Daniel Spisak on Technology

First we’ll start off with something that is useful for all of you and then follow it up with something that will only be useful if you all support it.

So what is something everyone here in SoCal can use? Information about gas prices but of course! There is an awesome site at GasBuddy.com that has some good tools for discovering what the price trends over time for gas as well as oil are as well as presenting a map of gas prices by state, county, zip code, city and more. Check it out and maybe you can help save yourself some money next time at the pump.

http://www.gasbuddy.com/gb_gastemperaturemap.aspx

Next up is something that I feel has been long due in our country. Right now most of you probably see news stories about how the MPAA or the RIAA are trying to impose some new wonderful draconian DRM, or sue the world into not stealing music, or trying to make that HDTV you bought last year not show your HD content at HD resolution because its not protected by HDCP or some such garbage. Basically, the RIAA and MPAA and certain members of Congress like that asshole Orin Hatch or the Honorable Congressional Asshole of the Month, Lamar Smith (more on him later)are waging a war against your rights to the ability to have Fair Use rights on media you lawfully purchased. In the process of fighting this fight you have large well funded political action committes who are funneling dollars into various members of the House and Senate in order to get new stricter copyright laws and harsher punishments enacted. On our side we have the likes of the EFF and the CATo Institute, but these are non-profit organizations and as such cant funnel money directly to Congresscritters they want to support. Enter IPac to solve this long unanswered need! IPac is a political action committee that stands for:

“We believe that technological innovation and individual creativity are vital to the future of this country. We believe that a prosperous and democratic society depends on freedom for all individuals to pursue scientific invention and artistic expression. Unfortunately, new, more draconian copyright and patent laws threaten to stifle these freedoms and restrict public participation in science, art, and political discourse.”

I believe that supporting IPac is the best way that we as citizens can start to take the fight against our rights back to our elected Representatives and I highly suggest and urge all of you to check IPac out and to contribute to their cause if you feel strongly about these issues.

http://ipaction.org/index.html

Be sure to check out IPac’s blog regularly. Currently its going over how Congressmen that were sent iPod’s as campaign contributions were sent back by some and attempting to understand how Senators like John Kerry or Conrad Burns would decline an iPod but gladly take thousands of dollars in donations from Hollywood cartels!

http://ipaction.org/blog/
Lastly we have an article about how to hack the apperance of the Login window on Mac OS X. Shows how to customize it to your hearts content. I imagine that doing these hacks might go away after doing a point upgrade of OS X but I dont know from firsthand experience as of yet so YMMV.

http://www.applematters.com/index.php/section/comments/hack-the-login-window/

So the cheif of Exxon, Lee Raymond retired recently and was awarded more then 400 million dollars in his final year of his contract, getting a total of 686 million dollars from 1993-2005. This works out to 144K and change each day he worked, or over a million dollars a DAY during his very last year at Exxon alone. What the sam hell is going on at Exxon? So much for all of that “we’re in all this together with you” bullshit. Plus, Lee Raymond looks like Fat Bastard!

http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7BFB243793-08BF-
4272-8801-41D9B12A4DB4%7D&dist=rss&siteid=mktw&print=true&dist=printTop

Moving on to other cool things, I stumbled across this site which documents how to make a Mont Blanc pen refill work in a cheaper pen then a $250+ Mont Blanc pen. Overall looks pretty cool and I think I will go do this at some point this weekend.

http://www.instructables.com/ex/i/7899F5DC1A2310299AD7001143E7E506/
?ALLSTEPS

Speaking of cool site there is also this site which documents all of the SR-71/A-12 plane losses over the past 40 years. Really interesting to read if you want an idea of how equipment failures can adversely affect planes. Also has links to a video of one of the SR-71 drone lanuch tests going wrong and the subsequent destruction of the plane.

http://www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/srloss~1.htm

Lastly we have an entry in Wikipedia about something known at the Voynich Manuscript. A text that is written in a language no one has ever seen or ever been able to decipher even one work of the text. I find it refreshing when I stumble across items like these because it gives me confidence in knowing that there are still things in this world wee do not know or understand.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voynich_Manuscript