I finally had a program freeze up on me just now; 6 days after getting my Macbook. At first I wasn’t sure what to do, I mean as a primarily Windows user up until this point I am used to hitting ctrl-alt-del and loading the task manager, selecting a task to delete, and waiting for Windows to actually carry out my request (which can take several minutes). Or in Linux am I used to loading up a terminal window and typing ‘top’ and selecting a pid (process id) to kill.

My first instinct, knowing that Mac OS X is fundamentally a Unix OS, was to load the terminal and try the same technique as on Linux. This didn’t work, however, as I later found out that this method only works on older versions of Mac OS X, before 10.3 (mine is 10.4.9).

The solution: a program called “Activity Monitor” found in Applications > Utilities. Using the Activity Monitor was very straightforward and efficient. Upon loading, it showed all of my current processes and highlighted in red was Safari with a “not responding” message. I simply clicked on the Safari process and selected the “Force Quit” button and the program was removed from my screen immediately. Quick, easy, safe, like everything else on my Macbook.

What caused Safari to freeze up you ask? Trying to make a new Yahoo Pipe. Go figure, my Google applications have yet to even hiccup.

Novell has developed a series of ads playing off the whole “I’m a mac, I’m a PC” parodies by Apple in which they portray Linux as a young woman who sort of puts the Mac and PC boys in their places.

Take a look:

Last week Viacom sued YouTube and Google in an effort to tame the beast that is online video. Today, NBC and News Corp. announced that they will be taking a different approach, an online video site of their own that will challenge YouTube head on. The two media behemoths said that their site, which has an unknown launch date, will contain videos from their two film and TV libraries.

“There will be user-generated videos but the emphasis here is on the premium content and we think that’s the value proposition here,” said NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker.

In addition, preliminary reports say that the site will feature personalized playlists, social networking functionality, and mashups which will allow users to create their own videos from copyrighted content.

My take on this is: great idea, far too late. YouTube is cemented deeply as the dominant online video site in terms of market share, and even weak competitors like MySpace Video, Daily Motion, MetaCafe and iFilm have a loyal fan base. Obviously this new site will get a lot of members at the start as people seek to learn what all the hype is about, but I think they’ll quickly jump ship when they realize it doesn’t have the content of YouTube — I can’t see NBC and News Corp. allowing content that infringes on copyrights, which is what YouTube members live for.

In essence this would be comparable to someone trying to launch a brand new site and unseat MySpace as the dominant social networking site. Many have tried, none have succeeded. Their efforts and resources are better off spent elsewhere.

What does Google think of it all? Well they don’t seem to be too worried, as TechCrunch is reporting that Google executives are referring to NBC and News Corp.’s project as “Clown Co.”

In something that won’t be reported on mainstream US media, Muslim pupils at a secondary school in northeastern Nigeria beat a teacher to death today because they said she was desecrating the Koran. The teacher, Oluwatoyin Olusase, a Christian, was giving an Islamic Religious Knowledge exam at the school when the incident took place.

Initial reports have no mention of anything Olusase may have done, but Nigerian police have confirmed the fatality and said their arrival on the scene had prevented the incident from spreading further.

“We have received information that a female teacher has been lynched by her students. We are investigating the report,” Gombe state police commissioner Joseph Ibi said.

While there have always been ethnic and religious conflicts in Nigeria, there has been a surge in radical violence in recent years. It is worth mentioning that Sharia law was introduced in this area of Nigeria in 1999.

The Easter holiday always falls on a Sunday between March 22 to April 25. But how come it varies from year to year and isn’t always on the same day like Christmas? Certainly Easter is just as important as Christmas.

The date for Easter changes yearly in accordance with the Gregorian calendar. The current Gregorian ecclesiastical rules trace back to 325 AD when Roman Emperor Constantine convened the First Council of Nicaea. At that time Constantine decided the Roman Empire would use the Julian calender, offered up by Julius Caesar.

In 1582 Pope Gregory XIII reconstructed the Julian calendar into the Gregorian calendar, with such differences as the “leap year” inclusion. By the 18th century, the majority of Europe was using the Gregorian calendar.

The general rule of thumb is that Easter is always the Sunday after the first full moon post-vernal equinox. The vernal equinox (when night and day are the same length) is fixed at March 21st. This year Easter falls on April 8th, while next year will be March 23rd.

The ecclesiastical lunar cycles can be easily programmed to predict the date of Easter in future years. The US Navy has developed an algorithm that uses the Gregorian system to do just that.

Here is a reproduction of the US Navy algorithm to compute the day of Easter years in advance:

The algorithm uses the year, y, to give the month, m, and day, d, of Easter. The symbol * means multiply.

Please note the following: This is an integer calculation. All variables are integers and all remainders from division are dropped. For example, 7 divided by 3 is equal to 2 in integer arithmetic.

c = y / 100
n = y - 19 * ( y / 19 )
k = ( c - 17 ) / 25
i = c - c / 4 - ( c - k ) / 3 + 19 * n + 15
i = i - 30 * ( i / 30 )
i = i - ( i / 28 ) * ( 1 - ( i / 28 ) * ( 29 / ( i + 1 ) )
* ( ( 21 - n ) / 11 ) )
j = y + y / 4 + i + 2 - c + c / 4
j = j - 7 * ( j / 7 )
l = i - j
m = 3 + ( l + 40 ) / 44
d = l + 28 - 31 * ( m / 4 )

For example, using the year 2010,
y=2010,
c=2010/100=20,
n=2010 - 19 x (2010/19) = 2010 - 19 x (105) = 15, [see note above regarding integer calculations]
etc. resulting in Easter on April 4, 2010.

