Court TVs "Anatomy of Pursuit": Pursuing the Truth

I'm watching "Court TV". The show is "Anatomy of Crime: Hot Pursuit". It's showing most of the issues surrounding high-speed pursuits between cops and criminals. I say most because they are concentrating on the cops and the innocent people who are hurt or killed during the course of the pursuit. I hear people talking about how the cops are at fault, that the pursuit never should have happened, how the policy in one case allowed the bad guy to go free, but the cop felt at fault for letting him get away, on and on and on.

But guess what is missing? The fact that the criminals being pursued are at fault. Perhaps its a sign of the times that we blame everyone but those responsible. Society is at fault, the government is at fault, blah, blah, blah. But what about the criminals themselves? What of them? Are they not at fault? Not according to this show. It would appear that running from the cops is the way to go. Go ahead! Do it! Even if you hurt or kill someone else, you won't be at fault! It will be the cops fault! It will be the government's fault! The victims will blame both of them and you'll be free and clear! Hell, it might even put you up in the eyes of your cellmates. (One of whom, I hope, is named, "Rufus T. Buttlove.")

And now they're talking about prosecuting cops for participating in high-speed pursuits. Just what your average beat cop needs, another armchair quarterback. (Note: I really loved the fact that one of the people talking most stridently about going after cops if the pursuit goes wrong is a "Professor of Criminology". One of the types of people I detest the most are armchair academics. They feel that they can solve all of the worlds problems with talk and reason. Yeah, prof, whatever...) None of the people talking about prosecuting cops are (or were) cops. Hmmm.

Could we make fleeing from cops in a vehicle (not on foot) a crime similar to firing a gun in public? Think about it. A thousand pounds of vehicle is a very deadly weapon, especially at high speeds. If we consider it a deadly force crime, the cops would be allowed to shoot at the criminals. I've seen many pursuits where the cops were able to, at one point, get close to the driver. They were able to reach in to the car, but they could not wrestle with the perpetrator. I think that if they were allowed to shoot the criminals, the pursuit would be over much quicker. Further, the criminals would think twice about fleeing if they knew the cops could shoot them for it.

Okay, all (sick) joking aside, here's the problem. Today, running from the police stands at the same level as drunk driving did many years ago. Then, Candy Lightner started MADD in 1980. That changed the way people looked at driving drunk. It's not funny anymore. But high speed pursuits are still cool, or not that big a deal. It's almost funny. People love watching them on TV. (Remember the so-called "pursuit" of OJ Simpson?) But they shouldn't be cool anymore. People need to look at them as sick and disgusting. How would they feel if, instead of a car weaving erratically all over the road, the helicopter camera showed a man with a gun indiscriminately shooting people? How would they feel? Thrilled? Or disgusted? That's how we should feel when we see a high-speed pursuit.

Why Am I Always the Only One?

I have both a Roku Soundbridge and Zonealarm installed on my computer. If you own both of these items, you probably already know the problems that arise. No matter what I do, I cannot make them coexist. So, if I want to listen to music on my Soundbridge, I have to temporarily disable my Zonealarm. Soundbridge has an interesting feature that allows you to "telnet" into it in order to make some changes (such as manually set the IP address) or play around with the display.

But telnet is a communication program. And Zonealarm is designed to make it as difficult as possible for programs to communicate. As hard as I've tried to make Zonealarm usable, it's just not possible. I've tried:

* to add "telnet" as a program to Zonealarm. No matter how many times I try, it won't show up on the Zonealarm program list.
* add a rule in the zones to allow telnet to communicate. No matter how I configure the settings, it won't work.
* add a rule in the zones to allow any program in the Trusted zone to communicate. And it won't work.

So, here I am with a firewall that is overly aggressive. You'd think that, as long as Zonealarm has been on the market, someone would have already tripped across this problem. Nope, I'm the first. How do I know? Because I've scoured the Internet looking for something similar (Don't bother looking on Zonealarm's web site. It sucks.)

Every web site I've been to says the party line of, "Add "telnet" to your list of approved programs" and "Put your Soundbridge in the allowed zone". But neither of these options works. Further, there are many settings that are possible for both of these suggestions, but no one will tell you what settings to use.

No dice. I'm the first. Frankly, this is not one of those times when being the premiere on something has its advantages. It's no advantage at all. It just sucks.

Sigh.

Dear America: Stop Your Whining!

