Pale White Man

The Computer with Linux is Installed

2010-10-17T09:58:00.004-05:00

This is the continuing story of a family who is switching the kids' computer from Windows to Ubuntu Linux. Long story short: The computer had been infected with some nasty malware. Try as I might, I couldn't get rid of all of them. Since I was going to be re-formatting and re-installing anyway, I asked the father if I could just install Linux rather than Windows. After he gave me the go-ahead, I installed the latest version, which is 10.10 or "Maverick Meerkat".
The one thing I noted off the bat was that the install was much more streamlined than in previous versions. It even asked if I wanted to do updates during the install, as opposed to doing the updates manually afterwards. Plus, and here's a big one, they asked if I wanted to add the ability to handle proprietary formats (Helloooo, MP3!) up front. Yes, I do. I try to be as software- and hardware-agnostic as I can. Right now, as much as open source purists hate it, MP3 is the primary method for storing digital music. The family has many, many songs already in that format. It would be more of a pain to convert them than to simply make it possible to load the appropriate (but proprietary) codec on the system.
As stated in my previous post, I added accounts for each of the two kids (ages 13 and 10), plus admin accounts for me and the parents. And to make things simpler for everyone (the drive is about an hour), I went ahead and added an SSH server. I included a public key-based authentication and removed the password-only from their system; while I was installing the computer, I set up their router to allow the SSH request to be forwarded to this computer.
As an added bennie, I noted that, when loading programs onto the kids accounts, the system asked for the username and password of one of the two admin accounts (me or the parents). No more did I need to worry about the whole "make the kids temporarily superuser" stuff. Just put in my username, type in my password, click and done.
Yesterday, they finally got their new (but old) computer. One thing I was really interested in was to find out precisely what the kids were using the computer for. Mind you, neither of these kids is an online gamer. (That kid, the oldest, is now in college.) But the youngest does check out various kid-related sites such as poptropica.com. It turns out that all either of them really needed was a word processor (for which they have OpenOffice) for school-related projects and a web browser (Firefox). Plus, with this version of Ubuntu, Firefox comes ready to play. No need to manually add Flash or anything. Once its loaded, its ready to rock.
After installing the computer, I walked each kid through the basics of starting up the computer, logging into his / her account, opening up OpenOffice (I put the requisite icons directly on the desktop), and opening up the browser. For the youngest, I had him open up his normal web sites, then I created bookmarks for each. I also added several of them directly to his Firefox bookmark toolbar. Once he opens Firefox, he has to make one click to go to his most favorite sites.
The one problem I had was trying to get their old printer to work. It's a Dell 720 color printer, and I could not get it to work. I scoured the Interwebz for how-tos. Several people spoke of using a particular driver for the Lexmark Z615 printer, since the Dell is allegedly a re-branded copy of that printer. No luck. I couldn't get it to work. I then tried to get the computer to print to an Epson printer which was connected to the parents' computer. The parents' computer is running WinXP. And at the moment I was trying to make it work, they happened to have left for some errands. Since I didn't have access to that computer, I decided to save that one for another day. For now, the kids will have to save their files to a thumb drive and print them on the parents' computer. Not ideal, but workable until we can figure out a better solution. I'd really like to get that Dell printer to work. Regardless, a minor glitch and, frankly, I can't blame the OS for it. Dell didn't provide a driver for it; besides, it's a low-end (I'm being polite.) printer anyway.
So, when I woke up this morning, I SSHed into their box and did a quick "who" command. Who's on the box this morning? One of the parents. Just before I left, I showed the father how to save a document in the MS Word format (since he has to send a lot of letters that way). And he was impressed with the ability to export to a PDF. His eyes actually lit up when I showed him that. Could he be doing something with OpenOffice? Possibly. My guess (and a quick "ps" command seems to bear this out) is that he's surfing the Internet using Firefox. Oh, and he was really impressed with how quickly the computer booted up, compared to the ages it took when Windows was still loaded.
I imagine their will be other problems (aside from the no-printer problem) in the future, but so far, so good.

The Family Linux Box - An Experiment Begins

2010-10-12T10:35:00.000-05:00

Can a family that has used nothing but Windows convert to Linux? I may be about to find out. I have a family who have two desktop computers. One computer is for the parents; the other is for the children, ages 13 and 10. The kids computer was infected with what Norton stated was "11 risks". The risks were various trojan horses, general viruses, and a rootkit. I've tried all of the standard procedures to get rid of the various pieces of malware, all to no avail. I asked their father if I could load Ubuntu Linux on the computer. He said to go ahead.
The computer is now loaded with version 10.4 (Lucid Lynx), though I may update it to 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). I've added an admin account for myself, an account for each of the kids, and an account for the parents.
I've already identified one problem. Neither of the kids is a super user, which means neither of them can use "sudo" to add programs or change their account in any way. So, while they can keep each other out of his and her respective files, they can't add any meaningful programs. Further, I don't know how I, as an admin, can do it for them. What I'm thinking right now is to temporarily make them super users, make the changes I need, then remove their super user status.
If you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments. Thanks!

Damn onions

2010-10-05T21:38:00.002-05:00

I'm a regular reader of the web site Blackfive. One of the best things they do (among many) is to honor those who have fallen, to make those who stop by the site pause for a moment to reflect on someone who has given their life so that I can have mine.
It was while reading a recent one that I remembered two words that I'd come across in the comments for a similar article. The words were, "Damn onions". When I first saw those words, I understood. I've discovered, though, that not everyone gets it. In case you don't, let me explain.
The short answer is that the story, like chopping onions, made the reader cry. But in my mind, it's more than that. The readers of Blackfive cover all of the military services. I've seen comments from those in the Coast Guard, Air Force, Marines, Army and Navy. While they may rib and kid each other, the one bond they share that no outsider can truly understand is that they are and have been sent into harm's way. Many of them subscribe to the macho world of the military. Be cool, calm and professional, but always have a plan to kill everyone you meet. That kind of thing. Therefore, showing emotion, even through the relative anonymity of the interwebz, is not something that comes easily to them. When they read of a comrade who has died, though, it's gonna happen. The tears will flow. They can fight it, but frankly, they'd rather not. They could type out everything they're feeling, but words really don't suffice. The emotion is too raw, and perhaps (just as with me) they cannot write well. Words might be in their head, but whether they are the right words put into the right order is another thing, entirely. So, to keep up appearances, we get the comment, "Damn onions."
It's those two words for which the true significance would take a thick book to fundamentally explain. They may not want to show emotion in public, especially to a bunch of strangers on the internet. But still, they are. They are crying. Just as I am, having read the story of SSG Miller, recently (and posthumously) awarded the Medal of Honor. If you are ever reading a story of a comrade, a warrior, someone who has given their life for their country, and you see those two words, understand the depth that those two words represent.

Analysis of a Malware Installation Attempt

2010-08-19T20:34:00.003-05:00

Here's the background. Earlier this year, I was in a masters class that was an introduction to the TCP/IP suite of protocols. TCP/IP is, in essence, the backbone of the Internet. It's what allows all computers to talk to all other computers, regardless if they're little handheld iPhones to large supercomputers.
Me, I hate theory. I mean I really hate it. So many textbooks provide such dry prose that I have to stand in a monsoon to keep some humidity around me. To help keep my interest, I decided to do a little experiment. A friend's computer had been infected with a virus when she clicked on a link in her Facebook account. Turns out the link was from a friend of hers, whose account had also been infected. My friend's computer was running Windows, and it required several days and a couple hundred dollars to get it fixed. Anyway, I decided to use this as an opportunity to learn something. So, I set up a virtual machine (using VMWare) to create a Windows 7 Professional system. Then, I loaded Kaspersky Anti-virus, created a limited account, and went hunting. I stored a few of the links that were now appearing on her (now infected) Facebook account.
Rather than bore you here with all of the details, here's a short, graphic-laden summary of what transpired. The short answer is that it appears that Windows 7, when run on a limited account, is a much tougher nut to crack than I thought. Considering that I converted to Linux just last year, that's saying something.

Rob, We Need You Back

2010-08-19T20:12:00.005-05:00

I've been a follower of Rob Rosenberger for many years. It's been at least ten because I remember reading his work while still living in a townhouse, and that was in 1999. Rob hasn't posted on either his Vmyths site nor on the SecurityCritics.org site since last year. So far as I'm concerned, Rob was (and remains) the master of biting commentary with respect to computer security and the computer security industry. Finding him looking over your shoulder is similar to finding a "60 Minutes" news crew outside your front door. It's just not something you want to see happen. For example, when he went after Richard Clarke, you could hear the bitch-slap reverberating all across the country.
For those of us on the other side, the receiving side, of his wit and wisdom, it's just the opposite. You hope, nay pray, for him to find someone or something to ridicule. Seriously, to me, reading Rosenbergers's insightful analyses was like finding the Rosetta Stone of the anti-virus industry. I could feel my IQ rising with each paragraph I took in.
Which brings me to my point. Rob, we need you back. I mean it. We need you. The seeming rise of botnets and uberhackers and what not just screams for someone with the knowledge and, even more importantly, the ability to translate that knowledge for the masses, and that means you. We need someone with the expertise to be able to look past the fluff and spin and exaggerations to be able to say what is BS, and what is BS.
Come back, Rob, when you can. As the ad goes, "We'll leave the light on for ya."

