Okay, so I wasn't back to to even a semi-normal posting schedule this past week. I just don't feel like I've had much free time lately, and it definitely does suck. I don't know what's kept me busy, but I barely even had time to sit down and enjoy a few games of Unreal Tournament this past week. As always, I'm hoping to improve upon this in the coming weeks... as soon as finals are over, anyways.

News from the Net

Over at PR News Wire, they're running a story (along with a memo from AT&T) that AT&T is withdrawing from the Pay Phone business. In my lifetime, I've never used a pay phone, and I've only seen my parents use them twice. My parents have never used a pay phone after they got their cell phones. Seeing as how some people would rather put their money into their cell phones rather than some things essential for life (clothes, food, etc), I can understand why AT&T is beginning to find a lack of profit in the pay phone business.

Other companies may also follow suit in the near future. I can only see pay phones working in places like airports and possibly larger malls. Almost everyone has a cell phone these days, so why bother with pay phones?

The Inner Circle

Blackthir13n has another shorter entry about his new pad. Place looks pretty sweet and stylish (I love spiral staircases), and it really makes me wish I had a place of my own. Someday!

It must be something in the air, because Bob posted pictures of his and Ashley's new look for their office. They've got older pictures there of previous setups as well for comparison. The layout now, I must say, is much cleaner than anything they had previously.

Jim posted a short tidbit about Paypal's Linux Grid Computer. I have to say, it's surprisingly easy to add computers to a Linux Grid or Cluster, and it's nice to see larger companies such as Paypal supporting such actions.

That's it for this week. Check back tomorrow for something new (hopefully).

It's been two weeks since I last wrote a weekly profile, and I don't have a real excuse as to why I haven't updated that often. Yes, it was the holiday and I saw friends and other more often than usual, but I still had a lot of free time. I've been playing a good amount of Unreal Tournament 3 as well, but nothing too over the top. I wish I knew why I wasn't updating.

News from the Net

I've been hearing news of a new Seed Vault for the last year or two. Now, this feat of engineering is nearing completion. The general idea behind the seed vault is to safeguard seeds of various crops, flowers, and plants against the ever changing climate and political situations. It should operate much like a bank deposit box, where indiviudals or countries are able to purchase a box and depsit up to 500 seeds. Interesting idea, no?

Another idea going on out there (which I haven't been able to find) is a DNA bank very similar to the seed vault. DNA of most living organisms would be held in a similar facility, a heavy-armored bunker in a remote region of the planet to defend against any fallout (and hopefully glaciers and super volcanoes). It's another interesting idea of it's own, but what good will it be after a catostrophic event? Assuming most of the world is left uninhabitable, what good is being able to resurrect various creatures and plants? What if such knowledge is lost and it's stumbled into by humans or another intelligent life for millenia from now? It would be like our discoveries of various historical sites. It would be ransacked and DNA contaminated before there was any understanding as to what it was. So what good is that?

I don't know. I can see some purposes for both vaults, but will they survive their ultimate purposes: time and catastrophy?

The Inner Circle

Having switched to a Mac, I really did enjoy Colin's latest entry on Why Vista Sucks. Of course, I primarily use my Vista desktop at home, but mostly just for gaming. I've also got a Linux server/HTPC running in the background.

Bob, on the otherhand, tends to keep computer technology out of his blog. He focuses in on life and online marketing most of the time, and I hear it works out pretty well for him. His latest entry is all about BlogRush, and it's second phase. I use BlogRush on my site, but I don't see that many visitors coming from it. Hopefully future improvements, such as those Bob wrote about, bring me more visitors.

That's about it for this week's weekly profile. As always, I have plenty of content planned, but so little time to write it! Until next time!

It's been two weeks since I last wrote a Weekly Profile. Life's been pretty busy, and I've also been working on some other websites, BIOS_LEVEL included. The other websites will be revealed soon enough. Luckily, the lack of entries on this blog have given me time to get a lot accomplished, giving me some material to write about for the next few weeks... provided I have the time. Anyways, onward with the profile!

News from the Net

It took me a while to find something to write about for this week's profile. Sure, there's been a lot in the news, but how much affects me? Certainly not Google's Android. My new phone is a Palm, and Palm's already declined Android. After poking around for a bit, I remembered that Unreal Tournament was being released this week. What better to write about than the next version of my favorite game series?

I was introduced to the Unreal Tournament series by none of than Nick and Ty, shortly after Unreal Tournament 2003 came out. When our old LAN group, Anti-LAN hosted its first LAN Party, Unreal Tournament 2004 had just been released. Even outside of LAN Parties, many of us played multiplayer almost religiously against one another. Eventually, we got into playing other people online and found that as good as we were at killing each other, we sucked at killing others. We got better, especially at the Instagib (1-hit kills) gametype. To be completely honest, we're probably some of the best players you'll find online.

With the release of Unreal Tournament 3, we're aiming to keep that self-proclaimed statement true. Of course, this means some of use are going to have to upgrade our computers to be able to play it. There's some hefty requirements to play the game at a competitive level, such as a 2GHz CPU, 2GB of RAM, a fairly recent higher-end videocard, and more. I have all of these requirements, and I can play the demo fine. Ty, who's PC used to be top-of-the-line, becomes sluggish while trying to play the demo. We want to get him up to speed so we can still play together.

