TechgnosisWeb Prime

Allright, those of you who don’t have any money to get me anything, I understand you. Hell, I don’t have enough money to get a lot of people anything. But I know you all love me and want to do something for my birthday, right? Of course you do. Well, here’s one thing you can do that will make me a very happy camper, and won’t cost you a single red cent: Click on this link and sign up there at freeiPod.com (if you’re gonna do it, please do it by clicking on the link, otherwise I don’t get your referral and you’re not really helping me then), then just do the thing with any single one of the offers they give you (most of them don’t cost a single red cent, and those that do, you can just back out after a week or two and not get charged anything). If I can get 5 folks to do that, I get a free iPod, and we all know that would make me so, so happy.

“But Katsu,” I hear you saying, “Surely this is nothing but a scam! I thought you were smarter than this!”. I know, I know… if it seems too good to be true, and all that… but I’ve been doing the research, all night long, and the thing appears to be fully legit. Go visit this site for more information on the whole thing, and help on how to get a free iPod of your own, once you sign up. Hey, doesn’t cost anything, and will only take a couple of minutes out of your night, and will make me very, very happy, so why not?

Edit: If any of you have gotten in there, yo may be confused as to which offers are the best and won’t rip you off. Well, the main two are the AOL offer and the eBay offer, those are your best bets for not spending a single cent. With the AOL offer, just sign up, they don’t ask you for a credit card, and then you have 45 days to cancel it with no charges at all. So just sign up for it, wait a couple days at most until the freeiPod.com website verifies that you signed up, and then cancel it. The other one is eBay, even if you allready have an eBay account, you can just sign up for another one, and then bid on an item, any item. You don’t have to win the item, you just have to have the winning bid for a moment so the eBay system emails you. Your best bet is to find one of those no-reserve keyboards that usually start at around $0.99 and sell for about $12, and place a max bid of $2 or something on the most recent one. You’ll have the highest bid for a moment, but you’ll probably be outbid pretty quickly, so you don’t end up paying anything. See, Uncle Katsu watches out for all of you.

UPDATE: For the doubters, here’s a guy who just received his iPod this morning.

YET MORE UPDATES: Well, looks like I may have gotten excited over nothing. I was looking throuhg their site more closely, and it looks like they don’t ship to Puerto Rico… which is weird, considering that the people they buy the iPods from, ECost.com, ships iPods to Puerto Rico with no problems. I allready emailed them, let’s see what they have to say.

My birthday’s coming up (August 17th). Just thought I’d get that out there.

Also, for those of you wracking your pretty lil’ heads for what to get me, let me just tell you what I want: I want a PDA again. I miss having a real PDA, ever sicne my old Z died. So here’s what you all get to do: Those $10 or $20 you were gonna spend on a small present or book or figurine, save ‘em, and just give me the cash. If enough friends and family members do this, I can afford to buy myself a new Zaurus (they’re going for around $100-$150 depending on where you look) and once more know the joy of carrying around a Linux box in my pocket. So, make ol’ Katsu happy: help him buy a new PDA. Heck, I’ll put up a Paypal link if you wanna give me my present that way. And if you weren’t gonna get me anything for my brithday, well.. can’t blame ya. Times are tough

Just a couple of quick links before I go to bed, in case my blog time tomorrow is limited:

Sent to me by way of Monster and Neil Gaiman: William Shatner, aided and abetted by Ben Folds, singing Pulp’s “Common People”. , Mr. Gaiman’s own words: You may not think you need to hear it, but I’m afraid you do.

Also, Slashdot’s new IT section color scheme is THE BEIGE OF THE END TIMES. THE BEIGE THAT CONSUMES ALL. Go ahead, read the entry, it’s freakin’ hilarious, as well as so, so true.

Someday, if/when I have children, they will play on this :

A Mobius loop double-twisted strip (sorry, folks, I got carried away. It’s not a Mobius strip, since it has an even number of twists, giving it two separate surfaces, rather than a Mobius strip’s single infinite surface. My bad.) that kids can climb on… hot damn. The geek in me is hopping for joy.

