you mean to tell me that all i have to do to rank for things is what I did in this page: smartest human alive Thats my domain. I think its comical how Google purports to be creating the best and smartest engine around, yet, all I gotta do is make a spammy crappy single page with the target phrase and links. I don't even think I did any linking to it. If i remember correctly (about 1 month ago) all I did was submit it to a free SE submission service. The funny thing about this is that I did that domain as an experiment to see if I could boost BrainDonkey up in the rankings for Smartest Human Alive, but surprisingly, the booster page actually got the rank... LOL. Stupid internets. Oh and if you feel generous, feel free to link to me with the phrase Smartest Human Alive. <a href="http://www.braindonkey.com" title="smartest human alive">smartest human alive</a> Just for shits and giggles mostly.

"Starting this fall, juniors and seniors pursuing an undergraduate major in the business school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will pay $500 more each semester than classmates. The University of Nebraska last year began charging engineering students a $40 premium for each hour of class credit." You know, I don't have any problem with this. Medical school has always done this. And alot of programs actually have this price discrepancy built into it, though the extra money is off the records and not necessarily into the college's pocket. Degrees, such as fine art, require the students to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars on art supplies. Computer degrees usually require a computer, and the assorted software. Obviously different degrees require different books, which cost more for some programs. My EE classes I took required purchase of an EE kit that was about a grand. I would rather each course has a price that included everything, as well as the books and supplies. Too many surprises and difficulties with squeezing the parents for more money, because you get the "but we already paid 10K" response. Via New York Times

This does not seem like a smart move by the over zealous security folks of the Customs Dept. They blocked Thomas Dullien, who is know in the hacker world as "Halvar Flake", from entering the US. Dullien was to teach/present a course at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas this week. Dullien is a reverse engineering expert, but the specific reason why he was blocked was because of a technicality. Years ago he had signed a contract with Black Hat as an individual, not as a company. The customs agent said he would require a H1-B visa to perform the two days of training. So they sent him back to Germany. Not because he was some dangerous cyber-terrorist, but because he was here as a person, not a corporate representative. wow, dumb. I'm not sure this is smart though, considering there are going to be a lot of very skilled people who are now pissed that the course they wanted to take is now toast. How many days until the customs computers crash? I know thats way deeper than a stooge of a local customs agent can be expected to think of, but still, seemed completely like an obvious potential result to me. Obviously, no one should do anything, but im sure someone with a chip on their shoulder will. Also, this now proves my belief that you never travel to another country on business, always travel on pleasure. "Oh, that trip to BigAssCorp? I met a hot chick at a bar and was meeting her again." This is the case always. They don't want to hear the truth, it makes their job more tedious, they want the vanilla answers. "what business do you have in vegas for this trip?" "to lose lots of money and get very drunk."

Alas, my trusty Roomba has had heart failure. The battery has died, or at least mostly died. Lasts about 5 minutes now, and of course it has to die under some piece of furniture that makes it really a pain to get to. Now I gotta find a cheap battery replacement. Hmmm... I wonder if I can just replace them? I think the casing is pretty much permanently sealed. I'll have to check. AH... I can. http://www.roombareview.com/hack/battery.shtml Seems someone had done it. Although the savings is minimal, only about 15 bucks, the improvement in runtime is significant it seems. So i think i will be doing this.

Congress gave final approval yesterday to legislation that requires tighter screening of air and sea cargo, and shifts more federal anti-terrorism grants to high-risk areas such as New York and Washington, delivering on a pledge by Democrats last fall to implement additional recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Oh lordy. More money being spent on shit that makes us no more safe than the day before Sept. 11. The amount of money this will end up costing is incredibly bigger than what they are pretending it will cost. Within 5 years, Radiation scanning of 100% of maritime cargo and 3 years for all others, such as airline. Wow, that sounds ambitious... Of course the DHS secretary can increase the deadline 2 years at a time, which basically ensures a never ending business of "building the defense infrastructure". Not to mention the fact that this cannot have anything but a negative impact upon the importation business in this country. Walmart should be pissed. Should things be done? Sure, but seriously, there is no way that scanning 100% of any cargo that is coming in via proper channels will help. Another well paid group, the DEA would probably agree that 100% is useless. Sure they can nab all the cargo that comes on giant cargo ships, but what about the guy in the little speed boat coming from cuba? How about private plane with a cargo drop in the woods prior to landing? It's futile, and its another exercise in representing control and security without actually being able to deliver.

