- Full-Body Scan Technology Deployed In Street-Roving Vans
- The Government’s New Right to Track Your Every Move With GPS without a warrant by installing a tracking device on your car while it’s in your driveway.
31 Aug 2010
22 Aug 2010
I had this error:
Permission denied: .htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable
I fixed it by changing all directories (and sub-directories) permissions using this command: bash-3.00$ find ./ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} ;
** Warning: This command changes all sub-folders permissions. **
25 Jul 2010
22 Jul 2010
| Song Title |
| Sane No More |
| Icarus Dream Suite Opus 4 |
| Paradigm Shift |
| Reign Of The Hammer |
| Desire |
| Searching (Album Version) |
| ‘Till I Collapse |
| Rising Force |
| Feedin’ the Box |
| Time Crunch |
| Ytse Jam [Live Version – Paris 1998] |
| Signify |
| The Dance Of Eternity [Scene Seven] |
| Desert Girl |
| High-Top Bop |
| Memories |
| Micah |
| Crystal Planet |
| Another Dimension |
| Made Of Tears |
| Goddess Nemesis (Instrumental) |
| Wayfaerer |
| Fuel Injection Stingray |
| Driving At Night |
| The Crusade |
| Rivers Dancing |
| Feed the Wheel |
| Paradigm Shift |
| Biaxident |
| Black Star |
| Time Crunch |
| Chameleon Carneval |
| Blitzkrieg (Live Version) |
17 Jul 2010
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/licenseplate/
- http://javaanpr.sourceforge.net/ (this one needs to be adapted to US license plates)
13 Jul 2010
-
Execute the following commands:
:~$ sudo apt-get install pulse-audio-module-raop paprefs :~$ paprefs -
Make these changes:
check "Make discoverable network sound devices available locally" check "Make discoverable Apple Airtunes sound devices available locally" -
Reboot (or restart pulseaudio)
-
Go to Sound Preferences – Output (by clicking on the speaker in the taskbar)
-
Select Base Sation as output
-
Start your favorite radio station (Pandora?), mp3, etc..
11 Jul 2010
While “Addthis” is supposed to be an helper, it is an annoyance for me because when you hover the mouse over it, a window popups and stays there until you manually close it.
An easy way to block it if you use Adblock plus, is to add the following filter (Tools – Adblock Plus Preferences – Filters – Add Filter..):
.addthis.com/*
<img src="/notes/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/Screenshot.png" alt=" title=“Addthis Popup” width=“200” height=“160” class=“alignnone size-full wp-image-769” />
10 Jul 2010
Xiaolin Wei and Jinxiang Chai developed a program that tracks human bodies in videos to create animated 3D models (which can then be viewed from any angle). It will be presented at Siggraph in Los Angeles.
Download a PDF or download the video.
Via New Scientist.
01 Jul 2010
If you want Excel to keep a field’s leading zeros when opening a CSV file using Excel, you can change it to =”value”.
For example, if you have a row with 4 values that looks like this:
test,00016102,test,test
Change it to:
test,="00016102",test,test
28 Jun 2010
BP brands to boycott include Castrol, Arco, Aral, am/pm, Amoco, and Wild Bean Cafe
23 Jun 2010
Build Your Own Tri-Copter
20 Jun 2010
16 May 2010
A few programs:
- Tor: “enabling Internet anonymity by thwarting network traffic analysis”
- Privoxy: “It has filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, modifying web page data, managing cookies, controlling access, and selectively removing content such as ads, banners and pop-ups.”
- Enigmail: “It enables you to write and receive email messages signed and/or encrypted with the OpenPGP standard.”
- Off-the-Record Messaging (OTR): “cryptographic protocol that provides strong encryption for instant messaging conversations”
An interesting talk on Youtube:
10 May 2010
Using Firefox and Adblock Plus, you can block some unwanted “features” of Facebook: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/05/how-to_avoid_facebook_malware.html. For example, it should prevent Facebook from sharing information with other websites.
Or if you want, you can completely delete your account, thanks to the The Consumerist. You could also just deactivate your account if you plan on re-using it.
06 May 2010
How-to move the minimize, maximize and close buttons to the right of the window in Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx).
