Blog
Welcome to my blog. This is where you get to learn about me and what I feel like ranting about at the moment. If you know me, you know I have a lot to say about stuff. This is my chance to just spit it out and, just maybe, get some feedback about it. Take a minute and read what I have to say. If you want to respond, well, that is what comments are for.
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Okay, now that that is over with, in case you haven't heard, Lori Drew is an evil bitch. There was some sort of drama between her daughter and another girl (13-year-old Megan Meier). So, in response she pretended to be a teenage boy, feigned interest in Megan, and then broke it off in the most horrible way she could. Soon after, Megan killed herself. This might sound like a plot out of some twisted Shakespeare play. But it is real. And what Ms. Drew did was quite possibly legal. You might wonder what it's doing in my "technology" category. You might also wonder why Ms. Drew might have gotten away with it. Surprisingly, those answers are related...
I competed in the ACM programming contest today for the first time (and the last time, as I am no longer eligible after this year). Traditionally, ISU has solved 1 or 2 problems (sometimes none). This year we had a new plan. This plan included lots of training, and some really talented coders. The results can be seen here. We competed at the University of Illinois UC site. I was on the team "ISU Null Pointer Exception."
It was an interesting time to be had by all. My team managed to place second at our site and 18th overall in the region. We solved 6 of the 7 problems correctly. I would also like to note that I submitted my first solution in 6 minutes flat (this is the time from when we see the packet of problems for the first time until I turned in a working solution). I tied for the fastest first solution in the region.
This would have been awesome, had I not then spent the next 45 minutes debugging my correct solution.
So I am taking a big leap. I am switching to Linux on my laptop. Not exclusively, I still have Windows on here, but I'm going to keep it to a minimum. Basically, I want to get some more Linux experience and it's just overall pretty cool. I will try and make a few entries about my experience, but first I wanted to get something out there.
If you go to Illinois State University and are thinking of switching to Linux, there is one giant barrier that is in place to try and stop you. That barrier is that ISU uses LEAP authentication on their wireless. LEAP authentication is a proprietary authentication mechanism by Cisco. It has a lot of overhead, it is insecure, and it isn't supported natively by 99% of wireless cards out there. So why does ISU use it? Who knows? But of course that doesn't really matter. What matters is that if you want to use Linux at ISU, you are in for a bit of a struggle.
So with sites popping up all over and even TV commercials about "Net Neutrality", it is amazing how much people hear about the issue without really knowing anything about it. So I am going to do what I can to try and simplify this issue.
Simplifying net neutrality is a difficult thing to do because it is a very complex debate with 2 legitimate sides to it. The reason it is so complex is that, being a big-business hating democrat, I find it hard to take a stance on a subject that puts Microsoft against AT&T. It is like watching the Cardinals play the Yankees and deciding which team to root for.
Media Center Extenders rule. Actually, I am going to back that up and say, Xbox 360's rule. I bought my 360 a while back and I think it is just about the coolest gaming system ever. I love to play games on it just to play them. The graphics are jaw-dropping, and if you haven't played a 360 on an HDTV, go buy one right now. Tell them Pete sent you. Then when they ask who Pete is, tell them to read my blog. Because I need a larger reader base.
Before I start, this article is for people with mild to moderate computer skills. It should be accessible to pretty much anyone. Email me if you have questions.
If you are reading this, you probably have the internet at home. If you are reading this (my blog) you probably have high speed internet at home. If you have high speed internet at home, you might have a cable modem. I have a cable modem and I must say, they are very nifty things.
As you probably already know, I am not a big fan of the RIAA and their scare tactics they use to force people into settlements. Recently, they have even gone so far as to recommend that students drop out of college to pay the "settlements" that are "so graciously offered" by the RIAA to avoid litigation.
Many people don't understand what is going on because it is very technical in nature and the RIAA "simplifies" things to the media in a light that makes it sound like their cases are rock-solid. This is far from the truth, so I plan on writing a series of blog entries that aim to explain some of the fallacies put fourth by the RIAA to hide the fact they really have no case.
I would like to say hello to mr. 12.221.209.125. He decided that my website might be a nice one to hack. My logs show he attemped a buffer overflow attack, then some sort of attack against frontpage... Anyway, needless to say, no such luck. Better luck next time.
Other than that, nothing entertaining goin on here. I started school. My first couple classes consisted of a math class with a guy who talks like he is drunk and is a bit scary, a music class with a pretty cool teacher who wants us to record every time we here music for the next day, and my religions class, which gave us 100 pages of reading for the first 2 nights and almost assigned a 4 page, single-spaced, paper to go with it. Today I don't start class until 2pm, so I am hanging out at my house failing to get dressed and, instead, writing a blog entry. I know I promised a commenting system soon, but school takes time and I haven't had any free time to finish it. Hopefully soon.