I am going to post a response I did on an African American History discussion board. I did not obtain an adequate response from my fellow classmates so I wanted to hear from my fellow bloggers! I am going to post the question given to us as a class and then my response. Tell me what you think! Oh and I’m including the link to the cartoon for those who have no idea what we are talking about! The link is
Question: What do you guys think about the racist cartoon in the New York Post, depicting the wild monkey that attacked the lady being shot by two cops saying that’s how you get rid of the person who created the Stimulus package? And what do you think about singer John Legend’s letter to the Post blasting it for being racist and insensitive? You can find a copy of the letter under Supplemental Readings (go under Course Documents to get there).
My Response:
I think the cartoon was pretty irresponsible of the New York Post to publish. The subject was obviously intended to offend others. I think that the guy should be fired that decided to draw this cartoon and the person in charge of publishing this paper should be questioned.
And I know I am going to go a little off topic but I hate how we often have a double standard in this country. We often judge others but some others can get away with “racist” comments. A perfect example would be of President Barack Obama. Within the last month he was on the Jay Leno show and was talking about a recent bowling game he participated in. He later states and I quote “It’s like the Special Olympics or something,” after he bowled a 129. That statement obviously was a racist comment against people with mental disabilities and or phyical disabilities. Except he’s the President and he does not get any mainstream spotlights on this ridiculous statement. My mother works with mentally handicapped people and I find this completely offensive because I know a lot of her patients.
Anyways what I am saying is that there is blatant racism all over the U.S. (including the ENTIRE world) and we often only focus on one group of people instead of all of the different races or minorities that are attacked. ALL RACISM IS BARBARIC. I am attaching a youtube video to his special olmypics comment and the story published online.
So why did I decide to jailbreak my iPod Touch? Just because I can! lol Lets just say that the only thing I have not hacked is my N95. My DVD Player, Apple TV, Nintendo DS, my old Sony Ericsson W710i, my old Samsung T10, and now my iPod Touch!
Now I hear that Apple is now declaring this jailbreaking process a violation of the EULA. Well I’d like to first say that I paid for my iPod and therefore I have the right to use it however I see fit. Otherwise lets say I bought a car and then Ford told me that I could only drive my car every other day and I could not drive in certain areas of the United States.
Another thing I’d like to say is I’ve paid Apple for the firmware upgrades as well as the Applications from iTunes. So my jailbreaking my iPod Touch has nothing to do with Apple’s profit. Even the music and videos have all been paid for. Give or take a few songs that I could not purchase because of the fact that their foreign artists that do not have a presence here in the States. And even then I try to buy every song that I can, because I feel as though supporting the artist is important.
So anyways back to the hacking my iPod. This was so simple that I believe a five year old child could successfully pull off this process. I found a great piece of software called quickpwn and then I was able to run it to jailbreak my iPod. Now there is another program you can download called quickfreedom. But I’ve read a lot of good stuff about quickpwn and it’s the one that I used myself.
So after you download quickpwn and a copy of the firmware you can begin the process. Run the application and it will go through a step by step process in jailbreaking your device. Really once you have the program installed the only effort on your part is holding down the home button and the power button when the software tells you to.
Now what are some of the benefits to jailbreaking your iPod? Well really I like the customization features you have available to jailbroken iPods. I have changed the icons and instead of a black consistent background I now have my wallpaper on the main screen. Also you can download apps that Apple have not blessed. One app that I would consider buying is a podcasting application. Now I now Apple added this functionality to the iPod now, but this will actually allow you to subscribe to your podcasts. Another advantage is I heard that the second gen iPod touches have bluetooth built-in and you can pair a stereo bluetooth headset to your iPod. You could even use it to make phone calls over a wifi network. Your iPod will still operate as it originally did, it will just have added functionality. All of your music, videos, applications, podcast or whatever will still work on your hacked iPod. Syncing with iTunes is also the same.
So I won’t link you all to quickpwn’s website but you will definitely find it if you google quickpwn. It should be the first link. Hope you all found this interesting and happy hacking!
P.S. Those were only several of the benefits to jailbreaking. It’s a very safe process and in fact if you don’t like it you can restore your iPod to it’s original state via iTunes. So since it’s so easy I’d at least say, try it out!
