MrCopilot

Perhaps you have heard of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) operated by European Center for Nuclear Research or NAMBLA, err I mean CERN . For those of you who haven't. Its a monstrous 8 Billion dollar machine outside Geneva, constructed for the purpose of smashing tiny particles into each other at unbelievable levels of energy and speed to recreate conditions a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Why, well to do science requires observation. We cannot exactly observe that instant back in time, so why not recreate it. The problem is, a couple of people think its a really, really bad idea. The kind of idea that could end life as we know it on earth, either through the production of stranglets or a micro black hole that could swallow us all. Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho feel so strongly that they are suing CERN in Hawaii asking for "a temporary restraining order prohibiting CERN from proceeding with the accelerator until it has produced a safety report and an environm...

Dear Miguel, Read your post . One question immediately springs to mind. Why? You said: I have been reading the OOXML storm in a teacup for more than a year now. Am looking forward to the approval of OOXML as an ISO standard and to be able to move the discussion back to the things that actually matter: free and open source software. I think we all agree that what matters is Free and Open Source software. Where we differ is in the looking forward to the ISO approval of OOXML. How would this be beneficial to FLOSS? The implication is that the long string of "countless bytes" being "wasted" on this subject would be over, and we will all get back to writing about more important matters. The problem with this way of thinking is not to hard understand. Most of the Free Software community is strongly opposed to OOXML as an ISO standard, either because of the FACT that it is a horribly incomplete and unimplementable document format or the FACT that OOXML is redundant. ...

Often the Internet is touted as a worldwide communication medium that brings people together. Well in Jacksonville, Oregon this week, the Internet certainly brought quite few people together. They were responding to a Craigslist posting about a man forced to leave his home in a hurry and abandon his property including his Horse and all needed new homes. This delighted the surrounding community and surprised Robert Salisbury, the owner. Salisbury came home to find around 30 people rummaging through his property. En route he passed a truck filled with his lawn equipment and cars loaded with his belongings. "I informed them I was the owner, but they refused to give the stuff back," Salisbury said. "They showed me the Craigslist printout and told me they had the right to do what they did." "They honestly thought that because it appeared on the Internet it was true," Salisbury said. "It boggles the mind." It certainly does. Police are promisi...

Apple was kind enough to let me know a new updated iPhone SDK has been released. The second beta version of the iPhone SDK is now available and includes Interface Builder, a powerful tool that allows you to visually build your interface and makes creating a UI as simple as drag and drop. We've also added new sample code and updated documentation to the rich set of resources available to you in the iPhone Dev Center. Log in to the iPhone Dev Center today and download the new version of the iPhone SDK. Too bad I can't use it. No Mac, No way to check out what sounds like a nifty Gui Builder. Leaving us Linux (and Windows) using devs out in the cold. Par for the course I suppose. Could this be the must have thing to get me to take the plunge? A Mac Mini wouldn't be so bad would it? Still torn. MrCopilot

You may remember an April Fools hoax a few years ago about audio captured on clay pottery that made its way around the net. Or you may remember the Mythbusters covering the possibility (Busted, If I remember correctly). Leaving Edison as the first able to "record" audio for future playback. Well, not exactly. According to the NYTimes, that honor goes to a Frenchman named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, who "recorded" a 10 second clip of “Au Clair de la Lune” on of all things PAPER almost 20 years before Edison and his tin foil and nearly 30 years before the wax cylinder. Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered. NYTimes The NYTimes article has even included the clip in...

A game I reviewed a while back, TeeWars has updated to a newer version 0.40 along with the updated weapons physics and gameplay comes a new name, TeeWorlds , and a new License. This was followed quickly by a bugfix release 0.4.1 a few days later. I applaud the developers for all their hard work. TeeWorlds is a worthy upgrade and still way too much fun. A new weapon, the Laser Gun, was added. The physics tweaked and a double jump indicator has been added. Also included is a much needed map autodownloader. Gameplay balance has also been tweaked, although I didn't notice the changes in my testing. The game runs fine under Windows and Linux without hassle on my setups. The laser seems a bit odd, kind of laggy. Could be just me though, as opponents seem to have no trouble hitting me with it. A map editor is also included, Press Ctrl-Shift E to start it. Good luck figuring it out though as it is not supported by the developer as of yet. Most interesting to me was the license change. I ...

Linux and Free Software is written by clever programmers. As such, undocumented features creep in to the most mainstream of applications. We call these Easter Eggs, because you have to hunt them. Here are a few of my favorites. From the terminal: ddate apt-get moo aptitude moo -v aptitude moo -vv aptitude moo -vvv etcetera and so on Take a break from all that number crunching and enjoy a few games in Open Office Calc Open a new Spreadsheet In Cell A1 type =GAME(A2:C4;"TicTacToe") or In Cell A1 type =GAME("StarWars") A couple more Open Office Easter Eggs In any Calc cell type =TTT() to get a random smiley. In any Calc Cell type =STARCALCTEAM() In the Help->About OpenOffice.org Screen Press CTRL-S-D-T Skype Hidden Chat Emoticons (I know its not "free", but it is available for Linux, so there) (london) (mooned) (bandit) (finger) (toivo) (rock) (smoking) (tmi) (heidy) (poolparty) (bug) (fubar) (drunk) (headbang) (flag:US) (myspace) Last but not Least, ...

