Author: Maëlys McArdle

JMcArdle.com Server Stats:
Successful server requests 1,013,288 Requests
Successful requests in last 7 days 20,332 Requests
Successful requests for pages 48,946 Requests
Successful requests for pages in last 7 days 12,249 Requests
….
Distinct hosts served 16,875 Hosts

So I passed the 1,000,000 mark for server requests. That means that stuff, such as my sig images, were requested from this server a total of 1,000,000 times since February 2005. Of those, however, only 50,000 have consisted of pages being visited.

Now if only this site would actually be worth visiting :p

Update: Should be noted that “pages visited” also counts the times that people have loaded my PHP image sigs; and therefore does not give an accurate representation of actual visits to this site.

Students Charged as Felony Hackers

In other educational news – 13 high school students in the PowerPage’s home state of Pennsylvania (the Kutztown 13 as they’re known) were charged with third-degree felonies for misusing their school-issued Apple iBooks. Their heinous crime? They used the administrator password (which was taped on the back of the computers, no less) to install unauthorized software. Not BitTorrent, not Limewire, but iChat AV. Sheesh.

Now that’s not the only thing that the kids are accused of doing, they also turned off the monitoring software (Apple Remote Desktop?) and even used it to monitor the admins. In addition, they’re accused of using hacking tools to find the new admin password when it was changed from the password that was taped on the back of the machines.

James Shrawder uncle of fifteen-year-old John Shrawder set up a Web site, CutUsABreak.org, to tell the students’ side of the story. The even posted the letter sent to the students charged with the felonies. The sells t-shirts and bumper stickers, including my favorite: “Arrest me, I know the password!”

The Kutztown Area School District issued a press release detailing the laptop policy violations but the charges still smack of heavy-handedness to me.

Do they really want to graduate a class of students that must check “Yes” for the question “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” Give them community service and suspend their computer or Internet privileges, maybe, but felony convictions for being kids? Give me a break.

UPDATE:

New charges were filed yesterday against the teens. A charge of computer theft has been lodged against all 13 defendants, so that they are now charged with three variations of computer trespassing.

Source site is now 404.

Is it just me, or is this just an instance of using big words and the law to cover the stupidity of the administration?

First off: Charging 15 year old kids with a felony for this? To me, given the crime, its as if a teacher charged a child with “criminal assault with a deadly weapon” because the kid threw a snowball at someone else. It is true that the kids broke the rules – and for that they should be punished. Suspended from using the computers maybe. But charging them with criminal offenses of this degree is beyond any level of comprehension.

Second of all, though the kids did do wrong, the administrators shouldn’t be so easily off the hook either. If anything, it seems that they are using these allegations and charges to take attention away from their clear lack of competence. They essentially created the massive security hole that was so easily exploited, and should be equally under scrutiny for their extreme level of incompetence.

Visit www.cutusabreak.org for more, albeit biased, information.

Cré-moé, cré-moé pas
Quéqu’ part en Alaska
Y a un phoque qui s’ennuie en maudit
Sa blonde est partie
Gagner sa vie
Dans un cirque aux États-Unis

Le phoque est tout seul
Y r’garde le soleil
Qui descend doucement sur le glacier
Y pense aux États
En pleurant tout bas
C’est comme ça quand ta blonde t’a lâché

REFRAIN:
Ça vaut pas la peine
De laisser ceux qu’on aime
Pour aller faire tourner
Des ballons sur son nez
Ça fait rire les enfants
Ça dure jamais longtemps
Ça fait plus rire personne
Quand les enfants sont grands

Quand le phoque s’ennuie
Y r’garde son poil qui brille
Comme les rues de New York après la pluie
Y rêve à Chicago
À Marilyn Monroe
Y voudrait voir sa blonde faire un show

C’est rien qu’une histoire
J’ peux pas m’en faire accroire
Mais des fois j’ai l’impression qu’ c’est moé
Qui est assis sur la glace
Les deux mains dans la face
Mon amour est partie pis j’ m’ennuie

REFRAIN

PS. No I’m actually not in Alaska… :p

Well, Mangas (Japanese comic books) have invaded the big retail bookstores here in Canada. As I walk past the aisles of Chapters, the biggest book retail chain here, I see the first editions of classic manga such as “Love Hina!”, “Great Teacher Onizuka” and “Battle Royale” as they invade our shelves. First volumes to series that were completed a long time ago in Japan.

My feelings are mixed. Anime has been around North America for a while now, with titles such as Dragon Ball, Pokemon, Digimon, Gundam Wing showing up on television. However, the explosion really took off with Pokemon, and since then there’s been tons of kiddie anime appearing on TV (BeyBlades, Monster Rancher, etc.).

The problem was that what was appearing here was just that: “kiddie anime”. Nevertheless, since a few years ago, they’ve began to bring the more serious anime – Cowboy Bebop, Full Metal Alchemist, and the just announced Neon Genesis Evangeleon. In recent months, manga has also caught on. Stores are increasing their anime selection.

Japanese influence is in full force. My feelings are mixed because I don’t think it will last, and not only that – I also believe that this is a fad that will collapse. As a result, there won’t much of any anime or manga to purchase in North America in a few years, leaving those true to the genre destitute.

Well, Quinnware has released has released a new beta media player called “Quintessential Media Player” [QMP]. Quintessential Player [QCD], their standard music player provided on that site, is a very competent freeware Winamp-style music player. Heck, I even made a rather succesful skin for it [woo – 9000 downloads]. Personally QCD is my favourite music player out there.

Now, however, they’ve released a new beta player that’s more akin to Foobar/WMP, with a far more advanced playlist system, and a far more developped video player.

That said, the video player is still not anywhere nearly as fully-featured as dedicated movie players such as Media Player Classic or VideoLAN. It’s more comparable to Windows Media Player or RealPlayer in terms of its pretty-interface meets lack-of-features.

Another thing that I don’t like of this new beta “Quintessential Media Player” is the “music browser” system, which sends your tracks over to the Gracenote website, and then retrieves an information page on the album being played. I really don’t like this dependance on an internet connection, nor the commercialisation aspects of such an addition.

All good things must come to an end, and I suspect that QMP signals the end of an efficient, free, versatile, minimalist music player that was QCD. This is sort of akin to the jump of WinAmp 2.x to WinAmp 5.x for those who are geeky enough to know what I mean.

Update: It’s occured to me that maybe I was too harsh on QMP. It still is a decent player, the default skin is much prettier than the default skin for QCD, and I suspect that the plugins between QCD and QMP are fully compatible (same underlying engine).

It still beats WinAmp, and blows Windows Media Player out of the water, esp. since it adds support for external devices (ie. portable MP3 players) as well as a self-maintained rating system for your music.

Update: It’s been 3 months since I wrote this review, and QMP has become my main music player. In that time, I really haven’t been hindered by the programs intermingling with the Internet, and I find that the introduced tweaks and features make this player quite superior to its predecessor.