http://current.com/items/89025402_water_fuel_car_unveiled_in_japan

Check this out! How cool is that!?

Seriously. This scientist fellow recovered a hard drive that fell from the sky out of the exploding Columbia Space Shuttle six months after the incident. It was warped and melted, but he managed to recover the platters inside the drive and install them in a new drive. Guess what!

"However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted, but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened where data had not been written.

Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over drives, as other approaches do."

If the space shuttle was running DOS, a) Why is the Space Program so bass-ackwards and b) How much better could it be with new technology?

Let's review: the 340MB harddrive (for scale purposes, I have a 500GB harddrive in my own home computer) was only HALF FULL of data. Was it written in COBOL or something? Jeepers, people!

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/05/09/columbia.data.ap/index.html

This is just a-fuckin-mazing. I think I want to see it in action. I'm morbidly fascinated. Do I want one? No. Do I want someone else to get one just to see? Heck yes. :)

This is a FIRST, ladies and gentlemen! Ever since I first had my own computer (as in not shared with my mother or my at-the-time-boyfriend) I have never had an entirely new system. I may have purchased new parts here and there for minor upgrades, but the majority of my computer has always consisted of hand-me-downs.

No more! Tonight my boyfriend is assembling my brand spanking new computer! (He is sooo amazing at cable management!) Here's what's going into it:

Antec P150 case
Asus P5K S775 P35 chipset motherboard
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz 4MB cache 1333MHz
4GB Kingston DDR2 667MHz RAM
7600GT video card
Zalman VF700-ALCu video card cooler
Pioneer DVR-212D SATA DVD writer/reader
500GB Western Digital 16MB 7200rpm SATA drive
320GB Seagate IDE drive

The Seagate drive is from my current setup, so it's not SATA. The video card is new, but a gift from a friend who upgraded. The RAM is a slightly-used gift from my man, who also upgraded. So my machine will be soooo new! I am very, very excited! I'll actually have a computer that's current and can process my photos and video without hiccuping or taking several hours!

Photos will be posted when I'm online again! Yay!

Once again, freedoms are being lost and nobody cares. :( How hard is it to get an American to protest these days? Seriously, people. Nobody else is going to do it for you.

http://news.com.com/Justice+Department+takes+aim+at+image-sharing+sites/2100-1028_3-6163679.html

Justice Department takes aim at image-sharing sites

The Bush administration has accelerated its Internet surveillance push by proposing that Web sites must keep records of who uploads photographs or videos in case police determine the content is illegal and choose to investigate, CNET News.com has learned.

That proposal surfaced Wednesday in a private meeting during which U.S. Department of Justice officials, including Assistant Attorney General Rachel Brand, tried to convince industry representatives such as AOL and Comcast that data retention would be valuable in investigating terrorism, child pornography and other crimes. The discussions were described to News.com by several people who attended the meeting.
...

Often invoking terrorism and child pornography as justifications, the administration has argued that Internet providers must install backdoors for surveillance and has called for routers to be redesigned for easier eavesdropping. President Bush's electronic surveillance program, which was recently modified, has drawn an avalanche of lawsuits.

The Justice Department's request for information about compliance costs echoes a decade-ago debate over wiretapping digital telephones, which led to the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. To reduce opposition by telephone companies, Congress set aside $500 million for reimbursement and the legislation easily cleared both chambers by voice votes.

Once Internet providers come up with specific figures, privacy advocates worry, Congress will offer to write a generous check to cover all compliance costs and the process will repeat itself.

...."

The monitor dilemma has been solved. I was waiting and waiting for prices to come down to something reasonable on a Samsung widescreen, and the Valentine's Week Sale at NCIX was all I needed. :) I picked up two Samsung 205BW monitors for $273Cdn, plus $13 for a 1 year Zero Dead Pixel warranty (one for myself and one for my man.) That's pretty cheap peace of mind, if you ask me!

They're beautiful. I have more real estate now than I know what to do with. There's only one caveat: my sad little video card can't handle the native resolution (1680x1050) in DVI mode, so I have to connect the monitor by analog. Ah well. Next month I'll upgrade my video card.

Something you might enjoy is in the works! You see, I am soon to be able to post voice messages to my site at ElliNude.com! All I do is I call a number from my phone and leave a voicemail. Well that message is automagically picked up on my site, and you can surf to my site and click the little link to hear my latest message! What do you make of them apples? Would that be cool for you?

Wireless...

conking out...

must get



cable





aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.