Those of you that have been following my tweets will already know that I recently bought what is called a “netbook”. A netbook is a laptop that is normally lighter in weight and smaller in size. I ordered from Best Buy the “MSI Wind U100″. After much research I found that this netbook was the right one for me. I absolutely love the idea of these tiny laptops because they express the idea that the laptop should be mobile. Some of these laptops can reach as big as 17 inches and who would ever want to carry around a pizza box size computer! lol Anyways there are several reasons why I decided to buy these particular netbook.
First off I’ve tested out several different sizes in the stores. Anywhere from 8 inches to 10 inches. It is nice to have a small laptop but the netbooks that were 8 and 9 inches I found extremely difficult to type on. Some of the Asus EEE PCs had these tiny keyboards and I found them not as productive as some others. But if you are buying a netbook for someone with smaller hands or perhaps a child then they might be compelling towards your cause. But for me I needed a decent size keyboard.
Second reason had to do also with the size. Obviously the smaller the netbook the smaller the screen is. Now thankfully God has blessed me with good eyes and I am young so my eye sight is better than some, but I still think 8 or 9 inches is sort of tiny for a screen. I want to preserve my good eye sight as long as possible. Also the smaller the screen the less productive you can be. Lets say if I wanted to have several applications opened at once then I would constantly have to switch windows. I like the option of staying mobile but maintaining screen real estate.
The MSI Wind U100 also had a decent amount of features that may not appeal to everyone but for enthusiasts I think it may spark your attention. First off with my Mac I have an iSight camera and since I will be traveling again this summer I decided my netbook had to have a built-in web-camera. The camera on this netbook is not as good as my iSight camera on the Mac but the price difference was quite noticeable. So after installing Skye on my MSI Wind I can now video chat with my family when I travel.
Another feature I was fond of was the fact that I could upgrade the memory (RAM) on this particular model. If you look around a lot of the netbooks only come with one gigabyte of RAM installed. Depending on the manufacture and model of your netbook, you might not even be able to add additional memory. The U100 allowed me to install up to two gigabytes of memory. I think this is important because it will add a more positive experience to using your netbook. *Also please note, not all MSI Netbooks allow you to upgrade the RAM, please make sure before you purchase it, if this is a feature you are interested in*.
The final reason I bought this MSI Wind is because driver wise (a driver is just a plug-in that allows the software to correspond with the physical devices in the computer) has the ability to run Windows 7 beta, Ubuntu, as well as Mac OS X! Being a Unix user I was quite excited about this. I will not show you how to get Mac OS X to run on your Wind but it is possible. Just Google what is called a Hackintosh. After a little tweaking you can have yourself a $300 Mac laptop. I have a Mac so I did not perform this attempt. *There are also some supposed legalities to attempting this process*. Anyways I have installed a new netbook distro of Ubuntu on my machine and it is running beautifully. My wifi, webcam, everything works with a fresh install of Jaunty Ubuntu 9. Those of you who are open source users will know what I am talking about. Anyways Ubuntu or Linux is faster than Windows XP (which is what came installed) or even Windows 7. I have been very impressed and I encourage everyone with this particular netbook to at least try it out. Ubuntu is absolutely free and is more reliable in some cases than Windows.
BoA is one of Asia’s renown female artists. BoA (보아) is also one of my favorite female artists. She started out as a Korean pop singer but ended up as a greater success in Japan. In fact a lot of her recent albums are all in Japanese. Her fame in Japan was so great that I originally thought she was Japanese. Anyways for the past several months Boa has been staying here in the US, attending private English lessons. Her goal was to improve her English and begin a music career here in the United States. Well looks like she is off to a bright start!
Boa had released her first English song in late October entitled “Eat You Up”. This was just a taste of her future CD. The beat is extremely catchy but it seems to be a little too secular for my taste. The song was such a hit that it was on the top 10 in iTunes under the Dance category for several weeks.
Well since I am a big Boa fan and supporter I bought her CD! I am quite impressed with her English and I am positive she will become a pretty well known singer her in the US as well. Her fame may not rise to that of like Britney Spears, but I still think she will do a great job here in the United States.
