mgroves

There's a million guides that tell you how to make the jump from Windows to Linux, and as many distros that claim to be 'newbie' or 'Windows user' friendly. The elephant in the room, however, is that if Windows is English, and Linux is Spanish, these guides are the equivalent of Babelfish: possibly adequate, but not as good as learning the actual language.

There's an interesting article at builder.au that basically begins with the premise I've described above. It points out the fundamental differences between the two OS's, but tries to describe the two in eachother's terms. It is by no means an unabridged guide, but it is a pretty good place to start if you've never cracked the seal on a Linux distro.

Sometimes I wonder what it's like on the OTHER side of the conversation (from KillSomeTime.com)

Love it or hate it, Windows is now 20 years old. Download Squad has a terrific writeup called "20 things you didn't know about Windows 1.0." For retro buffs like me, this article is pure gold. It's chock full of links and downloads and tidbits of trivia. Definitely check this out.

Here it is. I'm now inspired to buy up a bunch of NES controllers and churn these out as Christmas gifts. I wish the site wasn't in German so I knew some more details on how he did it.

Everyone knows Jack Thompson from his notorious Modest Proposal about violence in video games. The online gaming community just seems to parrot out how he's an absurd, crazy, sue-happy Jesus Freak. His recent fit about "reviews" of his book on Amazon.com served to malign him further.

The problem with Jack Thompson is a common one among politicians and public figures: "The end justifies the means."

"The end justifies the means" is the argument that abortion clinic bombers and other terrorists use. Is it okay to lie, murder, cheat, steal, as long as the motive and the end result is a positive one? Would it be okay to kill Hitler when he was a child in cold blood? You may think the answer to that is blindingly obvious with 20/20 hindsight, but a rational, civilized society should emphatically say: NO.

Jack Thompson's ends (at least the ones he claims) are rational and hard to disagree with: don't market smut and gorey violence to minors. One would be hard pressed to find someone who thinks minors should be exposed to such content. The problem is, then, who does Jack Thompson blame for such exposure, who should be responsible, and how can exposure be reduced.

While I don't know what Mr. Thompson has said on the subject of parental responsibility, he has certainly attacked the gaming industry itself. I think the industry as a whole has been pretty good about establishing a rating system to let parents know what kind of content is in a game. M is the same as an R movie rating, AO is the same as NC-17. Unfortunately for both movies and games, these ratings are not enforced by the retail vendors. Under 17 kids can get into R rates movies with little or no hassle. They can buy M rated games at many stores with no hassle whatsoever.

So how do we fix this? Jack has gone right to America's favorite tool of forced change and entertainment: litigation. Perhaps Jack (being a lawyer) only has the one proverbial hammer and every problem looks like the proverbial nail. Perhaps he thinks that the situation is so dire, with kids killing and dying left and right because of the influence of video games that it's okay to stretch the truth, threaten litigation, and call the police on anyone even hinting dissent so long as it stops the bloodbath.

This is not the way to prohibit kids from getting ahold of adult content. The fact is that if a parent doesn't care to take an interest in the media their children are consuming that children will get their hands on it no matter what.

If movie theaters and game stores aren't checking ID enough, let's enforce laws prohibiting the sale of this stuff to minors. We don't need new laws, we just need to enforce existing ones. If a theater sells an R-rated ticket to a minor, let's fine them. If a game store sells an M-rated game to a minor, let's fine them. If Blockbuster sells/rents an R-rated movie to a minor, let's fine them. But ultimately, if a parent expects the entertainment industry to raise their children, no amount of industry regulation is going to turn a bad parent into a good one.

Suppose you were creating some sort of dating site or auction site, and you wanted a user to be able to see all his dating matches within a 50 miles from him, or all of a certain auction item within 10 miles. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is to use zipcodes.

The key to using zipcodes is to have a database listing all possible zipcodes and their corresponding latitudes and longitudes. Technically, the latitude and longitudes are probably of the center of the given zipcode, so the farther away someone is from the center of the zip code, the less accurate this method will be. But it will be close enough. I've attached a database of zip codes that I got from Zipdy.

So let's say we have a database table containing every auction for our auction site. First, we find the zipcode of our user (assuming he has logged in and you are storing his zipcode somewhere), and it's "43130".

      SELECT lat, lon
      FROM zipcodes
      WHERE zip = '43130'
 

Looking at our table, we see that his lat/lon is 82.6092, 39.68965. These values should be stored in a string variable for use later (I'm assuming you are using PHP or ASP).

The next step is to write a SQL query to figure out how far each auction is from our user and select only the items within, say, 50 miles. Your SQL query may vary based on your table structure and what information you want:

      SELECT i.itemdesc, i.itemprice
      FROM items i, zipcodes z
      WHERE i.zip = z.zip
      AND 3963.0 * acos(
          sin([USERLAT]/57.2958) * sin(z.latitude/57.2958) +
          cos([USERLAT]/57.2958) * cos(z.latitude/57.2958) * 
          cos(z.longitude/57.2958 - [USERLONG]/57.2958)
                       )
          <= 50
 

This query is adapted from a forum post from Eamon Daly.

I'm assuming that you would be building this query in ASP or PHP, so you should replace [USERLAT] and [USERLONG] with the user's lat/long that we already put in strings earlier. This query assumes that the earth is a perfect sphere (it's not, but close enough) and uses trig functions to figure out the distance between two points of latitude and longitude.

So now that query returns all items (description and price in this case) within 50 miles of our user. To change the distance, simply change the <= 50 at the end of the query.

"America is dumb, it's like a dumb puppy..."

"I went there (to France) to live because it seemed so simple..."

I'm not trying to be down on Johnny, though. I think he's a good actor and not a bad guy. I think him and the 'dumb puppy' America have more in common than he thinks. Also, I gotta respect him threatening civil disobedience, though I haven't heard of him actually making good on it yet.

A petition effort lead by SmokeFreeOhio has apparently come to a head. Apparently a petition with at least 97,000 signatures can force the state legislature to place an issue on the agenda. SmokeFreeOhio claims to have 150,000. If the legislature ignores it, however, I guess it becomes a "Issue" that can be directly voted on. Once again, I must ask why this group wants to make a legal product illegal to use in most places? Presumably the group doesn't care about first-hand smoke as much as it does about second-hand smoke. If they care so deeply about stopping second-hand smoke, why not push to outlaw the sale and use of tobacco completely?

My guess is that proponents of smoking bans aren't out to destroy businesses. However, here's a heapin' helpin' of anecdotal evidence that says that's exactly what smoking bans are doing. Normally, I'm not one to use anecdotal evidence to support my arguments, but I think this torrent of closings and losses amounts to a pretty convincing argument.

If this sort of ban were to pass, the state would essentially be receiving tax revenue from the sale of a product that would be illegal to use in most places. You can have your cake, but don't even think about eating it.

Perhaps one of the most recognizable characters in video game history is Mario. Which Mario though? Intellivision Mario looks nothing like Super Mario Brothers 3 Mario. Behold: The Evolution of Mario.

Snoop Dogg is just awful, isn't he? He invented a form of rap where not even rhyming is necessary. He has 'sold out' to just about every company ever. I'm not saying it's a bad thing to make money, but consider:

• AOL
• Chrysler
• T-Mobile
• Girls Gone Wild
• Hot Dogs
• and his extensive filmography

For just about any other celebrity to whore themselves out this much over such a diverse set of products would surely destroy their credibility and potential for future endorsements. Snoop Dogg endorsements and branding, however, do not seem to be losing any steam at all. What gives?