DreamNid's Hangout

Racism

RIT has been presenting many anti-racism programs. One of my online aquitances have sent me this chain mail that is hilarious. I really wonder if this is true. Even if it wasn't real, the story still has a powerful message.

`

BRAVO TO
THAT AIRLINE HOSTESS!!!!

The following scene took place on a BA
flight between Johannesburg and London.
>
>A white woman, about 50
years old, was seated next to a black man.
>
>Obviously disturbed by
this, she called the air Hostess.
>
>Madam, what is the matter, the
hostess asked,
>
>You obviously do not see it then? she
responded.
>
>You placed me next to a black man.
>
>I do
not agree to sit next to someone from such a repugnant
group.
>
>Give me an alternative seat.
>
>Be calm
please, the hostess replied.
>
>Almost all the places on this flight
are taken.
>
>I will go to see if another place is 
available.
>
>The Hostess went away and then came back a few
minutes  later.
>
>Madam, just as I thought, there are no other
available seats in the economy
>
>class.
>
>I spoke to
the captain and he informed me that there is also no seat in
the
>
>business class.
>
>All the same, we still have
one place in the first class.
>
>Before the woman could say
anything, the hostess continued.
>
>It is not usual for our company
to permit someone from the economy class to
>
>sit in the first
class.
>
>However, given the circumstances, the captain feels that
it woluld be
>scandalous to make someone sit next to someone sooooo
disgusting.
>
>She turned to the black guy, and
said.
>
>Therefore, Sir, if you would  like to, please take
your hand luggage
>because a seat awaits you in the first
class.
>
>At the moment, the other passengers who were shocked by
what they had just
>witnessed stood up and applauded.
>
>This
is a true story which is not usually told.
>
>If you are against
racism, please send this message to all your friends,
>please do not
delete it without sending it to at least one
person.
>
>
>Arlene Gray
>National Sales and Movie
Marketing Assistant
>WLNY-TV 55
>441 Lexington Avenue - Suite
502
>New York, NY 10017
>(212) 370-1555 (Ext. 100)
>Fax: (212)
490-1778
>Email: href="mailto:GrayA@wlnytv.com">GrayA@wlnytv.com
>www.wlnytv.com
>
>
>

Disney lost its magic?

I'm sure most of you know that I am a big fan of Disney. It saddens me when Disney had to close the Disney Feature Department in MGM, Orlando which has been responsible for Mulan and Emporer's Last Groove. The reasons for doing this is because Eisner claimed the future is Computer Animations. That's not entirely true, but we can see you were very happy with Toy Story and Findinig Nemo total earnings.

Recently, Pixar has announced that it has broke off talks with Disney about continuing their relationship because they wanted more control and money. Maybe this is a ploy to get better deals.... but if it doesn't fall through, what is this going to leave Disney with? Their theme parks (which is in desparate need of maintainance and renovations) and imported movies....

Business 2.0's top 101 dumbest moments in business

This has to be the most funniest thing I ever read that dealt about business practices.

Part 1 The PC in the WC. On April 30, Microsoft U.K. issues a press release touting a new product called the iLoo, an Internet-enabled toilet equipped with a Wi-Fi broadband connection, a plasma flat screen, a waterproof keyboard, and sponsored toilet paper festooned with Web addresses. According to the release, the iLoo will "allow instant logging on."

Part 2 Johnny on the spot. Twelve days later, after much snickering in morning newspapers and on late-night talk shows, Microsoft flacks back in Redmond come up with a clever strategy for damage control. The iLoo, says spokeswoman Kathy Gill, was merely an "April Fool-like joke."

Part 3 Something doesn't smell right. The next day, realizing that nobody's buying the April-Fool's-joke-29-days-after-April-Fool's-Day explanation, Microsoft calls back reporters and admits that it had told an iLulu: The project was indeed real but has subsequently been killed. "We jumped the gun basically yesterday in confirming that it was a hoax," says MSN group product manager Lisa Gurry. "In fact, it was not."

