and after the raise in the “terror level” they were instructed by our CEO to “be on alert.” “Be on alert for what?” they asked, “what are we expected to do now that we don’t all ready do?
IEEE advises Congress to rethink the DMCA
This was just slashdotted, but I think it’s worth repeating. As a computer engineer, this makes me feel really good. The DMCA has hit academics pretty hard, especially when it comes to encryption. But fortunately the IEEE is thinking a little bigger:
IEEE members have reported that some content providers have sent baseless or inadequate DMCA notices to service providers, and that some service providers have gone beyond the removal of material that allegedly infringes, including blocking access to all the user’s material, suspending the user’s account, and sometimes even suspending all access to the Internet by the user. IEEE-USA believes that this goes far beyond the balance between user and content provider rights struck by Congress in the DMCA notice-and-takedown provisions.
Recently, researchers whose work falls within the exemption provided by Congress have been threatened with possible litigation under the DMCA, causing great concern for those researchers who want to publish their results in academic conferences and journals and similar forums, including those sponsored by the IEEE. IEEE-USA strongly condemns those who threaten legitimate research and its publication when Congress has stated its intention to protect such research and publication from litigation.
New York Sun proposes anti-war protestors be tried for treason
I was pretty shocked to read this… The article written by the editors of The Sun basically says: It’s treason to help an enemy -> Saddam is an enemy -> Protestors are helping Saddam. Uhhhh, yeah, I’m sure all those protestors are selling arms to Iraq. (whoops, did I just say that out loud?)
*sigh*…
Get this: Disney takes Pooh, uses Pooh to make money. Original owner of Pooh sues Disney for royalities of said Pooh. Disney attempts to destroy documents that reveal the Pooh trail. Original owner of Pooh hires ex-convict to recover the Pooh trail documents from Disney’s garbage. Disney asks judge to dismiss case because the Pooh trail was uncovered by “unthinkable conduct.” Everyone now has pooh on their hands.
All your waveform are belong to us
Cool website with loads of music-oriented DSP source code snippets.
I’ve been getting a little into music DSP lately… I would love to make the full jump to Cubase SX but there aren’t any solid OS X compatible VST samplers out yet, so I’ve been looking into what it would take to write one. Wow. DSP is a huge field, I wish I had paid more attention in my college DSP courses… So far I’ve only been able to write a simple saw-tooth wave VST instrument, and it’s got terrible aliasing problems towards the upper-frequencies. I’m gonna look into this BLIT thing to see about removing the aliasing. Neat stuff.
GPS, IRIDIUM, SKYNET, oh my!
Yeah! Now that’s what I’m talkin about!