msft

Revenue from Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, boosted by the success of the Kinect sensor and associated Xbox 360 consoles, grew by 55 percent from a year ago.

I have to say Microsoft has been pretty awesome as of recently. Ever since windows 7 they've been doing stuff right. Working with the people who jailbroke their new phone, Microsoft Security Essentials, the Kinect, then not trying to shut down the open source drivers for it, Windows 7 as a whole. The list goes on.

Despite an industry-wide 8 percent drop in video-gaming sales last month, sales of Microsoft's Xbox 360 rose 37 percent year over year, according to new NPD Group numbers.

how to control people

There are two ways to take control of others. Huxley and Orwell. Two methods in which a distopian future can happen / is already happening.

Orwell. As in George Orwell. Author of the book "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
In this, life is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control.
The perpetual war keeps people busy producing things for the war. Keeping them busy means no time to think about things like freedom and free though. Government surveillance via telescreen (transceiving television) in every room. If you try anything you'll be disappered. Mind control by controlling and removing words from the language. Words like freedom, rebellion, privacy. If you can't name it then you don't know whats missing.

They don't know the truth because they can't get the truth.

The other way is Huxley. As in Aldous Huxley. Author of the book "Brave New World".
All citizens are conditioned from birth to value consumption. People take a drug called 'soma' to get comfort when stressed for example. Sex is encouraged at an early age for fun and as a social activity rather than to start a family. Things like marriage, natural birth, parenthood, and pregnancy - heck even family, don't exist in this world. No family, no mourning in case of death. If something bad were to happen then to solution is always more soma. Everything is all happy.

They don't know the truth because they don't care about the truth.




Pic related: http://fatpita.net/?i=1952

Democracy2

How and why do people get democracy? Usually they have to fight for it. But they have to think for it first.

At around the beginning of the industrial revolution people wanted a government that represented them. Why? Because being freed from the tedious and hard work of farming gave them time to rest and to think. They thought, and they wanted a more democratic government - they didn't want to be ruled by a King. The printing press helped share these ideas of freedom and democracy. Also being pissed off at your living conditions and the government in general helps.

A society is only three meals away from anarchy. -Ian Maclaren

In the Peterloo Massacre between 60,000–80,000 people were killed in England for demanding the reform of parliamentary representation. They wanted the right to vote. This and other movements for reform eventually lead to the Reform Act 1832 and it launched the rise of modern democracy in Britain. [citation]

Democracy

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Silence please!

A shower is one of the best joys of life (or is it a bath?).

It also lets you breathe and think (and it's very comforting). Why?

Because it disengages your brain. There is very little distractions in a shower - you're forced to concentrate on a blank wall. The scrubbing of yourself is montonous and requires little brain engagement thus freeing it to think of other things - some of the best ideas come to you in the shower. A white noise effect generated by the water also isolates you from the outside environment. Last but not least, new thinking comes from a new environment (showering brings a change in location, temperature, attire (or lack thereof), and the addition of water.

So, do all your great thinking in the shower!

BTW just interested. Do you take showers first thing in the morning or at the end of the day?

Maths is hard

and here's why! The numbers system we used are based on the Hindu-Arabic numerals [0123456789]. This was invented in India at around the year 500 (about 2000 years ago). We assigned meanings to these figures. These are given to us by society, but we've never really grew up with it - we didn't evolve to understand these figures and so its very hard for us to understand them.

It's hard to visualise numbers. You can see the figure but the value behind that can be much harder to imagine. We've never really evolved to do that.

You can imagine one penny, but what about 50 000?

You can imagine a $100 note, but what about $1 000 000 000 000 worth?

It's really hard to imagine the value of figures like these.

So if you're having trouble with maths, work harder. You need this in today's society.

why we cook

Every house has a kitchen and most of the foods we eat have been cooked. Why? What brought us to bring food to a heat source and afterwards eat it?

Cooking food allows us to absorb the nutrients in it more easily (though they can be destroyed in the cooking process). It kills germs, improves taste and makes it easier to digest. Cooked food also gives us more energy.

