I thought and asked myself: “Hey, why not restrict a portion of all the people in the Philippines from voting? Sure they have the right to vote. We’re not taking it away from them. If they couldn’t read, then obviously, they couldn’t vote. If they couldn’t vote, then they shouldn’t have a reason to complain why we’re not allowing them to vote.”

It’s as simple as that.

No, I’m not saying that this community work we do every Saturday is useless. In fact, I’ve learned a lot from our previous experiences. Yes, I do take these NSTP classes seriously. The materials handed out to the communities were extremely useful, but only to those who can read. We can, of course, speak out what’s written and/or explain it to them before we leave the area.

Yep, you guessed it. There is a problem with that idea.

Even if we explain it to them (only those who can’t read) in the area itself, I strongly doubt that they could effectively apply it on the ballot. These people can be easily manipulated by the hired men of “cheating officials”. It’s so freakin’ easy to tell them that they’re doing these and that even though they’re not.

My proposed solution? Good thing my grandfather has a hard time stopping himself from talking.

According to my lolo (to non-Filipinos, this is how we call our granddad), we should not allow all people from voting. Only those who pay taxes should be able to vote.

Good idea, isn’t it?

Think of it this way. People who pay taxes are those who are more or less awesome enough to read, write, and above all, understand what he or she is doing. Also, people who pay taxes are those who simply are invulnerable to “vote-buyers”. Try giving your classmate/friend/colleague a 50-peso bill and “asking” him to vote a specific person. Most likely, that wouldn’t work, would it?

For most tax payers, that amount is extremely small. They can live without it. Imagine a voting area on the Election Day, filled only with tax payers. There really are a bunch of positive outcomes if we restrict a portion of the people from voting.

Now, imagine this. Election Day, on a voting place (yea, I don’t know what it’s called), filled with tax payers and extremely poor people. If you have extremely poor people who would do anything for instant money, there’s an extremely big possibility that there would be more votes to buy.

By the way, I have a question for you. Would you rather restrict extremely poor people from voting, or would you allow our extremely poor countrymen from being manipulated by the mercilessly rich people?  Restrict, or allow them to be manipulated?

I may not have a perfect solution. That may be because nothing is perfect. It’s just between a good move, a better move, and the best move. Still, the best move isn’t perfect.

Holy crap. I’m not writing tech stuff anymore -.-’ Anyway, back to topic.

There are quite a lot of reasons why people do not believe in aliens. Some are obvious, some are not. Some are even so fucking funny that you’d just want to believe in aliens anyway. Heck, I believe in aliens. Biased discussion? No. I will only be discussing a few that I know.

People don’t believe in aliens because of the simple fact that they haven’t seen one. EVER. This is one of the most common reasons why people don’t believe in aliens. “To see is to believe”, they say. If you’re one of them, maybe you’d say “I would believe in aliens the moment I see them” or whatever or some shit like that. There are, however, a few footages of UFO sightings around the world, most of which are hoax.

People don’t believe in aliens because they haven’t realized how big the universe really is. This is one of the points that I widely use. I,  myself, believe in aliens because of the fact the universe is extremely huge. Oh c’mon. Think about it. How many fucking stars do we have? We have billions, or more than that, right? With those stars are star systems, which may contain more or less a few planets. Chances are, a few of those billion/trillion/zillion/whateverillion planets have the ability to support life.

People don’t believe in aliens because of the common misconception that aliens are smarter than humans. Do they really have to be smarter than us for them to become aliens? Do they really have to be aboard some fancy gravity-defying piece of shit that’s ready to blow this puny planet up? Do they have to be in a circular faggoty ship that’s hovering in this planet’s shitty sky? Do they have to be wielding some kickass weapons that could destroy us all? Just some clarification : I’m not angry while typing this paragraph

People don’t believe in aliens because they’re so into science. Too much science… Too much fucking science… Too much looking for proof.  You get the point.

Yep, that’s all I got. I don’t know how to end this post… So… I plan to end it with… A FEW LINKS haha. Probably guys who, like me, believe that aliens exist

Your View : Do Aliens Exist?

Aliens Exist

VATICAN SAYS ALIENS COULD EXIST

Let’s head straight to the problem.

When he handed me over the laptop, I gave it a quick look. I booted it up and it tried to load Windows XP. A few seconds later, the screen went blank and gave me a blue screen of death. I assume that this was the problem he was speaking of. Also, I couldn’t boot into safe mode, plain old command prompt, and many others.