I spent this afternoon driving home from work listening to a talk radio channel on XM. I'm guessing that it was a left-leaning talk show because I was subjected to several callers discussing how their lives sucked because George W. Bush was the President of the United States. That was how conversations started, then it invariably went into how the mainstream media will not go after Bush on his stance on various issues, including the war in Iraq.

Before that, I spent some time with some colleagues who are anything but left-leaning. Frankly, some of them would make Rush Limbaugh appear more to the left than Abby Hoffman. They talked about how America was going down the drain because of the attacks on religion, the attacks on Christians by those opposing intelligent design, etc, etc, etc.

I, for one, am sick of all of it. Left and right. Now hear this, you are all idiots.

America, by my definition, is still the greatest country on Earth. (So I'm biased. So sue me.) It's the idiots like you who are flushing it down the commode of history. Stop your whining. Just because George W. Bush is President of the United States does not mean your life is over. If you truly believe that life here is that bad, the borders for outbound people are open. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

As for those of you who think that your religious views are under such attack and persecution, find your "Mayflower", weigh anchor, and shove off. Sorry, fellas, but life is just not that bad. Frankly, my life, for all of its faults, is pretty damn good. Perhaps I'm too much of a simpleton, but I have three squares a day, a nice place to live (cramped though it is), a wonderful wife, and good job (despite some of my idiotic colleagues), and a family that is mostly healthy.

I've seen people who have it bad. You are not among them. If having Dubya as the head honcho is the worst that happens to you this decade, you've done pretty damn good.

The one reply I'm sure to get to anyone (Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) reading this is, "I'm not whining!" My definition of whining is someone stating a problem in their life that has an indirect and intangible impact on their life. At best, Dubya is an indirect impact. Further, it's VERY indirect. Also, I prefer if you were to provide some substance to your smoke (And I sure wish I knew what you were smoking so I could try to place a ban on it...) I'm weary of hearing, "George W. Bush doesn't care. He lies. He does whatever he wants." Blah, blah, blah. Do you mind providing at least one tangible piece of evidence? Fact is, you can't. You listen to others bitch, piss, wail, and moan over the sorry states of their lives and you want to find a scapegoat. Fact is, your lives would be sorry without Dubya. You'd just find someone else to blame it on.

Same goes for you who complain about attacks on religion, Christianity, etc, etc, etc. Would you please provide one shred of evidence of how you are being attacked? One iota? No, don't hand me some magazine, such as Newsshit, Slime or one of the others. I want you to actually read something, process it for yourself, and give me a credible argument in your own words. Really hard to do, isn't it? Especially when you've never done it before. Instead, you want to find the party line of all of the other right-wing idiots (Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell) and just continue to spout it. No, I want you to tell me what YOU think. Can't, huh? Didn't think so.

I want both sides to stop talking in extremes, grow up, and deal with the world as it is, not as you perceive it through your narrow filter. There is a lot more gray between these black and white views of yours. You morons.

Power to The Consumer? Or Sony?

With all of the recent drubbings of Sony in both the blogworld and big media, one would think that it was only Sony that was ignorant. I'm here to tell you that that is not the case.

It's the problem of "Who has the power?" When the commercial world came up with the standards for current digital video discs (DVDs), they gave the people who make the discs the power to control certain features during playback. For example, have you noticed that you cannot skip over the "FBI warning" at the beginning of a DVD? You can typically fast-forward through it (although I have at least one DVD that won't allow that, either). There are also DVDs that put previews (commercials for other DVDs) at the beginning of the DVD. You can't skip over those, either. Nor can you go directly to the menu to play the DVD. You know, the DVD that you actually paid money to watch? No, they gave the people who make DVDs the power and they took that power and ran with it. Don't like it? Too bad. They have the power and you are not getting it back. Do you remember that, when you had a VHS tape, you could pop in the tape, probably fast-forward through a minute of dire FBI warnings (of which my thought has always been, "Who would want to copy this?") or other junk, then get to the movie.

Not any more.

Now, in order to watch a DVD, you VILL vatch de commercials und you VILL vatch de FBI varning! UND YOU VILL LIKE IT!

