Light-speed High School

Well, I'm starting to figure out why tabloids make so much money. Let me recap my last story for you.

On Sunday, at around 9:30 PM EST, a post was made on the "infamous" /b/ thread on 4chan, telling people to search up "Justin Bieber syphilis". With the popularity of the /b/ board, and the extreme hatred some people feel towards Justin Bieber, the board managed to get the search term up to #1 on Google Trends (although you won't be able to find it now). So, I stumble on this 2 hours later, and find rumors that CNN, FOX News, ebaumsworld and TMZ, among others, have reported this as true. While I didn't find any mention on TMZ.com or ebaumsworld, it's possible that a TV segment speculating the rumor came up on CNN and FOX.

Now, both Bieber-haters and -lovers were in an uproar. At least 40 questions on Yahoo! Answers were started within an hour of my discovery. Vast amounts of blog posts were made. And the number of visitors on this site doubled in less than an hour.

That's the power of the internet. Now that we've got information going at close to the speed of light over the Internet, it takes that much quicker for rumors to spread. Think of your average high school on Red Bull, speed, and steroids at the same time.

So I guess it'll be a return to tech news for me, now that my "15 minutes of fame" is done. Not that E3 is this week or anything...

The influence of 4chan

Wow. Just, wow.

So, I went onto 4chan for the first time in ever, pushed there by a TED talk from Christopher Poole, when suddenly, I stumbled along this:

So, I decided to do the search, just for sh*ts and giggles, and I find this:

I don't believe it. 4chan has managed to con CNN into thinking Justin Bieber's got syphilis. In less than 2 hours. Read down on that page and you'll see that Fox News has reported the same story (I'm assuming a bit here).

Wow. Good on ya, 4chan. Is it ironic that the talk I was watching had to do with the whole influence of 4chan deal?

UPDATE 11:33 PM EST: I just figured out that the certain thread on 4chan has just been deleted.

UPDATE 12:25 AM EST: Well, as far as I know, I'm the only one who confirmed this. There might be others, but they aren't high enough on google. Neither am I, I guess, if nobody else has commented on it. Just one last time before I go to bed: Justin Bieber does not have syphilis. I repeat, Justin Bieber does not have syphilis.

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ROCK BAND 3

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!!!!!

Rock Band 3.

Did I mention OMG?

It seems weird that, even though I'm basically flat broke, I can still get excited over new games, rare as it may be. But Rock Band 3 is definitely getting me excited.

For one, there's the pro mode. I'm a great Rock Band drummer, if you haven't noticed. I've also been messing around with the drums that we have in the band room at school, and I'm getting pretty good at those too. Pro mode for drums seems like a challenge that I'm willing to take up. Also, as a musician, I can see pro mode as a way to get people to actually learn how hard it is to play the actual guitar, or the actual keyboard. It isn't as easy as it looks. The option of having pro mode on helps the game keep its "party game" feel, while appealing to those hardcore, need-to-get-100%-on-Dragonforce players.

The vocal harmonies is a great addition, too. I loved this part in The Beatles: Rock Band, although I didn't get much of a chance to try it out. This was mostly because all of my friends hate the Beatles. Applying the three-part vocals to a wider variety of songs not only will appeal to more players (Flight of the Conchords, anybody?), but gives the crew at Harmonix more of a library to work with, while letting more people actually play the game. Seriously, after Rock Band 3, you're gonna have to work hard to get more people on one console.

Now, I'm a piano player. Naturally, when I listen to Baba O'Riley or Bohemian Rhapsody, I play along with the keyboard/piano solo. While I'm still neutral about the addition of keyboards, it has potential.

One of the things I have to give Guitar Hero credit for (after Harmonix got axed) was the ability to drop in and out of songs in the middle of the song seamlessly (well, that and having any combination of instruments). I like seeing that Harmonix has incorporated this into Rock Band 3 (which I feel is justified - hypocritically on my part - since Activision ripped off Harmonix here), which keeps it pretty laid-back.

Not that there aren't any flaws in this game. One concerns the addition of the keyboards. Now, whenever I get together with 3 friends and play 4-player Rock Band, I find it pretty hard to see my part. Of course, I could get a bigger TV, but I still need to get a job. Another instrument added in there would only make it more cramped and harder to see.

My other main concern is going to be the price tag. When Rock Band 1 came out, it cost me $200 for a guitar, drums and mic. With Rock Band 3, you're adding the Pro guitar, cymbals for the drums, and a keyboard. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole set came out to $300, maybe $350.

Since I'm going to be living in residence next year, this is pretty exciting for me. When 7 people can play music at one time, you've got almost the ultimate party game. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna look for a job so I can buy this.

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Finally!

It looks like SpaceX has finally launched their Falcon 9 rocket. It also looks like it went off almost perfectly. Congratulations, SpaceX.

This launch opens up many possibilities. For one, the cost per launch of a Falcon 9 rocket is around $50 million, about 15% of that of the Space Shuttle. Also, it takes the space business further away from the government, which is more interested in other pursuits. Commercial space is really where it's going to be at, the way that airplanes were last century.

However, there's still some other stuff that has me worried about commercial spaceflight. First of all, it seems to be getting off to a slow start. The Falcon 9 was delayed by over half a year before it finally got off the ground. Commercial spaceflight has been crawling along since it first started. The first person in space from commercial spaceflight was about 7 years ago (I think). It took the US government 8 years between the first orbital spaceflight and the moon landing. Meanwhile, commercial spaceflight has seemingly gone backwards. While there are numerous projects in development, there hasn't been a real breakthrough in a while. Which could be said about the entire field, I suppose.

Second of all, there's the enormous work involved with launching people into space. The Wright Brothers were able to fly largely on their own financial and intellectual steam. They were bicycle shop owners. The founder of SpaceX, Elon Musk, also founded PayPal, which was sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. He was able to employ professional engineers and scientists to get the Falcon 9 off the ground. The Wright Brothers didn't even build the engine used in their plane. They just made it aerodynamic. I don't see anybody selling rocket engines on the corner.

That doesn't mean that it's all expensive. There has been a few successful attempts to get pictures of space with just a balloon, a camera and a cellphone. I highly recommend that you try it. It would make for a great summer project.

I'm still pretty excited for the coming expansion of commercial spaceflight, if it ever does get here. For now, however, I'm gonna keep a lookout for stray rocket engines.

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The Library

I went to the library downtown a few days ago to kill time by surfing the web. I noticed, however, that every site I visited wanted me to upgrade the browser.

Which is when I figured out that the library still has Internet Explorer 6.

Kill me now.

Nothing really worked. Wikipedia was 10x the size it should have been, Twitter's layout was all wonky, and I couldn't even get into Facebook.

They had Firefox there too, but it wasn't really an improvement. The version of Firefox they run is as old as IE6.

A little investigation revealed that the library hadn't updated their software in almost five years. Their copy of Microsoft Office was from 2002, the messenger service was MSN messenger (not Windows Live Messenger), and they even had the very first version of Google Earth (the newest software they had, being released in June 2005).

Now, think about all that's happened in those 5 years. Five years ago, the NHL lockout had just ended. In the last 5 years, the Who released their last album. Katrina hit. Dumbledore died on page 596. 2007. Obama got elected (C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER). And I wrote about how the library has no sense of technology (you're damn right it's a sense).

You know, I shouldn't be surprised. Every single person who works at the library is a middle-aged woman. I wouldn't imagine that they would have the inclination, not to mention the knowledge (no offense, but they're librarians) to upgrade their software.

In the meantime, I'll go home if I want to get on the internet.

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