I thought to myself that this is going to be easy. It seemed easy.

The next thing I tried to do was to try to use my PCLinuxOS live CD to try to backup. I put the CD in the drive and started up his laptop. I then noticed that the BIOS (PhoenixBIOS) didn’t try to boot from CDROM. Then again, I thought this was going to be easy.

I pressed F2 to enter the PhoenixBIOS setup utility. I was shocked to see nothing else but a prompt that asks me for a password. “Holy @$#@”. I’m trapped in that problem. Unsolvable. For now. Maybe forever.

The persistent person that I am, I never gave up. A thought came into mind. It was a procedure that I used to do on our suckish desktop PC. For those who have experience on these things, yes, it’s shorting the CMOS jumper settings.

Before I actually wanted to open the laptop myself, I did a little research whether this was possible on a laptop. After quite a lot of google searches, I discovered that this method does not work, and many forum posts from users report that they tried the method and it doesn’t work. Some say that this is because most laptop manufacturers store CMOS data on a separate chip.

Still, I didn’t give up.

I recalled my past experiences with PhoenixBIOS on our desktop PC. I thought that if the BIOS couldn’t find an operating system in the harddrive, it would skip it and look for other places to boot on. So, what I did was that I bought an IDE to USB cable and removed all data and partitions on the cute little hard drive. I completely forgot about replacing the system files. Even if I did remember, I don’t think it’s going to be much help because what I only have is an XP installer and Windows Vista installed on my laptop.

I placed the hard drive back on the laptop. I also inserted a bootable linux live cd on its CDROM drive. I was confident that it would work. Unfortunately, it didn’t. It says “Operating System not found… bla bla bla, <”insertsomemoreshittycomputerstuffhere>”

Fortunately, I backed up some of my cousin’s most important data that I could find. Anything else was lost.

Still, I didn’t give up.

I tried to make a preinstalled Windows environment with BartPE, then copied all the “generated files” on the hard disk’s root directory. I also made sure that the partition I made on the hard drive was FAT32.

I do not fucking know what fucking went wrong here. Maybe I applied too much pressure on the hard drive when I was disconnecting it from the cable. To verify, I tried to browse the harddrive with my laptop, and, the worst happened : the hard drive is DEAD. Stupid fucking me >.<

There are many things that I regretted on after these efforts. Well, at least I tried. I regret spending P380. I regret accepting the “job offer”. I regret “breaking” the hard drive. I regret the time I spent on it. I regret going to many different shops just to buy an IDE to USB cable. I regret a lot more.

There are plenty more methods that I plan on using to fix the laptop. However, because of the fact that I killed the hard drive, and that I wouldn’t spend for 2 pieces of floppy disks, an IDE adapter between laptop and desktop hard drive cables, and another unbroken hard drive, I give up.

I am so pissed off right now. Anyway, at least I tried. I did my best

1. “%@#! That wasn’t the tab I wanted to close!” <– A WTF moment where one accidentally closes a tab. Annoying when you were still doing something with that tab.

This WTF moment is easy. After your uncareful hands (sure, it wasn’t your fault ^^) accidentally closed the tab, simply hit CTRL + SHIFT + T at the same time to restore the tab. Works with most major tabbed browsers like Firefox, IE6 and up, Chrome, Opera, etc.

2. “Shut the **** up Facebook chat!” <– A WTF moment where gets easily annoyed when a new chat message arrives because of the sound notification it makes.

This is pretty simple. Do take note that even though the chat notification sounds are annoying, they really help in notifying (duh?) you. If you really despise the sounds, these are the super simple steps on disabling ‘em.

Click “Chat”, then “Options”, then untick “Play Sound for New Messages”.

3. “Do not f****** disturb!” <– Yet another WTF moment caused by Facebook chat Usually caused by annoying Facebook-ers who keep on chatting with you when you don’t want ‘em to.

There are a bunch of ways to counter annoying Facebook chatters. Here are 3 methods that I know:

1. Simply go offline. To do this, click Chat, then Options, then click Go Offline.

2. Have a dedicated window for the chat feature. This will lessen the annoyingness of chat messages while retaining your “visibility”. Also, to prevent chat messages from ruining your games like Typing Maniac.

To have a dedicated browser window for chatting, simply go to Chat, Options, and then click Pop-out chat.