Back to Sony. You remember, the same people who thought that Betamax was the wave of the future? Who didn't give up til the bitter end? The same people who still cling to the notion that they can sell their stuff, which is not much better quality than anyone else, for a much steeper price? Yeah, that's the one. They decided that they were going to one-up the pirates. By not screwing the pirates, but rather by screwing their paying customers. Why? Because they had the power. They sat down and said, "Okay, if we make it so that people cannot play the CDs in their computers without first loading our software, how can we use that to our advantage?" I imagine that, at some point, someone at Sony said, "Er, um, guys, this might be a bad idea. Aren't we just screwing our paying customers while not doing anything to the pirates?"

Okay, okay. I said that they are not screwing the pirates. And they're not. They might be slightly slowing down the pirates. Why? Because if the pirates want to rip off the CD, all they have to do is load the CD into a normal CD player (such as Sony manufactures), direct the audio from the CD player into a computer, and simply record the music from there. While it will reduce the sound quality by a bit, the music was crap to begin with, so who would notice? Remember that this is exactly how the pirates copy movies. They literally take a videocamera into the movie theater and record it while they are watching it. What's to stop them from doing the exact same thing with a CD? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

But why did Sony consider it necessary to do this? Because, right now, people have "the power". They can rip CDs, make them into small, easily transferred files, then use one of a few "file-stealing", er, *file-sharing* programs to share with friends. And there is no degradation in sound quality. None. Doesn't matter if you are the first person in line to get a shared file or the 100th. The bits, and sound quality, are the same. The internet drastically changed the equation. So, lots of people are (ab)using their power. They can steal music or movies for just pennies, as opposed to having to pay many dollars to purchase it legally.

What did Sony do? They tried to swing the power pendulum back. Then they abused the living hell out of the power they had for the short while they had it.

Both sides in this fight are as stupid as the other.

Mathcad: It Was Great

I've been a Mathcad user for many years now. I first purchased it when it was version 5. Now Mathsoft, the maker of Mathcad, is up to version 13. And there were a few extras in between, such as Mathcad 2001. I purchased Mathcad 12 earlier this year. Since then, they've come out with one new update to the software.

The problem is that this update created a bug in one of Mathcad's graphic utilities. Mathcad makes it very easy to create a graph. They've also added some features with these graphs, such as zoom in and zoom out. The bug I speak of makes it difficult to use the zoom in and out feature. It's one of those things that you don't know you'll miss until it's gone.

I sent an e-mail to Mathsoft earlier this year talking about this bug. Mathsoft sent back a reply saying they were aware of this bug. Since then, deafening silence. No fix. No update.

But are they hawking version 13.

Now here this, Mathsoft: Version 12, for which I paid many hundreds of dollars, still does not fully work. When you fix the bugs, I will think about purchasing the upgrade.

You are probably not listening. I'm only one person. But I have a blog. No, it's not much, either. But you never know who might be listening.

Michael Moore: How Do I Hate Thee, Let Me Count the Ways

I've personally had issues with Michael Moore for many years. His vast amount of self-righteousness makes me puke. His "Farenheit 9/11" is the epitome of bloviation. He marketed it as a documentary. Except for the fact that he put it out before the election, it was a direct attack on a candidate, and he made millions from all the idiots willing to shell out to see it. (Of course, being such a "man of the people", Moore never thought to put it out free of charge.)

I tripped across an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer discussing the less-than-deity Moore.

It speaks for itself.

How I Hate Malware

I just tried to log on to my one and only chat group. I found that it had been hacked by some piece of scum (lower than scum, really). Instead of getting the site, I was re-directed to a site that had the simple banner of "Hacked! Secretlyx".

Wow! That's so cool! NOT!

I know the piece of shit that hacked the site is probably telling people how it is making the Internet safer for everyone by pointing out the flaws in security. I, of course, would like to hunt it down, find out where it lives, then bust down it's door, kick in the door to it's bedroom, and stand over it and ask it how much it appreciates my pointing out the flaw in it's front door not being stronger.

If I had to guess, though, it's parent's would probably tell me that it is really a good it and was just "playing around". I would then point out that they should not have bred if this was the best they could do.

I realize that it is not much of a threat, but I have a job in which I interview applicants. When I find out that an applicant has done malicious hacking, even if it is "just for fun", I throw them out. I realize you may find another job somewhere else. But I'll be damned if I'll hire your dumbass.

You've been told.

Happy Birthday to the Corps

Today, November 10th, is the 230th anniversary of the founding of the United States Marine Corps.

Happy Birthday to all Marines, current and former!

Heroic (Virus) Protection?

