I remember, way back in 1982/83, when math was boring to me (I finished our assignments rather quickly), and my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Luther, was searching for something to keep me busy. She handed me a book on BASIC programming to use on the Commodore PET computers we had in the media center. I think we had the models 4016 and 4032.

A few weeks before this, or maybe the year prior, we were introduced to the PET computers and turtle tracks. Turtle tracks was a simple LOGO-L-based programming language. It taught us logic and directions at a very early age.

I remember using it in this fashion:

FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90
FORWARD 100
LEFT 90

Not only did we have a VERY EARLY lesson on programming in the 2nd or 3rd grade (and onwards), but computers were in a pioneering state and a fairly decent part of our education, for those times. We had exposure about once a week, and this raised interest in some households. I wouldn’t say a large percentage of homes had computers in 1982 or 1983, but I’d make a guess that about 15-20% of the homes had one. Those who had them were relegated to playing games on them, and a small percentage of them were using them to do things like “socially network” on bulletin board systems.

If you go back in time and investigate what these systems were, you could easily determine they were VERY EARLY social networks. Online services like CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL expanded on the BBS, and became the definite precursor to social networks of today, like: MySpace, Facebook, and Orkut.

Let’s wrap this up. I’m a proponent of making computer science, even elementary programming (coding) education mandatory. It will teach our youth, our leaders of tomorrow, our future champions of industry, that computers aren’t meant for just hanging out on Facebook, Google+, and playing games. It could actually help to bridge the gap between playing and using a computer.

Should Kids Learn to Code was the original article that led me to Andy Young’s article.

I ran across this great 3 page article at Tom’s Hardware. It goes into adding an SSD to an aged laptop that is still plenty healthy for most of today’s computing tasks…especially home computing tasks.

One of the biggest bottlenecks we face in our daily “computer lifing” is that of mechanical drives and their slow transfer rates. Why not add an SSD to spruce things up? Normally, adding an SSD to a laptop reduces its use-cases because we taken hard drive sizes like 320GB or 500GB and smush them down to 60-120GB. Well, we NEVER use our optical drives, so why not use that space for our original mechanical drive and make the main drive our shiny new SSD?

If I were considering updating an older laptop with an optical drive in a caddy (like most Dells I’ve seen), I’d highly consider this approach.

To do it, you go to your notifications page and click the “x” all the way to the right of the notification. From there you edit that app’s settings (even though you don’t even have that app) and choose “Never” for how it notifies you.

Here is the two step process on how to do this:

Here is a post they made that is up at PasteBin.com. I took a copy of it in case pastebin.com has to take it down. I’ve blocked out the names of Chris Dodd’s children, but it is there.

Twitter – @AnonymousWiki
January 19th, 2012

Popular file-sharing website megaupload.com gets shutdown by U.S Justice – FBI and charged its founder with violating piracy laws. Four Megaupload members were also arrested. The FBI released a press release on its website which you can view here:
http://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/justice-department-charges-leaders-of-megaupload-with-widespread-online-copyright-infringement

We Anonymous are launching our largest attack ever on government and music industry sites. Lulz. The FBI didn’t think they would get away with this did they? They should have expected us.

#OpMegaupload
The following sites were taken down in response to the FBI shutting down megaupload.com
:) TANGO DOWN
justice.gov
universalmusic.com
riaa.org
mpaa.org
copyright.gov
hadopi.fr
wmg.com
usdoj.gov
bmi.com
fbi.gov
Anti-piracy.be/nl/
ChrisDodd.com
Vivendi.fr
Whitehouse.gov

DOX of MPAA CEO Chris Dodd (original: http://pastebin.com/mvLYNdWB)

Name: Christopher John Dodd, Jr.
Birthdate: May 27, 1944
Age: 67
Religion: Roman Catholic
Party Affiliation: Democratic Party
High School: Georgetown Preparatory School, Bethesda, MD
University: BA English Literature, Providence College (1966)
Law School: JD, University of Louisville School of Law (1972)
Occupations: US Senator, Connecticut (1981-2011), US Congressman, Connecticut 2nd (1975-80)
Current Position: Motion Picture Association of America Chairman & CEO (2011-Present)