Happy Fourth!

2010-07-03T10:43:00.003-05:00

I don't drink alcohol, but I'll still raise a toast tomorrow (the 4th) out of respect for those who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.

Oh if you're going to hit me with stupid whininess that you think passes for cynical wittiness, don't bother. If you don't know what passes for "stupid whininess", it's comments such as this:

From a comment on a Wired article: "Do you think that the Founding Fathers would be proud of us with the Bill of Rights reduced to a list of suggestions, Privacy gone, a government that kidnaps and tortures with no consequences to the perpetrators, wars waged based on lies and deceit?"

From a Gizmodo article: "This Sunday, our fine nation celebrates blowing up other nations for its independence."

Frankly, the second one is the dumbest thing I've read so far this year. It's so dumb that it will probably hold the title for the rest of the year, if not for several years after.

Enjoy your fireworks, your families and friends, and your independence.

Botnet from a Linux kernel vulnerability?

2010-04-29T13:55:00.003-05:00

I was reading an article on two men indicted on creating, then unleashing, a botnet attack. What really got my attention was this (my emphasis added):

A few hours later, T35 President Alex Melen responded to Zook's post, blaming the compromise on a Linux kernel vulnerability, and noting that "a lot of companies are dealing with these hacking attacks right now and not a lot can be done."

I found an article which seems to address an issue related to a Linux kernel vulnerability, but I don't know if this is the one addressed in the botnet attack. If it is the same one, they a patch has already been produced. Further, if it is the same one, then that gives me an idea on when this attack occurred (probably in the mid- to late-2009 timeframe).
Just another reminder to be on your toes with respect to computer security, regardless of your platform or operating system.

Hey, FX Networks! You SUCK!

2010-04-15T14:46:00.003-05:00

Again, it's my fault. I started watching the new series on FX Networks called "Justified". For whatever reason, I like it. However, I missed the second episode. This has not been a problem on other shows. For example, both "Burn Notice" and "In Plain Sight" (two of my other favorites) provide online episodes. Click to the website, click "Play" and away we go.

Not so with "Justified". First, I'm told that I have to download the "Move Media Player" which will provide "rich and exciting" video to my desktop. If you've read any part of this blog, you'll know that I no longer run Windows as my primary operating system. When I clicked on "Install", I was given a window that stated that "Move Media Player" only works on Windows XP and Vista, as well as Mac OS X.

Strike 1, FX.

I went ahead and fired up my laptop, which runs Vista. Except that Windows decided to go off the deep end. The "explorer.exe" process was running at 100%, making running anything impossible.

Strike 2, FX.

An hour later, I'd created a work-around for that problem. I managed to get the media player loaded. I started the episode I wanted. By the way, that took two restarts of the browser due to several errors I received. Except the episode is the wrong dimensions. Everyone is stretched out vertically.

Oh, and that whole "no buffering" is a whole lot of bullshit. If you're operating on the Internet, you're using a buffer. No way around it. Period.

So, I've downloaded a problem in which the first thing presented is either a lie or a completely made-up piece of bullshit. (My fault.) Then it requires over an hour to get to work. (Their fault.) And, to top it all off, it's probably watching everything I do. (My fault AND their fault.)

Strike 3, FX. You're out.

I'll be deleting the "Move Media Player" from my computer. And telling FX to pound sand.

Yet Another Reason I Like Linux: Panorama Pictures

2010-04-04T10:45:00.005-05:00

Under Windows, I had a heck of a time finding decent panorama stitching software. At least, software that didn't cost a gazillion dollars. Under Ubuntu, I appear to have found a great panorama stitching program that is free. It's called "Hugin Panorama". It's actually two different pieces of software; one is the backend processor (called "Hugin Batch Processor") and the other is the frontend GUI (called "Hugin Panorama Creator"). I installed both from the repositories. In this case, it was using the Ubuntu Software Center (Applications -> Ubuntu Software Center, then do a search on "hugin").
The first panorama I created was of a Civil War battlefield (Bolivar Heights) just outside of Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Personally, I think it came out stunningly.

The latest requires a short bit of digression. I used to be a volunteer firefighter. One of the first people I befriended when I joined the department goes by the nickname of "Tink". "Tink" is still with the department, but I'm not. But he wants me back. To try to push me in that direction, he suggested I stop by a building right next to where we have breakfast every Sunday morning. This particular establishment burned down due to the carelessly-thrown away ashtray. I stopped by. But I also decided to see how well Hugin would do with some cellphone pictures. Again, in my most humble opinion, I think it came out real well.

Consider this. I took this with an LG260 Rumor camera phone. If you don't know anything about this phone, know this: it takes crappy pictures. Yeah, they might tout it as a "1.3 megapixel", but those 1.3 million pixels have obviously had a hard life. I know, I know. It wasn't meant to take studio quality pictures. But, of all of the panorama stitching programs I've had, they always wanted good quality pics. Obviously, Hugin works differently. Or just better. Or differently better. Whatever. I just know it does a great job. (Just finished dropping a few dollars to the developer. Good work like this needs to be rewarded.)
Also, I didn't know the specs on the camera. All panorama programs need to know some basic camera info. Well, Hugin wants to know either the camera's horizontal field of view (shortened as "HFOV") or its focal length and length multiplier. Hell, I felt lucky the manual told me it was "1.3 megapixel". Forget about anything more detailed such as the focal length. I was able to take out a piece of paper, a pencil and a ruler, then actually calculate the horizontal field of view of the camera. It's approximately 52 degrees of HFOV. That works out to a 35 mm lense with a 1x length multiplier. Go figure. Punching that in allowed me to make the panorama shown above.
Hey, Hugin people, you guys rock!

Why Wireshark Doesn't Show Padding on Ethernet Packets

2010-02-21T12:51:00.004-05:00

This post will be about a truly esoteric part of the interwebs. I'm going to use my small home network for this discussion. I have a couple desktops hardwired with switches, along with two laptops (an HP and a MacBook) tied in wirelessly. I also have an HP printer that is wired in. The medium, as with most home networks, is Ethernet over 100BaseT. When I use a piece of software that wants to communicate over my network, whether its just to my networked printer sitting next to my desk or to a web server sitting half-way around the world, the software will create a frame of bits. That frame will use an address, called a "medium access control" or "MAC" address, send that frame to the next system in the link. If the address is for something on my network, then the connection is direct. However, if I'm going to send the frame outside my network, to the big Internet, then the MAC address that's used is the MAC address of my little Linksys router. When the frame gets to the router, the router changes the source and destination MAC addresses to those of itself and the server at Comcast (my ISP) that I'm tied into. This is standard Ethernet (802.3) stuff.
But here's a little known (to most non-geeks) fact. My computer only holds onto the MAC address of the systems on the network for about 20 minutes. It keeps these addresses in a file called an "ARP cache". That's a small file that ties IP (Internet Protocol) addresses to MAC addresses. The "ARP cache" is dynamic. It will only keep its contents for 20 minutes, then it's removed. So, what if it's been 20 minutes since the last time I connected over the network? More specifically, what if it's been 20 minutes since I connected to my router? Then the router's MAC address won't be in the "ARP cache". This means it needs some way to find out the router's MAC address. Which is the purpose of ARP, or "address resolution protocol". The purpose of ARP is to allow a system to determine the MAC address of another system given that it knows the IP address of that other system. So, when my computer wants to connect to the router, it sends out an ARP request stating, "Hey, who has 192.168.1.1? Tell 192.168.1.100." This message is broadcast to every system on my network. My router, recognizing its own IP address (192.168.1.1) sends a reply back to my computer (192.168.1.100) stating, "I have 192.168.1.1 and its MAC address is 00:01:45:a0:d2:30".
Still with me? Okay, here's where I get to the purpose of this post. Ethernet requires a minimum of 64 bytes (512 bits) be put "on the wire". I won't go into the reasons here, but this 64 bytes includes a 4-byte CRC. The CRC is typically not included, so that the minimum size from most programs that look at frames is 60 bytes. If you happen to be using Wireshark, you can use this program to capture the frames directly off of your network. I use it quite a bit just to better understand networking.
One thing that I noticed, though, was that I would look at ARP requests and notice that they were only listed as having 42 bytes. Actually, that's the actual size for an ARP request. But Ethernet requires a minimum of 60 bytes (again, not including the 4-byte CRC). In order to make the minimum, the computer will add 18 bytes of padding (simply a bunch of 0s) to puff up the frame to make it the 60 byte minimum. But Wireshark was not showing those padding bytes. Big deal! you might say. The problem is that there are known attacks using padding bytes to pass malicious data. So, why is Wireshark not showing those padding bytes?
The short answer is because Wireshark doesn't see those bytes. The 42 bytes shown occurs when Wireshark is run to capture frames from the same NIC card as which the frames originate. In other words, if I'm running Wireshark on my desktop and capturing packets from this same desktop, when the ARP request goes out, Wireshark will only show it as being 42 bytes long. The ARP replies, however, since they originate from a different computer, show the proper length of 60 bytes. However, I've looked at ARP requests from my desktop using Wireshark running on a different computer. All of the ARP requests, both requests and replies, showed as being 60 bytes, the Ethernet minimum. In short, this means that the NIC is adding the padding at some point that Wireshark cannot see it.
That's the answer why Wireshark shows some frames as being less than the required Ethernet minimum. It only happens when capturing frames originating from the same system Wireshark is running on and its because there are parts of the NIC that Wireshark does not have access to.

