New Car!

I've been saving for quite a while now, and I finally got myself a new car to replace my aging 1989 Pontiac Tempest. Thanks to Ford's family pricing I got myself a brand new 2006 Mustang for less than it would cost me to get a 2006 Civic EX. Being the ninja that I am, I just had to get it in black.

Edit: More pictures can be seen here.

Hurray for Miraculous Comebacks!

Another semester is over, and I can't believe how well I recovered in my math course. This course is known as the "death course" for computing science students. People were telling me that I put-off this course too long and that I should have taken it earlier. Midterm 1 came and went and I got 45%. I was beginning to think they were right.

For midterm 2 I refocused and changed-up my studying strategy. The results surprised me - I ended up with 88% on midterm 2. I stuck to the same strategy for the final. I don't know what my final exam grade was, but my overall grade is an A-. Not bad for someone who was failing after midterm 1.

MPAA can't even convince Hollywood of analog protection scheme

The MPAA has a hard time selling the analog protection scheme to Hollywood. "This is a room full of people whose living depends on this working. You're getting pushback to the point of hostility. If you can't sell this to us, how are you going to sell it to the target 16-45 demographic?"

read more | digg story

Apple Presentation Comments

Apple had a presentation today where they promised to unveil some "fun new products." The vague description and lack of hints as to what would be presented had the internet buzzing with speculation over the past week. Now that it has all come and gone I can't help but feel somewhat underwhelmed. Here's what was released:

Updated Mac Mini
The Mac Mini is now available with an Intel Core processor. The baseline model gets you a 1.5 Ghz Core Solo and the more expensive model has a 1.67 Ghz Core Duo. While I like the fact that it's available with a Core Duo, the Intel Integrated GMA950 graphics chipset is very disappointing.

However, the unveiling of the updated Mac Mini could give us some insight into what the specs of the Intel iBook will be. Traditionally the Mac Mini and iBook share a lot of common components. A Core Duo iBook would be very nice.

iPod HiFi speakers
It's a large rectangle with lots of speakers in it, an iPod dock, and that's pretty much it. Oh, and it costs $350 US. No thanks!

Leather cases for iPod Nano and iPod 5G
$100 US and it does not give you access to the screen or controls while the iPod is in the case. About $15-$30 will get you a leather case from another manufacturer, and you'll be able to use the iPod while its in the case.

More info:
New Intel Mac Mini [MacRumors.com]
iPod Hi-Fi Introduced (Plus Leather iPod Cases) [MacRumors.com]

What if Microsoft Redesigned the iPod Packaging?

Someone posted a very well-done, and funny video showing what the iPod packaging might look like if Microsoft designed it. You can view it here.

Behold, Microsoft iPod Pro 2005 XP Professional Edition with Subscription!

Update:
The original link appears to be down. You can watch it on Google Video here.

Origami video: the real deal?

Kevin 2.0 » Blog Archive » Origami video: the real deal?

Look at the instructions in the link above to view the video for Origami. It's difficult to tell if it's a small tablet PC or a large PDA.

Back to good ol' Ubuntu...

Top ten reasons Geeks make good fathers

This is avery well-written (and very true) list of reasons that geeks make good fathers.

read more | digg story

New DVDs already sparking copy-protection confusion | CNET News.com

New DVDs already sparking copy-protection confusion | CNET News.com

By what I've gathered about these next-generation DVD formats, I'll need to do the following to play them at full resolution:

To watch on TV:
- Buy a new TV, ensuring that it has all the proper inputs and outputs. Low-end HD TV's may not meet this criteria.
- Buy a HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player that costs more than my laptop did. Oh, and I'll only be able to play 1 of the 2 formats.

To watch on a PC:
- Buy new monitor. None of the current ones are compatible.
- Buy new video card. Again, none of the current ones are compatible.
- Buy new operating system since only Windows Vista will be supported. Linux gets no love. I am assuming that Mac OS X will be supported eventually.

Personally, I'm not looking forward to the next generation of DVD formats. I already had enough problems getting the current generation to work the way I wanted. Besides, I don't even watch very many movies as it is. A ninja has better things to spend his money on, such as diamond-tipped shurikens and every new iPod that comes out.

RIAA Says Ripping CDs to Your iPod is NOT Fair Use

The RIAA argues in a DMCA rule-making filing that copying for personal use (to an iPod) is not fair-use.

