More on AAC+

This site goes into a litle more detail about the coding technology.

A few cool things

I've been neglecting the blog recently -- I've been extremely busy with work and life -- but I have some cool things to mention:

AAC+: Dolby's new sound format, which is part of the MPEG4 standard, gives really good sound at bitrates as low as 24 kbps. Don't believe me? Try Tuner2 and find out for yourself. I think you need Winamp 5.05 or above to use the format

Star Wars Republic Commando: The game demo is out. I liked it.

Lifehacker: This Web site explains how to do lots of techie and non-techie things. Pretty nifty.

Picasa 2: The new version of Google's photo-management software is out. It's free, and makes managing photos easier than it is on the Mac.

More of thiose red state family values

Police: Girl died after mother forced her to drink bleach - Jan 14, 2005

"A woman angry with her 12-year-old daughter for having sex forced the girl to drink bleach and sat on her until the child died, a police detective said.

The girl's 9-year-old brother was forced to watch the attack, Detective Warren Cotton testified Thursday in a preliminary hearing for Tunisia Archie, 31."

Mission accomplished

Iraq a new terror breeding ground

Another brilliant success from the man we re-elected to keep us safe.

Bush and the evildoers agree on something

MSNBC - Militants warn Iraqis not to vote on Jan. 30: "The radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other insurgent groups issued a statement Thursday warning that democracy was un-Islamic. Democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority or people agreed to it, the statement said."

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

This story (reg required) is an interesting example of how the blogs and journalism mix. I was impressed with the amount of research that went into this story until I got to the jump and realized that hobbyist Bloggers had done much of the work.

In this case, it works -- a reporter can't be everywhere at once and has only so much time to work on the story. The more participants, the better.

I've finally made the switch

I've made Mozilla Firefoxl my default browser after open source developers finally got Yahoo toolbar working decently on it. The browser is fast and offers lots of cool plug-ins, like weather checkers, RSS readers and tons of navigation aids. It's also supposed to be a lot safer than Internet Explorer, though XP SP2 may have closed that gap.

Unless Microsoft acts quickly, Firefox could quickly reach a critical mass and steal serious market share. Not that they get any money off of the browser anyway.

Why the news media should be a bit more skeptical of "authority figures"

From the Los Angeles Times:PR Meets Psy-Ops in War on Terror

"Officials at the Pentagon and other U.S. national security agencies said the CNN incident was not an isolated feint — the type used throughout history by armies to deceive their enemies — but part of a broad effort underway within the Bush administration to use information to its advantage in the war on terrorism."

One of life's great mysteries...solved!

A Microsoftie explains one of the things that, even after all these years, I still never really understood about Windows -- until today, that is:

Will dragging a file result in a move or a copy?

- If Ctrl+Shift are held down, then the operation creates a shortcut.
- If Shift is held down, then the operation is a move.
- If Ctrl is held down, then the operation is a copy.
- If no modifiers are held down and the source and destination are on the same drive, then the operation is a move.
- If no modifiers are held down and the source and destination are on different drives, then the operation is a copy.

Call me stupid, but this behavior, part of Windows since 1989, was news to me.

Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich

This just about sums it up.

Bush says voters set direction for next four years

Some mandate. The guy's talking like he won in a landslide. At least he's being honest about his plans to give more tax breaks to the rich (make no mistake: "simplifying" the tax code is another way of saying "flat tax") and gutting Social Security by tunneling some of the money to "private accounts" and eventually phasing out the government subsidy altogether. If you don't think that's going to happen, just take a look at the record deficit.

FOXNews.com - You Decide 2004

Bush just took Ohio. It's over.

Bush takes Colo., Ohio leanign Bush

If these numbers bear out, Bush has this wrapped up.

Bush takes Florida

This doesn't look good.

Blue Light Alert

From today's New York Times:

"In its final form, their project may be viewed as the Homeland Security Department's worst nightmare: a road map enabling all sorts of undesirables to penetrate a nation's borders, banking systems, supermarket loyalty clubs."

I seriously doubt that government officials are worried about someone stealing my Safeway discounts.

The Bush recovery continues!

Job-cut plans soar to 8-month high

Something to think about tonight during the VP debate.

Kerry wins!

That's what we're hearing from the undecided panels at NBC, CBS and ABC. Something tells me the Fox News poll will look a little different.

It's all about momentum, baby!

The debate, part II

Wow, all six of the undecided Ohio voters on NBC's post-debate panel sound like they're leaning toward Kerry now.

Awesome!

The debate

Did Bush do as badly as I think he did? He looked like a guy who forgot to study for his final oral exam.

Users say Microsoft's Money is broke

It's true.

I have to echo the sentiment. While I'm not having the same bill-payment problem with the 2005 upgrade, there are lots of other irritating bugs that put me on the verge of going back to the previous version:

- After it resurrected old bills on the automatic scheduler, I had to completely re-do my scheduled bills and entire budget.

- I disconnected my accounts from online banking. When I went to re-connect them, it imported the banking info as new accounts, minus any info on pending bills.

- Online updates are erratic and confusing. When I try to manually sync my accounts it gives me an error stating that I can't -- because it's in the middle of an update!

- A change in the categories messed up the budget I had created, making "food" a seperate catagory, rather than the parent category, for "groceries" and "dining out."

These aren't huge problems, but 2005 doesn't really offer any real improvements over 2004, either. I liked earlier versions of Money, and I usually like having the latest and greatest software. But I have to recommend against this upgrade.