The Frustrated Bunny

Technology. Science. Politics. Geek. Etc.

Category: Technology

Politics / Technology

Why is Wikipedia blacked out? (A complete idiot’s guide)

Wikipedia (and other sites) are blacked out today to protest two bills in Congress, SOPA and PIPA. If passed, these laws could cause sites like Wikipedia, YouTube, Tumblr, and even Google to be blacked out FOREVER in the U.S. They want you to contact your senators and representatives and tell them to OPPOSE the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate. SOPA and PIPA could CENSOR the internet in America JUST LIKE it is censored in CHINA and IRAN.

Politics / Technology

Official list of organizations supporting SOPA: Call for boycott, Move Your Domain Day

This deserves its own post, and I promise I’ll have a more comprehensive post about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and why it’s a Bad Thing soon. Until then, have a look at this list of 142 organizations that are officially on record as supporting the bill. Some of the ones you may have heard of include ABC, CBS, Comcast/NBC/Universal, Disney, ESPN, GoDaddy.com, MPAA, NewsCorp, and several more. Several discussions on Reddit and around the internet have proposed boycotting the companies on the list. One specific proposal is Move Your Domain Day on December 29. On this day, if...

Technology

Google Reader sharing workaround

I don’t know a single person who isn’t at least a little upset over Google’s decision to remove Reader’s sharing capability. Sharing with and following friends, acquaintances, co-workers, fellow bloggers, etc. in Reader was, in my opinion, one of its best features. Jen McCreight has already outlined the biggest reasons why sharing is awesome and why it’s disappearance sucks, so I’ll just link to her post about that instead of repeating it. Now, there’s not much I can do about the excessive whitespace, although pressing ‘F’ toggles fullscreen mode, which collapses the sidebar and the black Google bar at the...

Personal / Politics / Technology

Gasoline prices redux

Back in June 2007, I wrote a blog post about gas prices. At the time, gas was $3.15/gallon. Gas is a little more expensive now (about $3.70-3.80 here in north Texas), but more or less everything I wrote then still holds true, with the possible exception of my really bad jokes. Nonetheless, I’m not planning on writing another post about gas prices until there’s something truly new and different about how everyone is reacting to it, but I felt that in light of the same old panic about $5/gallon gas and a decrease in demand for gas from the same...

Technology

My new netbook – Asus Eee PC 1215T: Initial impressions

I’ve been in the market for a new laptop for a little under a year, looking for a replacement for my growingly fragile Gateway laptop that I got in 2006. The Gateway served (and continues to serve) me well, but a fatal flaw in the design of the power jack and how it attaches (and tends to detach) from the motherboard, combined with a failing battery further drove my need for a replacement. Spec-wise, my Gateway is actually quite competitive with some of the higher-powered netbooks and subnotebooks on the market right now. It handles my occasional multitasking abuse very...