MrCopilot

Thanks in no small part to the efforts of The EFF and others , the honorable District Judge Jeffrey S. White has withdrew an earlier order blocking the wikileaks.org domain name resolution. “There are serious concerns that the court has, and serious questions raised, about the effectiveness of any order that this court might issue given the current state of affairs,” Judge White said, lamenting the fact that constitutional law might not be able to keep up with technological change. NYTimes Yeah, censorship is hard. I feel for you. I mean, how are we supposed to hide tax evasion now. MrCopilot

Next up in the Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games : OSGGFG 4.0 Racing Games. It's been a long time since I looked into open source racing games, certainly long enough for some new entries to the field. What surprised me most was the complete dearth of motocross games. I've put out a memo to @gamestudio to get to work on 2 new games to help fill the void. I have to confess a love, nay addiction of a certain closed-source non-free NFSU2 running under Wine. I had hoped to find a suitable Open Source replacement. Instead I found 10 open source racers to supplement it. Read More @ AC 5th Place, I'm making a move. No trophy for 8th place in Torcs Multiplayer in Armagetron Advanced. Trigger, It's Cool I know a shortcut. Super Tux Kart EXTREME Tux Racer = Extreme belly rash. Slune Racing TrackMania on a less than successful attempt. VDrift Drift Style Racing All in all, not a bad group. Read the Full Article @ AC MrCopilot

In a sudden outbreak of intelligence, The House of Representatives have voted to cut back on more than 18 BILLION in tax breaks to the major deomestic oil producers. Also under the bill, consumers would gain new tax breaks for buying plug-in hybrid cars, which can run on batteries that can be recharged by plugging in to electric outlets. Local governments would be able to issue as much as $3.6 billion of tax-credit bonds to finance projects to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Companies would get a new tax credit of 50 cents a gallon for cellulosic alcohol produced as a fuel. Oil and gas companies would lose some $13.6 billion in tax breaks granted in 2004 for domestically produced goods. Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron Corp. (CVX), ConocoPhillips (COP), Royal Dutch Shell (RDSA), and BP Plc (BP) would lose the tax breaks entirely. The deduction would be frozen at 6% for smaller oil and gas companies. That deduction had been scheduled to jump to 9% in 2010. CNN.Money Don't get to excited ...

Every muscle hurts, every crease in the blanket, Every joint. The Flu is cutting a vicious swath through my family. Basically a whole house full of moaning and restlessness. After being in Bed for more than 13hrs, I had to get up. Had to find medication. Check the web for a minute. "Hillary Clinton would make a fine president and I think all reasonable people know that. She would make a better president, offering more constructive policies protecting more Americans, than McCain could ever hope to. Her problem is that Americans, in any given election cycle, can become inflamed with a true passion for change that can only exist in a country like ours. She does not represent that change as well as Mr. Obama does. In spite of her superior capabilities in many areas, Obama would still move into the White House with more foreign policy experience than George Bush had when Bush and his brother stole the election in 2000." How insightful, who wrote that, Alec Baldwin . WTF. Sunday, ...

ITWire has a rant disguised as an opinion piece titled OLPC: one bad idea per child by Sam Varghese. I should let it be known I have written on the OLPC XO before. All of my articles have showered it with praise. My kid wants one, I wouldn't mind tinkering a bit with it myself. So it should come as no surprise how I feel about Sam's article. Although no real point was made, I will do my best to address his comments. For instance, we have personal computers and poorer denizens of this earth do not. Development agencies are very good at exploiting this sense of guilt - which is fairly common in the West. These agencies have do-good agendas, well-meaning no doubt, but more focused on their own survival than anything else. One thing common to practically all these agencies is that they actually believe that Western technology can alleviate any and all problems in the Third World. As proven time and again, technology from whatever part of the world can and does alleviate S...

