California’s New DUI Law

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed in a law on Sunday in hopes to provide safer driving conditions on the roads in California. The new law requires that some people with multiple DUI offenses are required to have a breathalyzer installed in their car. When they go to drive it, they have to blow into the breathalyzer, if the number blown is too high above the legal limit to drive, the car won’t start.

This is a great idea, however there are many flaws to it, it seems to me like it may just end up wasting money. First of all, anyone in your car can blow into it, therefore you can be drunk and have a sober friend or child blow into it, which will tell the car to start.

Second of all, this would be good in EVERY car, even non-offenders. If you want ultimate protection on the roads, this is the way to do it.

The Cleveland Show

I am a huge fan of Family Guy, and put a lot of trust behind all of its writers/voice actors, but I think this show is getting off to a slow start.

I decided to watch episode 2 tonight on Hulu, but I can’t make it through it, other things are distracting me (such as 30 Rock), and I just can’t do it.

Listen, I really want to enjoy The Cleveland Show (two doses of Family Guy-esque comedy in one night would be awesome), but you guys definitely need to add more random quirkiness to the show. The only person worth even watching so far is Cleveland, which is not enough for a show to live on.

Please, make the other characters more interesting or funny, if not for the sake of keeping your own show alive. You could always return to Family Guy, you were funny there.

My Internet Speed…

So, for some reason, my Internet speed is CRAWLING. Like, slower than dial-up crawling. This is not making any sense at all, if I wanted Internet this slow, I would just use the school’s. I’m trying to get in contact with a Charter rep now to see if they are having any problems on their end, but these speeds are absolutely ridiculous.

Conversions are terrible.

So, I don’t mind converting between binary, octal, hex, or decimal. That stuff is extremely basic and stupid easy once you learn binary, what I can’t stand is converting from decimal to either binary, octal, or hex. Basically, it works kind of like this:

Convert 3,489₁₀ to octal₈.

3489/8 = 436 r. 1
436/8 = 54 r. 4
54/8 = 6 r. 6
6/8 = 0 r. 6

The answer is: 6641₈.

Now, I don’t know if you recall remainders, the last thing I remember is that they were not used (which is when fractions were introduced to us). Having to go back to that for this stuff was so hard for me to do, I have no idea why.

But, on a positive note, I blew up a circuit board in my last digital logic lab!

The Impossible Homework Assignment

Alright, so, I am pretty diligent with my homework, and I usually get all of it done. Well, now I am faced with a WTF of a homework assignment.

Here’s what it involves:

I have to write two pages describing a single, inanimate object.

WTF?!

I, personally, do not have the patience or the creativity to write two pages describing any one object, I just can’t do it. I mean, I can describe things, but that’s like an entire product in two paragraphs. I just don’t know what to do at all… AT ALL!!!

This is absolutely terrible.

Obama wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

United States President Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his initiative to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the Muslim world and stress diplomacy and cooperation rather than unilateralism.

People are arguing that he has not deserved this award, as he is still overseeing the war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the fact that he has launched deadly counter-terrorism strikes in Pakistan and Somalia. Aagot Valle, a lawmaker for the Socialist Left party who joined the committee this year, commented, “And I hope it will be an inspiration for all those that work with nuclear disarmament and disarmament.”

What are your views on this stunning act? Do you think he deserved it or was this merely a fraudulent attempt to boost his Presidency and his goals?

(Information from here)

NASA bombed the moon.

So, if you haven’t heard, or live under a rock, NASA bombed the moon early this morning. They launched the LCROSS on June 18, with a mission to bomb the moon. It carried with it a Centaur missle, which is what they used as the first impact. The missle hit the moon shortly after 4:31 A.M. traveling at a speed of more than 1.5 miles per second. Around for minutes after the rocket impacted the moon, the LCROSS itself impacted the moon.