Running Windows under VMWare on Ubuntu

2010-02-01T10:04:00.002-05:00

As I've posted previously, I'm trying to figure out how to perform under Ubuntu all of the tasks I used to perform under Windows. Unfortunately, I'm having difficulties. This was expected. And I'm not blaming Ubuntu. If as many people were making software and hardware for Linux as they were for Windows, this wouldn't even be a topic of discussion. As it is, right now, I can't find a working Linux driver for my old Visioneer scanner. That means I still need Windows. I've had my system as a dual-boot. In those cases where I need Windows, I restart the system, bring up Windows, perform the task, then restart back into Ubuntu. It wouldn't be so bad except for the fact that, with a lot of the garbage that Windows requires (here's looking at you, Norton), booting up in Windows takes minutes.
I may have found some better solutions. First, on the scanner. I tried out several of the emulator and virtual machine programs that are freely available. These include Wine (an emulator of Windows that runs on Linux & Unix), Virtualbox (a virtual machine) and VMWare Player (another virtual machine). NOTE: While VMWare Player is free, most or all of the other VMWare programs cost money. Frankly, in my opinion, VMWare Player works best for me. I now have a (n almost) fully functional Windows XP system running on top of my Linux system. If I need to do some scanning, I can bring up the virtual machine (takes about 30 seconds), perform the scans (which are scanned into a shared folder between the Ubuntu host and Windows XP guest system), and close it down. Done. Also, if there is ever a problem with the Windows system, I have a stable copy backed up. That's the wonderful thing about virtual machines. They are simply a collection of files. BIG files (we're talking almost 10 GB for the WinXP stuff), but still just files. If the working copy is corrupted, delete it, and put a fresh version in its place. No muss. No fuss.
Second, on the video-related stuff, I occasionally play around editing video, such as when I made a short video for my father based on some pictures and video clips taken at his 70th birthday party. Nothing fancy. Fortunately, Ubuntu has several video editors available. I've chosen Kino, and so far, its working fine. What this means is that I can now see a not-too-distant point in the future when Windows will not be talking directly with my hardware. It will be safely ensconced in virtual machine where any damage it can do will be minimal at best. It also means its one more step when Windows won't be necessary at all.

Welcome back, Skippy!

2010-01-18T19:00:00.003-05:00

Back in nought-eight, I booted Skippy's List from my list of favorites. It started with that wiener Michiel (to which I did post a response, and even had Michiel himself show up to express his displeasure at my displeasure), and ended with Todd's post on the best way to kill someone and get away with it. I thought that a bit over the top, so I stopped linking to Skippy. It wasn't until I was talking with a friend of mine (who tends to be, uh, outspoken shall we say) that I realized the error of my ways. His response was, "So, you disagree with this [guy] and all you do is to remove your link to his site? What, are ya kiddin' me!?!" Put that way, I have to admit my response was on the back end of lame. Then, when he (my friend) found out that it wasn't even Skippy who wrote the posts I disagreed with, well, let's just say he took me to task. Again.

Besides, that really was no way to repay what I consider to be a true act of kindness.

Long story short, Skippy is back on the list. And sorry, Skippy, for just punting you.

I'm Doubling My Rates on Smokers and Compaq Presario Owners

2010-01-10T13:17:00.004-05:00

I've been working on a friend's computer for the past week. She has a Compaq Presario SR1000. Let me start by saying, "What a piece of shit." To start (and this is the most minor of all the problems it has), the heat sink for one of the smaller chips fell off. The heat sink is held in place by a spring, and the spring connects to two loops on the motherboard. One of the loops broke. I can't fix the broken loop, so I'm only able to connect the heat sink by sitting the computer on its side and letting gravity do its thing.

As I said, the most minor of all the problems. The next problem (and the one that has taken the most time) was the upgrading of the memory. The computer came with 512 MB of RAM. But that's misleading. The video is onboard and the RAM is not just for the CPU, but for the video as well. The video uses 128 MB, meaning that only 384 MB was left for the CPU. The system is running Windows XP, so 384 MB barely meets the "I'll run, but I won't like it" level. The 512 MB (shared between the video and CPU) was in one chip. The motherboard has two slots. I bought two 1 GB chips. The first went in with no problem. But the second... did I mention that the girl smokes? When I first opened the computer, the dust inside wasn't just heavy, it was black. I mean black. Cigarette smoke is the result of combustion, as is all smoke. Which means that it has a lot of carbon. And that carbon residue was everywhere, in every crevice, nook, cranny, and portion of the interior of the computer. Including in the open RAM chip slot. Now, I've tried for over a week to clean the contacts. I've managed to get a clean cloth with isopropyl alcohol into the slot. The first few times, it came out black. Now its coming out clean. But, still, for some reason, there's some issue because, with the second chip installed, the computer will run fine for some random time but will then go BSOD (blue screen of death). I've given up. It will have to run with just 1 GB of RAM (again, shared between video and the CPU).

The next, and perhaps the biggest, problem is that it's a Compaq. I've never seen a computer so bogged down with extra... crap... than I have with this one. It's bad enough that it's running Windows. That will slow anything down. But, then, it has all of the HP and AOL crap on top of it. That has taken a solid day of work just to get rid of most of it. I'd get rid of it all, but that would probably require a week. I relieved the system of the worst offenders, but the light offenders get a pass. This time. If I have to work on a similar system again, it will be with the understanding that the only that I'll be willing to load onto the system is Linux. That's an hours worth of work that will pay huge dividends in saved time later on.

My Christmas Present (Early) - The Celestron 44340 LCD Digital Microscope

2009-12-24T13:23:00.003-05:00

Nothing says "Merry Christmas" to a geek like a new piece of technology. Here is mine, a Celestron LCD digital microscope. (Or is it digital LCD microscope? Oh, whatever.) I've already taken several images with it, including the ubiquitous "let me image my hair follicle". That to people who work with microscopes is analogous to the "Hello, World!" program that all new programmers compile and run.
How is this new microscope? In a word, cool! I love the images it takes, which it will do at 1600x1200 without going to the (always crappy) digital interpolation. It takes really good videos, too, which is nice if you need to be able to look at a particular object at several depths. As always, the depth of field of this scope is poor, but that's physics, not poor design or bad engineering. It came with 5 slides, which is not even close to being enough. I've already gone through all five. I'm now working my way through, well, any object that will fit under the lens. And being the engineer that I am, I've already got a list of improvements I'd like to see incorporated.

1) Add an option to delay the taking of the picture. This is a must-have. Right now, when you take a picture, the scope, while well made, moves ever so slightly. I'm having a helluva time taking clear images because the scope is still moving when the image is snapped. I'd prefer a short delay to allow me to push the button, let the scope stabilize again, then have it take the image.

2) It provides the option to put the date on the image. I'd prefer a metadata field that provides the magnification of the image, the color lens being used for setting the light color, and the type of lighting (underneath, above, or both).

3) Make the image capture remotely controllable. Yes, I realize this will take some more work. I want the ability to plug in the USB cord and be able to take the images from the computer. Hit a "Snap" button in a window, it takes the image and instantly transfers it to the computer. That solves the shaking problem AND the transfer problem all in one.

4) Make the codes for talking to the scope over USB open source. You want to get some buzz going for your scope? Do this and you'll have programmers the world over snapping up scopes left and right. They'll hack the living crap outta your scope and have it doing things you never thought possible. And you'll sell a boatload of scopes, to boot. So, why not? Oh, and you'd be able to ignore all of my suggestions because the hackers will do it for you!

Merry Christmas all!