Here we go again. Another day, another problem with New Jersey Transit. I boarded my train to return home from work today and upon arriving at our first stop, the main power source in the train died and everything went dark. It’s like a swamp in here right now as there is no circulation and I’m not seated near any of the doors they have open.

This is just the latest in an unending series of unfortunate events for this company. I wish they had any kind of competition, so that they would actually have to make trains that didn’t break down everyday. Luckily for them, tens of thousands of commuters rely on them for transportation into New York City during the work week. This company is strong-arming its commuters worse than the US government is our civil liberties.

So we finally got power back about 10 minutes ago and just arrived at the next stop, and *drumroll* the power died again! At this rate I won’t get to my stop for 3 hours, should be an interesting rest of the way home…

T-Mobile launched the latest round of OTA (over-the-air) updates for the Sidekick 3 today. Release 3.4 will give Sidekick 3 users access to myFaves, a text message character counter, the ability to save photo attachments from emails into your Sidekick 3 photo album, and a new and improved address book.

This is fine and dandy and I’ll even venture as far as to say a much needed update. That being said for me personally it isn’t the end-all update to make me want to keep my SK3. I have a family plan so the myFaves package is virtually pointless. The ability to save emailed photos into my photo album is pretty neat, especially with my 2GB memory card, but the text message character counter and new and improved address book don’t really do much for me. Each of those applications works just fine as they currently stand.

The Sidekick 3 is a great device and were I still in high school or college I probably wouldn’t be able to separate myself from it. However, neither of those is the case and the novelty has worn off, it’s just not doing it for me anymore. So here’s to waiting for the iPhone or Google Phone…

A top-tier Chinese university has fired Zhang Ming, dean of political sciences, for writing about academic freedom and criticizing the country’s academic woes. Officials from Renmin University of China told Zhang that he should be punished for “breaking the rules.” Zhang’s blog contained articles that detailed a dispute with a superior and attacked the “bureaucratization of Chinese colleges.”

Zhang said in a March 12 blog post that he had irritated his superior last year by telling the media that the university had withheld some dissertation subsidies from graduate students.

In addition, Zhang’s superior was upset at him for defending a colleague that he believed was the victim of wrongdoing at the hands of an academic panel which selected members according to rank rather than academic achievement.

While this isn’t as serious a punishment as what Abdel Kareem Soliman received in Egypt, it still illustrates the blogging freedom we take for granted here in the US. Although I think Zhang was wrong to publish a dispute with his superior, I commend him for speaking out in favor of academic freedom, and I very much respect all of the bloggers around the world who speak out against what they don’t believe in, even in the face of punishment. Keep writing! Slowly but surely freedom of speech will circulate throughout the world.

Ever wondered what $200 million in cash looks like? Authorities in Mexico City confiscated over $200 million in US dollars from drug producers in what is being called the largest drug cash seizure in history.

That’s great that we’re catching illegal drug makers and all, but the point of this post is what does $200 million look like, so courtesy of Mexican drug lords, here it is:

Say hello to Apple’s newest fanboy. On Thursday of last week I made a post about whether I should get a Macbook or Macbook Pro. Well, it didn’t take much time for me to decide, as the very next day I went out and purchased a Macbook. So here’s my recap of the whole ordeal.

Friday was a miserable day in the Northeast, with snow dumping everywhere. I decided during the morning that today would be the day. The day dragged on a bit but I was growing ever excited, ignoring the fact that snow had accumulated about 6 inches and the mall was closing early. I left work on time and remarkably didn’t encounter any delays on my way home (apparently NJ transit runs better when it’s snowing).

I got to the train station and met up with Carin, who was on the phone with the local Apple store. She said they were closing in a few minutes due to the inclement weather, it was about 6:45, they were to close at 7:00ish, they couldn’t give us an exact time. I grabbed the phone and told the guy that I was coming to purchase a Macbook so keep the store open. He said he would do what he could.

We arrived at the mall and rushed off hurriedly toward the Apple store, not knowing whether or not it would be open. When we arrived at the store the doors were still open so we passed through them and saw mostly workers and most of the display computers powered off, but they were still open.

A salesman came to help us and I told him what I wanted and we inquired about the education discount. Carin had forgotten her student ID but the salesman said all she had to do was log into her school email and that would be proof enough. Problem solved. He went into the back and said I’ll be back in a few minutes to begin processing the order.

When he came back we hopped onto one of the computers and he loaded some special URL to begin processing the order. I gave him my info and he tried to sell us the .Mac membership and HP printer. I said no to both but Carin talked me into the printer because it comes out to be free after the rebate. The one thing I did want but didn’t get at the time was the extended warranty, but that will come soon. Once he finished filling out everything he submitted it and said go to the back counter in a few minutes.

A few minutes later we went back and the woman called our name and began to ring us up. The checkout process was very straight-forward and simple, and she gave us an extra rebate form just in case. After paying we had a lot of items to carry, the Macbook, the printer, and a bag with a mighty mouse. She offered to let us go through the back of the store if it would put us closer to our car, which I thought was very kind of them, but in actuality it didn’t help so we declined the offer.

So all-in-all, Apple kept the store open for us, showed exemplary customer service while we were in the store, and had a quick and easy checkout process. It was nice to actually be treated decently at a retailer, any retailer.

When we got home I began the un-boxing and configuring process. It was very simple and much easier than Linux and faster than Windows. Since then it’s been a lot of fun discovering everything this little turbo-charged piece of equipment has. You can be sure to expect a lot of posts about this thing in the upcoming weeks and months.

Here is a little preview of some of the pictures I took upon bringing it home Friday night:

You can find more photos from my Friday night unboxing and configuring in my Macbook Photo Gallery.