I don’t use IM too much anymore, but occasionally I log in to speak with a couple of fellow travelers and random friends from the past.
I’ve mentioned in passing that one of my friends is the guy behind the fairly popular HowToGeek site. And unsurprisingly, he is a pretty cool geek that is always working on some esoteric project.
He didn’t invent it but he has become [temporarily] interested in how the system works.
For those not in the know (which included me 5 minutes ago), trouting works like this.
A chat bot operated by some random administrator sends you a message. If you respond to it, the bot automatically dives into a database of other screen names (usually scraped off of LiveJournal). It then sends a message to that user as well.
Then it anonymously syncs the two conversations to one another, acting as a 3rd party proxy. And the most interesting part is that no one is the wiser unless they are explicitly familiar with this type of parlor trick.
You think you’re talking to a bot, but in reality, you’re talking to the other person.
While the original authors could have had some kind of malicious intent with the system, it feels more like the work of a psychology dissertation that has mutated on its own.
Each variation has been named after a type of fish (first salmon, then trout) — maybe the next wave will be tuna or piranha…
Think that it could be commercialized for an online dating service, suicide prevention or drug abuser hot line?
NBC reportedly spent $2 billion on securing the broadcast rights to transmit the 2010 and 2012 Olympic games in the US. They had previously spent $1.5 billion securing similar rights for the 2006 and 2008 games. And video access in every other country was sold off like wireless spectrum to regional broadcasters.
While this is not a new phenomenon (FIFA and many other sport leagues have similar operations), there is a bit of annoying statism involved.
For instance, even with oodles of bandwidth I am still prohibited to stream any Olympic event (including rhythmic gymnastics!) from my high perch in Seoul, legally. Wired put together a list of online sites that allow you to view the games, but alas, South Korea is not party to any of the legal streaming agreements.
And this is one of the problems of IP rights over artificially scarce resources. Because firms like NBC will sue enterprising webmasters that upload or post images or videos of the sporting events, few individuals are willing to risk the squeeze. So even though no one is being harmed, no property destruction is taking place, the threat of lawsuits prevents badminton fans from watching total South Asian domination.
And it’s not just NBC, as both the BBC and CBC will not transmit data to the hermit kingdom.
Last year the same problem cropped up with the Rugby World Cup. The event organizers ruled the broadcast rights with an iron thumb and sent DMCA take-down notices not just to fans, but also credentialed journalists. In fact, organizations like AP and AFP refused to go along with these ruggers and wouldn’t partake in covering the event.
Fortunately I was able to watch most of the matches due to torrent sites, but of course, none of them were live (don’t tell me the score to the Welsh-Scotland game dammit!).
This all ends up bumping into the $1 billion Viacom lawsuit against Google (which owns YouTube) for hosting copyright-infringing materials. To me, the ironic part is that the mega content firms are doing a disservice to themselves, because all of the uploading actually shows how popular a show is. So rather than shooting your fans, you’d think that Viacom could somehow monetize this new technology.
Oh wait, after nearly three years of sitting on their hands, Viacom now has dedicated streaming sites for South Park, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report — full episodes, full seasons, for free.
Now if only NBC would allow the same thing to take place with SNL overseas (I can’t watch anything on Hulu because it only serves the US).
Again, I’m not expecting or wanting to force NBC to accommodate people like myself, but I do not think it is very savvy (or libertarian) to sue others for providing a service that you won’t. Plus, I’m a blackhole out here: no one is providing online service at all, so a bottom-up provider wouldn’t be eating up competition…
If you missed it, you can grab a demo of the Creature Creator for the upcoming game (comes out early September). I spent 5 minutes and whipped together this guy. It’s very easy to use and extremely customizable.
It actually has a long tail but it’s obscured by its super sexy chest.
Also, the last few days have been Christmas-in-the-summer for fans of Blizzard games. They finally unveiled Diablo 3. Back in the day I spent hours playing the first two. Looks great (hold your breath until next holiday season).
Last week I discussed the global trends of Firefox 3.0 downloads. Some people questioned my methodology (12) that I was grasping at straws regarding Iraq. But I believe the following graph, created after 7 days of downloads (20+ million so far), helps put things into perspective.
