Did you know that other people associated with Columbia besides the Terrible 12s have been doing things (exciting things, in fact) this summer? It's true! Here, we'll prove it to you:

-- Columbia law professor (and subject of a 2007 Blue and White profile) Tim Wu wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about bandwidth, in which he warns of a bandwidth cartel and suggests alternate technologies with which to move information.

-- Fun fact: Terrible war criminal Radovan Karadzic (the only person to ever be indicted on genocide charges at the Hague) is a proud graduate attendee of the Columbia med school.

-- Today is Sunil Gulati's 49th birthday! Bwog has now wished Gulati a happy birthday three years in a row.

But apparently, not everyone was as excited as me. About ten people on the council were missing—enjoying SEAS NY trips, returning Homeward Bound at Kim's, etc. I snuck listens to the various coercing cell phone conversations that were happening: "Yo, can you just come for like twenty minutes? Then you can peace." I hope to someday sound that cool on the phone.

The competition was between Daniel Gundrum and Kenny Rivera—both SEAS '10, both into computers, both very nerdy. Daniel, whose oratory skills have impressed me before, again began working the crowd with an undeniable smoothness: "I think you wanna see some of the things I've done." Without even waiting for our validation (that's part of his smoothness), he proceeded to present several games he had programmed in his free time. One of them tested how many times he could click the mouse in thirty seconds, for which Daniel racked up an inspiring 134 clicks, perhaps symbolizing the 134 things I would rather do than play that game.

While some of us are still recovering from the first half of this semester, many of our more motivated, forward-thinking peers are already thinking about their fall classes (I know, I know). Hard to believe, but the course directory has already been updated with next year's courses.

Problem is, as many tipsters and readers have noticed, CULPA seems to be down. And without CULPA, there's simply no way to tell the easiest way to fulfill your major cultures or math requirement. (Although, regarding the latter: it's Intro. to Symbolic Logic). Anyway, the reason for CULPA's flaky existence may be the site's lack of a webmaster. In August 2007, CULPA announced that they would be looking for a new webmaster, as the old one had graduated the previous May. A tech-savvy tipster informs Bwog that it is his understanding that CULPA never found its webmaster, which explains why the site's been down.

Bwog emailed Seth Berliner, the CC' 08er in charge of CULPA, who explained that he isn't sure what's causing CULPA's blankness. "Though I can tell you that it's blank for me when I login to the site. Also, we periodically have experienced technical problems this year, most of them related to an upgrade of our server, I believe."

Berliner explains that the CULPA team is working together to pinpoint what's causing the blankness. Bwog will update with further developments.

We received many submissions in our first annual Mii-creation contest. The following represent the top of the class. Show your support by announcing your favorite in the comments. Winner gets to make a Mii of themselves for a Bwog post with the of title "CHAMPION."

Representing SEAS: Associate Dean/reported life-ruiner Jack McGourty

Tipster Stephen Wang informs Bwog that Alma Mater is going to be offering permanent email addresses for its illustrious, tech-savvy alums and seniors. Users will get to choose their own display name (!) and the emails will be able to "enjoy all the features of Google's Gmail
service while maintaining a Columbia address." So a lot like what every current student has been doing for four years.

However, our emailing tipster already sends word of a technological slip-up: "You couldn't sign up on the first day it was available... because it was broken, already."

UPDATE: Seniors: nab your first name as your display name before someone else gets it first! Ready, set, go.

UPDATE 10:13 PM: Commenter reports that lee.bollinger@caa.columbia.edu. is taken. No word yet on the.butler.marxist, princeton.sucks, et al. Hurry, hurry!

In light of CCSC's recent crusade against juicycampus.com, Bwog wanted to know if it were really possible to ban a website from the campus server. Apparently, it's not. Resident computer expert and Bwog Web Master Zach van Schouwen explains why in the following bullet-pointed list:

• It's expensive. They don't have an existing filter in place, so they'd have to buy expensive, unreliable software
• We're all forgetting the masterminds of SEAS. It would be approximately 30 seconds before any SEAS hack had a mirror of the site up that was accessible at a different address
• Proxy server. Let's say you're visiting Juicycampus. Normally your PC sends them a request, and they send back a website. A site blocker would prevent this request from going through. A proxy server is just a third-party server that you make the same request to; it then makes the request to Juicycampus and sends you the results. This can all be encrypted, too, in which case there's no way for even a smart CU programmer to know what you're doing.
• Google cache. You can get to any blocked site by looking at Google's saved copy. Nobody ever thinks of this. (There are other sites like this too.)
• Tunneling out. If you have login access to any off-campus server, anywhere, you can easily log into it remotely and view the site. (Like, say, the Bwog server.)
• Mirroring. Juicycampus can just change their address, put up a mirror site, identify themselves numerically...
• Copying. Some intrepid kid could just create a site that copies all their content every five minutes.
• CUIT's never made a practice of it, so it'd be pretty shocking if they shelled out the $1000s for a commercial-grade filter, slowed down everyone's internet, and blocked a single site. Liberty University probably wouldn't even do this, let alone... any real university.
  