I recently acquired a new DVD. Inside was a Symantec advertisement. It says, and I quote, "Norton software products offer heroic protection for your computer..."

Heroic protection?

While I believe that the word "hero" and "heroic" has been overused as of late, this goes a step beyond overused. This is sheer abuse. I know at least one heroic computer programmer. That's only because he was in the Army and served his country honorably for over two decades. He served in the first Gulf War (Desert Shield / Desert Storm). And now he's someone to whom I look to with regards to his computer programming skills.

His computer skills have nothing to do with why I think he's a bit above. It's his selflessness, his professionalism, and the fact that he did what so many of us are unwilling to do, put his country before himself.

"Heroic protection for your computer?" Give me a break.

Arrogance & Ignorance

My wife and I had a (fairly friendly) argument this evening. We go to the symphony on a regular basis. This evening, while dressing, she said that I couldn't wear my cargo pants. I'm thinking, "Why not?" They're essentially Dockers but with pockets on the sides.

My attitude as we walked out the door let her know I was annoyed. The pants were pressed, clean, and (Oh, my GOD!) comfortable. But that was not the point with her. Her point was (and I quote), "You would not be conforming."

Did I mention she's a card-carrying Democrat? I thought that was the by-word of Democrats, "diversity".

Perhaps not?

She went on to explain that there are "rules" concerning what one wears in public. Granted, I'll agree with that. It's not polite to show up in a ratty t-shirt, cut-off jean shorts, and sandals to a job interview. (At least, don't schedule an interview with me then dress that way.) But we're not talking well outside of the "rules" (whatever those are). We're simply talking some nice khakis (for which I paid a decent price) with some pockets on the sides. Instead, I had to wear a simple pair of khaki pants with no pockets on the sides. Aside from the pockets, they are identical. But, yet, somehow the pockets make them outside of the "rules".

She tried her damndest to make me understand. The problem is that that is impossible. It's not that I'm incapable of understanding. It's just that, in order to understand something, there has to be some logic to it. And there is no logic to the "rules". She even admitted that. Let me say that again, "There is no logic to the 'rules' of fashion."

Big surprise, huh?

It's not that I don't care about the "rules" (whatever those are). It's just that, in this instance, I don't care what other people think. I have no interaction with these people. I do not look like a bum. I wash, wear deodorant (even under BOTH arms!), and my clothes are clean, my shoes are shined (leather lasts longer that way), and my pants, shirt and jacket (Yup, wore one of those!) were all pressed.

Yet that is not enough. During our argument, I stated that there were many gentlemen at the symphony who wore loud, plaid shirts. She said that was different. That's not an issue of conforming, that's an issue of "coolness". She doesn't care if you are not cool, so long as you conform. In other words, she'd rather I showed up in a loud, bright, Hawaiian flower shirt than a pair of jeans made by Gucci himself.

She that not conforming shows that you are either arrogant or ignorant. If you knowingly violate the rules, you are arrogant. If you unknowingly do so, you are ignorant. I've always thought that arrogance was a non-conformance of the rules that had a direct effect on society. For example, the idiots that always drive in the left lane, regardless of how slow they are going, are arrogant. That has a direct effect on those around them.

But how does what I wear have this same, direct and tangible effect on those around me? Fact is, unless I'm buck-ass naked, it doesn't.

At least, that's how I see it.

From the Shores of Tripoli

It appears that several Somalis don't remember history. These Somalis attempted to hijack a large cruise ship just offshore (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4409662.stm). The ship captain put the coals to it, started evasive manuevers, and even attempted to run the attackers over at one point.

He didn't succeed, damn it.

Oh, well. Better luck next time.

What these pirates don't seem to understand is that piracy is one of the first problems that the US Marines took on after being formed. The part of the Marine Corps hymn "from the shores of Tripoli" refers to the Marines taking on (and defeating!) the Barbary pirates operating off of Libya in the late 18th century.

Fellas, let me point out some things that might make your life more livable:

1) Anyone on a ship has a very clear field of view, except at night and in storms.
2) Night vision goggles work really well at night.
3) Unless you are highly trained spec ops warriors, taking down a moving ship is not an easy-to-do.
4) If a ship captain decides to run you down, the laws of physics apply. A 50 pound raft / dingy / rowboat is no match for a 10,000 ton cruise ship.
5) If a friendly nation parks a warship in the area, all bets are off. You've been warned.