Anyways I really enjoyed ninety percent of all of the tracks of her first American album and I am looking forward to hearing future tracks from her. Her CD is a bit secular but luckily most of them are subtle and not as blatant as perhaps some other singers. The beat to most of the songs are fresh and as I stated before her English is outstanding for a non-native speaker. Her album is for sell on iTunes or Amazon. If you are looking for a hard copy of the album it may be a little more difficult to find. To my knowledge Best Buy was the only retailer here in Fayetteville that was selling her CD. I normally buy all of my music on either iTunes or Amazon’s MP3 store but I really wanted to buy this one as a CD.
Ok so I know everyone has a bloody iPod. Well ya! Including me but I also have my Samsung T10 MP3 Player. I will say it’s no iPod but I feel as though this is a very exceptional MP3 Player. Allow me to elaborate on my reasons.
Oh by the way. If you are planning on buying this MP3 Player you better hurry because I believe they are trying to fade it out. This could be a good thing or bad thing considering your look on things. Since they are trying to fade it out you can find it on Amazon for $80.
So some of the reasons why I really love my T10. First off it has a bluetooth module inside this device which means I can use my stereo bluetooth headset with it. This also means that I can pair it with other devices such as my phone and transfer files between my two devices. This is pretty handy to keep both of your devices synced or if you want to give a friend a song to listen to.
Another reason I like it is it shows up on my computer as an MTP device. This pretty much means that I don’t need to use the lousy software that came with the MP3 player. The Samsung software is absolutely terrible and I recommend not using it. Windows Media Player does a fine job of syncing both the audio and video to the T10.
Another thing that I like about transfering files to the T10 is that I can go into My Computer and see the T10 as a USB Removable Storage Device. Meaning I can organize the T10 myself in any fashion and manually delete files or add files to it.
The T10 also comes with an FM Radio. This is another feature that the iPods do not believe in. It all comes down to what Steve Jobs thinks is best for us all and he does not think we need a radio. The T10’s radio signal is very nice and it works from all around the world. It has a setting that will allow you to fine tune it for various other nations. It worked great when I was in Hong Kong and mainland China. I was able to listen to local talk radio
One of the last features I would like to share is the fact it supports multi-lingual songs. If you notice some MP3 Players or Mobile Phones do not have the fonts or Unicode in order to display foreign languages. For example my N95 only displays English, Spanish, or Portuguese metadata in the songs. To be more specific most Mobiles or MP3 Players can only display ASCII type languages, at least if you bought them in the U.S.A or any Western nation. Any Eastern languages only display as boxes. So like the iPod you can have foreign language songs and you are not required to translate them into English.
Well of course with all technological devices there are some cons. One that I already mentioned was the terrible software that they ship with it. But the work around is using Windows Media Player or manually transferring files via the Windows Explorer.
Since this is a MTP device there are some tricks you need to know in order to get it to work on Linux machines or Mac machines, but thanks to Google that was a very easy fix. Rhythmbox on Linux and XNJB for Macs. These are the specific software that utilise the Windows technology in order to speak to the T10. *Don’t worry I’ve tried both software and they work great.*
The most disappointing thing about the T10 is it’s battery life. Samsung claims 16 hours but it is more like 6-8 hours. The other negatives all had a work around except this battery issue. So this is probably the only major negative I have against the device. Well check out the T10 and I still love mine.
Hey everyone! I was getting ready for my Psychology class today and as I was getting ready I was listening to Bob and Sheri in the morning (national Radio show in the U.S and Canada)! Anyways they always try to have some amusing international news. Well I’m not sure their source of this information, but thanks to youtube I found the particular episode! I might suggest to Sheri via email for her to quote her resources. I’d like to post the link to this article.
A popular game show host named “Adela Lupse” in Romania displayed a temper tantrum on a live broadcast. It seems that her game show was not receiving any callers one evening and she went overboard. After not receiving any phone calls throughout most of her show she takes her phone and smashes it into the ground. As this is happening she is yelling in Romanian ‘God only knows what she was saying lol’. By the tone of voice she was using I do not believe it was a pleasant dialogue. Anyways Miss Lupse lost her job shortly after the show and cost the television studio a large fine. Another consequence to this woman’s bizarre behavior is the Romanian government has now changed the rating to this particular game show to an ‘X’ and has requested they change the airing time to after 10pm. This is to prevent minors watching violent acts on television. lol Anyways I find it extremely funny and here is the Youtube link. Enjoy
I saw this on Youtube and I just had to do a post about it. It’s amazing what this guy did with all of these gadgets. It’s probably one of the most expensive instruments I’ve seen also! lol Anyways I hope you enjoy!