The "Ghost Radio" Web Site

2009-12-13T18:32:00.002-05:00

Ever heard of EVP? It stands for "electronic voice phenomena". I'd never heard of it until today, when I happened to read a story on the JREF web site asking for comments on a Youtube video. This particular video (from a Brit based on his accent) claimed to show EVP. And what, pray tell, is EVP? Allegedly, it's the "voices" that radios make when they are not tuned to an actual signal. People are claiming that the radios are actually producing real, honest-to-God voices.
And like all things that anyone believes, there's even a web site for it. Except, in this case, it's not just a web site. Oh, no. For something of this vast, cosmological importance, we need an association. And not just any association. The American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena.
On the very first page of their web site, they make the following claim:

People report experiences such as hauntings events or EVP, and these experiences can be verified and often replicated as objective events.

What?!?! Really!?!? You're out and out making the claim that "these experiences can be verified and often replicated as objective events"? Really?!?! So, tell me this: On what are you making these claims? What's your criteria? In what type of settings are you doing the experiments? What's your test group and what's your control group? How are you controlling for bias in the tests? You are performing multiple tests, aren't you? Not just one with a couple of your friends over for ... whatever? And why isn't this evidence openly available on your web site? Why isn't it presented so that outsiders (or disbelievers, such as myself) and check your claims?
Here's a test that I would want to try: Make a recording of what you believe to be EVP. Then I would want to play it back to 20 people (just for a start) and see if they hear anything. If so, what? If they all agree that they're hearing the exact, same thing, then we go to the next stage. Oh, and when you make the recording, I'd want to control for outside disturbances. I'd want the radio to (a) be tuned to nothing at all and (b) not scanning. Let's control for outside disturbances, shall we?
P.T. Barnum, even though he didn't actually say it, was still right.

Why I want the score to read, "Col Barfoot: 1, HOA: 0"

2009-12-05T15:53:00.002-05:00

In case you've not heard about it, Col Van Barfoot, a recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, has been told by his homeowners association to take down his flagpole that he uses to fly his American flag. Due to his age, the fact that he's a veteran of three wars (WWII, Korea and Vietnam), and (probably most importantly) a Medal of Honor winner, this has caused quite a stir.
I support Col Barfoot in this. First, I hate HOA's. I've read all of the comments about how they keep home prices up. But I've not heard anyone provide any evidence of that. To me, they are simply an artifice cooked up to "keep out the undesirables". Since when were we willing to sell out our liberty for some unspecified "Your house price will stay high" crap?
Second, as someone who (unfortunately) lives in an area that has an HOA, I'd ask this of all of the people who state, "He agreed to the HOA rules when he bought that house." My question is this, "How carefully did you read your covenants before you bought?" Of the two houses I've owned, both had HOAs. The covenants are legalese guacamole. They are designed by lawyers for lawyers. Did his explicitly state, "No poles in the front yard?" I'm willing to bet it didn't. I'm further willing to be he asked about the flag pole before erecting it because the covenants did not explicitly cover poles in the front yard.
Third, and to me most important, he earned the Medal of Honor. He gets a pass. Period. Considering that the majority of MoH awards are given posthumously, that takes some doing. I've had an argument with one person who blew that off by saying, "That was over 40 years ago." To which my response is that does not matter. He earned a frickin' MoH. He gets a pass. Forever. Period.
Fourth, the flagpole issue is not a violation of a law. At most, it's a violation of a contract. That means that he cannot be arrested. The police will not be coming to his house.
Finally, don't bother with all of the "what if" games. Those are the people who say, "What if he decides to paint his house purple?" or "What if he decides to put a car up on blocks in his front yard?" or "What if he decides to fly the Confederate flag instead?" He didn't. He put up a nice flag pole to fly an American flag, and he more than earned that right. End of discussion.

Reason #4 Why I Like Open-Source: Rhythmbox Fixed in 2 Days

2009-11-24T14:52:00.002-05:00

I discovered a bug in Rhythmbox, which is the music-sorting and playing software on Ubuntu Linux. If you look at the link, I posted the problem on Sunday, the 22nd. Here it is 2 days later, and the problem is fixed. Now, the patch has not yet been posted, but I'm willing to bet that it is well and truly fixed. Why? Because I think the Rhythmbox maintainers had an idea where the problem was as soon as I posted it. It only took a couple of back-and-forth posts to figure out where the problem was. I was even able to test one of the maintainers' hypothesis myself. From there, I was able to post the results of my research back, and away they went.

One of the things that I most loved about this was that they showed me how I, a real newbie in programming and Linux, could capture the data they needed. They then provided me some feedback, asking me more detailed questions, showing me some mistakes I made in collecting the data (very patiently pointed it out, I might add), and continuing to work with me. That was my blinking light. That gave me a sense that something was happening. If the big software companies would take a hint from this, they might learn something.

Then again, maybe not.

Paranoia... Will Destroy Ya!

2009-11-19T09:37:00.005-05:00

Found this in the review section of a Firefox add-on called "Ghostery". The comment was titled, "You can't get around tracking." It starts off well enough. (All bold-faced emphasis is mine.)

I implement tracking analytics so I can develop more user friendly sites. I have also implemented non-invasive adds in order to keep content free. By blocking my scripts, you are only preventing developers like me from creating a better (and free) experience for users like you. Most tracking data is anonymous anyways. Unless you click a link from an email, no one can tell your personal browsing habits. This plug-in is a security blanket for paranoid "the government is watching" people.

Okay. So far, so good. Logical. Rational. Seems like a person who's concerned that all of this ad-blocking and cookie-blocking, while well intended, may be having bad repercussions. Let's continue.

Just so you know, the government tracks every single page request in the US. There is no browser setting or plug in that can prevent this.

(Sound of a car careening off the cliff...) WTF?!?! Went from "Hey, I just want to make a living" to the fastest Dr Jekyll / Mr Hyde, instant-right-turn-into-the-Twilight-Zone switch I've ever seen. I have Michael Oldfield's seminal work playing in my head right now. Where's my garlic and hot-cross buns? But, hey, he's not satisfied with simply making a right turn off the cliff, he wants to go down in a blazing fireball. Let's read his spectacular finish.

Much the same way to preventing unwanted pregnancy is abstinance... same goes for tracking... you must stop using the internet if you don't want anybody to know what you are doing. Otherwise, watch your back... 'cause we're going to GET YOU!! hahahahahahahah

I didn't realize that the medication could wear off so fast. I'm wondering if there's a straitjacket missing its wearer right now. Regardless, I'm going to be giggling about this one for quite some time, after I install just about every ad-blocking, cookie-cutting add-on I can put in my browser.

It's the Money, Stupid

2009-11-18T20:17:00.002-05:00

The BBC reports that the captain of a pirate-hijacked ship has died of wounds suffered when the ship was seized. Near the end of the report, the article adds:

The upsurge in piracy in the region is a consequence of the failure to find a solution to Somalia's political disputes, our correspondent adds.

No, you idiot. It has to do with something your article said earlier. But since you appear to have severe short-term memory failure, let me refresh your memory.

The pirates earlier told reporters they were leaving the ship after being promised a ransom of $3.5m (£2.1m), although there was no government confirmation of this.

Can you say, "Cha-CHING"? The pirates can. That, my friends, is what's driving them.

Any questions?

Need a Calculator for School? Try this!

2009-11-08T00:20:00.003-05:00

I was reading through ticalc.org's web site and, especially, the update on the DMCA situation vis a vie TI's threat to sue Brandon Wilson because he dared to crack the encryption key TI uses to lock down the software in its top-o-the-line calculator, the TI-83+. Yup. That's right. It's a whoppin' 100 smackaroos to get you one of those babies. Perfectly understandable that they'd be upset.

Okay. Not really.

I was reading through the comments on their news site concerning this issue when I found this one explanation as to why TI is pissed (er, that means unhappy in this context, in case any one of my UK or Australian / New Zealand colleagues is reading this... doubtful... this web site gets less hits the the Chicago Cubs.) Anyway, here's his explanation:

Their latest reaction is baffling at first, but the reasoning is perfectly obvious if you understand who their customers are. Schools, CollegeBoard, ACT, Kaplan Inc, and other institutes have been hostile toward the whole 3rd-party OS issue for years. Now that calcs are a blank slate for anything we can cook up, TI must show their partners they won't take the situation laying down--even if it's a lost cause. Either way, this will be the stall tactic until new deals are made, or some kind anti-hacking revision rolls out. This line of reasoning may sound alien and incomprehensible from a coder's standpoint, but I witness it on a daily basis in the business world.

So, if this the problem, if schools and colleges are well and truly against 3rd-party operating systems, well, then, I have the cure. The picture says it all.

Any questions?