The last time Net Neutrality was taken up by congress, a concerned citizen felt it necessary to voice his opinion to his local representative. He forwarded me the response he received in hopes I would share it with you dear readers. Feel free to scroll down, click and read the whole thing, it is an excellent example of political speech and passing the buck. The gist (for the lazy) was that although the Honorable Ed Whitfield voted for for the original bill, he voted against the amendment giving anyone the authority to enforce it. Then he notes that the Senate failed to pass its own version and the bill died just like Schoolhouse Rock describes. My advice to this young man, and to all of you, is to not be discouraged and make sure his voice is heard again on the newest upcoming Net Neutrality bill making its way through the political meat grinder in Washington right now. Also make sure your friends do the same. Be sure to mention as a registered voter the "Internet Freedom Preserv...

The New York Times and others are reporting on a Federal Judge's order to force Dynadot from resolving the wikileaks.org domain name and block anyone from transferring the registrar. On Friday, Judge Jeffrey S. White of the Federal District Court in San Francisco granted a permanent injunction ordering Dynadot of San Mateo, Calif., the site’s domain name registrar, to disable the Wikileaks.org domain name. The order had the effect of locking the front door to the Wikileaks.org site — a largely ineffectual action that kept back doors to the site, and several copies of it, available to sophisticated Web users who knew where to look. NYtimes Wikileaks can still be accessed through several mirrors as well as its Ip address @ http://88.80.13.160/wiki/Wikileaks Legal experts thankfully are stating just how ridiculous this order is. Judge White’s order disabling the entire site “is clearly not constitutional,” said David Ardia, the director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard ...

IBM has launched a new Free 3D educational MMO to teach children about environmental science. "Innovation is the key to competitiveness in today's globally integrated economy, but just when we need it to skyrocket, interest in math and science has been declining in the United States," said Stanley S. Litow, VP of Corporate Citizenship and Corporate Affairs and President of IBM International Foundation. "American competitiveness demands more interest in math and science by students. Virtual worlds and 3D are an unexplored resource in education. We asked our best researchers to incorporate the use of this technology into traditional educational curriculum." CNN.com PowerUp has kids trying to save the planet Helios from ecological disasters alone or in groups. If any one out there is listening, Planet Helios is being destroyed and we need your help! Hundreds of years ago the nations of our planet realized that the side effects from burning fossil fuel...

A few days ago a story was posted to FSDaily with the assuming title of " Can we please stop fighting FUD with FUD? " from Free Software Magazine. The gist of the article is the author's opinion that some, especially new, free software users have a habit of spreading FUD (Fear Uncertainty & Doubt) when comparing it to proprietary software. In some ways he is right. Free Software usually wins on it's merits, if not it's philosophy . But I want to comment on a few of his statements. If you’re to going run down Microsoft products then you need to be specific. What products suck, why and how do they suck? Whoa, this may require more space than I really want to devote. I see a lot of this type of thing that simply shows the proponent has rarely used the product in question. Aside from that, is this really a good argument to make? It is a great argument, if the ways proprietary software sucks could easily be improved if it was released as free software. Are we...

09-02-12 ) On 12 February 1809 in Shropshire England a man was born who would change the way we look at the world. 51 ears later he published a book that attempted to explain the diversity of life on this planet. His theory would lay the foundation for modern biology and pave the way for whole new fields of science and study. That man was Charles Darwin and today marks Charles Darwin's 199th birthday. 149 years after the publication of Origin of a Species being critically examined and studied. His ideas were controversial in his day, because they were in opposition to religious teachings on the origins of man. Darwin's theory has become a scientifically accepted explanation. But, there are still some who doubt the veracity of Natural Selection and Mutation known collectively as Evolutionary Theory, more often than not for the same reasons as it was disputed 149 years ago. If you believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible or the Quran, Evolution cannot be true. Many th...

It's a chore we all have to do. Even here in the digital domain. Being a fairly public netizen and blogger, I get a ton o spam. Filters take care of 99.7% of it, so I don't have to see the 120 Penile Enhancement offers and various email scams sent to me every day. Every once in a while those .3% do show up in the inbox. So as a service to the community (and for my own twisted amusement) it was decided to collect and air this scam spam for public viewing. Not wanting to clog up this blog with it, why not dedicate another for just that purpose. Head on over to Mrcopilot's Trash to take a gander at what passes for the state of the art in filter busting scam spam if you are interested in that sort of thing. My favorite is the pay up or we will kill you message I received yesterday. Check it out at Death Threats for Profit . Give it a Digg , to alert the masses. I must admit, that one made me pause for a second. Not even sure how that could possibly be an effective money maker...

