Tim asks, Do you believe in the theory of gravity?

Absolutely not. Its just another case of scientist making up crazy theories.

Henry asks, What would happen if I shot a gun in space?

Depends if you have a license to carry a concealed weapon in space and whether or not you hit someone. I imagine you would end up in jail or possibly a large fee.

Jeff asks, I just read that scientists actually came within one ten millionith of a degree from reaching Absolute Zero, back in 2000 bu have not been able to get any closer. How much would that suck to be those scientists? Sooo close, but no cigar.

LOL. I hadn’t thought of it that way, I bet they went home and cried. Then they tried make ice cream but only got cream and then they tried to build a tree fort but only got a back porch. Ehhh… well that’s all I got. This was fun.

James asks, Why is there light on earth from the sun, but yet in space, it is black?

In order to see something light has to reflect off it, black is total absorption (i.e. no reflection), so when nothing reflects it looks black like space.

Eric asks, What is the fifth dimension?

Its the one right past the fourth but before the sixth. You can’t miss it.

Jared asks, What is the most destructive weapon in the world, which does not use nuclear power? (Real weapons, not metaphors like “Hate”)

I would say non-nuclear missiles, or maybe biological stuff. Things that burn, or melt you are pretty powerful. I would rather be vaporized by a nuclear weapon than die slowly from fire or some crazy disease that makes your eyes fall out. Greed is pretty powerful too.

Liam asks, Which law of physics best describes you?

I would say conservation of Mass. I eat a lot but don’t seem to get fat.

Stephen asks, Are you a “Dark Matter Theory” or “Modified Newtonian Physics” kind of person? Do you create something invisible to explain the world or just change the rules?

We here at OW are rule changers. We see the status quo and then do awesome things that force the world to change. We’re different, trend setters if you will. The cool kids that are smart, and incredibly sexy. So yeah, ladies, let us know, most of us are single.

Shawn asks, What do you know about the theory of everything?

Nothing.

Nicole asks, Who knows the equasion for gravity

I bet Newton and anyone who has taken an intro physics class.

Dawn asks, What is the benefit of studies if we are not going to imbibe in our daily life?

Imbibe? Is that a word? I think it means drink, are we going drink our studies? I’m not sure that’s a good idea, don’t most schools have a problem with imbibing?

Phil asks, The Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest atom smasher, started up this month. Scientists predict collisions of sub-atomic particles produced by the LHC. Is anyone worried about ‘black holes?’

Lord knows I am. As we all know scientists are the agents of Satan and this device is a gate for Satan. So forget black holes, I’m worried about Satan.

Joe asks, What is another name for a circular particle accelerator?

What? I don’t know. A round particle accelerator?

10. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau acted as a romantic counter-weight to the often convoluted nature of Kantian enlightenment. His political and social theories influenced not only his own generation but much of the 20th century French social theory. Here we had a man who was not afraid to be other than what it was to be a human being. Here we had a man who would even privilege the life of animals and “prior-man” in his “Discourse on Inequality” where he traces the genealogy of man solely to the nexus of private property, where man sees other men building huts from the sediments and eventually asks himself “Why can’t I have one of those?”, or “I wonder if I can use the structure that he has made.”. In his famous political treatise “The Social Contract”, Rousseau states his more enduring maxim; “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” referring to his own political situation and reflection on instituted law. It is there where we have one of the more strong insistences on human freedom in distinction to the competition that makes man dependent on other men. Rousseau serves as a sign of the individual in the face of a possible myth created by those wealthier that there is a certain defined social hierarchy. While government must implement its laws as long as we are human beings in need of security, we as human beings must recognize that this counter-influence to the “state of nature” may not be the whole truth to our whole happiness.

9. David Hume

David Hume is the primer empiricist and skeptical philosopher of the 18th century. A simple and often jolly man, no one would have thought that his ideas would serve as the benchmark for skeptical thought centuries after. His influence not only traversed the myriad of 20th century social Darwinists, but also the counter-influence of German enlightenment, especially Kant. What Hume advocated was nothing other than philosophical destruction. By negating the fact that we can know anything about the external world, we were led to believe that our scientific audacity was nothing other than exaggerated hubris. All we have for Hume are recognized patterns from external phenomena. That something should happen twice, there is no necessity for this in the external world. That we should form mental patterns from the external world, this is simply limited to itself, in other words, we should be quite foolish to think our mental patterns can tell us anything about the world “in itself”. All we can understand is our own subjective experience of the world. We can’t know total truths, we can state aggrandized maxims, and we can only know what we experience. With this fact in mind, Hume stands as the “Bulldozer of Metaphysics”, as the ever-consummate challenger to the value of abstract thought.