You know me, I’m a victim of techno-lust. If there’s a way to mechanize something, anything, I’m all for it. There should be more whirring and clanking noises in my life! More beeps! More flashing LED’s! But the current crop of electronic voting machines is a travesty. Tech for tech’s sake is a shame, and these machines, designed by companies that have the capability and knowledge to actually make them trustworthy and reliable, are anything but. It’s not that hard to add in a printer with a long roll of paper held behind a thick glass where a voter can verify that his vote did, indeed, go through, and that can be manually verified in case of a recount. Hell, give me 5 minutes, I can code it. Make the code that counts my freakin’ votes Open Source so I know what’s going in there, and set up some basic certification mechanism so I can verify that the code that went into the machine is the code I saw, and I’ll be happy. But until that happens, we’re all at the mercy of events like the one described in this CNN.com article: CNN.com - Florida officials: Some voting records wiped out.

We interrupt your daily Bush-bashing to point you to an example of the insane security procedures going on right now at the Democratic National Convention: Wired News: Free Speech Behind the Razor Wire.

Looks like protesters are having their free speech rights completely trampled, by being herded into designated ‘free-speech zones’ which are well away from any delegates that might actually hear the protester’s points of view. Thankfully, modern wireless tech is at least allowing the protesters to communicate and organize with their fellows despite the security. Here’s a snippet:

But activists have been largely united in one civil action: their boycott of the so-called free-speech zone carved out by the U.S. Secret Service and local authorities, the only spot where protesters will be able to shout their messages to the delegates arriving on buses in a nearby parking lot.

The protesters are also coordinating actions outside the free-speech zone by sending text messages on their wireless phones. Some protesters for a short time Monday converted the zone into a mock prison camp by donning hoods and marching in the cage with their hands behind their backs.

The protest zone, which most people here simply call “the cage,” is beneath an elevated section of disused subway tracks near a newly paved bus parking lot.

Activists say the zone resembles the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The zone, surrounded by two layers of chain link fences mounted on Jersey barriers, draped with black mesh and topped with razor wire, violates the protesters’ free-speech rights, said a legal observer for the Boston chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

By the way, mad props to the fine folk at indymedia for providing assorted tech geekery and assistance to the protesters and independent media outlets over there.
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Well, the kittens have begun opening their beady little eyes, and I’m afraid they’ve just about overwhelmed me with cuteness. Now that they can see the big bad world, they’re more inquisitive, active, and bouncy than ever. They want to go out and explore… They’ve started playing with each other and with me, if I put my hand in the cage and move it back and forth, they pounce on it and nibble and lick my fingers and climb all over. Too cute. So far, their names are Small, Medium, and Large, the triplets, all female, which we can only tell apart by the lenght of the stripe on their backs, and Mr. White (though I’m considering naming him Elijah, in honor of one of my favorite comic book characters ever), the male. We’re still looking for homes, if anyone’s interested, though at least they’re doing a good job of making me not regret it if I do have to keep them all.

In other news, and in the name of all that’s holy, you have to see this: The Sad Song, by Fredo Viola. The song itself gives me the shivers with how good it is (I’m working on placing it on the radio.blog over to the left there, I’ll let you know when it’s converted and online (edit: it’s on the radio.blog, and clocking in @ 2 MB rather than the original’s 9MB, it should even be manageable with some preloading for dial-up users :))), but the video is spellbinding. Sure, it’s a beefy download, but if you’ve got t3h broadband, go check it out. Pieced together out of 15-second bits from a Nikon camera, it’s a brilliant piece of work.

Canada.com reports: U.S. President George W. Bush a big winner at World Stupidity Awards. Snippet:

Bush was a dominating presence at the second edition of the awards presented at the Just for Laughs comedy festival. Host Lewis Black, whose biting satire is a highlight of TV’s The Daily Show, took pride in the recognition the United States received at the awards, saying: “we are the gold standard.”

Black said the awards “celebrate the pros” and “perfection in idiocy” because real stupidity is hard work.

“It’s easy to fall down a manhole, it’s easy to put the candles too close to the drapes, it’s easy to launch a military invasion of another country based on a few blurry satellite photos,” he observed.