- Press ALT-F2, type: ‘gconf-editor’ and click Run
- Go to: ‘apps > metacity > general’ and right-click on ‘button_layout’ and choose “Edit Key….”
- Type in ‘menu:minimize,maximize,close’ and click OK
- That’s it.
06 May 2010
Find answers at Naturalization Test: Civics (History and Government) Questions with MP3 Audio.
Download all mp3 files to burn an audio CD or wait for your biometric appointment and receive a “free” CD.
02 May 2010
Using this method, it records every sounds going to your sound card, so you might want to disconnect any microphone (or turn them off) and stop using any program that generate sounds while you are recording.
- Download and install Audacity and Lame for Audacity (lame is only required if you want to save the songs as MP3 files)
- Start Audacity and click record
- Start playing the music at Pandora
- Try to record long enough to have complete songs, you can record as many songs as you like in the same file (as HD space allows), you can split them later
- Push Stop in Audacity at anytime
- To split the recording in multiple songs, follow these directions (if you want to keep it as-is, just choose File – Export):
- Click to place the cursor at the start of the first song.
- Choose “Add Label at Selection” from the Project menu. If you wish, you can type the name of the song.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each song.
- When you are finished, choose “Export Multiple” from the File menu. When you click the “Export” button, Audacity will save each song as a separate file, using the format and location you choose.(if you choose MP3 output, it will ask you for Lame’s DLL which is located in “c:\Program Files\Lame for Audacity” if you use Windows)
- Done!
Note: it might not be the easiest way right now to rip music from online radio, but it is the one that is the most likely to still work tomorrow.
24 Apr 2010
Goldman Sachs e-mails show bank sought to profit from housing downturn
By Zachary A. Goldfarb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 24, 2010; 11:43 AM
But the prevailing view of executives, as described in the paper, was not that the housing market was headed into a prolonged decline. They were not looking to short the market overall. That would have entailed making such large bets against mortgage securities that the firm would turn a profit if the market as a whole collapsed, which in fact it did.
The document acknowledges that Goldman at times shorted the overall market but describes those periods as temporary while the firm was rebalancing its portfolio to limit losses if mortgage securities were to lose more value.
At some moments, executives were actually considering making new bets, buying potentially undervalued securities that could pay off when the mortgage market turned around. A day after Viniar met with traders and risk managers, he wrote to Tom Montan, co-head of the securities division, saying, “There will be very good opportunities as the markets goes into what is likely to be even greater distress and we want to be in position to take advantage of them.”
The back-and-forth over which way the market would go, and how to invest in it, continued into 2007.
On March 14, Goldman co-president Jon Winkelried e-mailed Sparks and others asking what the bank was doing to protect itself from a decline in prices of not just subprime loans, but also other loans traditionally considered less risky. Sparks replied that the firm was trying to have “smaller” exposure to those loans also.
But managing director Richard Ruzika took issue with that answer a few days later, saying that Goldman might be overestimating the decline in housing. “It does feel to me like the market in general underestimated how bad it could get. And now could be overestimating where we are heading,” he wrote in an e-mail. “While undoubtedly there will be some continued spillover, I’m not so convinced this is a total death spiral. In fact, we may have terrific opportunities.”
Sparks later endorsed that optimistic view, suggesting as late as August 2007 that Goldman begin buying more mortgage securities.
The bank did not immediately follow that path, and by Nov. 30, 2007, Goldman had largely canceled out its exposure to subprime mortgages by increasing its bets that the market would continue to slide, according to the document.
But by that account, Goldman also continued to have $13.5 billion in exposure to safer, prime mortgages. That cost the bank. In 2008, the firm lost $1.7 billion on investments in residential mortgages.
08 Feb 2010
To avoid getting the error “Your operating system does not meet system requirements”, I had to use User Agent Switcher to download the spreadsheet at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/TC300022771033.aspx for electric meter logging for energy efficiency. Then I used cabextract to extract the .cab file and used Open Office to view the 30002277.xltx file. Here it is saved using Open Office’s ODS format: electricity_tracking.
24 Oct 2009
Another option would be to use an Home Theater PC (HTPC), more expensive but also more versatile. [
http://www.linuxtech.net/features/best_linux_htpc_motherboards.html]10 has some good tips for building your own.