"We won't win any popularity contests. We don't really care what people think."—Recording Industry Association of America spokeswoman Amy Weiss, on the group's decision to file lawsuits against customers accused of Internet file sharing, including a 12-year-old New York girl and a 65-year-old Massachusetts grandmother. U.S. record sales remain stagnant after the RIAA launches its campaign in the courts, and an appeals court bans the RIAA's legal methods in December.

Yes, the SCO is represented in the list :-)

Another "Can you do this?"

If you have a stack of dominoes and some surface, can you stack the dominoes so that the top domino is completely off the edge of the surface? If yes, is there a limit to how far you can have the last domino away from the surface? You must stack one dominoe on top of each other in the same direction.

Anyone taking Series in Calc can answer this question :-)

The Current State of Science

Michael Crichton gave a very interesting speech that talks about the difference between science and "consensus" from a large group that is supposed to represent science." Here is a clipping from the speech

My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming. Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.

It is a long read, but it is worth reading if you're an avid follower of science :-).

Posted by dreamnid at 01:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Poems

Here are some Croatian poems that you may/may not find interesting. Please note that any typographical errors are not mine. :-)

Source: Ivanisevic, Drago. Invisible Bridges. Translated by Peter Kastmiler.

Before the Chairs of Judges

Before the chairs of the judges

(the seats are still warm from the previous judges who would sentence these to death)

He glares at the floor

at the dust

------

My Granpa

My granpa was friends with the stars
with the sun and the moon
my granpa was friends with the donkeys
and the snakes and goats.
My granpa was friends wit hthe rain
and every wind, frost and wild animal.
And when he worked barefoot in the fields --
cause my granpa since he was kid,
since he was a kid he grew into the earth --
even hawk-eyed granma
couldn't tell his legs
from the the sinews of an olive tree.

AND THAT'S HOW MY GRANPA STOOD NEXT TO GOD.

-------

Invisible Bridges

In the cold and chilly eclipse

           You expression despairs

with throath gagging shrieks

Go

We will readily build invisible bridges

from city to city

for our love needs a truthfull bread

which seeks out the true hunger

-----

Untitled

Blood howls through the streets,
Blood smothered graces,
Blood on blind faces,
Blood wins blood defeats.

Blood fumes through the streets,
Blood forgets brother,
Blood has no respect for another,
Of blood the murderer reeks.

Blood bathes in blood,
Blood laughs madly at blood,
Blood cries tears for blood.

Blood of the dead, carrion for the worm,
Blood of evil breeds corpses and bones,
Blood and blood, blood and blood, and blood.

---------

Try saying the last one aloud :-(

MyDoom

If you haven't heard yet (you must be living under a rock), there is a serious worm that is spreading rampently through computer networks.

The funny thing is that on Feburary 1st, it will try to DDOS sco.com; home of the SCO group that angered many Linux users due to various lawsuits. The website is already being hampered, which is pretty curious since one wonders where all the traffic could be coming from.

Slashdot readers suggested that the SCO wrote the worm themselves in order to get some pity. They also warn that the worm will open ports in the computer for spam, so do not run this worm just because of SCO.

The worm can be identified by a subject message of "hello" and contains "The attachment is invalid."

Be sure that you do not open any attachments from people that you do not know and update your anti-virus definitions on a regular basis.

Crunch time

Time to update this blog.

I am heading towards the end of the quarter; I only have 3 weeks of class left. That means that the number of tests and essays will increase :-(. Oh well - there is nothing much I can do about that.

It seems that everybody seems to be stressed these days for unacademic reasons. My mother's oldest brother died, my online friend's daughter has a serious eye problem, Jason prepping frantically for One Acts, etc.

Today was the first time that I missed a class for a pretty bad reason; my alarm clock "didn't" go off. Oh well, at least it was for Tech Programming II and they were going over the test and arrays.

NASA seems to be in good shape. They traced Spirit's problem to the flash memory. Again, hopefully it will be a software glitch which can be easily fixed. Early yesturday morning, Opportunity did a near-perfect landing on Mars. It would appear that Opportunity landed in a scientific "gold mine" since the landscape is so different compared to the previous landing sites. Of course, the Rover team members have to worry that the same glitch that befell Spirit could easily be on Opportunity too. At least this time, we have an idea of where to look for.

