Warp Watch - Our Watch

Labels: ingenuity

Let's face the obvious: yesterday we were nerds, today we're the cognitive elite. Let's conquer. These past few weeks were interesting, so much so that in my free time I read the entire bash.org library of chatting highlights.
Most are rubbish, some are funny but few are truly full with meaning. Here is my selection from many thousands of quotes, there are many more that are hilarious but this selection represents ones that I found interestingly true :


#12
<SenioR> whahahah fravec! I fucked your mother!!
<@Fravec> Dad, buzz off, I'm talking to friends here...
Comment: never teach your dad how to use IRC


#11
SilverD: hmm, how can you tell if you're running a 32 bit or a 64 bit OS?
Reilithion: Is your computer all new, fancy, and shiny?
SilverD: no
Reilithion: You're running 32 bit.


#10
<Albides> I was insane before I used the internet... I was confused after I used it. Then horrified as I found out about things like dolphin sex and furries.


#09
<DannyB> some girl on the street asked if i was saved yet
<DannyB> i told her i saved at the checkpoint a couple minutes back
<DannyB> and can reload from there if i die
<DannyB> she was confused


#08
<SaintAlvus> I wrote a book on an object that lets you accelerate the passage of time.
<Bean> What was it called?
<SaintAlvus> Bong Mechanics


#07
<muse06> you ever think god gets stoned?
<humphrey> have you ever seen a platypus?


#06
<xterm> The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?


#05
<Beeth> Girls are like internet domain names, the ones I like are already taken.
<honx> well, you can stil get one from a strange country :-P


#04
<Nomenumbra> 1 bottle of beer on the wall, 1 bottle of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 0 bottles of beer on the wall.
<Nomenumbra> 0 bottles of beer on the wall, 0 bottles of beer, you take 1 down, pass it around, 4294967295 bottles of beer on the wall.


#03
<mayb> procrastination is like masturbation
<mayb> it's fun until you realize you just fucked yourself


#02
<Bus> y = ¦x¦
<JaxomZero> thats thinking positive


#01
<kidd79> do u know what i'd like they add to Google.Earth?
<Don_Vito> ..3D graphics?
<Don_Vito> animated water, trees and stuuf??
<kidd79> orbital ion cannon

Labels: Social

The entire Internet is buzzing with sounds of swords and shield bashing into one another over the topic of religion and god. Is is quite amazing that people in this day and age still believe in imaginary friends in face of overwhelming science. Science, especially Darwin's theory has been called religion but there is one big difference; if its proven to be false, its gone. We don't know everything and most probably never will know everything as individuals but to say that because we currently cant explain something it must have been created by an all powerful being should be enough to institutionalize a person.

I have nothing against religion, people have the right to believe what ever they want, no mater how absurd it is. But to say that one religion is better than the other is the ultimate Hypocrisy.

People that claim to speak to god are the worst, psychiatric clinics are full of people that hear voices, only difference is that these got away.

There are many posts dealing with absurdities of religious people from dinosaurs and humans lived together to the Earth is 10,000 years old.

It also looks like that the more developed the society in respects to scientific education and the level of prosperity, the higher rate of agnosticism.

While reading Proofs of the Existence of a God it came to me that there was no real list of absurdities that one can ask a Christian to point it out to them just how absurd this debate is.

Q 9. Can you tell me what are the 10 commandments?

Only 40% of Americans can recite more than 4 commandments while 90% of them have said in recent poll that they believe in God. Now that's that I call absurd. If you identify your self as something and are passionate about it at least you should know the basis of your religion.

If you don't know them a list of 10 commandments can be found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments

other sources:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2007-03-07-teaching-religion-cover_N.htmhttp://harpers.org/archive/2005/08/0080695

Q 8. Who killed more people God or Satan in the Bible?

God killed more than 2,270,365 people while Satan is accredited for only 10 killings in the Bible. And I always taught that Bible was meant to punish such deeds.

other sources:
http://dwindlinginunbelief.blogspot.com/2006/08/who-has-killed-more-satan-or-god.html

http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/u/hprajani/phun/god-v-satan.png

Q 7. Is Bible the word of God? A: Yes!
Q: Then how come he cant make up his mind?A: What do you mean?
Q: Choose any from the following : http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jim_meritt/bible-contradictions.html#good_to_alland have fun.