An Open Letter to Texas Instruments

2009-10-31T08:54:00.008-05:00

Dear Dumbshits,

Back in the day, you built a truly wonderful computer. I know because I had one. I also had the expansion box that weighed as much as the USS Missouri. And I still have the 300 baud modem that you built for it. Now, you're left with your IC market and some calculators. Me, I prefer my HP50g, but some of the calculators you make are pretty good. Given that you do not dominate the market in handheld calculators, you'd expect that any news, or "buzz" as the current phrase goes, that generates publicity for your calculator would be a good thing.

I guess you didn't get that memo.

Seems a hacker has managed to crack the encryption key for one of your calculators. And you're pissed about it. Sent him a high-falutin' memo stating, "Stop that!" Threw in some big words and acronyms, including DMCA.

I guess you just. Don't. Get. It.

You have a group of people who are dedicated to tinkering with your calculator. Are they trying to reverse engineer your hardware so that they can make their own? No. Are they selling the software that they have managed to reverse engineer? No. But because you are currently suffering from some cranial-rectal inversion, you're going to be the guy with the truly smelly flatulence who just arrived at the tea party. And instead of saying, "Hey, we've got a lot of people who are looking at our calculators as cool! Let's build up some buzz! Have a conference! Start a contest for looking at some other part of the calculator!", you decide to kill the party just as soon as it starts.

Are you REALLY this stupid?!?! Can't you SEE the possibilities here!?!? So they cracked the encryption key of your vaunted $100 calculator. And somehow you think this is going to impede on your corporate profits. Ya know, it might. But something tells me that, if you saw this as a potential to improve the market share, to increase awareness (People thinking, "TI still makes calculators? Hey, I thought they quit after that TI 2500 Datamath thingee."), to really and truly hype your calculators, you'd be on the right track. Are you following me here? Can you see where I'm going with this?

That's right. Park your lawyers in the closet for a few minutes and figure the possibilities. Lots of buzz, lots of hype, lots of publicity, lots of free advertising. For YOUR calculator. You know, the one you want to sell more of? Hellooooooo?!?! And all you have to do is to say, "Ya know, perhaps we should concentrate on the hardware and not so much on the software. Perhaps we can even make it open source. If we do that, there's this whole community of open source people out there. Perhaps they'll want to buy our hardware. And by default we can control that." (knock-knock. Anyone home?)

Please. Consider what I'm saying. You can either stay on this same road. Or you can really and truly make a comeback in the calculator department by embracing a different mindset. The choice is yours.

Back in Business

2009-10-30T19:22:00.003-05:00

After reformatting the Linux partition and starting from scratch, my system is now up to Ubuntu version 9.10. Yes, it's pretty nice. The interface is different, but I'm not certain that alone made it worth it. I do know that the Ubuntu team has stated that there were many changes that made the upgrade worthwhile. I'll take them at their word. I've discovered that some things that didn't work before do now. For example, I have an old webcam. It didn't work at all before, but does now. Kind of. Another thing is that this new version is recognizing my other partitions without me prompting them. I'm now in the process of reloading my data and putting back the various programs that I need. Skype is back (which was one thing I really needed) and so is Octave. I'm hoping to get the latest version of Freemat (version 4.0) installed as well. I've got Thunderbird back, and all of my e-mail is back in its proper place. All in all, the upgrade was disastrous, but the OS, once installed properly, is working fine.

The one thing I'm doing better this time than with the original install is keeping careful notes of what is getting installed and how I installed it. Some of those notes will be written up in upcoming articles.

A Big Setback

2009-10-29T21:40:00.002-05:00

Today, I received a notice from Ubuntu that a major upgrade was ready. Specifically, the system was ready to upgrade from version 9.04 (called "Jaunty Jackalope") to version 9.10 (called "Karmic Koala"). Being the trusting type, I hit the "Upgrade" button. As the upgrade progressed, I received a few errors, namely that "OpenOffice" was running. I managed to kill the processes, though for some reason it kept coming back. Anyway, there wasn't anything that said, "This is a MAJOR error! ABORT! ABORT! ABORT!" Two hours later, it finished. I restarted the computer and thought, "Hey! Looks great!" Wanted to go on about my business. Just before the upgrade finished, I was listening to some music. So I wanted to continue listening.

Only problem is my sound wasn't working. And still isn't working. Also, every time I reboot my computer, the icons on my desktop all shift back to the left side of the screen. (I have certain ones that I explicitly put on the right side of the screen.) And sometimes Skype doesn't start up. And also when I reboot or shutdown, I get a pop-up window that says an "unknown" process is still running.

Suffice to say, I'm far less than thrilled. I went to the Ubuntu forums and found someone else with a similar problem on the sound. He managed to get his problem resolved. I didn't. That was topped by someone called "lovinglinux" who came on and told me tersely that I was on the wrong thread. It was a kubuntu thread, and I was ubuntu. Despite the fact that the original creator of the thread was actually helping me. At the time, I was thinking, "Well, bite me, "lovinglinux", you arrogant, kubuntu prick!" I've calmed down since then and realized he was trying to save me from possibly getting bad information. But as mad as I was at the time, he was "wrong thing to say at the wrong time".

I've scoured the internet (both Ubuntu forums and non-Ubuntu ones) hoping, praying to find a fix. Somewhere. Somehow. And I've come up empty. Seems that a LOT of people are having similar issues. I'm now backing up all of my data on Ubuntu because. I. Am. Going. To. Have. To. Start. Over.

No, waiting is not an option. I need sound NOW. I need Skype to work reliably NOW. I need the sound because I use it with Skype. And I need both of them NOW. So, as I'm typing this, I have data backup in progress. Once it's finished, I'm going to start over with a fresh install, which seems to work better for most people. Still, this will be 6+ hours out of my life, not to mention the future time to re-install much of the software I've come to rely on. Freemat & Octave. Google Earth. Wireshark. Wine. Crossloop on Wine. Paint Shop Pro on Wine. And the list goes on. And this is time that I could have been spending doing real work.

Does this mean I'm dissuaded from Linux? Hardly. But if you're considering making the switch, wait a few more weeks.

Loading Digital Images under Ubuntu Linux

2009-10-25T15:02:00.002-05:00

After loading Ubuntu Linux (ver 9.04, aka Jaunty Jackalope), one of the things on my list that I needed was the ability to download images from my two digital cameras. One was an older Sony Mavica CD-R camera. The other was a newer Canon Powershot SD870. Under WinXP, it was pretty much plug-n-play.

The good news was that it was just that easy with Ubuntu. I literally plugged them into the USB cord I keep on the desktop for just such a purpose, turned on the camera, and voila! I'm downloading pictures. After plugging in the camera and turning it on, a new folder popped up on the desktop. It was as if I'd plugged the digital storage card (for the Canon) or CD (for the Sony) into the computer. All I had to do was to select the pictures I wanted to copy then paste them into the folder on the computer where I wanted them to go. Now, it didn't pop up a "wizard" of any kind. So you have to know how to do basic copy-&-paste operations.

The even better part was that downloading them from either device seems to be as fast, and probably faster, than under Windows.

I consider this one less thing off of the list before Windows can go "bye-bye" for good.

So It Begins

2009-10-14T22:41:00.002-05:00

These just arrived from Amazon. I have a bit of reading to do. Time to get started.

The Realization

2009-10-08T16:17:00.002-05:00

Many have said it, but it's rare when I agree. I'm an idiot. In one of my previous posts ranting about Linux, I was comparing it to Windows. I knew (and still know) Windows fairly well. The problem was that I was upset with Linux, of which I knew (and know) little, against something I knew well. Not a fair comparison.
Now that I have Linux to play (and learn) from, I've found that Linux has much more to offer than Windows. One of the best things is transparency. Linux does not try to hide anything. On the contrary, it gives you the opportunity to see everything. By way of analogy, imagine buying a car and having the hood welded shut. That's Windows. Linux is just the opposite. It not only has a transparent hood, the hood can be opened and the different parts examined to whatever degree you like. A further analogy is what is provided on the dashboard. A Windows dashboard would have the basics (speedometer, perhaps a fuel gauge) whereas a Linux dashboard would look like that of a 747. Gauges, dials, switches and levers everywhere.
So, those are my realizations. Now that I have my head out of my... motherboard, I can see that Linux will allow me far greater opportunities than Windows ever will.

The Beginning of the End

2009-10-06T22:18:00.005-05:00

I realized that, in a previous post, I'd ranted about I'd ranted about problems I was having with Linux. Specifically, I was using a version of Linux called Ubuntu. I'd tried Ubuntu and found it wanting.
Not too long ago, I started a new job that required me to having a much deeper understanding of programming. Frankly, that was one thing I remembered that Linux did real well. Perl, C, C++, you name it. Long story short, I wound up loading Linux onto a hand-me-down computer. After playing with the latest version of Ubuntu (9.04, the Jaunty Jackalope), I was pleasantly surprised. It did much of what I needed it to do right out of the box. Therefore, I've decided to make this permanent. I'm not going to make the leap completely. I've found that I still need Windows because there are still some things only it can do. But the transition has begun.
I plan on keeping a running log of my transition to Linux (and away from Windows) on this blog. Future posts will go through the various steps (loading Linux and adding functionality).

