The recent comment over nuclear power was uninformed and ignorant, it should have been reworded as more of a Homer Simpson-esque joke instead of including any one region of the country, especially my own.

Eh, graduation is less than 17 months from the day of this posting. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Today's systems have hundreds of file formats they must support. Wouldn't it be great if we could reduce all the file formats in existence down to a single file format that could be supported across all systems?

My latest three-part article addresses this concept: The Intelligent File Format

If such a concept could be made into a standard, pressure could be put onto Microsoft and other large companies to support the format or lose massive government business. (See the recent pushes for the Open Document Format for a very real example of how this can work.)

I'd love to hear your thoughts and opinions.

Very odd, I Meta-Moderated earlier today, then this afternoon I get prompted to do so again on the homepage. I thought it was set only to do so once a day. Are there that many moderations being done now, with not enough meta-mods? Too sad, if that's the case.

As much as I gripe about the editors and the way they pick articles, Slashdot belongs (in a very real, if figurative, sense) to all of us. We all need to participate in moderation and meta-moderation for the site to function well. So come one, guys and gals, give a hoot, meta-moderate! Remember, only you can stop unfair moderation!

I just submitted this article, let's see if they run with it:

I'm sure most Slashdotters have heard about the Mohammed cartoon controversy already, but here's an update. Fox news is reporting that gunmen have started storming hotels and apartment buildins in the West Bank looking for potential European hostages. This is on top of the large and loud protests in half a dozen Muslim countries, with protestors chanting "Death to France" and "Death to Denmark". If a little cartoon can cause this much uproar, can the Dar al-Islam (Muslim nations) and Dar al-Harb (everyone else) ever live in peace? Should we have any respect at all for a religion with this much contempt for freedom of expression?"

Oh, this is too much. Yesterday, I submit an interesting article about global warming being not-so-global, and it gets rejected. Today, I submit an article about bee flight and make a lame editorial comment about Intelligent Design, and it gets posted to the front page! Global warming, and both the science and politics behind it, are arguably far more important than how bees fly, but the article with the flamebait, anti-religion comment in the submission is the one that gets posted, not the one criticizing liberal beliefs. Sheesh, they're not even trying to hide their bias anymore, are they?

Hey Taco, if you're reading this, maybe you should look in the mirror the next time you want to yell at your site visitors regarding story selection.

Come check out my bro's band Maps and Atlases.

The liberal editors of Slashdot keep rejecting my submissions, so I guess it's time I start entering them in my journal, instead. Here's one that was rejected, despite the interest so many Slashdotters have in the environment and the subject of global warming. Guess they don't want to publish anything that will go against the prevailing liberal myth of human causes of global warming:

According to this Yahoo News article, from LiveScience.com, 2005 is the second warmest year on average since accurate records began being kept in the late 19th century. This is significant because it was predicted to be the warmest, showing that the climate data models being used aren't as accurate predictors as some claim.

Also, most of the warming is shown to have occurred in the North Pole. From the article, "It just doesn't look like global warming is very global," said John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Given that the warming shown around the world is still 3C cooler than 800 years ago, I really wish the hysteria about global warming would just go away. Humans, and the rest of nature, have experience far more pronounced climatic shifts than what we're seeing today and not survived, but prospered. Even as bad as the Little Ice Age was, if it hadn't happened we wouldn't've had the large influx of immigrants to America (bad for the natives, good for everyone else), wouldn't've had the French Revolution (bad for the nobles, good for everyone else), and might not have had the Renaissance (since the severe population decline from the onset of the ice age and the Black Death that was fueled by it led to higher wages being paid to the few craftsmen who were left, and hence a higher standard of living for the survivors...I'll try to find the article I read about it but it's not coming up in the first few results so far). So while the climate is changing, we don't yet know if it will be a net boon or not to mankind.

Personally, I'm much more worried about the pending magnetic reversals. Though seeing the Northern Lights in Texas will be quite a sight!

I've received numerous e-mail regarding how I run my businesses and the secrets to my success. Since so many of the e-mails are along the same vein, I decided to blog my responses and follow up in private e-mails for those who hate blogs.

http://yourownboss.blogspot.com

A common theme that I've noticed in Slashdot stories about China is that no one seems to know China's actual laws about free speech, criticizing the government, or religion. Nearly everyone is surprised when I drag out the Chinese Constitution and show them the rights that the government supposedly guarantees.

While getting +5's for knowing this is a nice racket, I feel that it's far more important to catalog the information in one place so that others can learn and spread understanding of China's abuses.

Thus this weeks article is China: Getting the Facts.

If you find yourself in a discussion about China again, I hope you'll find it a useful resource to direct people to. If some of you feel that it's worthy of a front page Slashdot story, feel free to submit it. :-)

As the price of gas surged past $3.00 a gallon, many consumers began to wake up to more efficient road vehicles such as hybrid cars. These cars reduce your overall costs by requiring less gas at the pump for the same range. Unfortunately, such savings are bound to be only a temporary fix. Oil prices have dropped back down for the moment, but they're still sitting at some of the highest prices in the history of the modern world. To avoid a transportation collapse (which would result in an economic collapse), we need to reduce our dependency on oil. And fast.

This week's article is part of a new series of articles I'm introducing called, "Come Dream With Me." This series is intended to showcase existing technologies that can be used to make our everyday lives better and our futures brighter. All we need to do is develop them.

The current episode is a two parter focused on Stirling Engines in both planes and cars. Let me know what you think. My hope is that everyone will learn a little something that will help them in the future. :-)

Alrighty, then! Now that I've finally got home internet again (which means that I'll soon be replying to many of the emails that I have piled up in my box!) I've put out a new article! This time, you can actually *have* the future I described, today!

Read More!

Don't you love the title, BTW? Buzzwords are fun, whee! (Or maybe I've done just a little too much cold medication. You decide.)

A new article is finally up, asking the question is AJAX actually new?

The latest article is up and running!

Free Books on the Internet
-- or --
How to get a Comp-Sci Education in 30 Days!

Check it out, if you dare...

MWAHAHAHAHA!

...the latest and greatest article is up and running! This week I decided to take some time and tackle the recent article by Sal Cangeloso, where he suggests that Linux needs more consolidation.

Sorry if I've been kind of slow in responding to your posts. I've been a little busy working on some cool stuff for the future. Not that I'm going to give anything away... ;-)