Category: Life

I saw a girl on Friday that I really liked. lol, were you ever to look up the definition of “numpty” it would read “NXSeal on Friday, the 23rd of January 2004”. lol, seriously I felt blearh about myself afterwards, and what I should of, shouldn’t of done.

Apart from that, I was thinking of the validity of copyright laws in our present day, and how the RIAA misuses it. Namely, the use of P2P. I mean, a library pays for a book once. Then people go
out and read the book, without violating copyright laws. A video rental store buys VHS/DVDs once, and then people rent them for a fee to the store’s profit. Now someone buys a CD, and a bunch of people on the internet borrow it, and it becomes considered copyright infringement. How does that work?!

I could think that maybe because they copied it, it would constitute a violation of “copy”-rights. Yet these are new times, and what was once defined as copying has become an antiquated
beast in our new times of computers, where the only way of transporting media is by “copying”.

Reguardless, I still think the RIAA is a little snitch:

• CD sales have increased 8% over the last year. This might be actually attributed to P2P, since more people may now “taste-test” new bands, which was otherwise prohibited through the very cost of the CDs [no one wants to spend $30 on a CD that could be crap].
• This reguardless that the RIAA has artificially kept the cost of CDs at an extreme high, even though the price of producing the media has dwindelled in the last decade.
• This reguardless that teens are switching to other forms of entertainment which bring them more bang for their buck (ie. a 2Hour DVD movie on average costs noticeably less than a 45Minute CD, even though the movie itself cost millions upon millions to produce, quite unlike the CD; or video games which bring much more bang for your buck).
• This reguardless that “legal” P2P systems that pay insanely large royalties to the RIAA have taken hold of the market as a viable form of new media distribution.
• This reguardless that the RIAA has decided to go after their very fans to rake in more cash, instead of trying to understand why the whole P2P phenomena occured and trying to harness its might into profits. Maybe all those people got turned off for a reason, like being unable to afford the large ripoffs that has become music CDs.

The only argument for the RIAA now is that the sales of the  reintroduced singles format fell by 30% over the last year. Not surprising considering they were charging $7 for one song
and a few abyssimal remixes of that same song. Also not surprising since such reintroductions often fail. But of course, when CNN airs its so-called unbiased news on piracy, they’ll only single in on this misinforming fact, and have some loner teen/adult with half a brain defending the cause of P2P.

Next time: Ignorance and the cost of general copyright defenitions pertaining to the development of software.

I received some great news today. They revised the chemistry marks for last term, and I have now officially… PASSED!!!!

HOLY FOOKING YAY!

On another note, I reworked that script I talked about in my last blog entry. Since the script essentially waits for the secondary server to time out before sending the user to the primary server, I’ve also added a little “wait” message.

Wohoo! Well, I have made another “background” script. Basically, when anyone ever accesses a certain targetted domain, they will first encounter a page with 4 lines of code. Basically, it will
check to see if the better and yet unreliable secondary server for the site is up. If it is, it will forward the user there. If it isn’t, then it will forward the user to the crappier and yet always on primary server. This also helps alleviate the bandwidth constrictions placed upon the primary server, and maintains an optimal environment for the user.

Possible applications are those who run HTTP servers at home that may not be left on 24/7.

It would seem that Win2k, the current OS responsible for this content being delivered to you faithful readers is having a minor glitch which causes everything to be double spaced. This
isn’t new, I remember having the same problem a few years ago when last this OS was in use by dear me.

On another note, school is going relatively well. I feel like I’m being hit with work from all angles, and I find it difficult to accomodate it all. I’m trying my best however, and I’ve set
myself in a daily routine of work t’ill 7, play t’ill 10, sleep t’ill morning type thing. So far, so good.

What else. Well, if you want my nomination of “Best Freeware of the Year” award, go check out TightVCN. It’s a solution that lets you remotely control other PCs. My “secondary” PC, has but two cables running out: a power cable, and the RJ-45 ethernet cable. Instead of having to switch monitor cabling, or having the blindness-inducing matter of 2 monitors, I can simply access it
through TightVCN on my main computer.

That said, I also edited my router settings to allow me to access my computer from the internet, as to write emails, go to sites without it being registered on the main computer (think cheap
proxy server, only not). However, thought TightVCN is undoubtedly the best proggie ever for personal control, my other nomination goes to SCWebcam3, a little golden nugget that allows you to automatically upload piccies of your desktop and from your webcam to any folder, FTP server, or as its own HTTP server. This is perfect to show the rest of the world your wonderful space.

Of course I could also nominate Firebird and the like, but unlike the above, already garner enough attention as is.

Bad News: I failed 2 classes in my first semester. I failed both Chemistry and Calculus. To rectify the situation, I have chosen to forego my current Advanced Vector/Geometry class for that of
my unpassed mathematics, and take chemistry once more next term. Since chemistry is no longer needed in my second year on, this implies that I will not be held back (less the geo- classes of next year require such prerequesites [though initial searches would prove in my favour]. On the plus side, I passed my other four courses.

On an other note, I have chosen to take advantage of the current IE6 spoof around to fake the Ottawa U. site [see links section]. It is somewhat a proof of concept to my friends and family to
forcibly demonstrate this unfortunate exploit, and hopefully convert them to Mozilla. Right now it only points to the index page of my site, but I will later today create a whole page for
it. Hehe, I will have fun on this bit ;).

Well, I am somewhat depressed right now due to my failures, and on such a note I shall take off and see you my dear technology adept readers later on.

Note: I shouldn’t bash IE too much, however. If it wasn’t for its half-decent FTP abilities, I would not have been able to upload the editing I did to my site from a random university internet
abled computer (using the tag ftp://user:pass@site.com/). What am I saying: bash it all that you can!