Xbox 360 hack downloadable

Xboxic:

"They took their sweet time after the first announcement on March 18th, but finally someone has bothered releasing a redistributable version of the firmware hack allowing you to boot backups on your Xbox 360"

Yes, all you 360 gamers out there can now just borrow the games from your friends and burn them to a DVD+R/DL (if you have access to such a burner). The hack involves opening up your xbox case and plugging the data cable from the dvd drive into an SATA socket on your mobo. Then boot from a DOS floppy disk and run some software to reflash the drive's firmware chip. All-in-all its a straightforward modification, but its going to be too much for 99% of xbox owners out there.

Yahoo 2.0

Technology Review: Emerging Technologies and their Impact:

"For a year or more, a common buzzword uttered by Yahoo engineers and executives has been 'social media' -- the idea that one-to-many communication on the Web has given way to many-to-many communication, and that traffic and conversation naturally cluster around content, such as videos, photos, blog posts, and bookmarks. Examples of social media in action at Yahoo include My Web 2.0, where users can save, share, and tag Web pages they've visited; Yahoo 360, a free blogging and social networking service; and Flickr, which first popularized the concept of 'tagging,' or adding informal labels to content such as photos to facilitate searches later."

Allright, as a self-appointed prophet of the technoutopia I feel it a duty to try and push my friends into this improved technology. Specifically -- web 2.0 sites like flikr and blogger and social networking. So check out yahoo's new junk -- its pretty cool, and what it enables is sharing more of your life with friends and family (via photos on flickr, text on blogs, videos on youtube ...)

Modern Parenthood

Instapundit.com -:

"We keep hearing about declining birthrates, but raising a kid is far more expensive -- financially, emotionally, and in terms of time -- today than it was a few decades ago. As she occasionally notes, things that were considered adequate, or even examplary, parenting then are now considered abuse or neglect. In fact, when you look at how the burden of childrearing has increased, it seems amazing that we see as many people having children as we do.

Society would be a lot better off (emotionally and demographically) if it would cut parents more slack on this stuff, though as she notes, much of the pressure is the result of competitiveness among parents, particularly mothers."

I agree with this sentiment -- I've often wondered why now-a-days kids just have to have pre-school, soccer league, ballet lesson, music lessons, gymnastics, karate, as well as church involvement as a *bare minimum*. My father, for example, didn't benefit from any of these "enriching activities" and he turned out fine. In fact he probably spent his childhood playing in the forest, smoking cigarettes with his buds and reading comic books. All in all, we make parenting into more of chore than it should be, IMHO.

Fire Florida's Senators

Porkbusters:

"Listed below are Senators, grouped by how many times they voted to support one the three Coburn anti-pork amendments that have come to a vote: the CSX Railroad relocation in Mississippi (Coburn lost 47-50); the 'seafood promotion strategies package' (Coburn won 51-44), and the Northrup Grumman bailout (Coburn lost 48-51)."

OK, here's the deal (and I'm talking to Emily, Kevin Oneal,Lewis P, and Brian Perry especially) both of our state's senators are porkers -- if you check out the link they voted for the two pork projects that narrowly passed (the Mississippi highway boondoggle and the Northrup G bailout, costing us 1.2 Billion dollars together). So here is the link to email Martinez (I can't believe I voted for this SOB. I naively assumed that since he campaigned as a small-government republican that he would be, you know, for a smaller federal government). If watching the federal government piss away your tax dollars on pork projects upsets you, please write and let you voice be heard.

Seize Arab Oil by Force?

Instapundit.com:

"But just to troll a bit more, I do think that seizing Saudi and Iranian oil would be entirely morally justifiable on terms usually approved of by the left: They didn't earn it, they inherited it (it's like the Estate Tax writ large!). They're extracting huge profits for fatcats at the expense of the poor. They're racist, sexist, homophobic theocrats! (Literally!) Surely if it's ever permissible to redistibute wealth by force, this is the case. Right?"

Except american "liberals" try to target only white christians with wealth redistribution schemes, so that's why they'd be contra.

Catallarchy » The Road To Hell Was Paved With Bad Intentions

Catallarchy » The Road To Hell Was Paved With Bad Intentions:

"Like the Nazis, the Communists murdered tens of millions. But even today, few people hold both movements in equal contempt. Citizens of the West remain largely ignorant of the crimes of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. But even those who know what happened shy away from the thesis that the two movements were morally equivalent. Why is this?"

Good question.

Ethanol: A Tragedy in 3 Acts

businessweek:

"If there were ever a time when the truth in advertising standards should be put back into place, it's now -- during the current (third) attempt to convince the public that the massive use of corn-derived ethanol in our gasoline supply will alleviate our need for foreign oil. Ultimately, the answer to just one question determines ethanol's actual usefulness as a gasoline extender: 'If the government hadn't mandated this product, would it survive in a free market?'"

This article is a must-read if you're interested in our fuel situation. I've always believed that ethanol was a con foisted on us by mid-western farmers through our political process.