8. Friedrich Hegel

After Kant had rescued abstract philosophical thought from Hume, Hegel took it upon himself to describe the entire existence of the totality of the world in his magnum opus appropriately titled “The Phenomenology of Spirit”. The task was so big, some say it drove him to madness. Carl Jung has been quoted as saying that “If Hegel lived in the 20th century, he would have been diagnosed with a mania”. 20th century pedestrian psychological thinking aside, Hegel would prove to be the foremost thinker in romantic philosophy for his large leaps of logic that covered all that could be known in the human world. In the “Phenomenology of Spirit”, Hegel traces the human being from his purely conscious state to his self-conscious state and then his fall back into non-consciousness. This would be referred to later as the Hegelian Dialectic. For Hegel, with the recent accomplishments of enlightenment reason and science, we have become self-aware of ourselves in a grandiose historical narrative, where we realize we had a large past and possible future where we no longer recognized ourselves like we do now. We see ourselves in a time with ancestors before us. For Hegel, because we see ourselves, there is no more left for the human-being to accomplish, making the goal of human existence the realization of the self. Francis Fukuyama would echo this sentiment in his book “The End of History and The Last Man”, where he foresees democracy and world-wide communication ending history as we know it, because we have fulfilled what we have needed to fulfill. Hegel swayed by the trust in reason of the enlightenment created the greatest and most sweeping of systematic philosophies, one that wanted to exemplify everything in one text.

7. Martin Heidegger

In the early part of the 20th century 2 world wars devastated the morale and spirit of both the west and the east. During this time, there were massive vacuums for spirited leaders to find the “groundings” of all existence in hopes of gaining clarity on their situations. Heidegger was the foremost thinker of this period who insisted that we reestablish what it is we mean by “being”. We all use the word, but none of us really understand what it means. In Heidegger’s most famous work “Being and Time”, Heidegger sets out to reestablish what “Being” is concretely. Through his existential analytic, we are brought to the most insightful, basic, understandings of the Dasein (Being-There, Human Being). We are simply “Looking-around-for-things-to-do” circumspectively. We are influenced by the “They-Self”. We are always calculating for future purposes, what Heidegger denominates as “Running-ahead-of-itself” when referring to the futural Dasein. It’s in this explanation, this subtle criticism of what he found man to become, that he demands a look back to the pre-socratic thought of greek antiquity, a time where thinkers were more in awe of the world than in trying to calculate an infinite amount of sediments that ostensibly make it up. Heidegger would become a Nazi, a move that he tacitly apologized for, a move that would repudiate him of the legacy as a philosopher he deserves. The task when reading Heidegger is trying to understand how one could be such a brilliant philosopher while at the same time being a nefarious Nazi. It’s in Heidegger that we learn more than anywhere, how deep the divisions are between politics and philosophy.

6. Soren Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard is undeniably the father of existentialism. It’s Kierkegaard’s reaction to Hegelian idealism that places him as the founder of personal subjective philosophy in contra-distinction to “systematic” philosophy. A thinker who thought more with his body than mind at times, Kierkegaard was known for making decisions based on sometimes ostensibly absurd reasons. As a thinker deeply influenced by the tradition of Christianity, especially the life of Jesus Christ, Kierkegaard would go on to give deep polemics against his own native church of Denmark, in hopes of restoring the passion of the actual life of Jesus Christ. In one of his more famous books “Either/Or” Kierkegaard speaks of a “Rotation Method” which is nothing other than limiting yourself as a human being to the most focused passionate existence that often defies modernity’s discursive social logic of “Being everything to everyone” ubiquitously. In his somber “Sickness unto Death” Kierkegaard would trace a genealogy of despair from the unconscious despairer to the conscious despairer, to the despairer-no-more (the man of pure faith). In all his works, he encounters the cumbersome division between faith and reason that the modern catholic church often likes to package up in a nice present, as if they may never come into conflict, a point that Kierkegaard absolutely negates. Kierkegaard places philosophy solely into the human being who has to make these difficult choices. It’s with Kierkegaard that philosophy starts to become distinctly human.

