I am continually amazed at the lack of priorities in this country. May 1 is being heralded as 'a day without immigrants' or some such nonsense. The idea being that workers, students, whoever will refuse to go about their normal duties in protest of pending changes to immigration laws. It will supposedly be the largest nationwide protest since the Vietnam War. I've already complained about this once, but this is getting ridiculous. United States Citizens are DYING in Iraq for, at best, dubious reasons. Families are being denied their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters, the government is spying on us, the military leaders are allowing torture and holding prisoners without cause; but the country gets upset about allowing people to illegally cross the borders into the US. Oh but "they take the jobs that Americans don't want", maybe if stopped giving all the lazy Americans their fat welfare checks so they can sit on their butts they might want those jobs. But no... wouldn't want to actually work, or lift a finger to provide for ourselves. We prefer to do absolutely nothing at watch 80 channels of crap on our TVs. I have no sympathy. Get a job, yah, even one of those jobs that you're too good for. Cause if you can't get off your butt and earn your own keep, guess what, you're dragging the rest of this nation down. I'm tired of my tax money supporting you, get out. And bring our troops home.

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Well, one more semester is done with. I'm still trying to determine what happened to the month of March. Cause I'm pretty sure that we went straight from February to April (it feels like it anyway). I had my last final this morning at 7:00... Philosophy at 7 am; not cool... I'm still not quite awake... Spring term starts on Tuesday, so I don't get much down time here (I'm taking 1 class during Spring term).

My Goals for this summer:
1. Get a guitar
2. Learn to play the guitar (with Josh)
3. Write an Open Source Karaoke program
4. Find cool girl(s)


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Let's take a look around the world:
Belching Peru volcano sparks alarm
Case of bubonic plague confirmed in L.A.
Mumps outbreak worst in 20 years
Major quake jolts Russian Far East

Unusual events are becoming more common. And the church is spending millions of dollars renovating old structures to ensure that they are seismologically sound "in case" of an earthquake. If you're one to believe in things of the religious sort, then the time for the rapture is coming soon. There are a number of graphs and such that show the increasing violence of nature over the last 100 years. We, of course, find many scientific explanations as to why these things are happening. But if you're familiar with the Book of Revelations, you will realize that the signs are upon us..... are you ready?

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The ACM Code of Ethics contains a clause about respecting the privacy of others. It specifically mentions protecting the privacy of any personal data that a computing professional might be in charge of gathering, organizing, storing, or otherwise maintaining. Unfortunately this guideline does not seem to be in wide use in the industry. Companies are all too ready and willing to sell our personal information to a third party that will then send unsolicited advertising to us. But what if, when the industry was evolving, the system designers and programmers stood up to the companies and said that designing the system to make it easy for personal information to be collected and sold would be against their professional ethics? Perhaps our information would be safer, or would have been for a time. It seems there is always someone out there willing to sell their conscious for few extra bucks. There are times when it is necessary and appropriate for a company to obtain detailed personal information about its customers, specifically when buying something. But in most cases, it is not necessary; there is no reason to know my email address and phone number for me to read a newspaper article. We may not be able to stop what is already occurring, but we as programmers, and as the general public can let companies know that we don't want them collecting any more information on us.

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Wow, I must be moving up in the world. I got my first SpamBot comment today. An Online Casino Bot stumbled into my comment submission page for my Patent / Copyright Law entry. I've banned that IP address from posting again, and deleted the comment; but it did take like 2 years for that to happen.
..... so exciting.....

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Baush & Lomb is recalling ReNu with MoistureLoc Contact Lens Solution. The CDC has launched an investigation into the unusually high number of cases of Fusarium keratitis, which infects the cornea, and can lead to blindness.

I care about this, because I've been using ReNu for 4 months. Luckily I haven't worn my contacts much this semester, maybe 18 times or so.... So let anyone who wears contacts know, get rid of ReNu if they have it.

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Has anyone been paying any attention to this circus of a so-called trial of Zacarias Moussaoui? Yes, the man has admitted to being a member of the al Qaeda organization, he's probably not a very nice guy. But his trial has been a joke. The prosecuting attorneys have been using every psychological trick they can get their hands on to convince the jury to vote for the death penalty. Playing back tapes of the attacks that occured, the audio recordings of flight 93, news footage... anything that will illicit a response. These things really have nothing to do with whether Moussaoui is guilty of conspiring.

