Google Turns the Lights Off

Google has made their homepage black today to heighten awareness to Earth Hour. Earth Hour is a worldwide energy conservation effort that Google has partnered with recently. The idea is that today from 8pm to 9pm local time to turn out your lights. It is nice to see some companies looking out for the environment. Even though they use a ton of power, they are one of the leaders in renewable energy usage also. They already have a huge solar panel farm on the roof of the Googleplex and it is said to only get bigger in the future.

I turned the lights out on my blog a while ago in efforts to save electricity. It turns out that on most CRT monitors this is true, but on LCD monitors the opposite applies in most cases. Google had a few links to other studies from within the turn the lights out link on their homepage. One of those reports stated that around 75% of computer users today run LCD monitors, so I might have to rethink my layout. I use a CRT, so it works for me, but it will only work if it helps save electric for most.

I can say that most of the lights in my house were off except for the room I was in. I did make sure that all other lights in the house were off and I use those nice low wattage florescent bulbs which all of the bulbs used in my house only add up to 1 - 60W incandescent bulb. I should have probably made this post earlier in the day, but I was out enjoying some of the nice weather we had today.

Firefox 3 Review - Looks Promising

After reading an article over at Ars Technica, I decided to give the new Firefox 3 beta a try. According to their article the speed gains and memory usage benchmarks were very impressive, so obviously I wanted to give it a try.

Before installing I wanted to make sure that the install would not overwrite my current install. Just in case I hated it or something, I wanted to make sure I could still run my old Firefox. Once the precautions were made and I made sure it was installing to a totally different directory, I made the install.

I would have to say that out of the box, so to speak, I was pleased to see that it kept my current Firefox bookmarks and I did not have to import them. I was even more pleased to see that some of my Firefox add-ons still worked and as they were imported also. As I started to browse the web I noticed that pages that normally loaded in a second or so, were almost instant. Many of the sites that I tried out were big sites that were generated by code like PHP, MYSQL queries, and some Java. It seems like they have made some major improvements in code parsing for pages and they load much faster than IE7. I have not tested it against Opera or Safari myself, but I plan to soon and run a follow up report.

Overall, I would have to say that Firefox 3 is looking to be a powerhouse browser with security and speed in mind. I did not even have time to check out the security features before wanting to write this post, but they are said to be just as robust as in the past. I will probably run another follow up on the latest security features as well. Ars Technica had focused on the fact that the new browser uses so much less memory than other new browsers, so maybe that is part of its overall new blazing speed. I am impressed and look forward to the final release.

Below is a picture from the Ars Technica article. Read their full article here.

I thought Schuylkill was hard to spell...

Well I was doing some surfing tonight and came across a picture that I was amazed by. I live near the Schuylkill River, and for the longest time that was very hard for me to spell. I have no problems now, but I know many people who still to this day cannot spell it. I would think that the people around this area just mumble things that might sound like this lakes name and perhaps end up with the right number of syllables. Anyway, here is a picture of the sign and man is it a tongue twister like 3 times over.



I found this over at Dave Ex Machina's photo gallery.

Here is the original picture from his site.

Amazing Backflip Wrestling Move FTW!

I wrestled in high school and this was an actual wrestling move that my friend Geoff used to practice all the time. He was never actually able to pull the full move off in a match, but he used to pull of a variation of it sometimes that was still fun to watch :) This guy seems to have practiced it a bit more or something as he nails it and actually pins the other guy in the end.


Amazing Backflip Wrestling Move - Watch more free videos

Badass move in my book and I am sure the other guy is on his back wondering what the hell just happened! This is why I liked wrestling, as you never really knew who was going to win. It was always up to who brought their best skills, who was conditioned the best, and who was ready to go when the whistle blew. From the looks of it, this guy has at least one of those covered, he brought his skills!

Let Me Go! - Attempted Empire St. Bldg. Jump

This is a very intense video! I saw this after I found the Clinton post. This guy was very close to jumping off the Empire State Building. I have to give him some props this was very well planned and he almost made it. Perhaps it would have been cooler if he would have just jumped and flipped them the finger as he did it. Then again, you might have ended up paying to see the video from the camera on his head on a DVD or something. Unfortunately for all of us, he is nabbed by building security before he releases and ends up having about 5 other guys hands on him within a matter of about 1 minute.



Jim Corliss is a brave man for trying this that is for sure, but why not just jump when you get on the other side of the fence? I guess he would have been known as Superman after that stunt, sort of like the Spiderman guy who climbs buildings all the time.

Clinton Has a Dream

Below you can see Bill Clinton coming back into the spotlight a bit. Hillary has been most of the talk lately and perhaps all the traveling has Bill a bit weary. At least when I fell as sleep in church I was smart enough to sit in the back.



I got a pretty good laugh as it almost looks like an old episode of Americas funniest home videos or Candid camera. You might have thought that Ashton Kutcher was going to pop out and yell you got Punked!