Ok so my friend Steph has gotten me back into playing the Pokemon trading card game. lol! Yes it sounds lame but it’s actually pretty fun and I really like the fellowship and the challenge. It’s actually more popular than I figured. Here in Fayetteville at BAM (Books A Million) on Saturdays there is a tournament that goes on and usually about 30+ people show up. Anyways I thought it would be an interesting post if I posted my deck online. To see kind of an idea of how to build a deck, now I also would like to thank Stephanie for assisting me with building this deck. She really helped me a lot in thinking up strategies. So ok I hope this helps you all!
Energy Cards-
10- Physic Energy Cards, 4- Multi. Energy Cards, 1- Warp Energy, 1- Cyclone Energy, and 1- Call Energy.
Stadium Cards-
3- Crystal Beach and 1- Moonlight Stadium
So when building a deck you need 60 cards. It is best to either stick with one type of pokemon or two at max. In my first deck I chose to deal with all Physic type Pokemon. Also in building your deck it is at your best interest to try and level out the three main types of cards. 20 energy, 20 pokemon, and 20 supportor/trainer/stadium cards. I placed a lot of supporter cards in my deck that will help me find Basic pokemon because my deck it sort of limited in that sense. I don’t expect anyone to copy my deck card for card but to get some ideas or even suggest cards to be added or taken out! Thanks a bunch everyone and I hope you’ve enjoyed this entry! God bless : )
hey everyone! I was browsing one of my favorite websites called KBS World News the other day and found this really interesting audio stream they do. It’s called “K-Pop Connection”. The hosts are Chris and Sarah and they seem to be entertaining. I love K-Pop and just Korean music in general so if you have a chance check out this stream. They discuss the news that affects this interesting spectrum of Korean culture as well as play some requested K-Pop. The show only lasts for an half hour but it is broadcasted several times throughout the day. The one that I try to listen to is at 9:30am EST. Even though the content is great there is a draw back to listening to their show. I recently installed Ubuntu (a distro on Linux) on the only PC that I own. Well this audio stream contains DRM and is only playable on Windows. So I had to take an old XP Pro disk and install Windows in a Virtual environment. I think this is an extreme downside because the web is not bias against what kind of computer you own or where you are located. I think they should either offer an MP3 download of the show or stream their content in a format that is accessible by any computer. I mean the point of placing it on the web is for people to access it right? But anyways I really enjoy the show and I hope that you all will also! Check out Sarah’s blog at http://kpopsarah.blogspot.com/ and then you can actually listen to the show at http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/entertainment/enter_bbs_list.htm. Sarah doesn’t update her blog daily but you can check it out weekly. Anyways as Chris and Sarah say “Anyoung”!
I went exploring today since it was my day off. I went to Shatin and looked around. It was nice and my friend showed me a pretty park here 3 hours ago
there is a life size replica of Noah's Ark here in Hong Kong! I am definitely going to see that! 14 hours ago
long long day around Hong Kong. I've walked so much my feet hurt! lol I'd say 6-7 miles. And I'm doing a new blog entry tomorrow morning! :P 2 days ago
so i met a really cute hong kong girl at a starbucks around here. I am going to ask her out sometime lol I have a good feeling 2 days ago
and the cell internet is really expensive over here! you pay by the kilobyte! looks like no cellular internet... 2 days ago
Your iPod will still operate as it originally did, it will just have added functionality. All of your music, videos, applications, podcast or whatever will still work on your hacked iPod. Syncing with iTunes is also the same.
BoA is one of Asia’s renown female artists. BoA (보아) is also one of my favorite female artists. She started out as a Korean pop singer but ended up as a greater success in Japan. In fact a lot of her recent albums are all in Japanese. Her fame in Japan was so great that I originally thought she was Japanese. Anyways for the past several months Boa has been staying here in the US, attending private English lessons. Her goal was to improve her English and begin a music career here in the United States. Well looks like she is off to a bright start!