Wife: Jackie Marie Clegg Dodd
Age: 49
Religion: Mormon
High School: Orem High School, Orem, UT
University: BA Communications and Political Science, Southern Utah State College (1987)
University: MA National Security Studies, Georgetown University
Occupation: Clegg International Consultants LLC Managing Partner (2001-Present)

Children:  (10), (8)

Address 1:
8 7th Street Northeast, Washington, DC 20002-6022
Phone Number: (202) 548-6040
Property Value: $997,000 [http://bit.ly/A7wfpb]

Address 2:
53 Main Street, East Haddam, CT 06423-1305
Property Value: $453,400 [http://bit.ly/ynBXN0]

Motion Picture Association of America Corporate Offices:

Washington, D.C.
1600 Eye St., NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
Phone: (202) 293-1966
Fax: (202) 296-7410

Los Angeles
15301 Ventura Blvd., Building E
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403
Phone: (818) 995-6600
Fax: (818) 285-4403

New York
200 White Plains Road 1st Floor
Tarrytown, NY 10591
Phone: (914) 333-8892
Fax: (914) 333-7541

Chicago
1010 Lake St.
Suite 422
Oak Park, IL 60301
708-660-0481
Phone: (708) 660-0481
Fax:(708) 660-0484

Dallas
1425 Greenway Dr.
Suite 270
Irving, TX 75038
Phone: (972) 756-9078
Fax: (972) 756-9402

Sao Paulo, Brazil
Rua Jerônimo da Veiga, 45, Conj 121/122, 12º Floor
Jardim Europa, São Paulo, S.P
04536-000, Brazil
Phone: 011-55-11-3667-2080
Website: www.mpaal.org.br

Brussels, Belgium
Motion Picture Association
Brussels office
Avenue des Arts 46 box 8
B – 1000 Brussels
Phone: +32 2 778 27 11
Fax: +32 2 778 27 00/+32 2 778 27 50

Mexico City, Mexico
Lafontaine #42
Chapultepec Polanco
Mexico, 11560 DF
Phone: 011-5255 5280 6878/5281 6090

Singapore
#04-07 Central Mall
No. 1 Magazine Road
Singapore 059567
Phone: +65 6253 1033
Phone: +65 6255 1838
Website: www.mpa-i.org

Toronto, Canada
55 St. Clair Avenue, West
Suite 210
Toronto, ON M4V 2Y7
Phone: (416) 961-1888
Phone: (416) 968-1016
Website: www.mpa-canada.org

MPAA Email: ContactUs@mpaa.org

Other Contact Info:
Website: http://chrisdodd.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SenChrisDodd
Twitter: http://twitter.com/SenChrisDodd
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/SenChrisDodd
Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/SenChrisDodd
Miscellanous: http://www.peekyou.com/chris_dodd/229085828

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do not Forgive.
We do not Forget.
Expect Us.

@AnonymousWiki

All it took was a 93ms search and the result was Insync! Not only is Insync the solution I was looking for: A desktop folder that is synced with Google Docs, but it can do this with multiple Google Accounts!

Taken from their site, here is some info about Insync:

Why should I use Insync over Dropbox?

1. Way cheaper storage — Google charges $0.25 per GB/year and Dropbox charges $2.00 per GB/year. That’s 8x difference. Plus you can get 20GB for $5/year.
2. Extensive sharing features…
   • read/write + read-only sharing permissions
   • nested sharing
   • share recipients are not charged against their storage quota
   • re-sharing permissions
   • individual file sharing
3. Multiple Google account support (personal, work, school, org, etc.)
4. You can use Google Docs web to edit docs online

Insync is 100% free. How do you make money?

We plan on making money via premium features. Example: secure remote wipe of local GDocs.

What does “Perform these operations when I’m not using the application” mean?