Conveniently Judge Leonie Brinkema redefined the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction" to include "airplanes used as missiles". With this new definition the United States should be invading every foreign country we don't like because they have airplanes that might be used as "Weapons of Mass Destruction". Assuming that anyone in the White House is still standing behind the lie that we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear and biological "WMDs".

And yet, our country goes crazy about changes to the immigration laws. Lie to us, drag us into a never-ending war for dubious reasons, allow our family members to die halfway around the world, place illegal wiretaps on U.S. citizens, torture and abuse prisoners of war (completely ignoring the Geneva Convention); possibly even stage the very attack that triggered this whole thing; but God, don't take away our wage slaves. This country won't function if we don't pay illegal aliens $3 an hour to slave away for the "American Dream". "They only take the jobs Americans don't want"; yah, we'd rather sit on our butts collecting Welfare watching our $20 a month cable TV, eating Fast Food, than get a job and become self-sufficient. Cause heck, even in prison we can sue the government for not providing the necessities of life, like Cable Television, and Air Conditioning...

Doesn't anyone care that most of this country has become such a cess pool as of late. To quote my brother, "well the thing to know about the US is that it is like two countries,
i am from the half that thinks we should not be invading other countries for the fun of it."

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Technology can be considered as the measure of the world's education. The accumulated knowledge that is at the disposal of anyone with the means and desire to use it. This information is neither good nor bad per se, the beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The moral quality of any inanimate object is simply a reflection of the person considering it. One might consider the first atomic bombs as terrible devices that killed thousands of people. Or one might consider the same to have been instrumental in preserving the lives of the thousands more that would have died in a full scale invasion of the Japanese islands. We need not be afraid of technology as it advances so rapidly around us. It has the power to perform great miracles, as well as great evils, depending solely upon the heart of those that wield it. We should concern ourselves more with educating and teaching those around us, such that they will harness technology for good, rather than worrying about what awe inspiring breakthroughs will occur that might be used for nefarious purposes. Technology is not the problem, it simply changes the nature of the problem that has existed for hundreds of years, namely people interacting with each other in peaceful and cooperative ways. The advances of the scientific community will not be slowing down, but perhaps, as a people, we can use these advances to build towards peace and overall well being.

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Disney is launching a new service that will tap into the required GPS coordinates tracking information on new cell phones. The target market being parents who want to be able to keep track of their kids, and call them at any time. I think this particular market has a lot of potential, if carefully balanced against the possibility of abuses of the system. It is a requirement that new cell phones keep track of their current GPS location based on information received from the cell towers. However, the owner of the phone can choose the level of availability of this information: none, emergency only, or all. In order for Disney's system to work these options would have to be disabled to prevent kids from simply turning it off. The real issue, though, is preventing unauthorized individuals from gaining access to the GPS information on other people's phones. The security of the system should be carefully scrutinized before being implemented. Unless I was sure of the security in a provable way, not just some 'guarantee', I wouldn't want to risk the danger to my children that could possibly occur. It is only too scary to think of the consequences of if the system were to be subject to any vulnerabilities. I hope these concerns are addressed by Disney before the launch date, and that parents demand the answers before signing up.

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So I've finished updating the layout of the site. I think it looks alot better now... Almost like I care or something... It was a strange 2 days that I've had this overwhelming urge to make this place better... Let me know what you think of the new layout. The picture at the top is from the San Diego Wild Animal Park. As for the new title "Kyle->GetThoughts();" that would be a programming reference, so if you don't get it, don't worry about it.

Don't forget to leave a comment telling me what you think of the layout!

Oh yeah, so I've had 3 hits from google by people searching for 'Kyle Britton'. One from Illinois (On AT&T), one from New Jersey (On Sprint DSL), and one from North Carolina (On Comcast Cable).

Just out of curiosity (if you happen to come back), who are you? And who are you looking for? Since I'm going to assume it's not me.

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So I've spent the last few hours changing the color scheme (as you may notice), I think it needs some tweaks, but I'm not sure what. I've also been fixing the code so that this website is now fully XHTML 1.0 Transitional compliant, as well as CSS compliant; as verified by W3C. You can find the little links in the side bar -->> to check for yourself.

It feels good being standards compliant.

Oh, and if it doesn't look right for you, may I suggest you use a real browser?

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