Yeah, I'm Ashamed About the Last 8 Years... NOT!

2009-07-05T10:55:00.000-05:00

BUMPED: The update explains why.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I originally published this one, then a friend from Texas (who is a much better writer than I) got ahold of it and polished it. Therefore, this has been slightly modified. The intent remains the same. Only the smackdowns are more well written.

I popped on over to Skippy's List and checked out the latest posting from Michiel, who went into a rather quick discussion of why he's happy that Bush is leaving office.

In a word, "Gack!"

It leads with

"I think about 70% of us can agree..."

Well, many of us believe that 50% of all statistics are made up, but I digress.

Michiel, if you want to rant about how much YOU think Bush sucks, have at it. It’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. You’re even entitled to say it aloud and in print, but what gets to me is the "I'm ashamed to be an American." statement you made, then dittoed time and again in the comments. This gets to sounding like a therapy session. "Hi, my name is Michiel, and I'm ashamed to be an American." followed by a chorus chiming in, "Hi, Michiel. I’m ashamed, too!"

Were you ashamed when Al-Qaeda tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time (1993), and Clinton did... nothing? When they blew up Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and Clinton did... nothing? When suicide bombers blew up the USS Cole and Clinton sent... a couple of missile strikes? When bombers blew up the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam I didn't hear much talk about shame then. All of these, by the way, happened on Clinton's watch. Did he have anything to do with them? Nope. What did he do about them? Next to nothing, which Al-Qaeda saw as, "Hey, we can kick the living piss of out these people and they won't do anything. What a bunch of pussies! Let's kill more of them!" This is what happens when you do nothing in the face of evil.

You talk about Dubya "being on vacation". Yeah. Vacation. The last sitting president to get a vacation was somewhere in the Coolidge or Roosevelt I administrations. Okay, sure, George W. Bush had absolutely no access to any of his senior staff when he was in Crawford. Nope, none. Completely isolated. No access to phones or e-mail because, well, Texas is obviously a technologically challenged backwater. Right? Hardly - the President of the United States is surrounded by the most extensive and redundant communications system known to man and he literally cannot get away from it.

Regardless, when did the President become the be-all, end-all of this country, and when did we expect the government to come to our aid when things were going wrong?

Since when did this country become a cult of personality? Is the President the only reason to love or hate this country? Apparently so. When Clinton's presidency ended, ~~Alec Baldwin~~ Eddie Vedder stated, "If Bush wins the White House, I'm leaving."

Alas, he didn't follow up on his promise.

When I was growing up, my family expected the government to stay the hell out of our lives, not get more involved. And certainly not to the point where we expect them to hover over us. The people I grew up with called that concept "socialism". We were expected to get through puberty, then move out. We were expected to work our own way through the world, and watch out for ourselves. Which reminds me of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans. Hey, couldn't have seen that coming. It appeared suddenly out of nowhere with absolutely no warning whatsoever. Just suddenly whacked New Orleans. Everyone's dancing in the bayou one second and underwater the next. No warning messages saying "Leave Now!" All the fault of that EVIL Army Corps of Engineers, no doubt.

And when people DIDN'T leave (you know, on any of those buses left to wind up underwater), then they started screaming for government assistance. When the call comes out, it falls to the government to do, well, everything. The Mayor of New Orleans sat on his hands waiting for the incompetent Governor of Louisiana to do something. But who took the blame when neither did anything? FEMA and George W. Bush, who simply did nothing more than follow the law.

A couple of months later, a flood hit the Midwest. I don't remember hearing about people dying in their homes or looting. Nor did you hear of the National Guard having to be mobilized to handle the populace.

Another one that really gets me is

"I have never been so embarrased (sic) to say I am from Texas as I have been these last eight years."

I haven’t read anything that leaves me with the feeling Texas is all that glad to have you. Tell you what. Head south. Seriously, hop in your jalopy, drive until you hit water, and then take a swim. That, if you'll pardon the cliché, will kill two birds with one stone. You'll no longer have to say you're from Texas OR from America. Instead, you can whine to the President of Mexico, [as world weary as you make yourself out to be, you know who he is, right?] about how he makes you embarrassed (note the spelling... "ss", two of them, as in "ass") to tell people you're from Mexico.

Oh, and you might want to hold that thought while you’re there, as you might not like the Mexican response.

But, wait, "Fortunately, I haven’t traveled to other countries". Fortunately! FORTUNATELY? So, you've never been anywhere but here but you're willing to throw your entire country under the bus simply because of the President? Yeah, you're truly a proud American. "Proud" in the same way that the President-elect's wife was "proud" to be an American. Well, I have traveled to other countries and have always been glad to be back. And, Texas – what a great place so long as you’re not subjected to the vagaries of Baghdad on the Brazos.

"And since we are on the Texas thing, what the hell is up with your accent?" Yeah, America isn't a melting pot at all. Can't have different dialects merging. That would never do.

In your closing, you stated "I would like to express my feelings by quoting your eloquent Vice President, Dick Cheney..." (It’s a bit lost out of context to its original utterance, by the way.) Instead, I'm going to quote another, eloquent American, Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post.

"Now, please respond with that biting sarcasm for which you are so well known, and bite me."

UPDATE 2009/07/05: Mike the Marine provided a much more curt appraisal of those who would turn this great country into a cult of personality.

Problems with Paperport 11 Not Responding

2009-05-01T13:16:00.002-05:00

I've had problems with Paperport 11 freezing up (not responding, crashing, whatever). Turns out that my problem is that the thumbnail files (which Paperport names "PP11Thumbs.ptn" and "PP11Thumbs.ptn2") were corrupted. I exited out of Paperport (it was not responding anyway), went into the directory where those files were stored, and deleted them both.

All that does is, when Paperport 11 starts up and you go into that directory, it will take a few extra seconds while it rebuilds the thumbnails. However, it won't freeze up anymore after that.

I have to agree with the many people who are very unhappy with the fact that the program crashes, but this is a work-around until Nuance fixes the problem. If that ever happens.

The US Patent Office's Secret Patents

2009-04-03T11:15:00.004-05:00

I've come to realize that all of the patents currently held by the US Patent Office are secret. How do I know? Well, take a look at this screenshot from my computer (using Firefox Ver. 3.0.8 as my browser). I'm supposed to be looking at an image of a page from one of Edwin Armstrong's patents for frequency modulation. Instead, I'm looking at... nothing. Nothing at all. Why? It seems that the Patent Office, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to use Quicktime to display images. And Firefox appears to have, uh, *issues* with Quicktime.

So my question is simple. Why Quicktime? Why not simple images (JPG, PNG, whatever)? Even Internet Explorer can display those properly.

Sigh.

Farewell to Another "Red Tail"

2009-03-30T19:04:00.002-05:00

Walter Palmer, one of the Tuskegee Airmen, earned a new set of wings.

God speed, sir.

Respect Earned

2009-03-04T18:18:00.002-05:00

I was teaching a small class on all things RF. One of the students was a Marine. He was quiet, but when I would ask general questions of the class, he was one of the ones who would proffer an answer. He also asked lots of questions. But one of the things that I noticed one day was that he was always 15 minutes late. That's unlike any Marine I've ever known. Marines are always punctual. Always. At first, it was annoying. Then I decided to confront him. Well, he beat me to it. On the third day, he came up to me during a break. Looking me straight in the eye, he quietly said, "Sir, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going through a divorce right now." My heart went out to him. Such a thing would be devastating to me. I blurted out, "I'm sorry."

He wasn't looking for sympathy. He was simply passing information. "I wanted you to know that because now I have to get my daughter off to school. So I can't get here til 8:15." I should have known. From then on, I always noted that, right at 8:15, we was walking in the door. But then on the last day, it's test time. Unfortunately, snow has caused a problem. Schools are opening two hours late. He has to stay home with his daughter because he has not been able to set-up childcare yet. We have two tests to get through. He's missed the first one, and we're well into the second when he finally walks... er, charged would be a more apt term... through the door. I handed him a copy of the second test and said, "We'll make up the other one later." Even though the second test is open book / open notes, he simply gets out a single sheet with some precisely written notes, a calculator, a pencil and an eraser. And everything is placed precisely on the desktop in front of him. He goes through the first test in brisk order. He hands it in and says, "Can I take the first one now?" I'm shocked at how quickly he's gone through the test, thinking, "He must have skipped some stuff." But I quickly drop the first test in front of him. He runs through it with the same, brisk pace. When he hands it in less than 15 minutes later (an hour was allotted for the test), I looked around. Despite the fact that he came in late, he breezed through both tests and still finished before several other students.

