Joe Terranova

The South Jersey Meeting for the LoCo Team will be Saturday, March 24th, at 3:00 PM. The location will be Coffee Works

Coffee Works
White Horse Road and Berlin Road, Voorhees, NJ 08043
Google Map
Coffee Works is in Lion’s Head Plaza. It’s in the same location as the Ritz and a Friendly’s, and is in the same strip as Tunes.
Coffee Works has, well, coffee, snacks, power, wireless, and is rather empty during the afternoon. Since this is the first meeting, it will probably be an informal meet-and-greet, as well as preliminary discussion.

Cheers, and hope to see you there

NOTE Address and google map has changed; original led to the middle of nowhere.

JoeTerranova.net

Alpha Preview of EVE Online’s Avatar expansion

Watch the video, and while you watch it, remember that these are the people making the World of Darkness MMO

Also, I’ve gotten some nifty ideas for a PhillyByNight secret backstory from Tom. Should be up in the near future.

JoeTerranova.net

Bribing Pro Bloggers with laptops? Bad. Very bad.

Bribing amateur bloggers with scooters/laptops/mp3 players? No problem

From the website:

Enter the Golden Blog Awards to win great prizes

All you have to do is mention the word ‘office’ and the link ‘www.itsnotcheating.com.au’ in your blog. Winner is judged on creativity of the story.

The blog or video with highest number of supporting comments will have the chance to win this fab music pack.

That’s right: the point of the site is to offer Microsoft Office Ultimate at a 93% discount to Australian College students, and bribe them into pimping Microsoft Office on their blogs. I don’t think that needs comment.

From the site:
It’s not cheating if…

• You do it in another postcode
• You use the thesaurus in word
• You drink light beer
• You’re home before midnight
• You don’t get caught

Contrast that with Bill’s response to Gorbachov’s Plea for mercy for a School teacher at a poor Russian school
According to Microsoft, it’s not cheating if you don’t get caught, but if you do get caught, they’re more than happy to send you to Siberia to rot.

It’s reasonable for Microsoft to try to show a friendly, smiling face to the 18-24 age demographic; it shows they’re paying attention, and understand how powerful bloggers really are. That doesn’t, however, change who they are; just below the surface, they’re still a faceless, soulless corporation, the black hole of modern computing, and no amount of hype or jive is going to change that. They’re desperate, and despite their flailing attempts to maintain dominance with FUD and pure brute force, they’re circling the drain. There’ll be a party at my house on the day they fall in. Be sure to save the date.

Oh, btw:

http://www.itsnotcheating.com.au/

I hope I win a scooter.

JoeTerranova.net

Pictures up from the Cherry Hill Linux User Group talk: linky.

Overall, it went pretty well. Didn’t convert anyone, but the 4 or so Ubuntu users there said they were on board for the LoCo team.

JoeTerranova.net

What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe. Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case. It is like an atavistic theism erupting when his guard is down. The comforts and consolations of belief are alluring even to him, he says, and probably will become more so as he gets closer to the end of his life. He fights it because he is a scientist and holds the values of rationalism higher than the values of spiritualism.

Evolution and Religion – Darwin’s God

JoeTerranova.net