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I have started a new site called The Box O' Memories.

Here is the link

I have a box (pictured above) that contains objects that are related to something significant in my life.  Some are tied to events, some to people, and others are things I used frequently for a period of time.  I have been adding things to this box for years, and in a lot of ways it tells my life story. 

Every few days, I will reveal an item within the box and tell its story; how I got it, what I did with it, how it ended up in the box, and anything else significant about it. 

I'm hoping I'll get other people to do stuff like this.  It's a lot of fun!
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[topicinfo topic=10001]Move target[/topic]
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This is quickly becoming one of my favorite shows.  It's like a combination of House and private detective shows. 

IMDB Page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235099/

Tim Roth plays Dr. Cal Lightman, a guy who really understands nonverbal gestures.  He doesn't really care what people are saying, only how they are saying it and what they're doing as they're saying it.  Because of this, he can detect when people are lying.  He gets hired by organizations that need to determine whether an employee, inmate, etc. is telling the truth about something.  Whenever a character makes a particularly important gesture, it shows pictures of famous people who made the same gesture in similar circumstances (they like to show Bill Clinton a lot). 

So far, most episodes are Tim Roth's character investigating one thing while his lackeys investigate something else. 

Maybe I'm biased because I've taken several courses on nonverbal communication, and the subject fascinates me, but this show has been awesome so far.  It has about the same amount of plot arc as House does, but it makes sense that way.

Has anyone else been watching this show?  If you're not watching it, I highly recommend seeing at least the first episode. 
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Apparently there is going to be a sequel to Donnie Darko.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1231277/

The movie follows Samantha, Donnie's little sister.  I'd post the trailer, but all it shows are clips from the first movie and it's not really worth watching. 

Quote
S. Darko takes place in the summer of 1995, seven years after the original film. It follows Donnie Darko's younger sister, Samantha (Daveigh Chase), who, in the wake of his death, has found herself at age 17 with a broken family, mired in feelings of insignificance. She and her best friend Corey (Evigan) set off on a road trip to Hollywood in a bid to 'make it big', but their journey is cut short when their car breaks down unexpectedly, leaving them stranded in a small desert town. When a meteorite happens to crash-land nearby, Samantha is plagued by bizarre visions telling of the universe's end and it appears that their breakdown was part of some grander plan. When she finds out she was actually adopted by the Darkos, and that she is in no way related to Donnie, she must face her own demons and, in doing so, save the world and herself.
Source: http://io9.com/5145837/donnie-darko-sequel-will-see-the-light-of-day

It's going to be a direct-to-DVD release, so it's not sounding very promising. 

I'm kind of surprised there would be a sequel to Donnie Darko.  I loved the movie when I saw it the first few times, but that was when I was 17.  The last time I watched it was about a month ago and it was... dumb.  It's really an incoherent mess of a movie, and it's no wonder Southland Tales was so awful. 

Is Richard Kelly doomed to never have a wide theater release of his movies?
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Finally, I have a reason to be glad I have a DS.  Trackmania, a solid and extremely customizable racing game on the PC, is coming to the DS.  It looks very similar to Trackmania Nations, but it looks like it has even more options.  Videos showed tracks in the desert as well as in the stadium, and claim that there are over 100 pre-made tracks in this game. 

That, on top of the ability to create your own tracks, makes it an extremely ambitious project for the DS.  I honestly don't know how they managed to fit all of that into the game, plus pretty good graphics. 

I love Trackmania, and the DS is the perfect platform for the game.  It looks like you use the touch screen to make the tracks (all in beautiful 3D, with loops and other crazy shit), and the directional pad for the racing. 

Check out the screenshots:


How the fuck did I not know about this game until now?

Also here is the Gamespot link: http://www.gamespot.com/ds/driving/trackmaniads/index.html?tag=result;title;0
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Source: http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/biztech/07/03/youtubelawsuit.ap/index.html

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NEW YORK (AP)  -- Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.

U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.

The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user's real name or e-mail address.