And how did he do? Well, let me just say that his grades would do ANYone proud, Marine or otherwise.

Another EMT Story

2009-02-16T10:17:00.003-05:00

A friend just sent me a video of a woman kicking the living p*ss out of a guy. From the context, it seems that he started it (after he got drunk), but she finished it. Reminds me of a story from when I was a firefighter. I was driving the ambulance this time, unlike my first story. The call was for a "person injured in a fight". The part of town where the call came from was not, shall we say, a good part of town. Any time the cops went in there, they went (a) in force and (b) loaded for bear. We pulled into the community behind two cop cars who raced ahead. By the time we got there, there were already five cop cars in front of a townhome.

Now, picture this: A small townhome. A front door made of glass and the glass is completely shattered. Surrounding the front yard is a 4' high chain link fence. The fence is roughly 15' from the front door. Lying on the ground where the fence hits the grass is a man, clutching the fence as if his life depended on it, crying, and he's yelling, "She was trying to kill me! She was trying to kill me!" Standing on the front porch are three women. One is relatively slender and of normal height (5' 8" or so). The other two are, shall we say, more substantial. All three are looking at this guy lying in the grass as if he were a cockroach to be stepped on. My aide and I start working on this guy. He's pretty well banged up. Has a nice cut over his right eye and a knot that's getting egg-sized. And more cuts all over. Oh, and he reeks of alcohol. We get him loaded into the back of the ambulance. Once we do, I ask the cops what happened because my aide needs to put it into her report.

Turns out that this guy has a history of domestic violence. This was his third time attacking the slender woman mentioned above (his girlfriend). In most cases, victims of domestic violence figure it's their own fault. Perhaps this women did, too. The first two times. But not this time. She called her two sister's to come help her. The two sisters (uh, BIG sisters would be the apt term here) came over and, uh, helped. They proceeded to give this guy (as another buddy called it) a "severe thumpin'". They finished him by tossing him through the front door. The plate glass front door. How in the world he did not wind up with deep gashes and life-threatening arterial bleeds, I will never know.

Let's just make this simple. The idea of "Don't Marry a Woman Bigger Than You" or "Don't Live With A Girlfriend With Two Sisters Bigger and Tougher Than You" isn't easy enough. How about, "Don't Commit Violence On Your Wife / Girlfriend / Significant Other"?

Just a thought.

Manny Acta - Class Act

2009-01-25T17:16:00.005-05:00

The wife lucked into some tickets for the 2009 Natsfest in DC. I'm not much of a sports fan. Never really have been. I'm a geek. To me, jocks were those guys we made fun of when they weren't stomping mudholes in us just for kicks. Anyway, the Natsfest is an openhouse at the Nationals Stadium. Pretty much everything is open. We toured the various executive clubs, had our pictures taken with different players, and enjoyed the sights. One of the things that my wife wanted to see was the PNC club. At the time we went, Manny Acta, general manager of the Nats, was giving a talk. I'd seen him a few times during the afternoon. He'd signed autographs until he literally begged to stop because his wrist hurt. After that, he simply asked if he could just have his picture taken with the visitors.

Then the talk started. Manny was having a conversation with Charlie Slowes, the voice of the Nationals Radio. Then the floor was opened for questions. Four or five people managed to get in questions. The interesting part, to me, was how Manny handled the questions. He treated each one as if it was the most interesting thing he'd ever heard. He was straightforward, witty, and intelligent. At 3:30, he was told that only one more question would be allowed. Manny was surprised; his response was, "Do I have to be somewhere else?" That wasn't it. Another group was going to use the area after us. So we had to clear out. But it was obvious to me that he was enjoying the Q & A. Yes, it could have been an act, but Gywneth Paltrow at her best could not have matched him. He was terrific.

So, I have to give credit where it's due. Manny Acta is a class act.

DTV is coming!

2009-01-05T23:52:00.004-05:00

In less than a month and a half, standard analog broadcasts across the US will cease. However, not all analog signals will cease. For example, if you are on cable systems, you will most likely still see analog for quite a while. If you are getting your signals over the air (meaning you use an antenna, not through a cable service provider or satellite dish), there are a couple of things to keep in mind:

Channel Numbers: In the analog world, the channel number referred to the actual RF channel (a 6 MHz wide chunk of spectrum) that your TV used. For example, if you were watching channel 2, that meant that your TV was tuned to a signal residing between 54 - 60 MHz. Or perhaps you were watching channel 13, which referred to the spectrum between 210 - 216 MHz. Well, in the digital world, it's not that simple. As part of the digital bit stream coming into your digital-ready TV (or digital converter box), each channel is assigned a "virtual channel number". This may (or may not) be the same as the RF channel. Look at the image at left. This shows the RF channel number (27) and the assigned virtual channel number (26-1). Most likely, the virtual channel number applies to the station's analog channel number, which most people are used to.

Multicasting: Notice how your digital channels are listed as "26.1" or "26-1"? That's because of something called "multicasting". That means that a TV station can put multiple programs onto one RF channel. For example, in the image shown, the channel is listed as "26-1". That's because it is the first program on the channel. But there are others. In this case, there were four programs running on this one RF channel. The first, listed as "26-1", was a program about home improvement. The second, third, and fourth programs (listed as "26-2", "26-3", and "26-4", of course), were a local program about Washington, DC, a cartoon, and a news program.

RF Channels: The FCC first established 82 channels for analog television (channels 2- 83). In the 1980s, the top 14 channels (70 - 83) were given up for a new service called "cellular telephone". Now, with the transition to digital television, even more RF channels will be given up; channels 52 - 69, to be precise. Starting on 17 February, only RF channels 2 - 51 will be available for television. Those channels from 52 - 69 (a total of 108 MHz) will be used for new wireless services. But, in a practical sense, this also means that, if you already have a digital TV or converter box, you will need to re-scan on or near that date. That's because many stations will be changing frequencies. Your TV will need to know where to find them, requiring a rescan of the RF channels.

Thanks for Christmas Eve

2008-12-24T23:18:00.003-05:00

As I sit writing this missive, thousands of my fellow citizens stand duty in harm's way thousands of miles from here. Thousands of miles from friends and, more importantly, family. I've just had a wonderful Christmas Eve day. Presents, good food, and family. But I digress. The point is that I do this knowing that my fellow citizens, volunteers all, are in harm's way this holiday season.

And if it weren't for those people, the world situation would be far, far worse. This wonderful Christmas of mine would not be possible.

So, to all of you, far away in really crappy conditions doing what you volunteered to do, please accept this:

Merry Christmas. And thank you.

Let Me Say "Thank You"... Again

2008-12-23T00:31:00.004-05:00

It's 1973. I'm eight years old. The nerdiness has already set in. I'm a voracious reader. I'm very big into books about submarines, World War II, airplanes, World War II, and Abraham Lincoln. Probably in that order. One summer, my parents took me and my siblings (all four of them) to the Indiana State Fair. I remember wandering around the fair with my Mom's hand firmly clasped in mine. We wandered up to a large table stacked with all kinds of second-hand books. The man working the table was very nice. He asked my Mom if I read. Her response was something along the lines of, "Oh, yes. He reads constantly." I was already pawing through the books on the table. At one point, he reached over, picked up a small, short book. It had a red cover and was a collection of humorous letters sent to the Beatles. It's title was something like, "Hey, John, Paul, Ringo, & George: Can I have a lock of your hair?" Something like that. He then said I could have it. Free. It was mine to take home.

I know that book is still around somewhere. I know I read it many times. Frankly, I read it at least once before I left the fair. My parents, at one point, wanted to watch one of the livestock shows. So, I sat with them and read that book. If I hadn't had that book, I'd still love to read. My parents really encouraged it. Growing up, my bedroom had a medium sized walk-in closet with shelves ringing the top 3 feet. And each shelf was cram-packed with old books. I learned of astronomy, physics, history, calendars, on and on, thanks to that closet of books. And for that, I thank my parents. That, and much, much more.

Still, this stranger added to my love of reading just a bit more. That love has stayed with me. Part of the reason I love to read blogs. I just love reading. And he showed me that a simple act of kindness can have a long-term affect.

That day at the Fair, before we left that stranger's table, my Mom (being a Mom and in her best Mom voice) said, "Say 'Thank you.'" I know I did. Otherwise, I would not have lived through that day. But that was a thank you of an eight year old under penalty of getting a whoopin'. So, here, now, and with Mother safely many hundreds of miles away, I think it befitting that I say,

Thank you.

Dual Monitors, But I Don't Know How

2008-12-13T14:51:00.002-05:00

I have a (now older) Pentium 4 computer. About a year ago, the video card went Tango Uniform. As a replacement, I bought a PNY nVidia GEForce 8500 GT. A nice card, frankly. I've heard others say that it's a less-than-stellar performer for games, but I don't play games on my computer. That's what my PS2 / PS3 are for.