Edit: UT3 comes out next week, not this week.

The Inner Circle

As for friends this week, Colin has a great post about a new bill that entails some students losing financial aid of colleges don't regulate illegal downloads. Essentially, if the bill passes, you will lose any government financial aid you're currently receiving unless your institution lacks copyright prevention methods. If they don't blog things such as Limewire, Pandora, and the like, every student at the school will lose their aid. Pretty extreme, isn't it?

Jim has a great little article on the release (or atleast landing) of Google's Android. I'm all for Linux being in every little device we have, especially cell phones. A more open platform will allow for greater compatibility and functionality... hopefully without a higher price.

Lastly, Colin wrote a short article on BIOS_LEVEL about OLPC's Give One Get One program. If you participate, T-Mobile is giving free WiFi access out to donors for an entire year. If I had the money, I'd do it.

That's it for this week. Hopefully I'll have a fresh article for tomorrow.

It was a slow week for new content on my blog, but some of the entries were well worth it. I think the Inner Circle is always great content because it gives an idea of what the latest and greatest content is coming from my friends. Some of it is great content. Specifically, I think that if Phil went into more detail about the projects he's working on at the house he bought, that he'd gain a lot more attention. Regardless, it's always fun to watch people restore a house.

Another problem I seem to have run into is lapsing back into my addiction with Unreal Tournament 2004. It's such a fun game, especially when you're good at it. It seems as though that after I took about a month break from playing, I came back better than ever, outscoring most other people in the servers I play in. I hope I can keep this trend up with Unreal Tournament 3 whenever it's released.

News from the Net

I'm focusing on a new story this week, but rather looking at an important story from a week or two ago. The article comes from Jonathan Fields, who describes him self as "a giddy dad, husband, New Yorker, multi-time health & fitness industry entrepreneur, recovering S.E.C./mega-firm hedge-fund lawyer, slightly-warped, unusually-stretchy, spiritually-inclined, obsessed with creation, direct-response copywriter, small-biz and online marketing-maven, speaker, entrepreneur-coach, yoga-teacher, columnist, author, once-a-decade hook-rug savant and blogger…gone wild."

The article is all about top bloggers revealing how to build traffic off-blog without spending a dime. Not surprising, most of the "top bloggers" agree that the key to creating a great blog is creating connections. Other great ways to creating a great blog include becoming a power user on social networking sites such as Facebook, Digg, and MySpace. A final key way to create a great blog is writing great articles. If you're content is that great, someone is bound to find you and spread word about your site.

There's a few other great articles on his blog, and he seems to update about the same amount of times a week as I do. Most of the articles relate to finding success in your personal activities. It's not a bad way to go at all.

The Inner Circle

Our first story here today isn't actually on one of the blogs I link to, but rather the Ubuntu Forums. One of the many friends I've made online playing UT2004 was getting sick of depency issues on the AMD64 architecture in Ubuntu. Thusly, he wrote a for him. I can't remember the exact revision it's on, but it's grown a lot since the original incarnation he showed me a few months back.

Colin always has the posts that amuse me the most. I think it's just his writing style. Regardless, you can read on his short rant about the system resources required to properly defend against intrusions and spam mail on his VPS. Holy Bageezus, that's a lot of RAM. I don't think BIOS_LEVEL will fair very well if it ever gets Dugg.

Jim, as always, has a few more great stories of Linux adoption. This week's detailed Asian Governments become Spokespeople for Linux Adoption. As more and more Asian markets are gaining momentum, more and more are switching to Linux. From the article, "At the end of August, Red Hat’s revenue for the first six months of its fiscal year was US$246 million [m], up 34 percent from the previous year. About 85 percent of its revenue came from software subscriptions with the balance coming from services like consulting and training."

There's also a newcomer this week, blackthir13en. He's another local Pittsburgher, and I've been trying to create more relationships with Pittsburgh technology bloggers. He's got a little controversey going on about the TV show 24. Who's going to join the terrorists, and who's going to stay with the U.S.?

This is a supplement to this week's Weekly Profile. I ran out of time writing that entry, so I'm finishing it off here. The Inner Circle, as you may guess, is really just link love for my friends. Hopefully they've got some content that may be of interest to you.

Zack has a great a entry/rant about Digg and Stumbleupon. He complains that there are too many people trying to cash in on the whole blogging phenomenon, and that some just use him as a tool to get their stories to the front page of Digg. I'm guilty of this, too, but I feel a little different about the subject. That'll be a whole different entry, however.

Bob's been bogged down by all the reviews he's had to do for ThinkComputers. So bogged down in fact, that he didn't have time to write his weekly "The Net" entry in his blog. Shame. On a brighter note, he gets points for writing an entry with the topic of "Ahhhhhhhh!"

Finally, Phil has resumed writing in the blog he created about renovating the house he bought. He stopped updating the blog in about May, but regular updates are kind of back now. It's been interesting to watch his progress, and it almost makes me want to find some beat up $6,000 home to do the same to.

That concludes the entry and this week's Weekly Profile. Stay tuned for regular updates in a day or two.