Lawyers for Google Inc., which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data -- equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books -- would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users' privacy.

The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer's unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer's computer.

Stanton ruled this week that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.

Stanton rejected a request from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code -- the technical secret sauce -- powering its market-leading search engine, saying there's no evidence Google manipulated its search algorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.

The court has yet to rule on Google's requests to question comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Viacom's Comedy Central.

Viacom is seeking at least $1 billion in damages from Google, saying YouTube has built a business by using the Internet to "willfully infringe" copyrights on Viacom shows, which include Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob SquarePants" cartoon.

The lawsuit was combined with a similar case filed by a British soccer league and other parties.

Together, the plaintiffs are trying to prove that YouTube has known of copyright infringement and can do more to stop it, a finding that could dissolve the immunity protections that service providers have when they merely host content submitted by their users.

Though Google said giving the plaintiffs access to YouTube viewer data would threaten users' privacy, Stanton referred to Google's own blog entry in which the company argued that the IP address alone cannot identify a specific individual.

In a statement, Google said it was "disappointed the court granted Viacom's overreaching demand for viewing history. We are asking Viacom to respect users' privacy and allow us to anonymize the logs before producing them under the court's order."

Google did not say whether it would appeal the ruling or seek to narrow it.

Stanton's ruling made only passing reference to a 1988 federal law barring the disclosure of specific video materials that subscribers request or obtain.

Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said Stanton should have considered that law along with constitutional free-speech rights, including a right to read or view materials anonymously.

He said a user's ID can sometimes include identifying information such as a first initial and last name.

Viacom said it isn't seeking any user's identity. The company said any data provided "will be used exclusively for the purpose of proving our case against YouTube and Google (and) will be handled subject to a court protective order and in a highly confidential manner."

This is not the first time Google has fought the disclosure of user information it had been stockpiling. While gathering evidence for a case involving online pornography, the U.S. Justice Department subpoenaed Google and other search engines for lists of search requests made by their users.

After Google resisted, a federal judge ruled that Google was obliged to turn over only a sample of Web addresses in its search index, not the actual search terms requested.
They say it's to investigate copyright infringements, but what the hell do they need to know the viewers for?  I do a lot of searches for anti-christian videos, as well as anti-Bush videos, so is that going to put me in danger of being questioned or arrested? 

I don't want to believe that the united states is slowly making its way to a dictatorship, or that it's already there, but when a judge orders something like this, you really have to wonder.  Do the american people have any say in anything anymore?
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Car racing has always been the shittiest "sport" on TV.  It's watched primarily by rednecks, except when there's a spectacular crash that kills someone.  But fuck car racing, because the long-awaited rocket races are happening THIS YEAR.

http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/news/2008/04/rocket_racing

This surpasses car racing on every level.  Planes go faster, move in all three dimensions, and holy shit the crashes are going to be awesome (but let's hope they don't happen, of course). 

This may be the first sport I actually care about.
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About a year ago, someone here on GW told everyone about Microsoft's promo thing called Live Search Club.  You could play games and win points, which you could use in turn to get free stuff, like the Vista Ultimate package or an Xbox 360.  But then there were a bunch of cheaters who totally ruined it for everyone by running scripts that would automatically give them points without so much as visiting the website.

Eventually, a lot of people got messages saying they were caught cheating, and emails saying that they weren't getting anything, and everyone forgot all about it.

Three months later, in October I guess, maybe not, I got a copy of Vista Ultimate in the mail.  I was confused, but it was cool, and it's sitting on my shelf, unopened and unused. 

I forgot about it entirely up until yesterday, when my dad called me.  He said I got a package, but I didn't remember ordering anything.  I asked where it came from, and I thought I heard him say "Live Strip Club," so I was panicking.  I didn't order anything from a porn site- I hadn't even been to a porn site in a while.  But he actually said "Live Search Club," So I asked him to open it and tell me what was in it.

It was a copy of Flight Simulator X.