The first five countries are listed because they have aggregated the most FF downloads thus far. No surprises.
The next grouping is Asia, specifically the eastern part (minus Japan). The two notable surprises are that Taiwan and Singapore.
Taiwan has half the population of South Korea but has downloaded FF 60% more than their Korean counterparts. I attribute this to the fact that FF 3 has not be made available in Korean Hangul yet whereas it has been made available in Chinese. And while I have lived in both Korea and Taiwan (I currently live in Seoul), I still can’t generalize about their surfing habits (they all use Naver though… hate!).
Singapore is another interesting case because its residents have downloaded FF nearly as much as its significantly larger neighbors. Again, I attribute this to the language barrier (Chinese and English are the predominantly used dialects in Singapore). When FF is translated into more languages it will probably be increasingly adopted in those regions.
North Korea is an absolute shit hole, don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. Several of my coworkers and friends have had the chance to take tours up there. Things to keep in mind. You are only allowed to take a guided tour in special Potemkin villages (fake tourist villages). You cannot stray away. The infrastructure has completely collapsed since they no longer receive the subsidies and free handouts from their old soviet pals. There is one internet cafe in the entire country, it is in Pyongyang and only politically connected individuals can use it. The sole ISP connects via a filtered satellite connection. That’s it. Hence the big fat zero internet users and FF downloads. And yea, I would personally like to visit it, but the money you spend on the tourist package directly funds Kim’s regime (you know he still operates gulag’s right?).
Anyways, one thing I would have liked to see in the China downloads is a separation of Hong Kong, Macao and the SERs. I would wager that the vast majority of traffic comes from these regions.
The next grouping is the Middle East. The internet user numbers come from IWS.
As I pointed out a week ago, the thing that sticks out the most is that number from Iraq. All of its neighbors have a substantially larger net presence and FF downloads. In fact, the refugee camp known as Palestine has a larger FF user base. Again, I attribute this solely to the fact that war has been terrible to the Iraqi infrastructure and economy as a whole. More on that here and here.
The next group is basically the “Axis of Evil.” Despite the political rhetoric of Bush and Bolton, these places really are run by tin pot dictators or are in a constant state of war. Thus, it is not surprising that their FF numbers are very low relative to the next group: the Commonwealth.
Yes, I think these two groups are a good illustration of dichotomy. Similar sized populations, totally different levels of economic freedom. While I’m not a huge fan of trying to wedge empirical data into philosophical matters, I think this shows the correlation between freer markets versus socialized/nationalized markets.
Actually, lets give the residents of Afghanistan a free pass. They endured a 10 year invasion from the Soviets. During this time the CIA funded the counter-insurgency (the Mujahideen in Operation Cyclone) which gave rise to the Taliban. After the Soviets left, the Taliban ran around blowing up the place. Now the US military, after pursuing bin Laden, have been occupying the war zone for the past 7 or so years. Yea, so not too many questions as to why their FF numbers are really low unless of course you really think carpet bombing sprouts router connections.
Coda: and while I’ll try to do one more update in a few weeks, I doubt the trends will change. Even if some kind of magical worldwide military deoccupation took place, it would take years to build an infrastructure in the various battle-hardened regions, let alone change the socialist policies that stymie innovation and foreign investment. Oh, and if you haven’t gotten it yet, download FF today:
What applications do you still run through Windows?
Aside from Firefox, I think the only other two are Notepad and Paint.
I just found a couple of no-install, no-login cloud-based alternatives.
Spynote lets you just type plain text into a window (I need to use it to correct html tags or transcribe video). It’s free and simple. Opening up Google Docs takes longer and has spacing/formatting that can get annoying (especially when editing odd indented resumés).
CanvasPaint does the same thing, but for MS Paint. Looks and feels just the same. The only qualm I have is this: the main reason I open up Paint is to quickly resize a saved image or screen capture. Right now it doesn’t look like CP has the ability to paste a screen capture into the template. Still the same, it’s free and does everything else.
As far as instant messaging, I’ve mentioned them before and I’m still using Meebo — for the better part of two years now. And while there are occasional connection problems it does the trick (like Sex Panther). Out of curiosity, does anyone know what their business model is? Do they have any revenue stream?
