The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
This is a project promising quite a throwback. The TA Spring project is basically an open source remake of Total Annihilation, brought up to modern system standards. If you having been gaming long enough to know what that means, you’ll appreciate the joy this can bring.
[tags]Open-source Total Annihilation remake, The TA Spring project[/tags]
Just got back from a week-end at my mother’s doing cleaning and home improvement work for her. I got the pleasure of finding some tripped breakers in the electrical box outside, 2 dead computers, a dead cable modem, a non-working internet connection once I got a working cable modem (yes, I have multiple cable modems), and poor cable signal to the television. So I’m not exactly in the best mood now. I have to spend tomorrow figuring out what, if anything, can be done to get the computers working again. I think we took a lightning strike that blasted some electronics, but I’m not sure.
On the other hand, I help my mother get some work done around her house, got my wife’s van clean, spent some time with my entire family, and had dinner with a beautiful woman. She’s a long time friend of mine that I’ve gotten to see little of this past decade, so it was really fun to catch up with what’s going on with her. That made my week-end good, which made for the return to all the house problems extra frustrating.
Look for some updates tomorrow as I catch up on geeky news, and maybe make a comment or two about Imus (briefly – he’s done worse, why get fired now?).
Going opposite most top 10 lists, Computer world has the top 10 Firefox extensions you should not get
Now this is just damn ducky. A couple of years ago, the Congressional Business Office (CBO) released a report on the impact on the US economy of legalizing same-gender marriages. This wasn’t a question of morality, fair treatment of citizens, biblical imperative, or anything like that. The report is pretty much a straight-up study of how the US economy would be helped or hurt by allowing same-gender marriages (also available in PDF format if you prefer.
The federal government does not recognize “marriages” of same-sex couples either for receipt of federal benefits or for tax purposes. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (Public Law 104-199) provides that the federal government will honor only marriages between one man and one woman. It also stipulates that no state, territory, or possession of the United States or Indian tribe can be required to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in any other jurisdiction.
The potential effects on the federal budget of recognizing same-sex marriages are numerous. Marriage can affect a person’s eligibility for federal benefits such as Social Security. Married couples may incur higher or lower federal tax liabilities than they would as single individuals. In all, the General Accounting Office has counted 1,138 statutory provisions–ranging from the obvious cases just mentioned to the obscure (landowners’ eligibility to negotiate a surface-mine lease with the Secretary of Labor)–in which marital status is a factor in determining or receiving “benefits, rights, and privileges.”(1) In some cases, recognizing same-sex marriages would increase outlays and revenues; in other cases, it would have the opposite effect. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that on net, those impacts would improve the budget’s bottom line to a small extent: by less than $1 billion in each of the next 10 years (CBO’s usual estimating period). That result assumes that same-sex marriages are legalized in all 50 states and recognized by the federal government.
Continue reading “The economic impact of same-sex marriage on the US economy”
Your task? Get the mummy from one side of the screen to the flag on the other side without touching the spikes
I periodically read about Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, and keep thinking how cool it would be if someone in the open source community came up with a good OCR package. While prices are far better than they were about 10 years ago when I first looked in to OCR software, it can still be expensive to get going with OCR. Now, Google has announced work on an open source OCR system. There is a technology preview available, with a 3rd quarter alpha release targetted. The code page points out that no real training of the character recognition engine has taken place yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see a sister project get going to use distributed tools for training, letting thousands of open source fans get involved on the project if they aren’t capable of contributing on the code side.
The OCRopus engine is based on two research projects: a high-performance handwriting recognizer developed in the mid-90’s and deployed by the US Census bureau, and novel high-performance layout analysis methods.
OCRopus is development is sponsored by Google and is initially intended for high-throughput, high-volume document conversion efforts. We expect that it will also be an excellent OCR system for many other applications.
I’ll watch this project. It could be another highly significant open source tool in the near future.
[tags]Google working on open source OCR software, Open source Optical Character Recognition package from Google[/tags]
Apparently this is not a new comic, having a pretty substantial archive, but I just found the DM of the Rings comic (link goes to the first epidose). DMotR combines the D20 gaming system with the recent Lord of the Rings movie to generate some pretty good geek humor.
[tags]DM of the Ring, Web comic[/tags]
I posted the following article on Sunday via my remote posting setup. I didn’t realize until last night that the article didn’t go up on the site on Sunday. I almost skipped it, but since everyone seems to be talking about Imus more now than when I posted, I figured I could still get away with it. Following is the original post I made Sunday afternoon, unedited. I put it here just so I can look in a week or two and see if Al Sharpton is still expressing his outrage or not. Then I can point back and say “See, I told you so.” or “Guess I was wrong” when we know what he’ll do.
This might not be quite as funny if you aren’t a computer geek, but I’m sure at least a few of these will be recognizable to even non-techies. The Programming Blog has a long list of things computer in movies can do that computers in real life just can’t seem to manage.
4. All monitors display inch-high letters.
5. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces.
6. Those that don’t have graphical interfaces will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
27. Searches on the internet will always return what you are looking for no matter how vague your keywords are. (See “Mission Impossible”, Tom Cruise searches with keywords like “file” and “computer” and 3 results are returned.)
Some of the things in the movie can be done by real computers, but that breaks part of the list if you consider that. They also left off the Wargames computer feature of the computer being able to talk to the user no matter what computer the user is on.
[tags]Things computers in movies can do[/tags]
Scared of being caught for not completing your work on time? Well, it seems at least one person out there thought that setting a small fire in the office would be the best way to hide failure. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out how she planned.
A licensed vocational nurse remained behind bars today with combined bonds set at $330,000 after she was accused of setting a March 28 fire in a North Loop office building that killed three people.
Misty Ann Weaver, 33, was charged with three counts of murder and one count of felony arson in the fatal four-alarm fire at 9343 North Loop East that also injured six people. Her bond was based on $100,000 for each murder charge and $30,000 for arson.
Weaver, an employee of cosmetic surgeon Dr. Robert Capriotti, has confessed to starting the four-alarm fire at 9343 North Loop East, according to officials with the Houston Fire Department and U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
HFD Chief Arson Investigator Roy Paul said Weaver wanted to cover up the fact that she had failed to complete paperwork for an important audit for Capriotti. The audit had to do with the doctor’s state accreditation or recertification, Paul said.
Details of the damage done in the full story. I get not wanting to be caught failing to complete work. Setting a fire to deflect from this just isn’t a smart cover though.
[tags]Nurse sets fire to hide failure to complete paperwork[/tags]
I’m adding the Viruslist.com blog to my security blog bookmarks – you should, too
Another eye candy post that’s really just for me. I don’t know many folks who have the hots for Ms. Ricci, but I’ve had a thing for her for so many years it’s absurd.
[tags]Eye Candy, Christina Ricci[/tags]