3. Last but not the least is the “leave-em-alone method”. Once they start up a chat, simply minimize (DO NOT CLOSE) their mini chatbox so it wouldn’t come out from nowhere again. However, you get the red balloon thingy that notifies you how many chat messages you have received so far.

4. “F*** this useless pic with my f****** tag!” <– A WTF moment where you get notified A LOT because a ton of people commented on a picture you got tagged on. The annoyingness most likely reaches your mail inbox.

This is simple yet a bit rude. Simply go to the picture, remove your comments (if you did comment), and untag yourself from the picture.

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT do this if the picture you got tagged on is a group photo (or anything that involves your real life interaction with people) with you and your friends, family, etc…

By the way, this is also applicable to notes.

5. “Shiiiiiit! I typed all that for nothing!?!?! >.<” <– A WTF moment where one accidentally lost all that was typed onto the note editor.

There are a lot of possible reasons how one could accidentally lose all that he/she worked on. It might be because one accidentally clicked on a link that opens in the same window, an accidental tab closure, etc.

There’s not much that can be done, but you can always save the draft once every few moments.

6. “Why the hell did I reply to that effin post?!” <– A WTF moment of regret when one ponders upon his action of commenting/liking on a post and then suffers the consequences of future notifications from other commenters.

A very simple yet rude solution is at hand Simply unlike the post, remove all your comments from the specific post, and sit back and relax

7. Me wants you to add more <– A WTF moment where I, an awesome person, asks your awesomeness to add more because I ran out of ideas.

I hope this humble post will help you in preventing yourself from getting mad due to some Facebook stuff. And oh, if one of your friends(annoying non-real-life friends) are extremely annoying , DELETE THEM! ^^

I’m asking this question because I had a very negative reaction or comment when I heard people suggesting that Noynoy should be the new president of the country. I heard these from the news, from the people around me, and most especially, the interviewing session that we had to do for our NSTP class.

This thing that I hear around are alarming. EXTREMELY ALARMING.

Think about it. Even if her mother was the greatest president (is she? :p) of the Philippines, does that really mean that Noynoy would be as good as her mother? Does it mean that skills, abilities, and powers are passed on from generation to generation? If I had the Aquino’s blood, will you support me if I have plans for presidency?

Even more important : How can people assume that Noynoy will be the one to “save” this damn country even though they don’t really know ENOUGH about Noynoy? This is an act of new-waving.

New-waving means being easily swayed by what is common or being dependent on other people’s wants, likes, opinions, thoughts, etc. New-wavers are those who do new-waving.

Oh c’mon. He gained popularity only because Cory died. Now, people want him to be the new president because they believe someone of the same blood could do the same thing. The sad part is, most people who want Noynoy to become the new president are people who just heard in the television that Noynoy is one of the sons of Cory. There are also some who don’t really know that Noynoy exists, and now that they heard what’s common, they too want Noynoy to become president because he got popular due to the Cory death thingy.

Why aren’t some people thinking? Sure, I have nothing against Benigno Aquino III aka “Noynoy” if he would run for presidency or not. I just have this slight feeling of anger against people who dont really think much and conclude stuff even without proper examination/proof/evidence/experience/insert-antonyms-here.

I asked this question to an interviewee: “Do you think there’s still hope for the country?”

A woman of about 20 years old answered: “Yes, if Noynoy would be the new president.”

Isn’t that awesome? Is Noynoy a superhero or something?

However, there are a couple of things that we can do in the meantime to help speed up the N73. I decided to write this to help those who get pissed of by the N73.

Here are the things that can be done to “tweak” the N73.

Switch to the default theme or use themes without custom icons. This greatly helps because less RAM would be used.

Switch off “Active Standby”. The active standby thingy is the one in the upper part of the screen below the clock that provides 5/6 (not sure) shortcuts to applications. Switching this off does improve the user responsiveness of the phone. I was against this but it had to be done I love the active standby.

To switch off active standby, Go to Menu -> Tools -> Settings -> Phone -> Standby mode -> Active standby (switch to off).

Close (not minimize) the music player and other apps when not in use. If you are unsure whether it was minimized or not, hold down the menu key and the task manager would show up. Other apps can be closed by selecting/highlighting an application and pressing the “c” key.  Some N73 editions like ME require that you click “Music Player”, go to options and choose exit.