“This year my people, we scaled the Everest of stupidity and we stand upon its peak.”

Bush took the Stupidest Man of the Year Award and for the second time in the history of the two-year-old awards won the Stupidity Award for Reckless Endangerment of the Planet.

Blatantly stolen from memepool: Why stop at librarians? Babes against Bush! Bands Against Bush! Kids Against Bush! Knitters Against Bush! Republicans Against Bush! Bluetooth Users Against Bush!

Bushes Against Bush!

TechgnosisWeb: always ready to bring you the latest and greatest ‘News you can use’ ™, is proud to present: How to become a pimp in 10 days. Here’s a taste:

Getting gals on your lady squad is easy if you choose targets who look like they’re lacking in self esteem.

“It doesn’t hurt if they’re pacing in front of the bus station at 2 a.m. in a teddy and high heels,” says Rooster.

“That could well be an indication they might have some experience as a working girl.

Found this article on BoingBoing, linking to Lawrence Lessig’s site: Boing Boing: Lessig: Shame on you, O’Reilly. It’s absolutely brilliant, and Lessig calmly, rationally, and methodically takes Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to task for his constant lies and fabrications. Here’s a snippet:

Lessig then proceeds to take O’Reilly to task, point-by-point for an ongoing campaign of pathological libel agaist Jeremy Glick, the son of a 9/11 victim who spoke out against the Bush Presidency and the war. Glick appears in Outfoxed, a new documentary that criticises O’Reilly and his network, and in answering the charges raised in Outfoxed, O’Reilly has chosen Glick as a symbol of what he hates, and in order to make his point, he has been lying repeatedly about what Glick said and did. Lessig’s point is that attacking a giant media organisation is one thing, but using your on-camera bully pulpit to repeatedly slander someone who has already lost so much is unconscionable.

Link to Lessig’s article.

I know, I’ve been promising since forever to put up pics of the baby rats (kittens), but I kept putting it off. Natalie finally made me take a few pics, tho, so here they are. The quality on these is crap, but that’s because my digicam is pretty craptacular to begin with. Still, you can just make them out. Enjoy!

(Click on the thumbnails to see them full size)
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Well, my post rate’s been dropping, although that’s mainly due to exhaustion; work’s kept me pretty damn busy the past few days. Haven’t had much of a chance to do things around here or over at AG, other than random posts on the forums. Here’s hoping the week will calm down a tad soon. Until then, here’s a consolidation of a lot of things I would have been posting about during the week had I not been so busy:

Looks like accusations of abuse @ Abu Gharib have gotten much, much worse:

At the end of this post are links to digital copies of two documents from the Taguba report, hosted on the Washington Post website. Is it possible that they document the exact incidents to which Hersh referred? Excerpt from statement provided by Kasim Mehaddi Hilas, Detainee #151108, on January 18 2004:

I saw [name deleted] fucking a kid, his age would be about 15 - 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard the screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name deleted] who was wearing the military uniform putting his dick in the little kid’s ass. I couldn’t see the face of the kid because his face wasn’t in front of the door. And the female soldier was taking pictures. [name deleted], I think he is [deleted] because of his accent, and he was not skinny or short, and he acted like a homosexual (gay). And that was in cell #23 as best as I remember.

If you haven’t seen MoveOn.org’s ‘Bush in 30 seconds’ contest, you owe it to yourself to go check it out, and at least watch the winning entry. Heck, then go and watch the other 150 top entries. There’s a lot of very smart, very talented people out there, and they see the truth about this administration. Let’s just hope that, come election day, there’s enough of us to make a difference.

John Stewart is God: John Stewart on BushCo’s apparent attempts to find a way to delay or cancel the November elections. John Stewart on homosexual marriage.

Go ahead, sign the petition to the FTC to keep Fox from being able to claim ownership over the phrase ‘Fair and Balanced’.

“It is by caffeine alone that I set my thoughts in motion. It is by the juice of the bean that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shaking, the shaking becomes a warning. It is by caffeine alone that I set my thoughts in motion.”