During the four minutes before impact, the LCROSS gathered what the scientists are saying to be, “a wealth of data,” that they will use to learn more about our closest celestial body. The goal of this mission was to try and determine if there is any frozen water on the moon.

The two items impacted in the Cabeus crater, which is an area of the moon that never sees any sunlight. If the returned data shows there to be water frozen, then not only will we gain a better understanding of other celestial bodies, but we will also be able to begin plans for a moon base, which will allow us a closer look into the mysteries of the universe, as well as provide us with better surveillance of Earth.

Slashing at UCLA.

So, in an awesome way to make UCLA look good, there has already been a brutal attack on campus. During one of the chemistry classes, Damon D. Thompson stabbed and slit the throat of one of his female classmates. Suspects state that there was some bickering between the two, and it looked as though he was just punching her until she was on the floor with blood coming out of her neck. She is in the Ronald Reagan Medical Center in serious condition and he is in custody.

So, as someone who originally wanted to go to UCLA before choosing OIT as my school of choice, I cannot believe this. It is honestly, extremely hard to even fathom that happening, especially if it was a classmate that I knew. What kind of bickering could be SO bad that you just start stabbing the opponent? I suppose the “permissions to stab” in L.A. may be different than they are anywhere else in the world, but I honestly have no clue.

I hope that the victim makes it through, and that Damon gets severely punished for his actions.

Bandwidth Limits

Ok, I have one question for everyone out there. When attending a TECHNICAL institute, why have a bandwidth limit for everyone? I mean, I can understand that they want to limit downloads, maybe it is because OIT is a “green” school, I honestly have no idea right now.

I have personally ordered a dedicated Charter line, so I have fast Internet and no (or a really high) bandwidth limit. My friend, however, has already went over his bandwidth limit, which is only 5GB a week! For any kind of programmer, gamer, or general computer use, that is nothing at all. Also, not only is that ridiculously low, the consequences for going over that is severe.

This is a heads up to anyone who may be coming to OIT, look into getting Charter, you will have faster speeds and you won’t have to worry about the 5GB/week bandwidth limit. Oh, did I mention that is uploading and downloading bandwidth?

It’s super nice.

Binary, Octal, Hex, what?

Binary

So, one of the keys to my Digital Logic class is learning to count in different number systems. Thank God it is coming as a second nature to me. Binary is probably my favorite, because it makes the most sense to me. Also, counting in it is quite fun. For example, here’s how you count to 10 in 4-bit Binary:

0000 (0)
0001 (1)
0010 (2)
0011 (3)
0100 (4)
0101 (5)
0110 (6)
0111 (7)
1000 (8)
1001 (9)
1010 (10)

Pretty basic stuff.

Octal

Alright, so octal is also pretty easy, but it is really stupid how it works, and I am not entirely sure why someone thought it would be a good idea to make this number system. The way it works is you start counting on 0, and you count up to 7, that’s it. There is no 8 and beyond for that, which is beyond stupid. Here’s how to count to 10 in octal:

1   (1)
2   (2)
3   (3)
4   (4)
5   (5)
6   (6)
7   (7)
10 (8)
11 (9)
12 (10)

WTB efficiency, kthxbai.

Hex

I LOVE counting in hex, it’s awesome. Basically, unlike our puny decimal counting system that only gives us 10 numbers (0 - 9), hex gives us 15! That’s amazing! Well, it also varies it up a bit by throwing the alphabet in there (A-F). Let me go ahead and show you 1-15 in hex (it goes to 15, so I want to show you all of the characters):

1 (1)
2 (2)
3 (3)
4 (4)
5 (5)
6 (6)
7 (7)
8 (8)
9 (9)
A (10)
B (11)
C (12)
D (13)
E (14)
F (15)

And that’s that! Pretty cool stuff, isn’t it?

Well, that’s a little update on how some of the numerical systems work that our computers use. I may be discussing some more electrical logic stuff as well as programming in the future, so stay tuned.