Not a big truck

Charter, the only cable television provider in the Athens area, will be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy before April 1st.

As part of an agreement with debt holders, they will be paid in full and Paul Allen will maintain the largest voting interest in the company.

Sadly, Athens will likely not see an improvement in service.

Chief Executive Neil Smit says the St. Louis-based company’s cable, Internet and telephone operations will continue throughout the debt restructuring process.

As of this writing, my connection is slower than DSL speed, clocking in at 1.3Mbits per second. This is half the connection speed I paying for.

The theory of Evolution forms the bedrock of all biological sciences today. United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has declared 2009 as “The year of Darwin”.

Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) was an eminent English naturalist who achieved lasting fame by convincing the scientific community that species develop over time from a common origin. His theories explaining this phenomenon through natural and sexual selection are central to the modern understanding of evolution as the unifying theory of the life sciences, essential in biology and important in other disciplines such as anthropology, psychology and philosophy. Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is one of the most fundamentally important concepts in science, philosophy and human culture.
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In light of Ruckus being shutdown, I’ve decide to post something here I wrote about DRM for StandUp a while back. It’s a crash course in DRM and how to get around it.

Digital rights management, DRM, is software employed by many copyright owners to protect their content from being pirated. Nearly all Americans come into contact with DRM on a daily basis. Enjoying music bought from Apple requires the use of DRM; even laughing at Garden State on DVD requires the use of DRM. So, DRM is good… right? Hardly a person exits who legitimately supports piracy; however, most DRM is extremely restrictive and takes away from what consumers can do with legally acquired content under their rights of “fair use.”

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When using a public computer, don’t leave any of your accounts logged in. This should go without saying, however, in the casual environment that exists around WUOG where computers are not the only things that are shared, leaving a Gmail account logged in is not uncommon.

This is a terrible habit, and should be punished. That is why Internets Etiquette dictates the finder of said Gmail account should send the most wildly inappropriate link to the offending party.

The recipient is then obliged to both click on and view the entirety of the content. However,  if the viewer has already seen the offending content, then the viewer is not obliged to review a second time.

The Politico headline is a little harsh, but Obama did promise that all bills would be online 5 days before they are signed so the American people can review them.

This apparently does not apply to emergency bills. Also, the system isn’t set up yet.

“Currently we are working through implementation procedures and some initial issues with the congressional calendar,” the statement read. “In the meantime, we will continue to post legislation on our website for comment as it moves through Congress over the next few weeks.” The White House posted a link on its website Sunday to the Senate bill.

It looks like another trillion is going to get printed, packed and shipped without the approval of the people.

[via Politico]

Hi, I’m Frank. And I’m a Twitterholic. I’ve been clean for about…35 minutes. It’s a hard battle that I’m facing hour to hour. Everytime I see a something out of the ordinary, I have the strongest urge to stop what I’m doing and get on my phone to tweet txt or rush home to tell everyone what I just saw.

I know I have a problem. And that’s the first step. Now, how did I get here? It started out simple. I’d say “hey, this movie rocks, check it out.” But it was just downhill from there. I was sitting in Church, and the Reverend was speaking a passage when all of a sudden he said “cock” (as in referring to a rooster). A click open and several taps later and on my twitter account was, “LOL HE JUST SAID COCK! [as in referring to a rooster, but the juxtaposition of the person and the word taken out of context made it "lol-worthy"]”

I pressed send, and I looked at my phone. “Was this a sign of things to come?” I pondered to myself. “No. It’s just a one-time deal. It’ll never happen again.” Of course I lied to myself. Upon watching  The Day the Earth Stood Still, I tweeted no less than 20 times. For those of you with a calculator, that’s one tweet per six minutes. Examples of said tweets:
“OMG NEO! WHOA, NEO!”
“NEO’S AN ALIEN? WTF?!”
“MAMA BOUCHER IS THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE? WTFWTFWTF?!?!?!”

Although, in my defense, it was the only way to make the film entertaining. I’m not saying it gives me the right, but….it’s hard, you know? It’s a long battle. I have to realize that when I see a carnival on the road, I have to dial a friend’s number to tell him/her about what I just saw, and not just put it out there on the interwebs.

Now to repost this on my Tumblr….brb.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQp7Id8iRA4[/youtube]

This is but a taste of the trio that call themselves Derrick Comedy. NYU graduates Dominic Dierkes, Dan Glover, DC Pierson, and Dan Eckman made their own skits and putting them onto youtube. The sketches are for those whose humor spectrum falls into “mildly depraved” and “dead inside,” or as I fondly call myself, a “Deadsie.” “Bro Rape,” “Rookie,”  “KP,” and “Spelling Bee” fall into the “Deadsie” while those looking for a lighter (not light, all of them have dark qualities) should check out the above “Keyboard Kid,” “Self Defense,” and “Girls Are Not To Be Trusted”

These guys have become so popular that they made a movie which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

Enjoy

Sure, not everyone ‘gets’ Twitter. Lets face it; some people were born cool and into awesome, cutting-edge, social new media sites and some were just born to be on MySpace. But, who are these merchants of cool that crowd the Twitter-space with glorious witticisms and links to things you think are cool and witty and beautiful?

Luckily for those of you who like these kinds of answers answered in easily indexable and reference-able lists, SF/J has a completely compiled list of people on Twitter. Need an exemplary excerpt? Fine, have one:

people who are just back from a really awesome run

people who are involved with “computers”

DJs

DJs at the airport

DJs who are drunk

people who don’t have anyone’s email address

people who are mad at television

The full list is rather entertaining as well. Which Twitter user are you? Me? I’m split between ‘people who like Battlestar Galactica’ and ‘Rachel Maddow‘.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYQCzULU_3o&feature=related[/youtube]

Fantastic Waste of Time

So for those of us who seem to be utterly addicted to puzzles and games here is a fun one that will definitely get you hooked. Fantastic contraption is an awesome free online game where you build crazy gadgets in an attempt to complete the level. The goal is to get the pink ball into the pink box by building some sort of mechanism using the parts provided. If you are any good at this game you will have to complete every level before you can lead a normal life again. Enjoy!

http://www.kongregate.com/games/ColinNorthway/fantastic-contraption