Grilling is man’s oldest cooking method and its discovery about 750,000 years ago helped our hominid ancestors evolve into the human beings we are today. Cooking is the secret to our evolution.

We have weak jaws, tiny teeth and small guts compared to other animals. Cooking helped us eat better.

Microsoft

I'm finding Microsoft to be less and less relevant these days.

Sure there will people who play games and/or will always want Windows. But people are starting to experiment with Macs.

Then it's phone and tablet side is being lost by iPhone and Android which are doing well.

But for business use Windows and Office will always be there so at least there's that.

Although Windows 7 Phone looks strong. Who knows it could have saved this girl from her self.

Musicals

Musics gives life colour and musicals are a great example of that.

shipoopi (original):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1iZarUHt04

family guy take:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjazkgtcrms

Other ones I enjoyed was 'the sound of music' (before seeing that I thought the von Trapp family was a vampire family). This takes place in Australia right before the Nazis take over. Also, Hairspray (set in America with black and white segregation).

Then there are also ones for kids including High School Musical (which appeals to little 12 year old girls - which is something that Disney has been doing).

There is also High School Musical: The tv series a/k/a Glee which takes a bunch of retarded and crippled people together where they sing songs other people have made and then they become popular!

Among these crippled people are: flamboyant gay kid, the shy Asian girl, the stupid cheerleaders, the skank with the heart of gold, the jocks, and the obese, sassy, neck-rolling, mouthy black girl. And these people really act out their stereotypes - but they do it while looking very pretty.

Goddamit at least HSM made their own songs.

Fight Club

The thing about Fight Club is that most people look at it on the surface. Basically we gotta fight to bring down tha man!!!! Fuck advertising and fuck corporations. Be a man and fight for no reason!

This contrasts with the actual meaning behind Fight Club. Basically there is this lonely man that doesn't fit in with society. He tries to connect with people but the only way to do that is to blow up the other's apartment, fight him and start an underground boxing club. This goes even further with vandalism of buildings and even a bombing carried out by his group.

He tries to free people from consumerism...by putting them in his own cult?

Grocery Store

I work at a grocery store.

People come up to me and ask me 'how much is this?'

I grab the item and read the price label attached to it.

Are people this stupid?

today I learnt a bit of SQL, MySQL and PHP.

Today I learnt a bit of SQL, MySQL and PHP.

Databases are designed to store and retrieve data.

MySQL is server software that provides access to a database.

SQL is a computer language used to interact with the database.

PHP is used to make webpages based on the data stored in the database. It also allows users to store data submitted from a webpage to a database.

I started by copying the table of country populations

in to a text files separated by spaces. Then I wrote a php script to create a database and within it make a table and then load the data from the file into the table. The query looks like this:

mysql_query("INSERT INTO countries (rank, country, pop)

VALUES ('$rank','$name','$pop')");

the name of the table is 'countries' while rank, country and pop are table headers. The values are received from the file.

Then another php script outputs the contents of the database to be displayed to the user in a web browser.

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM countries");

while($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))

{

echo "";

echo "" . $row['rank'] . "";

echo "" . $row['country'] . "";

echo "" , $row['pop'] , "";

echo "";

}

At this point a user can insert more data into the table using the php generated web page or delete data:

mysql_query("DELETE FROM countries WHERE rank=$_POST[rank]");

$_POST[rank] is provided by the webpage based on the users' input and it used to identify which entry is to be deleted.

But one of the most important things SQL is used for it to output certain entries that meets a criteria and also to display data in a certain way.

mysql_query("SELECT * FROM countries WHERE pop $_POST[operator] $_POST[value]");

this query takes in an operator eg. = < <= > >= != and a value and it returns entries where the population is true with the operator and value.

a sample query could be: SELECT * FROM countries WHERE pop > 50000

$result = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM countries ORDER BY rank ASC");

This last one gives back results in a certain order. In this case the data would be ordered by ascending rank (starting from 1 and going up).

If you want to learn more see w3schools for their tutorial for SQL and PHP

For a simple, all-in-one package server software to try on see XAMPP