Note: each company paid me millions of dollars to post this.
The list of the Top 500 fastest supercomputers was released today (it’s compiled and released every 6 months). No big surprises there, at least if you keep up with the big headlines (development such as the Ranger from Sun and Roadrunner from IBM).
Of particular interest are two things.
First, the Top500 organization put together a couple of charts measuring performance over the past 15 years.
It shows a geometric increase over the past decade and a half.
Also, they have an entry regarding power consumption. Unsurprisingly, the closer a system is to the very top, the more efficient it is performance/watts. Thus, the fastest machines are also the most energy efficient.
This can be a result of several developments. First, they are probably more modern and thus were designed with energy conservation in mind. In addition, for the same reason the Airbus 380 is the most efficient passenger plane, so to are multi-core machines. Using virtually the same footprint to deliver 2-3x the performance.
It’s one of the selling points behind IBM’s Kittyhawk program (economies of scale, or in this case, energies of scale).
Also, if Linpack isn’t the benchmark you want to measure performance with, you may be interested in the HPC Performance initiative which has some other metrics.
Sky Dayton founded EarthLink, an Internet-service provider, in 1994.
Sky Dayton: I owned a couple of coffeehouses in L.A., and I had a computer-graphics company that I co-owned. And I heard about this thing called the Internet. I thought, That sounds kind of interesting. The first thing I did is I actually picked up the phone and dialed 411, and I said, I’d like the number for the Internet, please. And the operator is like, What? I said, Just search any company with the word Internet in the name. Blank. Nothing. I thought, Wow, this is interesting. What is this thing anyway?
I’m sure most geeks have their own stories about “where were you the first time someone was futureshocked.”
Mine involved an English class I had back in junior high — spring of 1994 taught by the volleyball coach Mrs. Gorby.
We were assigned one of those loathsome busywork projects and after class I asked the teacher if I could use some sites on the Internet for references.
She asked “What’s the Internet?”
I don’t remember what I turned in but I’ll never forget the quizzical look her face gave me. Priceless.
Note: fortunately for me my dad was an early adopter, having installed an ISDN line in the early ’90s so he could connect to the libraries at the University of Texas at Dallas just down the road. I have other stories like this as well. For instance, in 1996 I used the super cool and independent Hotmail (pre-Microsoft). When I told my friends my email address they all thought I was talking about hot males and porn. Classic. [P.S. Who doesn't love 5 MB storage limits?]
If you have a chance be sure to at least skim the various viewpoints presented in the recent special edition of IEEE Spectrum which tackles the super sexy technological singularity.
While he tends to kind of ramble a little bit, the essay by Vernor Vinge is a useful overview on how many futurists tend to view the various paths engineers and scientists are taking. [See also: Experts disagreeing]
And while individuals like Kurzweil are big proponents of “hard” take offs (in which a singular invention begets a self-replicating smarter-than-human propagation that physically transforms the planet within a relatively short period of time) I think that the safest bet to predict on is a combination of digital devices and network services forming seemingly high-order thought processes… Web 7.0!
Actually, take a quick step back and look at something like the new Luke arm developed by Dean Kamen. This device, which is capable of imitating nearly every aspect of a human arm is surely upgradable and could easily become superior to the appendage we take for granted.
And looking at individuals who are quadriplegic or survivors of multiple amputees, what is to stop the next step in creating synthetic, computer-controlled appendages for the entire body?
I think a milestone in human development will be when the physically handicapped, infirm and elderly voluntarily decide to become grafted into cyborg-like structures. The IEEE Spectrum also graphically displays the current progress on the science of bionics including the Luke arm and other digitally-controlled prosthetics.
One of my questions is what is the price-point in which the nerderati begin to allow themselves to be subjected to biomedical surgery, to replace their limbs with superior devices? Traditional prosthetics for arms and legs typically cost around $5000-10,000. The Luke arm apparently costs $100,000. Do you think advocates of transhumanism such as Google’s Larry Page or megainvestor Peter Thiel would take the plunge as a beta tester?
And this leads to the final question presented to Vinge, how do you prepare for the singularity? I am of the opinion that no one should assume that the AI scenario will occur in your current lifetime and that everyone should practice these three life extension techniques: exercise, eat decent food, save money.