Nintendo Syndrome?

Half Of 26-Year-Old's Memories Nintendo-Related

BROOKLYN, NY—According to an fMRI of Philip Jenkins' brain during memory recall, his parietal lobe is activated equally for the words "mother" and "Banjo Kazooie."

I will have to say that until recently I have also experienced the onslaught of the up+up+down+down+left+right+left+right+b+a+select+start in my daily life and would like to sit down with this guy to figure out some of the other codes that I cannot remember anymore. I have bought some nice games over the Wii and cannot remember the codes for the life of me. He may have the missing link I am looking for. I just turned 27, so perhaps this is a real epidemic and Nintendo is to blame for thousands, if not millions of people from being able to process any more information than their video games.

Power Saving Color Scheme?

I was reading an article the other week on this new search engine that uses Google's custom search to create a search engine of your own. Pretty cool, right? The owners of this new search website claim that their site is using less energy than Google's own website because they are using a black background. I think that it might be true, so I am going to give it a go here on Spaced Out. I have not researched this too much yet to see if displaying black on a monitor is less than white, but I will surely follow up this post with some more info. If in fact the pixel does not even light up, that would be great. However, if the pixel needs to display all colors to achieve blackness, that would probably be a different story. Check back soon to see if the new dark layout will stay or be sacrificed to mother nature.

Im Back!

I took a long break from updating this site as I have been working on some other projects. I plan to start posting some more spaced out news in the near future. Stay tuned for more great gaming news, technology news, and more news about the latest gadgets, trends, and current events.

Peace

My Gaming PC died :(

Well, all good things must come to an end I suppose. I have pieced out a 64-bit processor when they were hot on the market and ended up with a nice machine. It lasted a good 2 years or so, but something has gone awry. It has performed like a champ since day one and just all of the sudden started having reboots out of nowhere. I don't have time for these things, as I run a WoW guild and have lots of websites I am working on now.

I am not sure if it is the motherboard or what, but I have ordered a new mobo and video card as it seems I cannot buy one that will fit all of my components anymore. I guess I could have tried Ebay, but I have heard too many bad things about it lately. I have ordered a newer ASUS board that will fit my 3800+ 64bit Athlon processor. It should arrive in the next few days as it is only being shipped from a state away.

The plan is to figure out if it is the motherboard or processor that is the problem. I figured getting a known-good, or hopefully known-good component in the mix would be a good idea. It turns out I needed to buy a new PCI-E (PCI Express) video card as AGP boards are a dying breed now if you want other performance benefits. I should be able to figure out if I need to buy a new processor from this or if it was the motherboard.

One thing I overlooked was the fact that my RAM could be the problem. I hope to run a memtest86 on the old system before I try to install the RAM into my new setup. I have gotten a new power supply within the last year, and I just bought a new Hard drive as I thought that was the original problem with the way the computer was acting. I had a similar problem in the past and it ended up being the motherboard.

Well the parts are on their way and it is only a matter of time until I figure out what is the REAL problem with my system. I have a secondary one, though it is not that great. I am pushing a whopping 768MB of ram and an AMD 1600+. It is not going to set any MIPS records, but it is getting the job done for now to at least updated some of my sites. It's not bad for an E-Machines.

War Costs Soar by a Third; Total Could Top $1.4 Trillion

It's not just the troops that are surging. War costs are up for American operations in Iraq -- way up, more than a third higher than last year. In the first half of this fiscal year, the Defense Department's "average monthly obligations for contracts and pay is running about $12 billion per month, well above the $8.7 billion in FY2006.

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This war has become a cash cow for corporations like Halliburton and other Military contracting companies like Security companies (Mercenaries) and Defense contractors like GE (General Electric) I just read an article that showed GE making over 100 billion in profits last year but did not spell out how much of that was through their Military contracts for building and maintaining fighter jets, the Abrams tank and other equipment being used in this war. When will it become evident to the people of this country that we are heading down a very windy path to hell. We need to separate church and state but we also need to separate big business and the state. Which is worse? I feel that having a corporate state is because money is what makes the world go round. Look at the whole Jack Abramoff scandal, it is a perfect example of why big business is in Washington and they have the power. You can be a religious fanatic all you want, but you will never do anything without money at this stage in the world. Hopefully Jesus remembers to bring his dad's ATM card when he returns, he is going to need it.

The Pirate Bay Wants MediaDefender to Walk the Plank to Bankruptcy

The BitTorrent trackers sitting in the depths of The Pirate Bay are there for the benefit of the people, to help them distribute bandwidth intensive media worldwide at no cost. But when anti-piracy companies like Media Defender of MiiVi infamy abuse that service, it's time to bring out the plank. They're not welcome.

