The people at Raspberry Pi are working on creating at $35 dollar multimedia machine that will be used to educational computing. It already outperforms the iPhone 4s in graphical tests and XBMC has ported a working build that should be pushed up to master anytime now.

Video evidence

The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers by Adrian Chen

With Martin’s system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone’s card for the card in next day’s compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.

This is like a Stringer Bell wet dream.

I am pretty tempted in my online Personal Finance class to quote Wu Tang Clan in my financial values. “Cash rules everything around me”.

Seems rather time-consuming for large numbers but it sure makes learning multiplication a visual experience instead of a strictly memorization exercise.

Paying Taxes is the most patriotic thing I do all year.

The Pirate Bay reacting to SOPA

Because of Edisons patents for the motion pictures it was close to financially impossible to create motion pictures in the North american east coast. The movie studios therefor relocated to California, and founded what we today call Hollywood. The reason was mostly because there was no patent. There was also no copyright to speak of, so the studios could copy old stories and make movies out of them – like Fantasia, one of Disneys biggest hits ever.

The translation seems to be a little off but the heart of the story is true. Hollywood has stood on the backs of great creative work that had fallen out of copyright yet strengthen copyright so nobody could make money off of their shoulders. This is also from an industry that set the record for the most equals ever in one year.

The sooner motion picture companies realize their distribution model is broken the faster they can get back to creating original work. They are too inefficient to compete unless they embrace companies like Netflix and Vudu.

I think my girlfriend has a super-human ability to find all cake/cupcake shows currently playing around the world. Every time she touches the TV remote the stars align, an executive at TLC switches their programming and my girlfriend finds them in the guide. Help me.

Peter Dinklage wins a Golden Globe for his portrayal of Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. Can’t wait for season two.

Season 2 starts April 1st.

A good persuasive video on the broken American copyright system. My guess is you haven’t put much thought into copyright laws, time to get educated.

Sell Your Stradivarius ASAP by STEVEN D. LEVITT

Does it make sense that we have gotten worse at making violins over the last 300 years, when we have gotten so much better at making just about everything else? Not really. Finally there is some experimental data on the subject, and it doesn’t look good for those who pay top dollar for fancy old violins.