AideRSS is a new service in public beta that is supposed to be using AI to determine the importance of stories in the RSS feeds you subscribe to. You then can filter based on your criteria, and as such, the crappy stories don't ever show up in your feed reader. The service is well executed and seems to do a decent job of filtering and providing you with a bunch of information about the stories, and that is supposed to help you determine which stories to bother with. There is a problem though, and its if this thing was to take off big. More people would be using it, which would in turn show only stories to people based on certain scores, but new stories get no scores because no one is reading new stories. Mind you the idea of 100% world domination of RSS feeds is about as possible as Bush seeing the error of his ways, but still, conceptually that is the goal. Regardless, cool service, check it out.

If you have played Viva Pinata, you might be interested to know that there is a Weekend Morning cartoon by the same name. Well, I have a beef with that cartoon. Not that I watch it or anything... Actually i don't, i just found out about it because I was flipping channels trying to find something other than God Garbage, and stumbled across Viva Pinata. And immediately I noticed two major things to complain about. The Lemur, Galagoogoo, is out during the day, running around like its freakin xmas. That thing is the sleepiest, laziest, most finicky character in Viva Pinata, and its going on this big giant adventure, during the day. I cry FOUL!!! Also, a minor visual thing that I am not sure really why they didn't do it. The skin on the characters in the game moves with momentum with the characters move. Thats on my little old Xbox360. Why didnt they do that in the cartoon??? Bah. 99% of the way there. Although the show did actually make me laugh, and amazingly the one I watched actually had a plot I could comprehend. Go figure.

The PushScan voting system won first place at VoComp 2007. Apparently it was a very close race, but, i have some opinions on this system. First, it looks like a great start, but it does have a flaw or two, which i do think can be addressed easily. First, about the system. It's a color marker system, that uses letter matching to select the result you want. So in other words, its like a multiple-choice scantron sheet in a lot of ways. Your "human readable" choices are listed above with a letter representing each choice, and then a row of the choices below. The system is actually 2 sheets of paper. The top sheet has holes in it that let the letters show through from below. So the top sheet if the informational sheet and the bottom sheet is the record of your vote. You then mark with a big fat marker, each letter corresponding to the vote you wish to cast. Simple, just like scantron. Then, to count the vote, the bottom sheet is given to the "worker" who scans it into the computer. You shred your top sheet, which has all the information on it, but is assumed to be no value because you don't know which letter corresponds to the mark since the letter is actually on the bottom sheet. You then get back the bottom sheet, or serial number to lookup your vote sheet online. You can see how it works in a simple slideshow here: http://punchscan.org/experience/ This all works great at first glance. Easy to use, easy to understand, and has self verification built into it. However, the way they set it up allows for vote buying. Meaning, someone could buy your vote, and you can prove it to them by showing them your final vote sheet. woohoo! $10 bucks! So here are my suggestions for improvement. Instead of shredding the top sheet, make THAT sheet, the sheet that the voter keeps. There is no way to know which way they voted by looking at it, since all the letters are now gone. The bottom sheet still has the code number, which would be perforated for the voter to rip off themselves and a matching code number remains on the sheet as well obviously so it can be cataloged correctly for lookup later. So the voter leaves with the top sheet, and the serial number of the bottom sheet. That is 2 keys to verify the match of the documents and confirm the vote. Do not allow access to the online verification until AFTER the results are finalized. The way they did it originally, you only can confirm what letters you voted for, but you no longer know who or what that letter corresponds to. My suggestion solves that problem. In the original system, you leave the voting area with your bottom sheet, which actually shows how you voted leaving the system open to vote buying. My suggestion eliminates that, though realistically you could collect payment after the election has been decided. However, the reality is that if the candidate buying the votes won or lost, why would he pay after fact? A pay for vote tactic only works during voting, once the polls close, there is no point in making good on your "deal" anymore. At least for a government election in America, the actual ballots need to be kept for certain amount of time, which would mean that the voter cannot leave with the bottom sheet, since that is the actual ballot. And even though it is scanned, i personally would not feel comfortable with an election process that throws out the actual ballot immediately. That would leave the system way to open to manipulation. But in my suggestion the voter can leave with the top sheet, and a code which is a reference to their ballot online. Another suggestion for the online portion would be to show the letter that the computer interpreted your vote as being. Just because you show me my ballot online, doesn't mean the OCR software read it correctly. So show me the actual letters as recognized by the OCR ballot scanning system. That would be true verification. I realize this was just a prototype system, and there is no real supporting hardware for it, but please make it so I stick my own ballot into the scanner, maybe like how a shredder works, and have the ballot drop straight into a secure storage box or bag. I don't want the poll worker touching my ballot pulling a fast switch on me. Though I guess if I then went online to verify, and didn't see my vote, then i could complain. So maybe that wouldn't matter, but it would still be ideal. All in all though the system is off to what seems to be a great start. I wish them the best, and hopefully after the US elections this year, which will be handed to whoever pays diebold the most money, we can start seeing new systems that have accountability for 2011. my 2c for what its worth. via Threat Level

