Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Firefox3 RC1

It's coming in 1 week or 2.
And after that, there will be RC2, and then the golden release!

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Shutting down computers

run -> command.com
shutdown -i
And then type in comment, timeout, etc.
You can shut down ANYBODY in the local network

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

HCE Class

Yeah, so we went to this teachingsexualhealth.ca website.
This is in the front page:



Lol.....

Monday, April 21, 2008

M$ Frontpage 2000

I to this day, still do not understand why the school teaches how to make website with it.
Frontpage provides horrible, non-standard compliant HTML code.
Its themes are really horrible too; crappy gif graphic and looser design.
It is based on IE5 and thus does NOT properly display CSS2.1 in the WYSIWYG editor.

In general, it sucks. Period.

Saturday, April 19, 2008

Snowing in April?

I am surprised too.
Here, in Victoria, B.C.?
I mean, it hardly even snows throughout the winter!
Ugh stupid global warming + extreme climates.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Some boarder suspended

One of our fellow gr8 boarders got suspended for a few days.
Not much to say.
Reasons:
- theft
- major late homework in various subjects
- skipping classes (fake sickness and then lie to nurse)
- more

He will be coming back next Monday

Friday, April 11, 2008

Fibonacci Numbers

You know the sequence:
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, ...

Where each number is the sum of the 2 previous ones and the first 2 numbers are 1's.
So, I was curious if there is a formula for finding the nth Fibonacci number...
Here is what I found.

There is 1 rule that will guide you through the process (contact me if you want the prove)

if F(n) = a * F(n-1) + b * F(n-2)

and that c and d are 2 solutions to the quadratic equation x^2 = ax + b
then for any integer n, F(n) = r * c^n + s * d^n where r,s are real numbers

Applied to this case
(1 + √5)/2 and (1 - √5)/2 are solutions for x^2 = x + 1
so we have

F(n) = r * ((1 + √5)/2)^ n + s * ((1 + √5)/2)^n

since f(1) = f(2) = 1

r * (1 + √5)/2 + s * (1 -√5) / 2 = r * (3 + √5)/2 + s * (3 - √5)/2 = 1
r + s = 0 //subtract f(1) from f(2)
s = -r

r * (1 + √5)/2 - r * (1 - √5) / 2 = 1
r * (1 + √5 - 1 + √5)/2 = 1
r * √5 = 1
r = 1 / √5

Thus, the formula is:
F(n) = (1/√5)((1+√5)/2)^n - (1/√5)((1-√5)/2)^n

or to simplify things...

F(n) = (1/√5)(φ^n) - (1/√5)((1-φ)^n)
Where φ = Golden Ratio = (1+√5)/2

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Smoking marijuana? Wtf?

So this is what happened.
During Monday after school, all the sudden, MY floor smelled like pod.
It was really shocking. We had a house meeting and we plan to expel the person that did it.
I mean, seriously, smoke marijuana IN the boarding house? WTF???

Some BS Technology Class

So, it was the so called "Media Awareness" website we go to.
Then, we played the whatever stupid game in there.

It tells you not to give out personal information in the internet.

Whilst this is true, it's perfectly fine to give out your name; there is probably about a few million people in the world with the exact same full name as you, thus untrackable.

AND if you are really concerned about privacy, give false information!

Scam sites won't attract too many users if they have a ton of security check to make sure the information is real; they must allow some fake users if they are to scam anybody in general.

Monday, April 7, 2008

Back to school

So, alright I'm back.
But, after getting used to the new laptop, the old school computers are like so slow for me.
Single core? That's just... pathetic (at least compared to those cheap quad core desktops...)
I hope the school upgrades the computers... it's just a little bit slow...
Also, I can't stand Office 2000... it's missing some features and obviously not forward compatible.
At least upgrade to 2003 for the

The good thing - I got Firefox 3.0! It's awesome with the new features.
Be sure to check it out!

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Apple Inc suing over New York City??



http://www.macobserver.com/article/2008/04/05.1.shtml
http://www.efluxmedia.com/news_NYC_Not_Entitled_To_An_Apple_Apple_Says_15989.html
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/its-like-comparing-apples-to-apples/?hp

It seems like Steve Jobs are in the way of New York City's efforts to go green as they have some far fetched dispute over the seemingly completely different apple logos.