I'm wondering how the hell I ended up getting it, seeing as I ordered it in the summer of 2007.  I also won a Zune, so I was hoping that was what would be in the box (maybe later?).  I'm not sure why Microsoft would send something THAT late, when it seemed they weren't going to send it at all. 

Has anyone else got anything from Live Search Club recently, or ever for that matter?
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Firstly, click this link: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2007/11/27/yeates.ut.robo.soldier.ksl

Watch the video.  It's awesome. 

For those of you who don't watch it, the military has a prototype of a robotic exoskeleton that can easily lift heavy loads and allow soldiers to do difficult tasks with ease.  It's a nerd's dream come true, and the models they have for future versions look like something straight out of RoboCop.  I can't wait until there are soldiers that don't even use guns; they'll just run at their enemies and throw them into walls and such, like in Crysis. 

But this will definitely have other purposes down the road as well.  Instead of using fork lifts, scrawny guys get into one of these things and kill all of their co-workers much faster.
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My laptop is two years old now, and for the most part, I haven't had any problems with it.  Part of the casing cracked, but I duct taped it, and since then it's been working fine.

But today I was looking at stuff online when suddenly it locked up completely and I heard a beep.  I figured it was no big deal because the battery was out of juice.  I went to class, and when I was done, got back on, plugged it in, and turned it on.

Nothing was working right.  The screen went blank and the computer just restarted itself.  I was pretty freaked out, but everything worked okay in safe mode.  This lead to the discovery that my graphics card was the problem.  With it disabled, my laptop runs fine (though it has horrible frame rate).  But the problems don't end there.  For some reason, I can't put my laptop into hibernation mode, which is a major inconvenience.  I looked at the power options in the control panel, and the hibernation and standby tabs are completely gone. 

I'm really upset because everything's been working great, and the day before NaNoWriMo, it totally flips out on me. 

Is there a way to replace a video card in a notebook, or at least check to see if it's been bumped out of place or something?  I think the video card has something to do with the hibernation, but I'm not sure.

Any help would be wonderful.
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Today was the first GW meet in Frederick Maryland, hosted by me, Xanqui.  It wasn't a very long meeting, but everyone who participated had a blast.  I stocked up on beer just for the occassion, but I was surprised to see that I had pretty much the same amount in the end as I did in the beginning.I got several different brands because I didn't know what anyone wanted.  Actually, I only got all these different brands because it was all I could grab before the store manager realized I wasn't 21.  But we had beer, and that was all that mattered.I showed up at around 8:00 PM and was greeted by everyone in the meet.  I left the door unlocked since I was going to be running a little late.  I forget who took this picture.  I was pleased to see that they hadn't already wrecked my house, but I trusted everyone who was coming.The first thing we did was get online with our computers (using the wireless network) and talk to people on IRC about the meet.  You might have been in IRC when this all happened.The games got scattered all over the floor like immediately.  My room was spotless before everyone showed up, but I didn't mind all my games on the floor.  The first game we played was Mercenaries, selected by me because I was hosting this.  The goal was to kill as many people as possible in under five minutes.  I won, with 623 kills.  I got lucky though, because this massive army surrounded me right at the start.This is me winning.  Nobody even came close to my final score.Following the game, we started trashing the place, just for the sake of trashing it.  I was going to be cleaning it up anyway, so why the hell not?  I ended up hitting the table next to my PC and papers went flying everywhere.  I was a bit pissed off, because they were my psychology notes that I spent about 5 months gathering.  But no harm done, really.Everyone left without pitching in to help clean up.  My room is still a mess.  I don't recommend anyone host a GW meet simply because Internet friends are the messiest fucking friends in the world.  Everyone had a great time.  We laughed, we cried of loneliness, and we did some serious gaming.  GW meets are hella fun, especially when you get a lot of people in on it.  This was the first one I've ever been to, and I highly recommend any loyal GWer to attend one.  I guarantee you will meet some very interesting people you thought you knew, but really didn't.