My wife and I have this theory about products and services called the 99% rule. It is interesting to us how everything we buy seems to make it 99% of the way there, but missing 1 glaring thing that wouldn't be any real additional cost to add it. Obviously if it would make it more expensive, its not counted. Its things that, if the creator had actually tried it out, would realize it needs to be there. I'm trying to become un-fat and get back in shape. Since I have actually managed to workout for 4 weeks in a row, every day, even with old shoes that were hurting my ankles, I decided to get new stuff to make it less torturous. The Nike DriFit running short, in particular the Nike Men's 7" Dri-FIT Distance Music Short is one of these products. The music player pocket is nice, but I don't us it for that, I stuff my ID and keys in there, and the pocket is on your right butt-cheek-hip, which means they don't flop around much annoying the hell out of you like normally positioned pockets. The spandex thigh length (boxer brief) liner is great for preventing sweaty chub rub, and its even vented on the butt-crack to allow for greater airflow and less sweatiness in that area. Very comfortable, and surprisingly effective at keeping you somewhat cooler than normal shorts or other running shorts, not including those 1970's running shorts people wear... The drawstring is crossed inside the waistband making it slightly easier to pull tight, which is a bonus to me. I'm sure people feel both ways about this, but who cares, since you can always change it yourself anyway. Here is the 99% issue. The liner and the out shell relationship is fine, except for when you start running... LOL. It's a running short!!! Its not a comfort issue. They are really comfortable to run in, so don't get me wrong on that. Everything works great from a comfort stance, except for a reduction in air cooling due to the issue I am getting to. The outer shell, which is the part you see, rides up between your legs, creating a mass of material that cuts off airflow, but that's a minor issue when compared with the fact that you look like a complete mental patient running around with gray spandex "underwear" hanging out the bottom of shorts which are all jammed up into your crotch. Did anyone even run in these shorts at Nike when they developed them? It only takes about 5 strides to "get your panties in a bunch". Is it cause i'm a bit over weight(40 pounds @ 6 feet)? Probably, but so what, you sell extra-large, which should mean it should work for me if i fit into them, which i do with room to spare. Seemed really weird to me, so I started looking at why, and its not just because of my inner thighs creating a blockage preventing the shorts from dropping back out, that that is probably a lot of the problem. You can't just sew the outer shell to the spandex liner, I get that, it would reduce the air flow and probably impede the comfort because attaching a non-stretchy thing to a stretchy thing, makes the stretchy thing no longer stretch, duh. So, instead, I tried velcro tabs, which failed slightly because they need to line up correctly, although functionally they worked, practically they will have problems over the long term i suspect. After the velcro attempt, I came up with a really simple solution to get the Nike DriFit shorts to co-operate and function as expected. I sewed one end of a 1.5-2 inch long (about 1/4 inch wide) piece of elastic cloth (basically spandex) to the liner, closest to the knee, on the inside of the thigh (actually a little towards the front because of squatting issues). The other end I sewed into the outer shell, again inside thigh, and straight out from the point on the liner that the other end is attached to. This give the outer shell the ability to move the way it should, but not more than 2 inches. And the stretchiness of the elastic strip allows for squatting. So what would that cost nike? These shorts are already freaking expensive, whats another 2 cents? I am going to forward this to nike, and see what their response is.

$4,300 is what it will cost you to overheat your nuts while surfing your porn or playing WOW. Every now and then a new integrated seating system comes out that tries to merge comfort with computers in one shiny package. Of course what do you do with the computer? We these guys decided to jam it between your legs. So lets see, whats all at play here. Close proximity to an unshielded EM source, Heat, an inability to change your position like crossing your legs. Unless I am just seeing this wrong, the computer between the legs thing doesn't bode well for future children's genes being healthy. via BornRich