Well, it’s still technically Sunday, so I’m still good on my promise. Not much to tell, my weekend was mostly dedicated to two things: AniGaming, and goofing off, in that order. Spend several hours on Saturday coding up a few fixes and new features over on AG. So far, everyone seems fairly happy with the new stuff, so that’s good. Now I gotta dedicate some time to actually grabbing news and updates, especially on the games folks are asking about. This week should be a busy news week over there.

Except for my work on the site, however, my weekend was fairly uneventful. Visited friends, did some grocery shopping, and spent a few hours leveling up in Disgaea. The rat babies are doing fine, they get bigger every day, and they’re starting to get hair, you can barely make out the outlines of what their colors will be when they’re more fully developed. So far, looks like at least one of them will be white/cream like his mother, the other three look like they’ll have ’saddles’ of darker colors along their backs and light colors elsewhere, one of them at least looks like it will have a blaze of color atop its head as well.. I’m eagerly awaiting their fur to come in so I can put up some pics.

Anyway, me off to bed for tonight. I’ll try and keep updates coming, but don’t know if i’ll be able to keep the previous furious rate of posting up, since I’m a lot more active with AniGaming these days, and work has gotten busy (I’m pretty sure I have to go to Salinas tomorrow, for example, and that means no posting from the office, because I won’t *be* at the office).

I know, I know I said I’d write more, but I’ve still been busy working with AniGaming. Come on, you gotta cut me some slack, I haven’t worked on that site in ages and it’s starting to show a bit of life, I gotta milk my sudden enthusiasm for all its worth. I’ll post stuff up tomorrow. Promise.

Just a quick note to let all my loyal readers know I haven’t forgotten about them, I’ve just been busy with work and with some coding over @ AniGaming. The ol’ corpse of AG is, if not exactly showing signs of life, at least twitching due to the accumulation of gases, to paraphrase my good friend The Absu, and I’m trying to take advantage of that small spark to do some minor changes and updates to the site, so that’s taking up a lot of my time. Don’t worry, there’ll be some decent updates soon, likely tonight.

Taken straight from Slashdot and thrown right in the faces of the people who are still obsessing over the one security flaw found in Moz/FF:

“Buckle your seat belts folks. On what is looking to be the next Black Tuesday, with rumors of 9 new Windows security patches being released, Secunia is reporting on 4 new vulnerabilities in IE that allow for arbitrary code execution and placing content over other windows. Combined with the new Windows patches, it is likely more Download.Ject and Sasser like viruses will be emerging in the coming months.”

So, let’s see.. one minor flaw that’s mostly the OS’s fault, versus… all the old IE flaws and 4 new ‘extremely critical’ flaws just today. Yeah. Boy, you gotta love that IE.

Well, news on the ratsie front: we’re down from 5 baby rats to 4. One of them didn’t survive the night (it had been pretty weak from the beggining). On the plus side, hey, less ratsies to deal with, but on the downside, well, it’s always sad to see a little newborn animal die, even if its one you didn’t want. I’m sure many dog and cat owners know the feeling of losing one or more of their pets litters within the first couple of days.

Other than that, the whole thing seems to be progressing well. Nezumi’s taking pretty decent care of her 4 babies, and is quite protective over them. I managed to distract her away from them for a while though while I removed the one that passed away, and took the opportunity to hold the other babies for a while (everything I’ve read says that it’s okay to handle the babies, very gently, the mother won’t reject them afterwards or anything). They’re tiny and warm and they squirm and squeak. Kinda funky looking since they still have no hair, but cute too, in their own pinky way. I’ll see if I can’t maybe post pics of them and their mom (and my other 2 rats while I’m at it), though perhaps the pics will have to wait until they have a little hair and Nezumi’s not quite so overly protective towards them.

… and for those of you who were gloating about the ’security flaw’ found in Mozilla a few days ago, InfoWorld has an article describing that several MS products are vulnerbale to the same flaw, such as Word and MS Messenger. So it turns out that the flaw wasn’t really in Mozilla, it was in the OS itself.. funny thing, that.