Q 6. What were Jesus' last words?

This was taken from the last archive. Found this one interesting as it concurs the favorite part of every Christian and that is the crucifixion. Most people are sure that they know what were the Jesus' last words.

Well it depends from whose perspective you look.

Matt.27:46,50: "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?" that is to say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" ...Jesus, when he cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost."

Luke23:46: "And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, he said, "Father, unto thy hands I commend my spirit:" and having said thus, he gave up the ghost."

John19:30: "When Jesus therefore had received the vinegar, he said, "It is finished:" and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost."

Q 5. Does God love You? A: Yes !

Q: No, he regrets ever creating you!A: Fuck off

Q: Look in ...

Genessis 6:7; "And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them."

Q 4. What is hotter, The Heaven or The Hell?

Actually by reading the Bible it seems that Heaven is hotter then Hell.

Data for the temperature of Heaven can be found in Isaiah 30:26; "Moreover, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold as the light of seven days."

And for the temperature of Hell in Revelations 21:8; "But the fearful and unbelieving... shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone."

We have then, temperature of heaven, 525°C (977°F). Temperature of hell, less than 445°C. Therefore heaven is hotter than hell.

More information along with calculations and a rebuttal of the proof on http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/hell.htm

Q 3. Is your god omnipotent (all-powerful)?

“Can God create a rock that he can’t lift?” If God can’t do this, then he isn’t omnipotent, and if he can, then he still isn’t omnipotent, because then there is something, that he can’t do – i.e. lift the rock.

This means that omnipotence is a logical impossibility, and therefore omnipotent gods are also logically impossible.

Q 2. Is your god omniscient (all-knowing)?

But how can humans have a free will, if a god in advance knows what is going to happen? There can be no choice in any meaningful sense of the word, if there is only one possible outcome to each and every situation (that is the outcome that the god has foreseen). This leads us to conclude that free will combined with omniscience is impossible, and if we want to keep omniscience and thereby have to kill off free will, what does that do to the concept of sin?

Q 1. If a creator created the universe, what created the creator?"

The only way out is to declare that the creator was not created and just "is" (or "was").

From here we might as well ask what is wrong with saying that the universe just "is" without introducing a creator? Indeed Stephen Hawking, in his book "A Brief History of Time", explains his theory that the universe is closed and finite in extent, with no beginning or end.

more information: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/arguments.html#lll

Labels: Religion

While reading a recent post by Mike Elgan I felt a strong sense that he was wrong. Ever since I first heard of eInk I fantasized about having one book that would stand on my bookshelf and it would contain all the books that I have read and will read in my lifetime. It is understandable that such device will not show up anytime soon but I also know that I will own one. Currently they are thin plastic case with one "page", slow refresh rates, mostly in black and white and not long battery life for a "book". The most advanced eInk device by my account is Iliad iRex.

It sports a WiFi, 256 Mb of internal memory, USB, MMC and CF expansion slots, 400 MHz XScale Processor and a touch sensitive eInk screen. Just by writing this make my mouth water. Of course all of this takes toll on the battery but even then it can operate for 21h on one charge. This operation time is optimistic and in reality is less than that. Developers, please fix this, eBook should not be limited by such inconvinience. Implement alternative sources of power like solar, motion or even temperature difference sources of powering the little gadget.

Mike Elgan in his article argues that people buy books because they like the feel and touch of paper. They collect books, love to turn the pages and i general are book worms. I must admit, I also enjoy a good book and like the personal touch each and every book brings with it but to say that people like reading long texts or books off a glowing computer screens is nonsense, let alone reading such texts from mobile phones or PDAs. As for sunlight readability, try reading from your notebook on the beach, eInk has no problem with sun and at most we can say that the sun is its allay.

eBooks are in their infancy and it may look like they are not superior to traditional books but this way of thinking is wrong. Large adoption of eBooks is still a few years away but it is coming and with it a shift in paradigm.