I am angry. Like everyone else in this country, I have heard Rev. Jeremiah Wright say "America's Chickens come home to roost" about 4 billion times. I've heard Barrack Obama talk about his white grandmother. I've watched the talking heads express disgust and shock and horror at all of it. What I haven't seen is the context either was said in. Sam Stein over at the Huffington Post thoughtfully points out that when the chicken statement is heard in context and properly attributed, all of a sudden the disgust and shock and horror are missing. Replaced instead by a general feeling of "Can I get an Amen!" Don't believe me? Set aside 10 minutes of your life and watch the whole sermon that was hacked up and looped over and over. Barrack Obama's speech following the media blitz of Rev Wright snippets was a powerful adult treatment of race relations likened by many, who have actually watched or listened to it in it's entirety, to speeches by Mar...

I enjoyed the Simpsonator , I had not seen this one though. South Park Studio . Used Successfully by Gabe Schwarzer to create this little Gem

Sadness. No obituary could sum up the life of the amazing author, Sir Arthur C. Clarke. He imagined the geostationary satellite , the space elevator . He wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey. He was knighted by Prince Charles. That would be enough for celebrating a full life, yet somehow falls woefully short in describing Clarke. His writings, both fiction and non-fiction, inspired generations of scientist and engineers to bring his imagination to life. Even today the next generation is feverishly toiling away to bring the Space Elevator to reality. Clarke's Three Laws When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Interesting Places to remember Sir Clarke. Clarke's Foundation...

Introduction MrCopilot was asked to assist in a Linux deployment for a home over the weekend. I usually jump at the chance to help bring new users to the fold. This particular request though, came from a person with a Masters Degree in Computer Science. Installation of most distributions is now so easy that surely my learned colleague could handle this task on his own, I encouraged him to do so, and I would help with any problems he encountered. Well I was wrong. Linux is not Windows. Those of us who use it regularly tend to forget how difficult the learning curve can be. I must give him and Kubuntu credit. He managed to get both machines up and running, wifi working and even a seamless virtual Windows installed with Virtual Box. Using the almighty Google to handle any questions. Unfortunately, adept was hopelessly broken and frustration started to set in. I was called on site. 1 Kubuntu disc, 8 Hours, and 4 PCs later. I offer this Post Mortem. Users The clients were 2 wonderful pre-...

Having a Linux PC on the shelf at Walmart, had a lot of us convinced that the tides were changing. No such luck. WalMart has announced that it's Linux experiment is ending . After selling out of gPC from Everex over the holidays, a decision was made to stop stocking it on store shelves. "This really wasn't what our customers were looking for," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc . spokeswoman Melissa O'Brien. We'll have to take her word for it since Walmart does not release sales figures. Must have been a more than a few returns. The gPC and Cloudbook from Everex will continue to be offered online at WalMart.com . Note to WalMart executives: Don't give up on Linux, Next time though, try selling a real Linux PC with a mainstream (Read Intel or AMD) processor and a decent (Read AMD, Nvidia, Intel) video card. No offense to Everex, but the gPC is underpowered and underwhelming as a general purpose Desktop. The Windows version (+$100) of gPC was even less suitable for...

Gov Spitzer. What can I say? A Democrat, Governor, caught up in a Sex Scandal. I can't recall anything like this ever happening before. Problems I have with this story: IRS, FBI undercover surveillance video and Federal Wiretaps. Republicans in Albany are threatening to impeach. I'm sure they'll have no trouble with that. Meanwhile, Spitzer is just twisting in the wind.Leaving all the important questions unanswered. Will he resign? Will he be impeached? He reported asked the girls “to do things that, like, you might not think were safe.” What things? The world needs to know. Call Woodward and Bernstein, we simply must know what those things are. Becoming an elected official must require some sort of mini lobotomy, particularly in the inhibition area of the brain. The higher the office the bigger the chunk of brain removed. Governor is a pretty high office. “I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my, or any, sense of right and wrong,” ...

The long awaited iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) is finally here. The iPhone SDK includes the Xcode IDE, Instruments, iPhone simulator, frameworks and samples, compilers, Shark analysis tool, and more. You can watch the keynote in QuickTime courtesy of Apple. During the introduction Apple trotted out developers who were given 2 weeks with the SDK to show some demos. EA Spore Sega SuperMonkeyBall Details of the Developer Program were also announced along with the new iApp Store at iTunes. Commercial and Free application developers join for $99. Enterprise Developers fork over $299. iApps will be available for purchase or free at iTunes. Looking good, Now what is the catch? The Catches SDK Download is for Registered Developers only. Don't get me wrong, you don't have to pay to download it. But you do have promise not to talk about all the wonderful stuff registering gives you access to. SDK only runs on Mac Leopard machines. No usable VM solution as of yet. Leaving Window...

Quoth the Comments Section : Verily I must agree with my dear friend Anonymous here. Anonymous said... "First, have the guts to write under your own name." It may be cute to adopt monikers but if you are out there on the web, put your name to what you write. Anonymous posts are the work of cowards. I think you may misunderstand the meaning of the word Anonymous . MrCopilot is a name, a company, a family, a person, a domain name, a blog, a freelance writer, and they are all me. Go ahead search me, have at you, I wrote almost all that stuff. However, if you were to search for me by name, parsing through the results would take days, literally days. I represent an infinitesimal fraction of the data of my ancestors and the like named. Authors, Scientist, Fraudsters, Geniuses, Bigots, Lesbians, Actors, and all around a great bunch, just not me. Spoiler Alert My Last Name is not Copilot. My name is not a secret. I bet it takes the average reader less than 30 minutes to find it. On...