Bwog wishes all a happy end of classes and a grudging welcome to reading week! While writing a paper this weekend, one B&W editor wondered aloud whether there was any way to highlight text in Word and change the case of the selected text. As per usual, Master of Word Zach van Schouwen was standing by with solution on hand.

A short illustrated tutorial:

1 . 2.

Bwog played around with Google at work yesterday. Here's what Google suggests we're trying to find when the bolded word is typed into the search bar:

Butler Library
Butler Library columbia
Butler Library hours
Butler Library columbia university

Tao Tan
Tao tanning lotion
Tao tantra
Tao tang
Tao Tan lehman

Columbia Spectator
Columbia Spectator online
Columbia Spectator noose
Columbia Spectator madison
Columbia Spectator newspaper
Columbia Spectator blog

Barnard
Barnardos
Barnard marcus
Barnard college
Barnard castle
Barnard castle school

This week's question for Bwog comes from Daily Editor David Iscoe who wants to know if hitting an electronic device such as a computer is a good way to get it to work? David requests an engineer's advice. Lucikly, webmaster Zach van Schouwen was on hand to answer David's question.

"The master walks in to find the student flipping his machine on and off in an effort to solve a technical failure. The master shakes his head, and says "It is futile to power-cycle the machine in lieu of understanding the problem." The master then flipped the machine on and off, causing it to work immediately. At that moment, the student became enlightened," Zach explains. He then clarifies that the official term of computer repair geeks is "percussion maintenance" and that yes, hitting a computer—for example if a laptop's wireless slides out of the motherboard—can quite possibly get it to work.

The idea is that hitting a computer can "dislodge the heads if they've become stuck on the platters, or otherwise misaligned," says Phil Dotree of Associated Content. However, he warns that the risk of damaging your hard drive is high if you choose to slap your computer around a bit.

Ask Bwog thanks the always-helpful Zach van Schouwen and Phil Dotree of associatedcontent.com, whoever he may be.

Columbia—in what the administration says are efforts to "ensure redundancy across our communications channels" (swear to God)—has launched the Text Message Enrollment program, in which the University will be sending out important messages to students who register their mobile numbers with SSOL.

The email introducing the Text Message Enrollment program cites "the portability and ubiquity" of cell phones as contributing factors that eventually won over the hearts of tech-savvy bureaucrats.

Weather emergencies and major transit interruptions are possible instances in which registered students would receive a text message.

"its snowin, 1 skippin 116 :( luv CU"

The latest issue of Jester drops Thursday - that is, if the nefarious CUSJ [read: Jester] doesn't interfere once more. The theme is one near and dear to Bwog's heart: technology.

(all links take you to the same PDF)

AIM and the Manhattan Project - Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together (p. 11)

The Greatest Living American (p. 12-13)

Ha Ha Ha Ha... Zune (p. 17)

Name-Checking Shatner and Remnick (p. 21)

Remember Project Athena, the promised Columbia wiki that was supposed to revolutionize campus life? Right, "barely" was our response, too. That is, until a mysterious i-banker IMed Bwog with the tantalizing info: Project Athena was online, and hosted off campus. We were quickly directed to wikicu.com, the slightly less sonorous realization of the project. While most of the site appears to remain in development, much already seems handy, including endless important links, an events calendar to rival ours (well, in all but wit, of course), and...by Zeus! That's where all the lavish photos from the old housing website went! Other miscellany includes a swim test schedule and a guide to Spanish verbs.

What to expect? Where is this going? This Spec column from back in September makes one notable suggestion: documenting the horrors that await unsuspecting future residents of Wien.

Meanwhile, over on real-world Wikipedia...

Someone's been messing with Jester's entry. This morning, it read:

"The magazine is known on campus for its completely inept coverage of the scientific community and generally poor quality paper stock."

As of this evening, it reads:

"The magazine is known on campus for its lackluster understanding of particle physics, frequent misrepresentations of string theory, and fervent hatred toward America."

One tipster blames the Columbia Undergraduate Science Journal. Let the wiki-war begin.

-CJS

No matter if your quarters are nestled deep within the shaft of McBain, or if your pad flies high in the penthouses of EC or Sulz, your bedroom and its contents are sacred. Every technological gizmo, throw pillow, and Scarface poster has been plugged in, consciously tossed, or hung meticulously, with merciless self-disclosure and the core elements of feng-shui in mind.

Bwog doesn't have the cash to "pimp your room," and we certainly don't want to raid it and then date you. So we bring you a new feature, the "Cribs-esque" semi-weekly Thursday Room Hopping, starting with...

Cory and Sean (left to right), a tag-team pair of first-year track and cross-country stars, respectively, delighted in taking Bwog on a tour of their 214 square-foot LLC paradise -- complete with subwoofer speaker system, 32-inch high definition flatscreen TV ("That's money!" says Sean), and wireless router.

"The women flock to 8A11 like the sparrows of Capistrano," Sean notes.

"Yeah, they say, 'Oh, your room is so pimp!'" adds Cory, in falsetto.