5. Safari

Originally bundled with Mac operating systems, this web browser was only in use by a small percentage of the computing world. As Mac has grown in popularity over the past few years, so has their web browser, Safari. A unique and fun name accompanied this quick browser yet for most of its life it has been available for only Mac operating systems. The release of Safari for Windows operating systems was long awaited and anticipated. Wrapped in a silver skin, this program offered a fresh look to traditional Windows programs, yet this was overshadowed by the tremendous lack of speed Safari offered. This dramatically affected the release of Safari for Windows, yet the traditional product has been working great with its home base Mac operating systems. Safari offered a nice feature of automatically resizing windows with ease when the user wanted a differently sized window. The zooming and resizing features in Safari were one of the first and have been enjoyed by its users. Development has continued on the Windows version of this product yet this is not their primary market. Conquering the Mac market was a breeze, as it was the default choice for all Mac computers in the world. Overall this product is gaining popularity and is nice enough to offer development for both Mac and Windows. Old-wizard.com enjoys sharing, so we are in agreement that this is one of the better web browsers, finding itself at five.

4. Internet Explorer

Ah yes, another fine product from the monopoly loving company Microsoft. This web browser is often ranked as the most popular web browser on the planet, yet this is largely to do with the fact that most people just settle for what is standard. This web browser is actually built into the operating system known as Windows XP, and is the standard bundled “option” found with all Microsoft operating systems. Until recently Internet Explorer has had huge security flaws, and lacked any sort of imaginative design. The newest product, still in beta testing, is Internet Explorer 7. The streamlined features with this new version made many people feel lost within a product that they use on a daily basis. The menus disappeared and were replaced with icons, and when you click on the icons they just bring up a menu where everything is hidden. This could be considered as an advancement, yet we consider it as just a cover-up and attempt to mock Firefox. Internet Explorer maybe preinstalled into most computers on the planet, yet the lack of cross platform usage makes them rank only fourth on our list. The backing and development of Microsoft Corporation makes this product stable and secure, but in no means number one.

3. Flock

What the Flock? Many may find themselves asking this question, as this word is popping up more and more in daily conversation, and on several websites, invading your computer. Flock is an up and coming web browser that is strongly based upon the feeling of community. A sleek looking product that resembles Firefox with more shapely outlines and curves. It is almost as if they tried to take the best features of Firefox and Internet Explorer, and meld myspace, facebook and youtube into the same window. Flock can pull statuses from your favorite social websites, such as updates from your friends status window in Facebook. It streamlines this data, from multiple sources, and puts it within your web browser for easy access. This is like using an upgraded version of Firefox, yet it lacks in some of its base features such as favorites organization and sharing. We can defiantly see this product getting more attention in a very short amount of time as the social network sites such as Facebook and Myspace are launching into super popular web applications. Flock also caters to the blogger community, offering the same sort of streamlined updates as for the other sites. Due to its young age, this browser does not have the popularity or user base of other browsers, but it is definitely something to keep an eye out for. Go ahead, install it and check it out, perhaps it will replace your copy of Internet Explorer.

2. Opera

Opera finds itself second in this list of competitors because of the massive amount of platforms, or operating systems, that it supports. In its dossier you can find versions supporting Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, BSD and several versions for cell phones and PDA based platforms. Sharing is caring, and Opera has shown us all how to do so. Another great advantage of this browser is that it is self sufficient for its security features, not dependent on the built in security measures of the platform it is being run on. Usability for this browser is very easy for users to get a hang of, and it actually displays pages with fewer errors than Internet Explorer. Opera also finds itself supporting widgets, which are small web applications, with ease. Users can customize their widgets to feed them different streaming information straight to their desktop. Although it is not as popular as the plugins for Firefox, these widgets go along with the same thought process and are enjoyed by many people every day. A clean looking and functional web browser finds itself in the shadows of Firefox and internet explorer, yet actually offer the user a much more engaging web experience than Internet Explorer. Keep up the good development Opera, as we enjoy how you share your fresh application with almost every possible computer platform on planet Earth.”

1. Firefox

The web browser that finds itself at the number one poll position of our list is Firefox. Taking the internet by storm as of late, many users have enjoyed this product because it was a fresh and interesting alternative to the boring and forced upon Internet Explorer. One of the main factors for this product’s popularity was its pure speed at which it could load pages. Zipping through different websites is of course most dependent on the speed of your connection, yet browsing with this superior browser can increase even the tiny sliver percentage of users still using dial up internet. Of course Firefox is secure, if not even more secure than its competitors and is offered for several operating systems. Tabbed browsing was one of the most amazing features introduced by Firefox; allowing users to have multiple web pages open within a single Firefox screen. Increasing productivity and allowing users to have several pages at their fingertips is another huge advantage to this product. Continuing with the list of great features included in Firefox is all of the optional plug-ins that it offers. StumbleUpon, one of the most popular plugins, allows users to select what topics they are interested it and “stumble” through pages that coincide with their likes. If the user enjoys the page, they give it a thumbs up, the program learns and shows more pages like that. If you give it a thumbs down, the opposite happens, and the viewer sees fewer pages with the same content. A community has been created with StumbleUpon users, where links can be shared and sent directly to other users instantly. The popularity of the plugins offered through Firefox, the speed and security of this product, and the cross platform support makes this our favorite web browser on the market. Old-Wizard.com fully supports the use of Firefox, and recommends it for viewing of our content. Enjoy the fox!