Seriously now, how many fat engineers do you know? What if there is a snag along the way and your lifestyle kills you? By joining a gym and eating decent food not only will you be extending your own life, but you can enjoy your current one. Imagine that, actually having a fun time in meat space!
And while economist Robin Hanson discusses the issues of economics in the IEEE investigation, one thing that few people really have discussed is the costs of becoming a first mover. I would dare say that most people don’t like being the last person on the block to own the latest and greatest gizmo, unless of course it is AYDS.
Therefore, wouldn’t a prudent plan of action be to save say $150,000? It is the same amount of money for being doused into a vat of liquid nitrogen through the auspices of cryonic services like Alcor. As a consequence, not only would you be able to pay for the augmentation operations but in the event that you physically die, at the very least your brain could be preserved, right?
So, how about it? Stop eating junk food, invest your cash strategically, and learn how to program. After all, in the worst gray goo AI scenario, someone that knows how to write useful robotics code may be allowed to live by our new digital overlords. So why not grab a NXT kit from Lego or the new Create by iRobot. After all, Microsoft’s Robotics Studio is fairly easy to use (see Exhibit A) and could very well save your life!
Just kidding, anyone that has watched The Matrix knows you will probably die because we all smell like rotting big macs.
Courtesy of the latest skinny on Google’s mammoth datacenters.
Regarding their infrastructure my favorite quote continues to be: “Server makers pride themselves on their high-end machines’ ability to withstand failures, but Google prefers to invest its money in fault-tolerant software.”
And in the long run, that probably will be their greatest competitive advantage.
Over the past year or so I’ve argued that a better gauge for measuring processor performance is through metrics like the SPEC suite. Furthermore, I’ve mentioned that watts should also be increasingly taken into account (e.g., MIPS/Watt, FLOPS/Watt).
I have also discussed the emerging trend of packing systems into every denser proximities — even noting that IBM has modeled these details in a program called Project Kittyhawk.
The above screenshot is an image from a spiffy new datacenter firm based out of Las Vegas. The thing that caught my eye was the watt per sq. foot density.
While I am hardly the expert on this matter I am curious to know what Google and IBM are range their systems are balanced around. While their numbers may be a bit different, one should also take into consideration that firms like Google typically install OTS white-boxes whereas IBM is all about custom tailored server cabinets (designing every little divet and screw).
My bet is that SuperNAP (Switch Communications) is a boutique shop somewhere in between: OTS technology that is entirely homogeneous. A bit different than RackSpace for sure, but I bet the players will consolidate within the next decade bringing about those digital factories in the clouds.
I am curious to know what energy source is providing them electricity. Perhaps they are a new owner of solar tracking photovoltaic farm. After all, Las Vegas - like much of the southwest - gets a lot of solar radiation each year.
I promise this link - “What the Frak?” - actually goes to a funny overview of the last 3 seasons of Battlestar Galactica.
I have never watched the series, in part because I’m too cool for anything on the SciFi channel. That and the two or three previews I have seen make it look like Lost, another show that I’m too cool to watch.
On another note, what was Rick Astley thinking when he put together that iconic music video 20 years ago? Dancing at night in a deserted street with a trench coat… chicks dig that kind of thing — very romantic.
I really wanted to do an April Fools post, something along the lines of me moving back to America and joining the Marines and/or the IRS.
However, it appears that five years ago I officially posted my first of many highly sophisticated musings.
Actually, movementarian.com started a year earlier (around June of ‘02) as an attempt to recreate The Onion… with my friends as co-authors. If you look at some of the older content from archive.org you can see that some of the of the articles were good, others sucked (mostly mine).
Several of the contributors did a really good job poking fun at some of the odd things running around in the news. For instance Andy Stedman penned a popular article that still gets hits from Google (probably because of the picture…): Man Reports “Public Goods” Problem Spontaneously Solved
Anyways, David Veksler and I took the site down around February ‘03 to relaunch it as a blog community… (kind of like the Engadget for satire and humor) all under the umbrella name of Collectrix.
That never really panned out (which is a discussion for another day) and during the last days of February and beginning of March I started looking at other target markets.