Disable or minimize the resolution of the LOG. Go to Menu -> Applications -> Log -> Then press options then settings. Set the log duration to a lower value. The log does help some people.  Your choice.

NEVER RUN LIFEBLOG (Unless you do use it). After flashing the firmware from ROM, or after updating the firmware, never ever run LifeBlog. Once you run LB, it’d start collecting items for you to blog. Therefore, more processes. More processes = more lag.

Use the phone memory for almost everything aside from music files, images, and the like. Messages, contacts, and other smaller data should be saved on the phone memory because the phone memory is faster to access than other external storage devices than memory cards.

Keep the number of items in the inbox and gallery to a minimum.  Move “valuable” messages to one of your folders. For the gallery part, keep a backup of images and videos on your PC then delete the ones on your phone.  I don’t delete. It’s up to you

Use Y-tasks. Y-tasks is a freeware application. Use this to reserve memory on the phone memory of the miniSD. Reserve something like 5mb. To reserve memory, install Y-tasks, then install the plugin called “Memory status”.

Download them from the DrJukka.com website.

That’s pretty much it for now. If you have something to add, please do comment

Before I begin writing the rest of the post, please take a look at the screenshot.

Well, who said you can’t?

I really hate it when people are so fucking paranoid of malware (aka viruses and the like). These viruses have always been part of the computing vocabulary of most people I know, and of those on Filipino forums. Yes, I hate those show-offy bastards on forums that copy and paste stuff for show-off reasons. Anyway, that’s not the point.

Why are people so afraid of viruses? Most people can’t even take a few moments switching of their anti-virus software. For some reason, anti-virus software have been the blood and the lifeline of their computer. After a while, when problems begin to show up, they blame viruses for everything. My friend even blamed viruses as the nuisance in draining the battery on his iPod.

Isn’t this great?

Anti-virus developers are making a hell lot of money from the gold mine located in the people’s heads.

Let’s get back to the screenshot.

As you can see, he suggested running two anti-virus software at the same time and claims that it doesn’t eat up much memory. Hmmm. The phrase “that much” could mean “too much” to underpowered PCs, and could also mean “not much” on more powerful machines. Perhaps he could have used a more definite and more precise description over his claim. Also, physical memory usage isn’t everything.

AVs (anti-virus. I won’t be typing the whole word again) depend on virus signatures or definitions, which is the reason why you need to keep them updated. That means that newer, unrecognized viruses cannot be detected by most AVs. Having two AVs running at the same time could fill in the gaps, but it really isn’t that helpful. TRUST ME. Most AVs are on the same world. Meaning, they both recognize newer viruses after the viruses show up, which is definitely obvious. My point? Don’t expect having two AVs help in detecting very recent viruses.

Btw, completing a computer security suite, as well as running 2 AVs at the same time is OVERKILL. What made people install a lot of these shitty stuff is paranoia.

No, not because it’s hard, but because the coverage was simply useless.

All that we had to MEMORIZE were ; the school mission statement, the 3 c’s (competence, conscience, and commitment), and the staff of the school.

Useful? No.

We had to memorize the  5 paragraphs of the mission statement WORD FOR WORD. Our teacher would tell us what paragraph to recite and we had to comply word for word.

The 3 c’s were the worst.  Competence, conscience, and commitment each had at least 2 branches of long sentences. All of those we had to memorize. Again, word for word.

The staff of the school was the part where almost everyone failed to answer.

What the hell is the point of memorizing these things? Does it really help us in our daily lives? So what if we memorize all those things? Can’t she think of some other questions for the exam? Extremely f****** annoying!

Anyway, before I do any more stupid stuff, let me begin. This is the first episode of my hopefully-continuous series.

You will learn from this post how to automatically shut down your computer with Free Download Manager without an internet connection. Haven’t heard of that, have you?

Here are the steps I took.

1. First, I ran Free Download Manager.
2. I set the traffic usage mode to Medium. That way, I can set the maximum speed of the “download”.
3. I set the maximum download speed to 5kBps.
4. I selected a 7MB file as part of the “timer”
5. Created the download with a url of file:///E:/pix%20and%20stuff/counterstrike_art_001.avi . To easily get this address, drag the file to the address bar of your favorite browser.
6. Checked “Shutdown computer when done” under the Tools menu.

Yep, that’s all. I’m not quite in the mood to add more talk in this post.