And Yes, we love books but it is time for them to enter the 21st century.

Labels: Editorial

Labels: Social

Labels: Social, Web

I'm sad to say, but Ubuntu is not a threat to Windows Vista., not even close

I got so worked up about Ubuntu. Everywhere you go there is a mention of Ubunt and Beryl, how amazing it is, how stable, and all other whatnots. I intentionally did not use and help as it should be a strait forward process more or less found with windows and OS X.

So, this is a day I will remember my long forgotten days with my trusty Linux box from some 10 years ago. For such experiment a new hard drive was needed, so I went out and got a new 160 gb HDD. Booted the computer one last time to Windows XP to burn the Ubuntu 6.10 to DVD and then I closed windows one last time. Or so I thought.
Now came the installation. I connected all the wires to the brand new HDD bought specially for the new OS, and proceeded booting of my soon to be new Ubuntu box.

The last time I was installing Linux it was RedHat distribution but cant remember the version. Its installation was in terminal mode with allot of Q&A, strange numeration of hard drives and/or devices. It was a completely different universe with its own distinct rules.
Here Ubuntu plesently surprised me, its installation has graphic installation interface. Even better, it was a live disk so actually I could try it out before I choose to install it. Of course, I did no such thing and proceeded with the installation. Ok, basic information, choose drive named something or other which on Windows would represent C:\ drive, press next and load tetris to wait the installation through.

Five minutes into the installation, ups, you did not select or made a swap partition. Damed, I know that, I remember that Linux uses swap partitions, hmm.. how do I add them? Well I guess it will lead me through it. Ok, click go back to the partition dialog, but it crashes. Lets start again, ok, basic information, select partition, ups almost missed the creation of swap partition, but no help prom Ubuntu. Actually I shouldn't even have to know what a swap file is let alone search through dialog boxes to find something that resembles the something or other a error dialog box stated I should do to correct it.

Ok, installation continues, and as it is live DVD I can try out some applications. I settled with a game of Tetris.

Excellent, my Ubuntu installation is ready. First boot up, excellent, no more terminal window, straight to xWindows and gnome. Resolution is low but that was expected as new drivers are needed. Ok, need to connect to the internet go get new drivers. Hm... how to do that, system, networking, that should be it. Ok, No, maybe the next networking, No, administration tools, No. This is getting ridiculous.

About 30 min later I'm still trying to find how to connect to the internet over ADSL. It should be strait forward process. Ok, I'm stuck, clicked on first help icon I found but it required Internet. Digging around for another five minutes and finally I found something that resembles a help file. Typed in ADSL and got the procedure in terminal. WHAT? I STILL NEED TO ENTER COMMANDS, THERE IS NO USER INTERFACE. Ok, easy, we setup it once and thats it. I follow the procedure and type commands in command prompt, which once again I should not know what it is but.... And it worked, I opened Firefox and the Internet just seamed to jump, it was so responsive I got goosebumps, downloads of drivers went over declared speed for my ADSL, and I have never seen such speeds in Windows. That was the first impression.

Next chapter, the installation of ATI video drivers. What on Earth do people using Linux smoke as I want some. The procedure for installing video drivers borders with science fiction, take a look here. Ok, driver installation completed. Now, I have dual display setup, if you would like to see how this goes, check here.

Ok, now I had newest graphic drivers, dual display that worked and all I needed was that eye-candy called beryl. I installed it and for all my trouble I got just errors.

Up to now the installation of Ubuntu took 3h of my life I want back.

Ok, I can live without the eye candy but I need my files from windows partition. Gewiz, Ubuntu has no NTFS support. I need to install that too. Went to the wiki about it and with BIG RED letters there is a warning, and with small plain letters bellow it says, don’t worry about it. What !?

At this point I gave up.

Ubuntu still needs allot of user interaction to make it usable, allot of advanced user interaction. It is a big step forward for linux but nothing dramatically changes. It is still the most stable OS but also the most un-user friendly.

I was hopping that Ubuntu could replace Vista as I have no desire to pay for it but it seams it is inevitable.

I expected a smooth and polished OS but actually found it light years behind in usability to Windows.

Labels: Linux, OS