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This just seems so wrong in many ways. First they movie industry doesn't want you to download movies, then then they have one of their minions setup a "honey pot" for what looked to be some sort of STING type operation. TPB is taking the right approach and hitting them in the pocket as law does not seem to apply to them either. I know that downloading files it is not the most upstanding thing to be doing on the internet, but there could be a lot worse. I don't see how any of this will accomplish any good for the industry as people have already given up on the RIAA and have just stopped buying music. The same could follow suit for the MPAA if they keep up these dirty tricks. Laws are laws and according the law of their home country, The Pirate Bay is doing nothing wrong. It is way within their reach to collect payment for the usage of the network from certain parties, especially if they are dumb enough not to read the fine print. Finally, someone got big business with their own fine print instead of the other way around. Even Pirates have some rules it seems, haha! Major props to the guy who wrote the title for this as it is just great.

Virginity For Sale - Offers start at £10,000

Baby-faced Carys Copestake, 18, has offered her virginity for the price of £10,000 to help her pay for university tuitions.

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Well, at least we are not the only ones desperate for money for college. It just goes to show how crazy tuition costs are to get a good education. It should not have to take a woman to sell her virginity for knowledge. That sounds like some sort of Satanic ritual, in fact it probably is. I find it a sad day in the world when people have to resort to these types of things just to get tuition money.

Microsoft deletes mass Xbox 360 crashing claims from Forza 2 forums

Nothing like a company already nailed for being a monopoly just going around erasing peoples rights to free speech. They are hiding a digital voice with their power and it is insane. Microsoft needs to be broken up like the Bells were, not just catered to because half of the government's PCs are running on windows.In what appears to be an effort to conceal the over 900 replies gamers provided on the official Forzamotorsport.net forums about Forza Motorsport 2 crashing on the Xbox 360, Microsoft has deleted the long thread, now stating that it’s “exclusive content for registered forum users” only. However, the thread was removed entirely, even to...

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Potential cure for HIV discovered

In a breakthrough that could potentially lead to a cure for HIV infection, scientists have discovered a way to remove the virus from infected cells, a study released Thursday said. The scientists engineered an enzyme which attacks the DNA of the HIV virus and cuts it out of the infected cell, according to the study published.
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The Pirate Bay finds permanent hosting solution!

"Today we announce that we're moving some of our servers to the North-Korean Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden." Wait. What? Those crazy Swedes!

This is just one of the funniest things I have ever seen for an April Fools joke :D

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Google's New TISP Service (April's Fool)

Get a head start and order your free TISP kit today ONLY

Get yours quick, while supplies last! :D

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Kid suspended for wearing Pirate garb to school, claims it's his religion

"A student has been suspended from school in America for coming to class dressed as a pirate. But the disciplinary action has provoked controversy – because the student says that the ban violates his rights, as the pirate costume is part of his religion. Bryan Killian says that he follows the Pastafarian religion...

Sounds like you can get away with just about anything in this country if you have the right excuse. So if this is kid takes this to court and wins, then people should by precedent be able to smoke ganja if they were to be Rastafarian. Interesting concept. It also means that Luciferians would able to actually do human sacrifices too I guess. Scary place to be when there is freedom of, or from religion. I wonder when the Church of the Pineapple Under the Sea will be up and going. All hailing their master and creator Spongebob Almighty.

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Heroic Secret Service Agent Takes Question Intended For Bush

WASHINGTON, DC—Agent Anthony Panucci dives in between the president and a hostile reporter.

I wonder what they classify CNN as, perhaps a terrorist organization.

RIAA Backs Down After Receiving Stern Letter from Defendant's Lawyer

In SONY BMG v. Merchant, in California, the defendant's lawyer wrote the RIAA a rather stern letter recounting how weak the RIAA's evidence is, referring to the deposition of the RIAA's expert witness, and threatening a malicious prosecution lawsuit. The very same day the RIAA put its tail between its legs and dropped the case.

Looks like someone has finally figured out how to go up against the big bully. I am glad that someone has figured out how to word their legal letters to make them think twice about litigation. This should become a template for all responses to RIAA accusations. They really have no clue how easy it is to use another IP to do sharing with and are probably even going after the people who had their IP's used during downloading by pirates. So many folks have unprotected proxies on the internet which allow you to hide your IP while viewing websites and more. Using one of these is just one way to fake out someone trying to collect IPs for the RIAA. I feel that it is just a stupid battle they are fighting and they should just figure out a way to make the digital world work for them rather, than make more haters as they go. Digital services like revamped Napster and the monopoly behind the movement, Itunes, are going to be the way all music is bought in just a few years. CD's and other disc media will be a thing of the past. The more that fiber optics are used these services will become more robust and able to offer more than just music content. Hi-Def movies and other high quality content is just on the doorstep. Perhaps they could spend more efforts in getting with the times and plan for the future rather than holding on to a medium that is dying anyway.

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