If you recall, it was during this time that the buildup for the Iraq war was also crescendoing. As I was against the invasion - and all wars - from the get go (even marched in vain at the Dallas protest) I looked at setting up community blogs for libertarian types. I attempted to purchase antiwarblogs.com but the owner wanted to hold out for higher prices (he ended up sitting on the domain to this day).
Instead David and a couple of my friends started buying up other domains to build blog networks from (visit this older link from Archive.org to see a small list).
Different times
Anyways, if you look at the first 3 or so months of archives on this blog you can tell most of my posts had to do with the nascent blog industry. It was started:
- 6 weeks after Pyra Labs (Blogger) was purchased by Google
- when LiveJournal was still independent (and still shitty)
- during the days of the RSS 1.0 vs 2.0 — Dave Winer vs Mark Pilgrim war
- before TypePad (I managed to start drama with Movable Type and Anil Dash)
- before WordPress (B2++ and Cafelog were the two living and breathing creations)
In fact, early in ‘03 I started corresponding with Donncha O’Caoimh from Ireland about adding new features to his build of B2++. He eventually joined the WordPress development team and I believe, is still very Irish.
It was also during this time that commentators like Bill O’Reilly and Andrew Orlowski (of The Register) were lashing out against individual blogs… because anyone can post whatever they wanted on them. It was the beginning of the end to the gatekeepers.
At the time I thought that the burgeoning blogosphere needed a group of defenders so I teamed up with an array of now A-list bloggers and purchased/developed a site called: ProBlogs.org (promoting blogs and rebutting player haters). You can still see some of the older posts from archive.org: 123
These included: Roland Piquepaille (a French jack-of-all-trades, who now writes for ZDNet) Richard Giles (an Australian-based Web 2.0 innovator) Michael Fagan (a Canadian uber geek that has quite the digital pedigree) Stephen Dulaney (a pioneer and popularizer of podcasting) Elwyn Jenkins (one of the first academics to seriously study this new medium… my understanding is he had to go into hiding because of the mob or something)
Anyways, I can hardly attest to being a mover or shaker in this industry. I suppose I could make up a story about being flown into a Bosnian blog conference under sniper fire and mortar attacks, but someone’s already used that one.
I decided against becoming a billionaire geek and ended up going back to grad school. Smart decision, right? And over the course of the following years, I stayed on the sidelines and continued working within the antiwar/libertarian communities.
Some stats of how much beer drinking, girl chasing time I ended up spending on this web thing:
With any luck I’ll still be around in the next 5 years. However, I think I’ll try to spend more of my time posting super sexy music videos like Call On Me or Satisfaction. That’s why you started visiting in the first place.
Or in other words: in direct contrast to the lyrics from these band members:
Whether you like it or not, Wikipedia has become entrenched in many peoples lives.
Even many of the expats I meet throughout my globe trotting adventures are quite fond of it. In fact, in the event that we are wrong about something my friends and I often joke that we’ll just log in and change the entry.
This typical involves something drastic, like deleting the entire entry for Taiwan (because you know, it doesn’t technically exist).
And unsurprisingly The Onion explains the urge to modify the mundane with a probably-true story.
Another page in the fight between what should fill server farms was written today.
The Register and Nick Carr discussed a new paper by IBM whose authors believe Google is headed in the wrong direction with their off-the-shelf approach to HPC/distributed grid computing.
I mention this because the paper can only be accessed from behind an institutional paywall.
I have my ways though, and found it sitting on an open server (for now). Here is the pdf of Project Kittyhawk.
Believe it or not, but I am actually teaching kindergarten kids right now. While some might consider this a big step down from the university teaching I was doing two years ago, the experiences I’m confronted with on a daily basis really keep my mind churning.
In addition to cleaning up plate loads of snot that oozes from a plethora of orifices I also have the time honored ritual of teaching children abstract concepts like colors and how much wood would a woodchuck chuck.
As a result, I’ve begun to rethink a bit of how strong and weak AI approaches have developed over the years. I mean how do you teach a machine something — how do you get it to learn? If you were an engineer starting from scratch, how would you approach this method?
After all, humans are squishy, brittle machines, yet it appears that it only takes a relatively short period of time to condition necessary parts of the brain in order to detect patterns and rules for classifying information, like the color red.