From the GreeNYC site, their logos looks quite different from Apples. There is an infinity symbol in it, and there isn't a bite. Also, Apple Inc's apple is a solid gray while GreeNYC's is hollow.

I don't really know what Apple is doing now... I mean suing for this little thing? And the chances of success? Zero. NYC might even bite back since it already has long term claims on apple (since like 1920).

Hmmm....

Friday, April 4, 2008

Selling class notes illegal?

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/prof-sues-note.html

Apparently from the above article, a professor in University of Florida is suing the company Einstein Notes for "repackaging notes as 'studykits' and then profiting from the other lazy students that don't go to classes" without permission. Some students in the class are "payed" for taking notes and thus the professor states it's a "illegal distribution of copyrighted material" and thus is "infringement of copyright laws"

Unlike previous cases, this professor actually copyrighted his lectures, and he recorded every one of them. So, it's much more viable for a law suit. BUT, lots of possibilities could open up if this law suit against Einstein Notes is successful. Companies like Cliff Notes have been in the business of providing commentaries and summaries of novels, which are supposed to be copyrighted - what if they get sued?

Thursday, April 3, 2008

The difference between FAT32 and NTFS

I have always wondered what's so different about NTFS file system. I mean, there is file encryption alright, but I don't really need it. It's unnecessary as I carry no sensitive data.

FAT32 is older, and thus has better backward compatibility, and thus I kept it for some time.
I finally found out the major difference - file size limit.

Oh yeah, you can have a 1000GB hard drive filled with files in FAT32 system.
However, there is one major limit. You CANNOT have a single file that is larger than 4GB.
I discovered this while *trying* to backup another hard drive and keep getting error in the same spot.

Right... so I point the backup to a NTFS drive and it worked.
Strange, right? But remember, FAT32 is more than 10 years old, and has limitations.
Unless you need backward compatibility, convert your drives to NTFS.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Unreliable Softwares

Well, since the sturdy Partition Magic 8.0 doesn't work in Windows Vista, I got another software for managing and partitioning hard drives last year. It's called Paragon Partition Manager.

However, it seems less robust than Partition Magic. I've already had failures and fatal errors with it, including some bugs appearing when moving large amount of data (which is required for partitioning drives).

For example, one time, during the "quick data moving" stage, after moving a ton of data, it stopped, render the system unresponsive. Another time, during the same quick data moving stage, it stopped near the end stating "security error" leaving a few MB of files invisible.

Softwares that do these kind of risky job should be stable and robust itself, not introducing failures in critical areas, almost corrupting the hard drive in the process.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Website Hits

So, you think if you stop updating the website/blog, nobody will visit, right??
Actually, I'm quite startled by the result myself.

I made a blog about a game in July 2006, and then I periodically post in it until April 2007. In total, 95 posts were made, and the blog got about 5000 hits. Then, I decided to stop posting, because I no longer played the game. I totally forgotten about the blog, until I visited it today.

Guess how many hits? 9036. I'm not kidding. The blog continued to get hits long after its last update. The number of hits per day increased in the past 4 months without any new posts!

And so... here is an advice if you are running any websites - never ever remove any page that has been exposed to the internet. Old information is useful information, and old pages get MORE views.

As for the number of hits to this site? About 2500 hits (since April 2007).

IE8 & FF3

Just recently, IE8 Beta 1 has been released. A rather quick progress I'd say, by Microsoft's standards. So, I and my friend downloaded it.

According to various sources, IE8 passes Acid2 test. However, really, it doesn't pass. Oh yeah, it rendered correctly, but there are some unnecessary scroll bars on the eyes.

And Acid3? Well, it did even worse than IE6 - a dismal 10/100.
Also, the interface looked almost exactly the same as IE7. In other words, rarely any updates.

As for FF3... I'm updating to the latest nightly builds everyday. They seem to do very well. FF3 passes Acid2, catching up to other browsers, and scored a 71/100 on Acid3. Also, there are lots of impressive UI (user interface) changes, such as when you type in the address bar, it will match any letters in the URL instead of just the first ones. Also, the new theme looks better than FF2 IMO. One thing: don't use nightly builds unless you can withstand crashes. The betas are more stable.

Safari and Opera betas scored 100/100 on Acid3, but they still have the performance issue on test26. Safari also hacked around some of the tests (like in test#71 about font rendering, they hard-coded the svg font used to make sure they antialias correctly) which kind of defeats the purpose of the test.