Neither Forever Geek or its affiliates encourage violating gun laws and request that you use guns responsibly. If you happen to have a computer with Audacity on it, and a spare pistol or two, then you might want to give this experiment a try. The project will require you to be at a place where you can shoot guns safely, a metal target, a gun, a computer, tape measure, and Audacity. The bullet’s ringing impact on the metal plate is heard clearly and is discerned in the spectrogram by the persistence of audio peaks at certain frequencies as the ringing trails off. The other peaks in the spectrogram are echoes Read more »

Recently, a New Jersey student was awarded $117,500 in settlement money from a New Jersey school district. The school had punished him for creating a website on his personal computer that allowed other students to post comment in a “guest book” regarding the school. The school’s defense was that the student had posted anti-Semetic comments, but the student denied these accusations. The student and his family filed the lawsuit two years ago, with legal backing from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union). “While my parents and I are happy the case is resolved, most importantly, I’m hopeful this will help ensure that free speech rights of students aren’t trampled on Read more »

For the launch of the new XBox 360 gaming system, Microsoft is planning a large launch party in the California desert. The event will be a combination between E3 and Burning Man, and will take place on November 22. The VIPs at the event, will be given a game that is supposed to take place in an alternate reality called Hex168. It’s only because of all the dust, and the downside is only total equipment failure. Read more »

Apple is already planning maintenance updates for the next couple of months, leading up to the release of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in December of 2006. These updates will provide bug fixes throughout Mac OS X, as have previous 10.4.x updates. The first 10.4.4 seed will be released in the last week of November or the first week of December. In the past, Apple would release a minor update to it’s OS X operating system right before the Christmas break. This update is rumored to be released with the new Intel Macintoshes. Read more »

In the first half of the next year, Apple will release a Powerbook line that will include an iSight, and will be 20% – 25% thinner. In addition to that, Apple will release an iBook line next year that will have widescreen displays. Unfourtunately, Apple will only release the 15″ Powerbook first, a few months later, they will release a 17″ Powerbook, but the 12″ Powerbook is no longer part of the roadmap. The new Powerbooks will have iSights built in to the middle top of the screen. Apple is likely to release the 15″ Powerbook in January at MacWorld 2006. Maybe something like this. The only details so far Read more »

It looks like good comes to those who make things free. After Opera’s recent announcement that they would make their Opera browser free to use, they made a licensing deal with Thales, an in-flight entertainment company in France. Thales services Airbus and Boeing, and the broswer will allow airline passengers to navigate the Web, videos and games on a single screen. The system that will be using Opera, may not be ready until 2007. Thales selected the Opera browser because it supports multiple languages and can automatically reformat Web pages to fit the small screens typically used for in-flight systems, Opera said. Read more »

Bill Gates and Michael Dell are two of the richest people on the face of the planet. We all know them as leaders of the computer industry, but did you ever wonder what their home life is like? Well now you can get a glimpse of that. Bill Gates house costs more than $53 million dollars; the home and its accompanying structures cover some 66,000 square feet. Details on Michael Dell’s home or scarce, but I think you can tell my the pictures that it is worth a considerable amount of money. Read more »

I know that I have been posting a lot about Front Row lately, but I promise this is my last one. A reader, JW explained in the comments on another post, how to hide the Front Row icons from your dock. Here are the instructions: If you’ve already setup Front Row, you’ll have to redo the Launch Front Row script. Take this code: tell application “System Events” tell application “Front Row” to activate key code 53 using {command down} delay 0.0 key code 53 end tell and save it as an Application Bundle, not an Application in your /Applications folder. Go into your /Applications, control-click on the script’s icon in Read more »

NBC has announced that they will begin to place NBC Nightly News on the Internet for download. Not much information avaialble at this point, so I’ll just blockquote it. Past broadcasts will also be archived at the http://www.nightlynews.msnbc.com Web site, the network said. It’s not necessarily news on demand, though. The newscast, aired at 6:30 p.m. on many NBC stations on the East Coast, won’t be available on the Web until after 10 p.m. ET. “Many of our viewers tell me they often miss the broadcast because they’re not at home or tending to their busy lives and families,” anchor Brian Williams said. “This new service reflects the fact that Read more »

Yesterday, Apple upgraded Mac OS X to version 10.4.3. The update broke the script that opened Front Row and clicked the Escape button for you automatically. Whether or not this was done on purpose by Apple, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter because I have found a solution. This is the solution: Go into /Applications/AppleScript/ and open up Script Editor. In Script Editor, copy and paste this code: tell application “System Events” tell application “Front Row” to activate key code 53 using {command down} delay 0.0 key code 53 end tell Press File, Save As, and name it to Launch Front Row, in your Applications folder overwriting the previous Read more »