LUX.ET.UMBRA

It’s the end of February of 2006. Bruce Davis, the ex-Chairman of the Guilford County Commissioners and one that I dislike due to these acts that we the taxpayers are paying for, still doesn’t have time to blog even though he’s being paid an outrageous amount of money to represent Guilford County. Heck, I as a taxpayer, am paying for his “roaming” cellular bills.
Apparently there just isn’t enough time to blog with his first, and last post dated Oct. 21st of 2005. There were many follow-ups, such as this one in November and this one in December.
This is exactly why I dislike politicians. Everything is a farce when it comes to reaching out and communicating to the people. I’m also fairly amused that back during that time with the whole cellular fiasco, there were three people with County paid cell phones. Mr. Davis, Mr. Alston, and Ms. Coleman. Currently, Mr. Alston doesn’t have his cellular phone posted on the County Commissioners website (2/28/06). Did he turn it in? Anyone?
This is also the reason I love my city Councilwoman, Sandy Carmany. Communication galore! Talk about not shirking responsibilities. Bravo Sandy!
So when are we as a community going to get down to business and oust these people that supposedly represent “us” but voted to give RFMicro $800k+ as the fourth incentives package without paying any attention to what we have to say? I’m not one to get corrupted by the political realm, but there are others that are strong enough to withstand the pressure. Hoggard? Wanna give it a shot? It pays well.

Tags: Blogging, Local by darkmoon
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A very simple solder hack to implement local dimming with an X10 wall switch. The basic concept is that the X10 dimmers can dim the lights via software, but not via the actual switch itself. It takes one single solder short to implement this. Talk about easy if you’ve done any easy soldering before.
X10 is a technology that allows you to control your appliances and devices from the network/Internet.
MAKE < Instructables

Tags: Hardware, Tips and Tricks by darkmoon
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Strangely enough, Deutche Telekom has joined the “not too bright” crowd against Google and the other major Internet firms. As quoted:

According to an interview in WirtschaftsWoche, Deutsche Telekom director assured that not only should users pay telecommunications companies for the access to the Internet, but also Web firms (he mentioned Google, Yahoo!, Amazon o eBay), since they use the infrastructures for their businesses.

Hello? They have to pay for their bandwidth somehow, and it does go through a telecommunications service at some point. Every corporation on the planet that does Internet business doesn’t own their own infrastructure. They have to connect their fiber into the tier-one pipes and that’s where they get charged. And as far as I know, Amazon, Google, Yahoo, and every other Internet firm doesn’t own any of the tier-one infrastructure. Who does? Telecommunication giants such as the Bells and Deutche Telekom. The same that are complaining that these firms are “freeloading”.
WHY DOESN’T ANYONE UNDERSTAND THIS. Oh wait, we forgot. Dealing with management types again that know nothing about the technology they manage.
Via Dirson

Tags: Business, Google, Internet, Technology by darkmoon
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Google is readying its micropayment site, Google Purchases. This will be used in conjuction with Google Base, Google Video, and other Google products. The big question? Will this actually become usable?
PayPal has only succeeded due to the adoption by eBay. Will Google Purchases have the same effect? Will eBay be willing to let its micropayment contender on for more flexibility? I would have to venture “no”.
This is definitely another useful product of Google’s, but whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen.
Dirson < GooglePurchases

Tags: Google by darkmoon
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This is amusing since I’ve brought this up before and I agree wholeheartedly. The digg site shows what the public is gauging and what type of news interests the audience. The only reason this wouldn’t work? If you’re a news buff for a certain niche market, this type of technology would fail miserably.

Jake showed them how the members can label a story “lame” and off it goes. He made it clear that Digg is owned by its public and that’s why it works. Shouldn’t all news organisations wish the public owned the news?

Digg only works when it is not part of the Long Tail. Period. And being such, if you’re interested in a particular subject that the usual masses does not (say, the genetic research of green peas) then blogs and other Long Tail news sources would be much better suited.
Buzzmachine
< Guardian

Tags: Media by darkmoon
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ATI has always been fairly poor with their linux drivers, especially 3D support due to binary constraints and proprietary driver information. Nvidia on the other hand has been very quick in releasing drivers for Linux for new product releases. ATI has recently been slammed in Driver Heaven, after a product that’s been out for five months doesn’t have any linux support whatsoever.
ATI would do well to just release certain hooks in an API to open-source developers and allow development to be done by the community. This would relieve them of driver support, and also open a new line of communication with the open-source community. Just a thought, although I doubt it will happen.
TheInquirer < DriverHeaven

Tags: Hardware, Linux by darkmoon
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Amusing parody of if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging. What’s scary is the truth in the box design. Apple is minimalistic, while Microsoft is…. well. Just take a look.
Via YouTube

Tags: Humor by darkmoon
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Use these tips and apps to reclaim GBs of hard drive space to make room for new stuff. Some really nice free apps as well as some shareware and relatively low cost programs. There is a quasi-NSWF image at the top of the page, but the content is clean.
Via digg.

Tags: MacOS X by darkmoon
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Seattle, as progressive as it is, has moved in on another front. Municpality backed podcasting. Seattle’s Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs has started the OnHold service that provides a podcast featuring a local musician every week. This is then archived and creating a “local music scene” database online. Not only is there the podcast, but there are links to the artists’ CDs and websites for purchasing.
Now if there’s ANYTHING Greensboro should be doing, it’s this. Follow the big dog of change.

MakesYouGoHmm < Seattle.gov

Tags: Music, Podcasting by darkmoon
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WinDirStat is a Windows cleanup tool and usage viewer. It is also released under GPL so it is open-source.
It is one of the most unique and disk usage viewers since it shows the tree map along with file sizes and is able to graphically represent the disk right away. This is useful in seeing what is on the disk and how it is layed out.
Sometimes, it’s nice to know how to use a drive effectively when installing a program or removing one.
Via WinDirStat

Tags: Open Source, Tips and Tricks, Windows by darkmoon
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