Exhibit A
I am assuming my sample size is big enough: a couple dozen middle-class Taiwanese kids between the ages of 3-6. Over the last few days several new kids were enrolled in my class. None of them spoke English. Within a day I got one of them to recognize shapes like circles, squares and triangles. And now after a week, not only have do they all know my name and the names of others, but also the weather (hot, cold, snowy, rain), basic colors, types of food and a number of other relatively simple concepts.
Sure they could be savants, but based on the “normal” distribution curve and observations from other teachers, all of the other kids at the schools (I teach at 3 different ones) progressed at about the same rate. In fact, based on the academic research into stages of cognitive development, they are smack dab on target with the rest of their human peers.
This is in stark contrast to simply attaching a webcam into a workstation and expecting the machine to somehow magically distinguish your face from mine. The hardware for this particular application arguably can discern curves, lines, colors and distortions but the software end, including the device drivers, has to be developed with the necessary code to translate the totality, the whole sum of the parts.
Ultimately you and I are also auto-didacts, capable of teaching ourselves new concepts, a feat that is still beyond the reach of most AI applications.
Thus, I suspect that a balance between hardware (akin to Minsky’s Thinking Machine) and software is where cognizance, sentience and self-learning resides. Thus, you need a machine(s) fast enough to be able process numerous inputs in real-time, yet software robust enough to tackle fuzzy, seemingly abstract variables (e.g., even something relatively benign like where does red stop and infrared begin).
IBM’s Blue Brain project appears to be making quick progress on the hardware “strong” side of this equation.
While it is a somber read, Wired magazine recently published an interesting piece on the lives of two AI researchers who died last year. With any luck, their novel “weaker” approaches to teaching machines and getting machines to think will live long into the future.
In addition you may be interested in the innovative work conducted by Luis von Auhn. I’ve mentioned him before as he is the brains behind the “Captcha” as well as Google’s Image Labeler. His Google Talk on Human Computation is also outstanding.
And yea, that is the same Tanenbaum who emailed Linus Torvalds and let Linus know that his new kernel project wouldn’t work. See the text of the old debate.
Due to the relative anonymity of the internets, some participants in flame wars act like they have 12″ steel cocks.
I know that sounds crude, but if you have ever spent even a short amount of time on a forum or USENET group, you will invariably come across the various archetypes illustrated in Flame Warriors.
In reality, despite the plethora of material available online, arguing in these venues is generally a waste of time. For instance, even if you believe your argument is cogent, kosher and filled with sexiness, at the end of the day your enemy is probably a 14 year old kid that plays on the Xbox all day in his parents basement. And thus, you will be griefed, trolled, and Godwinedad nauseum. Or as the eponymous site is called: SomethingAwful will undoubtedly occur.
In fact, I think the JRR Special Olympics photo sums up just about every debate that has traveled through the series of tubes.
With that said, let us turn to an odd brouhaha: John Romero versus Mike Wilson both of ION Storm fame (not to be confused with id).
I’m not going to really discuss the debate because (1) it is now over, (2) the colorful commentators in the various comments sections have much better one-liners than I can find from bathroom walls and (3) it is a fight between two video game developers. Lame.
Setting the stage
For some good background on what the two guys are bickering about I recommend perusing the book Masters of Doom and an older article from the Dallas Observer appropriately titled Stormy Weather.
I should also mention that two of my high school friends used to visit the ION offices back in the day and even played against the developers; let’s call them W&TT. They are brothers about the same age as my older brother and I. And based on their own observations and experiences, the info gleaned from the article and subsequent book are dead on. Mismanagement, egos, and shoddy work ethic was more abundant than an STD at Planned Parenthood.
The one time I personally met John Romero was at a large public LAN exhibition in the Spring of 2000 in downtown Dallas. The key event at the gaming party (yea, that is very dorky sounding) was the public unveiling of the hyped action game: Daikatana. John, who still had his iconic long hair, was its lead developer and participants at the event would have a chance to play against him in a deathmatch.
A friend of mine spotted John and Stevie Case (his girlfriend at the time) and we asked him to autograph the billete program we received at the door. Also standing next to John was a fellow by the name of Angel Munoz who is the creator of the Cyberathletic Professional League which managed the whole event.
