April 2nd, 2006

April Showers

It’s a gloomy day today. Since waking up, it has done nothing but rain outside. Yesterday was much more pleasant. Daylight savings began today, which next year it’s supposed to change to the great bureaucracy that we American’s call Congress. The entire change is unnecessary and should be boycotted by all Americans, if we were able to resist using the metric system, we can resist the new daylight savings time.

Three swishes of blue, representing the earth, will become the new Weblogs.us logo, or at least for the next few mock-ups that I create. In the Weblogs.us forums we have come to an agreement that the blue swishes logo is generally accepted, even if it needs some refinement (which seems to always happen with time). This means that the new Weblogs.us webpage will have a blue color scheme; I’ve already uploaded two modified versions of my original mockup (Rev 14 and Rev 15) that are visible on the forums, so check them out and either leave me a comment here or help in the creative processes in the forums.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

February 5th, 2006

Meet Mtekkxpathlon

Posted by John Havlik in General

Yesterday, at work one of the tenants was throwing away a ton of dated computer components. Most of the stuff was SCSI Pentium and Pentium 2 servers, some Pentium overdrives, and old apples and one old power mac. Among the mess were two jewels, one was a case with a Biostar motherboard with a AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.4Ghz, which we found later, and another was a Elitegroup motherboard with a AMD Athlon Thunderbird 1.0Ghz. Both boards have AGP 4x slots, well the Biostar has a AGP pro 4x slot but AGP cards work in it so it’s all good.

The Elitegroup one wouldn’t POST so it has been robbed of its CPU and heatsink. The Biostar does work. It took a bit of coxing to get it to find the 40GB western digital hard drive to boot Windows XP, but it is working now. The 512Mb DDR ram from my brother’s shot motherboard fits nicely next to the ATi Radeon 9600 that was in my brother’s old box. My Sound Blaster Live! card, Pioneer DVD burner, and my 200GB hard drive will be making their way into the new system by the end of next week. I can finally play Halo at full settings without any lag.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

February 1st, 2006

AT&T: Pay More For The Internet Or Else

Posted by John Havlik in Anti-Consumerism

AT&T’s CEO Ed Whitacre is complaining once again, that it isn’t fare that web content owners are allowed to use large volumes of communications companies’ bandwidth for ‘free’. He wants big sites such as Google and others to pay for access to their clients. I read this a month ago but it has come up again. Don’t these people realize that Google doesn’t just plug into the Internet for free? Google must pay for several optical connections to their server farm and ISP fees, which their ISP pays to connect to other networks, such as AT&T’s network. Then the consumers, you and me, pay to connect to AT&T’s network, my Mediacom cable connection connects to the AT&T network. Why should Google and others pay twice for their Internet connection?

The real problem lies with what lies before us in the next five to ten years. About ten years ago we were promised fiber to the wall and all the bandwidth we could suck up, well about 100mbps both ways. What happened was the web 1.0 bubble popped. Suddenly around 2001 these big Telephone Companies found themselves with some fiber upgrades and a large amount of dark fiber, since the demand shifted, they stopped investing in their networks, except when they absolutely had to.

Now as the so called Web 2.0 movement catches fire and begins to run with the economic torch, the telephone companies realize that demand has increased (shifted to the right on the demand curve graph) but their supply capacity has remained the same since they foolishly lined the pockets of their CEOs and management instead of investing in their networks. The entire Web 2.0 movement will heavily push VOIP and IPTV. POTS will more or less die soon, as in by 2010. Once POTS dies as everyone uses VOIP, SBC/ATT will find itself with a bunch of worthless copper. They should have upgraded ever last inch to fiber but now it’s too late. That’s what Ed Whitacre is seeing, though he could be just seeing a plan to line his pockets since as a general rule of thumb all CEO/CFOs are corrupt, self-centered, evil rats. Their profits will dwindle and the new ATT will die a quick painful death, just like Enron.

Here is the link: The 200 Billion Broadband Scandal

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

January 25th, 2006

Pawns

Posted by John Havlik in General

In keeping with the pessimistic view of the media theme of this week, I decided to release a poem that I wrote for Creative Writing.

The media’s captives consume
another war story,
economic issues, news of an urban shooting,
incorrectly used slang, drug use and abuse,
hate, rape, sex, incest, ignorance, and infatuation.

Today’s music consumer enjoys well-rounded plethora music.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]

January 21st, 2006

Longest Page on the Net

Posted by John Havlik in General

So there is this art collaboration by the art community at Blue Sfear that is approximately 56.25 feet long. The image is about 7.0 MB in size, so dial-up users you have been warned. Each member has created a section is 600×450 pixels, and the artist is allowed to use any program he/she wants. The worm flows as one gigantic mural and is a must see. There is some sexually suggestive content on it, even though the artists are required to refrain from posting explicit images.

-John Havlik

[end of transmission, stay tuned]