Last night, I was talking to yet another online aquitance about the future of NASA. We both agreed that the Space Shuttle fleet shouldn't be forced to retire by 2010. With the number of renovations that each shuttle goes through and the performance of our economy, I think they will serve the US space needs for quite some time.

Accidents are expected. NASA has way too much pressure from the politicians and the public to keep a near-perfect record. Unfortunately, this mentaility will hurt future space missions and what that agency is capable of. Frankly, I was disappointed of the CAIB recommendations. Do they really expect NASA to check the wing every single time they head out to space? In order to follow these recommendations, NASA has to schedule every Space Shuttle mission to meet with the ISS as a safe haven. This is their grand solution? The most disappointing thing is that the Hubble Servicing Mission has to be scrapped since it is considered "too risky" and pointless. The original plan for the Hubble was to bring it back to Earth and display it in the Smithsonian. The only problem with that is that the only shuttle that can carry it back is destroyed. Now, there will be one more mission that will attach a rocket to control the Hubbell descent where it will be broken up into the sea.

President Bush recently tried to rile up the public by announcing the much expected Mission to Mars. I have mixed feelings about the mission, but I suppose the end result would help humanity immensely. NASA shouldn't be restricted by silly safety regulations imposed by a commission.

The greater question is if Congress will support the mission to be launched by 2060. If they decide to cancel the mission, many man hours and tax dollars will go to waste. Therefore, there should be a special provision to guarentee NASA the budget they need to get to Mars (unless the Great Depression happens again).

Can anybody imagine what the rocket for Mars will look like? The sad part is that most of the rocket will disetergrate by the time it reaches Earth's orbit. To help cut the size, shu8man suggested that we'll need fueling stations either at Earth or Mars (It would be impractically to have it in the middle since the "middle" will be different for different launch times. Mars and Earth are not standing still here :-)). To me, the rocket will not be too much bigger than the Saturn V since you don't really need much trust during the cruising stage. At Mars, it can refuel in order to leave Mars' orbit. For sure, it will be one heck of a thing to see at its completion :-P

Exploding Apples

Yeah, some research group took pictures of food exploding.

Copyright © 2004 MIT.edu

Spirit not responding

CNN and MSNBC is reporting that NASA is not able to communicate with the famous Spirit martian rover. They were able to contact it, but apparently, the rover is spewing out random data. Hopefully, it will be a software glitch that they can fix, otherwise it will definately have a negative view on NASA's success.

This event was very curious to me as many people were wondering why NASA took their time with moving Spirit off the lander - probably a result from Beagle 2. If all fails, we did get pretty good pictures of the martian landscape, although I'm afraid that is not enough to justify the millions of dollars.

Happy Chinese New Years

Where are those darn firecrackers?

Sorry about not posting, but I have been taken over by Call of Combat and BootLeggers :-)

Image Gallery

If you haven't noticed yet, I redid the image gallery since 4Images was not very good handling bulk uploads. You can still access the gallery by clicking on the link in the right menu. If there is a picture of you that you do not want made public, please notify me right away!

Enjoy!

Photoshop CS is not artist friendly?

If you use Adobe Photoshop CE, be forewarned that you cannot scan or edit many of the world's major currency. This was requested by several governments because they claimed the number one source of fraudulant money comes from the scanner and the inkjet.

I'm not sure if Adobe should put this blocker in the program. It has been reported that it is easily defeated, but I think many people are worried about other things that could be blocked, say, burning flags or copyrighted materials.

Since artists always done artwork with any subject imaginable, I believe that this blocker is unnecessary and really an annoyance than anything. If anything, the government should add some watermark and make printer manufacturers distort the image if the printer detects the watermark AND 80% - 120% of the actual dollar size. That should help prevent people from trying to use it as actual money.

Matrix, anyone?

If you thought the armored shells that carried machine guns in Matrix: Revolutions were weird, a Japanese company made a rescue robot that uses the same look.

Copyright © 2004 tmsuk