Angel quipped that John should get used to having people ask him for autographs, because to quote Ron Burgundy: he was kind of a big deal.
We all parted and seemingly enjoyed the rest of the weekend festivities. As an aside the Tribes tournament my duct-tape “clan” played in was the highlight of my weekend as we didn’t suck nearly as bad as we thought. Nor did I.
At one point I did attempt to speak with Angel about an endeavor some of my friends were working on called AdreniLAN. It was essentially a game-oriented PC Bang placed along a busy freeway in North Dallas. It received its name largely through the efforts of a Vietnamese friend of mine who had also coordinated an audacious undertaking the previous year; let us call him HN.
HN and I were part of a pilot network engineering program in high school sponsored by Cisco. We spent three semesters training and studying for the CCNA (by and large it was a waste of time). At the tail end of our scholastic tenure, HN and several of his technical-minded friends put together a large LAN party in the high school cafeteria called AdreniLAN.
They procured switches, routers, and hubs capable of hosting/transporting several hundred participants. They had a dozen or so dedicated game servers, a redundant power system and even coordinated large pizza deliveries. These were no small feats for a group of highschool seniors that were strapped for cash. They even got Tiger Distributing and a couple other sponsors to throw in prizes (like computers and various accessories).
While there were a slew of various games being played over the network, Quake 2 was the game played in the main tournament. While I considered a number of my friends fantastic at the game (primarily because they kicked my ass), everyone was bested by legendary gamer Fatal1ty who eventually won the computer and of course, all of the hot chicks.
I mention all of this because when I attempted to speak with Angel at the CPL event a year later, he shrugged me off. As a side note, he is the proprietor of an online gaming site called Adrenaline Vault (like the names?).
While I never saw the email myself, Angel apparently had contacted one of my friends about the name HN had used for the PC Bang. Apparently Angel was not too thrilled or supportive, hence his apparent annoyance of my queries. And yet another friend (mormon!) of mine had also mentioned that when soliciting support for the high school event the year before, Angel was not too happy about the original AdreniLAN either. Maybe everyone just caught him on a bad hangover day.
Postmortem
Despite the fact that 8 years have gone by and I live half-way around the world, after seeing the John and Mike debate, it is nice to see that some things never change. Quite comforting.
A quick run-down of where they all are now:
- Angel was superficially a dick, though some of my friends that still attend those CPL events say he has become less socially retarded
- Daikatana was a financial fiasco and impossible to beat without cheat codes (the game design was incomplete)
- Stevie Case jumped the shark by posing in Playboy and broke up with John
- John, has since worked for numerous companies at various technical levels, yet never achieving the fame he had a decade ago
- AdreniLAN, the PC Bang, despite becoming an official CPL test center, folded after a couple of years
- HN, an autodidact, now works as a graphic artist in California
- W&TT were smart and chose not to go to college; their geek prowess paid off and they not only live debt free but rake in a good chunk of change at a dotcom
- Only 2 of the 20 Cisco participants became CCNA certified, I was not caliente enough to be one of them. The program was scrubbed several years later.
- And most importantly, playing video games is still the leading cause of virginity. Don’t let basement virginitus happen to your friends.
If you have a chance be sure to at least skim the 
One of my questions is what is the price-point in which the nerderati begin to allow themselves to be subjected to biomedical surgery, to replace their limbs with superior devices? Traditional prosthetics for arms and legs typically cost around $5000-10,000. The Luke arm apparently costs $100,000. Do you think advocates of transhumanism such as Google’s Larry Page or megainvestor Peter Thiel would take the plunge as a beta tester?
So, how about it? Stop eating junk food, invest your cash 
I really wanted to do an April Fools post, something along the lines of me moving back to America and joining the Marines and/or the IRS.
These included:
Believe it or not, but I am actually teaching kindergarten kids right now. While some might consider this a big step down from the university teaching I was doing two years ago, the experiences I’m confronted with on a daily basis really keep my mind churning.
Thus, I suspect that a balance between hardware (akin to Minsky’s 
Due to the relative anonymity of the internets, some participants in flame wars act like they have 12″ steel cocks.