Worked Over and Overworked

6449 Comments, mostly neg about debates.


ABC News: Clinton, Obama Find 'Brotherly Love' at Philly Debate

This was the most disgusting display of journalism I've ever seen. Charlie and George are puppets. William Ayers, flag pins and "Bitter? Give me a #### break. Those are media driven issues and NOT what people who are struggling with high gas prices are concerned about. I almost paid four dollars for regular unleaded gas at at discount station. But the high price of gas was a throw away question at the end of TWO HOURS! Has anybody at ABC been to a grocery store lately? Are the houses or condos in their neighborhood empty or up for sale b/c of the mortgage crisisI guess not, because they insulted both candidates with the tabloid questions in the first 50 minutes of this charade that was called a debate. This is why I get my news elsewhere, b/c ABC can't be trusted to deal with the truth. Poor Peter Jennings, he didn't work as hard as he did for you to turn this into tabloid TV. And if you want to do Hannity's bidding for him, then go to FOX News.

Subprime was just the beginning. Wait until California's prime borrowers start handing their keys to the bank.


Why the next mortgage crisis may be worse. - By Mark Gimein - Slate Magazine

Just two banks, Washington Mutual and Countrywide, wrote more than $300 billion worth of option ARMs in the three years from 2005 to 2007, concentrated in California. Others—IndyMac, Golden West (the creator of the option ARM, and now a part of Wachovia)—wrote many billions more. The really amazing thing is that the meltdown in California is already happening and virtually none of these loans have yet reset.

* In San Bernardino, a house bought for $310,000 in 2005 is now being offered by the bank for $199,900. * A 2,000-square-foot ranch house in Rancho Santa Margarita is down from $775,000 to $565,000. * A starter home in Sacramento, sold for $215,000 in 2004, is now down to $129,900.

These are not sale prices. They are asking prices. Don't doubt that they are negotiable.

Yeah

"Nostalgia is the new friendship" That Nathan guy again.

PXL-2000


PXL-2000 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Oddly, simulating the PXL's simple hybrid design turns out to be quite difficult. Indeed, getting the cassette deck distortion just right has proven to be an extremely complex problem. One can, however, get close to the PXL's oddly ethereal quality by putting a video sequence through a number of different processing steps. These must be carried out in this order or the effect will be quite different. * Reduce the saturation to 0. The PXL2000 is a monochrome camera. * Reduce the frame rate to 15 frames per second. Deinterlace the video; the PXL does not interlace. * Reduce the resolution to 120 pixels by 90 pixels. * Apply a Gaussian blur function with a radius of about one and a half pixels. This mimics the lowpass filter. * Sharpen the image slightly (about 30%). * Clamp the black point to about 5% and the white point to about 95%. * Compress the dynamic range of the entire image by about 1.2 to 1. * Posterize to 90 steps * Add a lag effect; this should add a small proportion of the three previous frames to each frame, giving slight trails and motion artifacting * Add whichever video modulator simulation effect you prefer, plus some scanlines (since PXL is not interlaced) * Clamp the white and black points again * Apply a second Gaussian blur with the same radius * Add a black border around the image to push the edges of the image into the title safe area. (The image area is exactly 75% of a full 720 x 540 NTSC frame, or 540 x 405.)

The result of this process should resemble PXL2000 video.

Thanks Nathan!

Azureus and a Base Station FYI


First Thoughts: AirPort Extreme Base Station - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

RE: torrenting and ports, if you have Azureus, you don't have to manually forward ports anymore with the new router. Goto Azureus Preferences > Plugins > UPnP > NAT-PMP and enable it.

On the new Extreme, goto Internet > NAT and Enable NAT Port-Mapping Protocol

Now everytime you open Azureus, it should be able to open the appropriate ports on the Extreme as needed.

How to process .fff files without FlexColor


UFRaw - Home

The Unidentified Flying Raw (UFRaw) is a utility to read and manipulate raw images from digital cameras. It can be used on its own or as a Gimp plug-in. It reads raw images using Dave Coffin's raw conversion utility - DCRaw. UFRaw supports color management workflow based on Little CMS, allowing the user to apply ICC color profiles. For Nikon users UFRaw has the advantage that it can read the camera's tone curves. Even if you don't own a Nikon, you can still apply a Nikon curve to your images. My guiding concept in the development of UFRaw is to give all the essential (and some non-essential) information and control over the raw conversion, with the hope that one could resolve all the exposure and white balance issues during the raw conversion. The obvious advantage is that one can make full use of the raw data. The provisional advantage is that this way we circumvent the current 8-bit limitation of the Gimp, as UFRaw does all manipulations in 16-bits.