Good luck with that, RIAA. I don't own a CD player. Many of my friends don't own CD players either. However, we all own an iPod or other MP3 player, and also enjoy listening to music on our computers. It sounds like the RIAA could benefit from a ninja visit.

read more | digg story

Don't listen to your iPod on a bike, but buy an iBikeMount?

Check out this link. In the second paragraph it says,

Following the death of an Australian woman, police in the country have warned that cyclists should never listen to an iPod while riding. “If you’re a cyclist and you want to stay alive, I wouldn’t wear an iPod under any circumstances,” Assistant Commissioner (Traffic) Noel Ashby said.

Isn't it just a little ironic that the previous story, directly below, is for a bike mount for the iPod Nano? I guess iLounge isn't taking any sides on this issue.

Which OS is Easiest to Learn?

Over the weekend I had a small debate with some fellow ninjas and computing science students regarding operating systems. It all started whene I said that I would buy an Intel Mac if dual booting to Windows worked.

I explained to them the advantages of doing non-administrative tasks as a non-privileged user. By the end of the debate I managed to convince some of them that if you are teaching a typical desktop user to browse the web, check email, and do some word processing, then all three OS' (Windows, Linux, and Mac OS) are equally easy to learn.

Having used Linux and Mac OS more than the typical person, I wondered if my point of view was biased. I asked my sister what she thought. She isn't nearly as technical or interested in computers as myself, but she is a heavy user of Windows and has used Linux and Mac OS on occasion. I asked her which she felt was easiest for a new user to learn. Her answer surprised me: "They're about the same."

What does everyone else think?

Google Talk - now with people actually online

Google is adding a new chat feature to Gmail, which is essentially a web-based version of Google Talk. While using Gmail people will (supposedly) optionally show up as being online. Any chatting done through this interface can also be searched in Gmail.

I'm interested in seeing how many people actually start using this. I have many friends who use Gmail but none of them use Google Talk.

read more | digg story

Update (Feb 14):
I've had this feature for almost a week now and I must say it is very slick. It is fast, efficient, and has not interfered with any of my regular Gmail usage. Having all my conversations archived in one place, regardless of which computer I used, is one of the most useful features I've ever seen in any IM application.

New Job in May...

I just accepted a co-op job offer for a position that starts in May. This time I will be doing QA instead of technical support. What makes this position interesting is that it seems to be mostly Mac-based.

Theoretical Rent-A-Ninja Pack

Google Pack is a package of free software that Google feels is essential. Lifehacker.com has also posted their own Lifehacker Pack. While this isn't a comprehensive list of all my favorite free applications, these are the ones I use on a near-daily basis.

OpenOffice.org
This one was a total "gimme". I first gave this a try over a year ago I was too lazy to try to find a bootleg copy of Microsoft Office. Now I actually have a legit copy of Microsoft Office installed but I still find myself using OpenOffice.org more. Why is that, you ask? It handles more formats, does a decent job of exporting your documents to PDF, and my "basic" version of Microsoft Office did not include Powerpoint.

Mozilla Firefox
I shouldn't have to explain this one anymore. NEXT!

Avast Antivirus
This antivirus software is very easy to configure, fast and easy automatic updates, and not intrusive. Oh, and licenses are 100% free for home users.

CCleaner
Sometimes referred to as "Crap Cleaner"-- it does quite a nice job of cleaning up unnecessary files that installers and uninstallers leave behind. It can also go through your registry and remove most invalid entries. After running this for the first time I freed up approximately 400 MB's and reduced my Windows startup time dramatically.

The Gimp
It's like Adobe Photoshop, but free and open source. For the casual Photoshopper it has pretty much everything you'll ever need.

TextPad
This is currently my text editor of choice while working in Windows. You can open several large text files in a single window and it will keep on going. Try doing that with Notepad!

TaskSwitchXP
An alt-tab replacement for Windows XP that behaves a lot like Mac OS X's Expose. It only takes up around 600 KB of RAM on my computer. Once you try this there's no going back.

VLC
This media player plays everything that the big guys choke on. It even lets you play DVD movies from outside your region, and helps you get around Macrovision protection so you can output to older TV's.

iTunes
This is the software that finally got me to organize my music collection, and made it very easy to do so. I can no longer imagine organizing music without a quicksearch feature or smartlists.

Google Earth
OMG I CAN SEE MY HOUSE!!!!!111eleven

Picasa
I often refer to this as the "iTunes of Photos". Currently I am using it to keep track of my collection of wallpapers. I'm sure that if I had a digital camera I'd use it even more.