Let’s just take a step back, even before the installation attempt. As with previous versions of Microsoft Windows, there are different levels of the operating systems, offering a multitude of options to accommodate your need for the computer. Whether you are the modest home user just browsing the interweb and sending emails, or a powerful business user pushing your computer to its number crunching edge, Windows has been able to accommodate you. Here before you lies the list of Microsoft Windows Vista options, in order from least feature filled, to most: Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Business, Windows Vista Enterprise, Windows Vista Ultimate. These were developed with different users in mind and as you go higher up the Vista chain, you get more and more features. It’s a sneaky way for Microsoft to create price tiers, without actually saying it.

Picking out a version shouldn’t be too hard but it does get quite confusing with the plethora of options available between all of the different versions. More bells and whistles obviously means more money spent. Once one purchases their copy of Windows Vista, they then are faced with the daunting task of installing it. This is by no mean a walk in the park. During my trial test of installing Vista on my computer, it took me countless hours spread across a two week time span, crawling through all corners of the internet just to find a piece of software to make Vista see my hard drive. I couldn’t even get past the second step without running into a problem. This was frustration at the “ultimate” level, I somewhat wished my frustration could have been downgraded to business, but Microsoft is not fond of downgrades, only upgrades. Finally, like a diamond in the rough, a suitable driver was found from 1997. For some reason this software worked even though the newer, “Vista Certified” drivers didn’t.. On to the install!

With Vista finally able to find my hard drive, I was then actually allowed to install Windows Vista Business onto the computer. From then on, only mediocre pain ensued. I got blasted into a dark desktop screen, with sleek looking black menus, taskbar and flashy bubbly looking menus. I soon found out that barely half of my computer’s hardware was actually functioning. No sound. No printer. No external hard drives were working. It is as if I bought a brand new car, but could only find one gallon of gas to drive it with. Troubleshooting this issue, I found out that my current and trusty anti-virus software didn’t work with Vista. I was then on the hunt for a version that would work, because as with any brand new version of an OS it is susceptible to viruses instantly.

After several hours of searching, I was able to find a suitable anti-virus program that worked. I also tried to install other programs that I use on a daily basis, but only one of them was Vista compatible. The others didn’t even have a release version of the software that would work with Vista. During all of this, Vista kept bothering me, in the form of tossing a transparent black screen up prompting me with annoying questions, as if I was venturing to places in the computer I shouldn’t have been. Are you sure you want to do that? Is this what you meant to do? Do you know that this could cause an error? Don’t you know that this will make the system unsecure? The questions would not stop. Like an annoyingly indecisive friend. Over and over I was slowed down by Vista making sure all my moves were made apparent to me. This was quite aggravating. Dealing with a half working computer, and screens popping up warning me of what I already knew I was doing, I got fed up. I left the project for the night, not touching it again till the next day. I continued to use Windows Vista for a couple of days, and found it to be more of a hassle than an advantage. Sure, it looked fancy and did nice Mac like visual styles, but overall it was the most painful OS install and usage of my life. I would rather go back to Windows Millennium, and we all know how horrible of an OS that was. I won’t even go there.

As with all Windows products, they regularly release updates that get applied to the software that fixes problems, adds features, and makes it more secure. With Windows XP, about one year after its launch, Microsoft released “Service Pack 1”. It was a collection of all the updates, and then some, that Microsoft released over the year. This was a massive update, and enhanced Windows XP greatly. In the case of Windows Vista, Microsoft has already released information that it will be releasing “Service Pack 1” shortly. There are versions of this service pack floating around the internet, and it should be released to the public soon. Quite sad when the latest OS needs a service pack so shortly after it’s fumbled and rush release to the public. Nonetheless, a few days after I installed Windows Vista, I wiped it clean, and installed a fresh copy of Windows XP Professional in under 45 minutes. Quite superior, for an aging Microsoft product reaching the end of its life cycle.

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