I spent a good part of today trying to find a way to process Hasselblade's fucking 3f format. The good old GIMP comes in handy again!

Fuck you DHL

Really. Like fuck you with a 15 pound hammer, no lube.

I like how you say you were here twice today and I was not here. Thats cute. I have a Fed Ex package right here? How'd that happen? Oh, and I FUCKING LIVE HERE and I don't get out much.

So you are a liar DHL. A dirty Liar. My momma don't like liars.

Fucking twits. The main office really had no way to resolve this mystery. I do. Delivery my god damn package. Let's pretend its your god damn business to delivery my package or something like that.

Yeah, that would be fun.

US kept slow in broadband lane


BBC NEWS | Programmes | Click | US kept in slow broadband lane

We all know that America is the technology hub of the universe. It is home to Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, Google, YouTube, Yahoo, MIT - the list is endless. So why, when it comes to the basics, like delivering the internet to its citizens, has it fallen way behind many other nations? In Manhattan people pay about $30 (£15) a month for a download speed of three megabits per second (Mbps) via a DSL line. Many people are very happy with that, until they realise what is going on elsewhere in the world.

"In Japan you can get 100 megabits for $35," says Selina Lo of Ruckus Wireless.

LOL


Gamasutra - Fixing Online Gaming Idiocy: A Psychological Approach

Some gamers are fuckwads Of all the ways I spend my free time, playing games online is the only one I would describe as "frequently barbaric". Insults of all kinds, including racist and homophobic slurs, are commonplace.

The women I know who play online avoid anything that would identify them as female -- including voice communication -- in order to avoid the unwanted, and frequently negative, attention.

And that's just how players are intentionally insulting -- what some people do while playing online can also be aggravating.

Cheating, team-killing, entering a game but not playing, quitting before the game is over, and more, are all relatively common. Common enough that it was deemed worthy of a Penny Arcade comic, speculating about why normal people become fuckwads online.

Holy smokes


The Big Picture | Lender-Abandoned, Non-REO Foreclosures

"In some cities that have low property values, where there are dense concentrations of foreclosures, you see lenders who file foreclosure proceedings but don't actually take control of the properties, because the lenders have to maintain them and pay taxes on them." "There are areas in some parts of the country where property values are quite low, and there are no large-scale expectations of them going up. They don't know that they will ever recoup those costs," and so the lenders never re-take title to the properties, allowing them to become derelict." (emphasis added)

There you have it: Abandoned, Non-REO Foreclosures.

Yowza, this is just starting.....

Hmm.... interesting


A Camera for the Shot You Missed - New York Times

But this Casio can snap — are you ready for this? — 60 photos a second. These are not movies; these are full six-megapixel photographs, each with enough resolution for a poster-size print. After such a burst, you’re offered three options: delete all 60 shots, keep all 60, or review them and pluck out the individual frames worth keeping. The whole batch begins to play like a flip-book movie; you control playback with a back-panel control dial. As you watch, you press the shutter button once to identify each frame you want to keep; the rest will be discarded.

Wheeee!!!! Good times!!!


Some homes worth less than their copper pipes | Reuters

Real estate brokers and local authorities say once-proud homes coast-to-coast are being stripped for copper, aluminum, and brass by thieves. Much of it ends up with scrap metal traders who say nearly all copper gets shipped overseas, much of it to China and India. In areas hit hardest by foreclosures, such as the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, copper and other metals used in plumbing, heating systems and telephone lines are now more valuable than some homes.

No 4th Amendment?


Administration Asserts No Fourth Amendment for Domestic Military Operations "While the newly released memo focuses on "asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators," it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, II, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo..."

Good lord, it just get crazier. This country truly has gone to shit thanks to bush co.

April Fool's funny


World of Warcraft: The Molten Core

Blizzard's World of Warcraft: The Molten Core Collector's Edition, also announced today, will include tinted cellophane TV overlays, further increasing the array of colors available to players. Additional Collector's Edition features, as well as details on the upcoming World of Warcraft: The Molten Core beta test, will be revealed closer to release. World of Warcraft: The Molten Core will initially be available for the Atari 2600 platform, with plans for additional console systems to be announced in the near future.