Rainlendar
Displays your calendar and Outlook events on your desktop, while taking fewer resources than Konfabulator would while doing the same thing.

FileZilla
Free, open source FTP client that is really easy to use.

Is there anything you feel is missing from this list? Leave a comment!

Feds want Google search records

From Digg:
The Bush administration on Wednesday asked a federal judge to order Google Inc. to turn over a broad range of material from its closely guarded databases...Nicole Wong, an associate general counsel for Google, said the company will fight the government's effort ``vigorously.''

My two cents:
MSN, Yahoo, et al, have all given their search information to the US Department of Justice. Google has not. Which search engine will you use from now on?

read more | digg story

DIGG: Blu-Ray Output Will be Downconverted By Hollywood

Looks like hollywood does not want us to buy movies anymore. Both next-gen DVD formats will have a flag that will force them to downsample to around the same resolution as standard DVD's if they are not played through an HDMI input. But wait, there's more:

- HDMI cables are expensive.

- Most current HD TV's do NOT have HDMI. If you want to watch these formats in their full resolutions you're going to have to buy ANOTHER HD TV.

I already stopped buying CD's because of copy protection-- it looks like they don't want me to buy movies either.



read more | digg story

DRM - a student/consumer point of view

Rather than go on a long-winded rant about ideals against Digital Rights Management (DRM), I will simply post some of my experiences with it.

DVD Movies
I am a computing science student in university living on my parents' basement. As such, I have an old hand-me-down TV and no DVD player. The TV is from the late 70's and has no composite inputs and no S-video.

When I purchased my first laptop with a CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive I figured I could use that to watch my small collection of DVD movies. To make sure others could watch with me in the basement I purchased a cheap S-video cable to hook up to the back of my VCR. Due to some sort of DRM called Macrovision it was thinking that I was using the VCR to try to record the DVD, and thus the image from my laptop was scrambled when sent to the TV. The image only gets scrambled while playing DVD's. As a result, I tried plan B.

I decided to try the DVD playback on the Playstation 2. Again, because my TV has no composite inputs I was forced to hook up the Playstation 2 to the VCR. Again, the copy protection thought that I was trying to record the DVD onto a VHS tape (who would do this?) and scrambled the image.

The only way I could finally get DVD's to play on this DVD was to use VLC on my laptop. VLC uses a different DVD playback library than other media players and may actually be illegal under the DMCA. The same applies for playing any DVD movies in Linux. Lucky for me, I am in Canada and the DMCA does not apply here.

Music CD's
I no longer own a CD player. The first and only CD player I owned was an old Sony Discman which broke several years ago. My preferred ways to listen to music are through my laptop (which I sometimes connect to a stereo) and on my iPod Nano. All of my friends listen to music the same way.

On Christmas Eve I needed to do some last-minute Christmas shopping for a couple of family members. I walked into the music section and found several CD's I knew my family members would enjoy. However, after looking on the back they all said that the content is copy protected and may not work with iPods. Instead of buying 5 or 6 CD's this holiday season I didn't buy any.

I have purchased some music off of the iTunes Music Store since it seems to be the only way to legally acquire new music that is guaranteed to play on iPods and not Rootkit your computer. The downside here is that there is no way to play these purchased songs in Linux.

Conclusion
Using legally acquired multimedia can be a pain in the ass.

Is Google Losing It?

Over the past few months I can't help but feel that Google is losing the momentum it had several months ago. Allow me to elaborate:

1. Google Talk - Leading up to its release there were tons of rumours about some sort of Google IM client and interest was high. When it was finally posted for download almost everyone was underwhelmed. Although many people I know have it installed, nobody ever uses it.

2. Google Pack - This collection of applications does make it easier to get essential applications for fresh Windows installs. However, a lot of the applications included are definitely not the best in their class and can be extremely intrusive. Some examples are Real Player and the trial version of Norton Antivirus.

3. Google Video - While I am very excited about being able to download these files in iPod Video formats, the regular Google Video format and Google Video Player are horrible. Do we really need another media format with its own DRM? Everyday consumers are already confused as it is.

Judging from blog entries and online magazine articles, I am not the only one with these opinions. High profile sites such as The Register and PC Magazine have also posted similar opinions.

With the exception of Google Earth and Picasa, all of Google's applications have really lacked the polish and features expected from a multi-billion dollar company. Google really should stay focused on where they dominate-- search and web-based applications.