It just means that if you are offline, Insync still has access to your GDocs to perform operations. It doesn’t mean Insync has forever access. By the way, you can revoke access to Insync at any time using your Google accounts page.

Why does Insync need access to my Google contacts?

We use your contacts to faciliate auto-completion when you are sharing.

What’s Insync’s favorite song?

That’s a no brainer.

Google

WordPress

Watch this for more information:

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

More information is here: SOPA Strike.

First attempt at opening one of my MKV folders was a success. Let’s hope this persists. Thanks NirSoft!

Nevertheless, I butchered my profile on the machine, at which point, Postbox wouldn’t even LAUNCH, saying that Postbox was already running. It seems that you shouldn’t go into your AppData/Roaming folder and delete your profile folder. Rather, you should use the Profile Manager to make these changes. So, I went into Postbox’s Profile Manager (same as Thunderbird) and deleted the default profile and created a new one. Right after that, Postbox didn’t complain about running already and all was well in the world of Peter’s e-mail.

Vic-20

I had this computer in the 3rd grade, for about a month. We got sick of it quickly and got a Commodore 64 instead.

Commodore 64

This computer was the base of my entire existence, damn-near, from 1983 – 1986 or 1987, when I got the Amiga 500. I got the Amiga in 7th grade or 8th grade. I know it was at least 7th grade, as it came out in 1987, which ended 7th grade for me. I remember selling people in Jr. High Commodore 64 games, so I must have still had the C64 at least in 7th grade. Anyway, I had my own phone line when I was 9 or 10 years old and ran the Snakepit/Snakepyt BBS and went by the handle Diamond Back. I had the grandest time during this pioneering era of home computing. I repeat, GRAND and PIONEERING at the same time.

Commodore Amiga 500

Can we say “game changer” here? Amazing computer. Amazing possibilities. True multitasking operating system. Separate chips for Audio, Video, and I think memory controlling. Even swapped out the Motorola 68000 for a 68010 for a slight bump in performance. I remember buying the Commodore A590 hard drive for this thing. About $1000 and came with a 52MB Quantum SCSI hard drive. I can’t believe I spent this kind of money. I also spent about $500 on a US Robotics Couriest HST modem that got around 14000 baud when connected to another Courier HST modem. Man, those were the days. I could go on and on about this. The people I hung out with. The activities I thought about doing, day in, and day out.

Here are the steps I took (mostly in this order):

1) Signed up for a Google Voice account, got a number to use in the 586 area code.
2) Bought an ObiTalk 110 from Amazon.com for $50.
3) Bought an AT&T GoPhone from Best Buy last week for $5, on sale from $10.
4) Bought a $15 card from 7-Eleven as the phone needs to have minutes on it to be able to be truly active and forward calls temporarily to my Google Voice Account.
5) Configured ObiTalk 110 to connect to my Google Voice account.
6) Unplugged phones from Comcast modem and plugged them into ObiTalk 110.
7) Initiated a number porting of my home number to AT&T (on the Go Phone).
8) A few days later, the port was complete and my Go Phone had my home phone number.
9) I enabled call forwarding on the Go Phone to ring my Google Voice number (which is tied into my home phones).
10) I initiated a number porting from AT&T > Google Voice. Google only ports from mobile numbers.
11) 24 hours later, Google Voice has my home phone number.
12) I called Comcast to verify my phone service was canceled, and it was, automagically via the number porting that occurred with AT&T.
13) Asked Comcast to give me a good rate on Double Play (from Triple Play). My new rate is $35/mo. less.
14) Investment: ObiTalk 110, $50. Go Phone: $5. Minutes: $15. Number porting: $20. TOTAL: $90. 12 month savings is $420. Not a bad deal here, and, I have a “burn” phone I can use once I get it a new number. ;)

In my research, I found this great review over at michigantelephoneblog.com: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4. Part 3 covers how to get 911 service, which you don’t get with Google Voice. That’ll be my next step in this process, more like an addendum.

And here’s another article about using ObiTalk 110 and Google Voice.