TeeWars was noticeably absent from the last edition of the Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games : OSGGFG part 3: The Platformers . I apologize, it was an oversight on my part. To make up for it I am giving the game full review here. TeeWars is an online multi-player platform 2d shooter. Thats a mouthful, game play involves running, jumping, shooting and dying .. a lot. TeeWars' motto is Cute little buggers with guns, and cute little buggers they are. You can customize your avatar's color and shape in a variety of ways to make your Tee unique, although they all end up very reminiscent of a certain pink Nintendo character who shall remain nameless. The control system in TeeWars utilizes the keyboard for movement and the mouse for aiming your weapon and grappling hook. Yes, that is right I said grappling hook. Not only can your Tee Jump and Double Jump, he has the ability to latch onto any platform, wall or overhead area and swing or ascend up the line. Even a passing enemy c...

Harlan Ellison is often lauded and or maligned for his abrasiveness. Personally, I enjoy his writing and am constantly entertained with his numerous public scuffles. Todays Quote of the day comes from the film Dreams With Sharp Teeth , a film about Harlan Ellison. While discussing the plight of writers and getting paid for it, he comes out with this pearl of wisdom. "I sell my soul, but at the highest rates, the highest rates. I don't take a piss without getting paid for it." See it in context below This clip puts this movie on my must see list. I still have fond memories of his reviews in my collection of Asimov's and Astounding Science Fiction mags. No one speaks their mind as clearly and as pointedly as Ellison. MrCopilot

Two new studies are making their way across the web this week examining the environmental impact of the manufacturing biofuels. Sites are interviewing one of the authors, Joseph Fargione of The Nature Conservancy, to get an authoritative viewpoint. At first glance his arguments appear valid. "Carbon is the main building block of life, so plants are 50 percent carbon by dry weight," Fargione said. "So when you're looking at a rainforest, there's tons and tons of carbon stored in the plant biomass and in the soils." When land is cleared either by cutting trees down or by burning, much of that stored carbon is released into the atmosphere. "Fire releases the carbon directly, as carbon dioxide, and decomposition, when plants decay, that also releases the carbon as carbon dioxide," Fargione explained. "And this carbon dioxide goes into the air as an important greenhouse gas and contributes to global warming." Large amounts of carbon in ...

After my KDE article , comments are everywhere complaining about the headline. OSNews , Linux.com , and even the Dot . One guy even blogged his grief about it. So here I offer a response. First off, Get a grip. Articles need good titles. This one was too good to pass up. Second, according to the company that produces Windows XP, end of life is Jan 2009, 11 months from now. See Microsoft Lifecycle Third, the article clearly states that my Windows development platform was going unused for months at a time. No more .Net and no more embedded coding. I preferred to use a text editor on the linux box. Kate for embedded, Kdevelop + QT for cross platform apps. In that sense it was dying. Giving me Kate on Windows does a world of good for it's usability. My only question is, Why don't these people ask these questions here? Windows is the market leader, it will be for some time. We all know this. However, I bought my last copy long ago. I recommend it to no-one, I support it not at a...

Much webspace has been used on the recent acquisition bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo. The New York Times Technology Section has basically been taken over by stories discussing the merger. Alexa Page View Graph Notice the trend. Microsoft has it's MSN page set as the default of virtually every Windows machine in the free world. Google is the Default home page in the #2 browser spot. Leaving Yahoo to hope that users will set their page to default. Yahoo is facing a pretty steep decline, Microsoft is falling off the chart, meanwhile Google is steadily climbing year after year. So if you are Microsoft, losing a three way race, what do you do. Emulate your competition doesn't seem to be working. Buy out the #2 and take second place by default. For years that is exactly what the have been trying to do. yahoo microsoft google Google Trends Graph Yahoo is faced with re-rejecting the most generous offer from Microsoft or disappointing it's investors with Dollar Signs...