Anyway, the card comes with three outputs, a DVI, a VGA, and an S-Video. I recently purchased an LG 19" monitor and mounted it the wall above my current computer monitor. The LG is a nice, little monitor. It even came with VGA inputs. Which got me to thinking, Can I use this for a dual-monitor set-up?

The short answer is, Yes. But here's the problem. I don't know how I got here. Here's how I have them set-up.

Both monitors are now set-up in their native resolution. The Samsung uses 1920 x 1200. The LG uses 1440 x 900.

They're set-up in a top/bottom combination. That means that I go through the top of the Samsung, which puts me on the bottom of the LG (mounted on the wall above the Samsung).

Each can have a different wallpaper.

Windows boots up and runs from the Samsung monitor.

Here's what I remember. I started with the nVidia GEForce window that appears when you go to "nVidia Display" window. I then clicked on one of the wizard buttons, followed by a few of the others, then I wound up with all of the settings I have now.

And it works pretty well. The only drawback is that some of the high-resolution graphics don't pan as smoothly as before. But otherwise, it works just fine.

The Engineer's Creed

2008-11-21T22:33:00.003-05:00

With all due respect to the US Marine Corps, my good friend Jeff provided me with the following "Engineer's Creed".

I could not have said it better myself.

This is my calculator. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My calculator is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My calculator, without me, is useless. Without my calculator, I am useless. I must key my calculator true. I must calculate better than any enemy who is trying to out-calculate me. I must calculate him before he calculates me. I will....

My calculator and myself know that what counts in this war is not the problems we solve, the size of our graphs, nor the equations we make. We know that it is the trig that counts. We will trig...

My calculator is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its function and its keys. I will keep my calculator clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will...

Before God I swear this creed. My calculator and myself are the defenders of my country. We are the masters of our enemy. We are the saviors of my life. So be it, until victory is America's and there is no enemy, but Peace.

Buh-bye, Skippy!

2008-11-11T19:11:00.002-05:00

Skippy's List is off of my blog list. No more will it's URL darken this site, or any I run. Why? Well, it's gone well off the deep end, and wound up in "let's talk some seriously deranged, mental s___".

End of discussion.

Monday Night Homework Blues

2008-11-10T20:38:00.002-05:00

This will be quick. I'm reading through my textbook, "Digital Telephony", for my master's class. Came across the following quote, "It's well known that..."
Let me be crystal clear here. The following phrases should NEVER, EVER be found in a textbook:

It's obvious...

It's easily seen...

It's clear that...

It's well known that...

Out.

Roy Huddleston: Your Book ROCKS!

2008-11-08T23:44:00.002-05:00

I've been working on some simple HTML and CSS pages. But I was working from books that were 10+ years old. Today, I went out and bought a new HTML / CSS / XHTML book, "HTML, XHTML, and CSS: Your Visual Blueprint for Designing Effective Web Pages" by Roy Huddleston. One of the first pages pointed me towards a VERY cool CSS site, called "Under the Sea" by Eric Stoltz (no, not THAT Eric Stoltz).

To start, just the link to the CSS Zen Garden was worth the price. The "Under the Sea" page alone has enough cool tricks on it that I'll be parsing it for the next week.

The book itself is very well laid out, in my opinion. The information is presented well, not overbearing, does not insult my intelligence, and is straightforward. Well worth the price. (Which was $30 at Borders. Amazon.com may have it cheaper.)

Frankly, if you're looking for a good book on XHTML and CSS, this is it.

Colts vs the Patriots

2008-11-02T23:04:00.001-05:00

I sent my younger brother a text message asking where he was.

He sent me this.

I'm pretty certain he was adopted.

God Speed, Col. Ripley

2008-11-02T22:48:00.003-05:00

Retired Marine Col. John Ripley, who was credited with stopping a column of North Vietnamese tanks by blowing up a pair of bridges during the 1972 Easter Offensive of the Vietnam War, died at home at age 69, friends and relatives said Sunday.

You will be missed, sir.
God speed.

Nyet, Alexey! No worm from you!

2008-11-01T08:26:00.002-05:00

I check out I Can Haz Cheezburger fairly regularly. Like many of the larger sites nowadays, it has a boatload of small adverts all over. Just this morning, as the site was loading, Norton popped up a message:

Attempted Intrusion "HTTP Misleading Application Detection" against your machine was detected and blocked.

Bah-ROO!!??

A quick check of the Norton log shows the following:

Details: Attempted Intrusion "HTTP Misleading Application Detection" against your machine was detected and blocked.
Intruder: infoclicknow.com(http(80)).
Risk Level: High.
Protocol: TCP.
Attacked IP: XXXXXXXXXXXXXX.
Attacked Port: 1463.

So, who is "infoclicknow.com", I wonder?

A quick ICANN check provided the following:

Registrant:
Alexey Vasiliev +7.3834427722
Alexey Vasiliev
Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
Moskow,NSK,RUSSIAN FEDERATION 630122

Domain Name:infoclicknow.com
Record last updated at 2008-10-22 13:03:18
Record created on 2008/10/22
Record expired on 2009/10/22

Domain servers in listed order:
ns1.freefastdns.com ns2.freefastdns.com

Administrator:
name: Alexey Vasiliev
mail: tel: +7.3834427722
org: Alexey Vasiliev

address: Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
city: Moskow
,province: NSK
,country: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
postcode: 630122

Technical Contactor:
name: Alexey Vasiliev
mail: tel: +7.3834427722
org: Alexey Vasiliev

address: Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
city: Moskow
,province: NSK
,country: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
postcode: 630122

Billing Contactor:
name: Alexey Vasiliev
mail: tel: +7.3834427722
org: Alexey Vasiliev

address: Ol. Duducha 21/2 53
city: Moskow
,province: NSK
,country: RUSSIAN FEDERATION
postcode: 630122

Registration Service Provider:
name: Regtime.net
tel: +7 8462698077
fax: +7 8462698057
web:http://www.webnames.ru

Imagine that? A Russian who is trying to pass malware? Whoda thunk it?

Jaless Alexey! Nyet!

NOTE: Very poor translation: S____ Alexey! No!

Attitude

2008-10-17T21:51:00.003-05:00

I, er, enhanced an image that a friend sent me of his new pet.

He appreciated it.

Random Friday Night Post: The Alpo Story

2008-10-10T23:06:00.004-05:00

Background: I was a volunteer firefighter for 8 years. I worked out of one of the busiest stations in Maryland. I mainly worked on the ambulance, which is the setting for tonight's post.

We've been dispatched for an "unknown" medical emergency. I'm the third aide, meaning I'm sitting in the back of the ambulance. We just pulled up on location. I hop out, aide bag over my shoulder. I'm standing beside the ambulance wondering when the driver and second aide are going to get out. I start to walk towards the passenger side door of the cab when I hear a low growl over my shoulder.

I slooooooowly turned my head. There, about 8 feet away, was a medium-size, mangy, dirty, ugly dog. Does Cujo ring a bell, friends? Now I realize why the other two guys are not getting out of the ambulance.

They're too busy laughing their asses off.

I'm trying to decide what I'm going to do, whether make a jump for the back of the ambulance from whence I came? The cab so that I can kill the driver and aide before I get mauled?

Just as I'm trying to decide, I hear a crunch, crunch, crunch sound behind me as if someone were walking across gravel. I again slooooooowly turn my head a little further.

I beheld a beautiful sight; a police officer was coming up behind me, with both his flashlight beam and full attention on the dog. And his non-flashlight-holding hand was on his gun. No, not just on it, but his hand around the grip. All he had to do was pull up and the gun would be unholstered.

Fortunately, the dog was as stupid as it was ugly. He did not like the idea of tangling with two people. He finally drifted off, and I and the (expletives deleted for decency) driver and second aide went on about the business of this call.

As you're probably aware, firefighters are known for harassing each other. Mercilessly. I became immortalized thereafter (or at least until I did something else even better) as "Alpo".

And now you know the REST of the story...

Technology is overrated.

2008-10-06T21:36:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, it's better to go with the simple answer to a particularly thorny problem.

2008-10-05T16:04:00.004-05:00

This from a friend of mine. Five screens, three games. He and his wife were watching three NFL games simultaneously, and they both have their respective fantasy football sites up on their laptops (operating wirelessly through their access point).

This is known as serious visual overload.

(sniff... sniff) I'm so proud!

Oh, yeah, baby!

2008-09-29T22:03:00.004-05:00

Just. Too. Sweet!

From ABC affiliate WZVN in Florida,

Two men were beat up and then arrested after Charlotte County Sheriff’s deputies say they tried to rob a paraplegic man inside his home.

As they say, get some.

There's An Hour I'll Never Get Back

2008-09-28T07:33:00.004-05:00

The wife and I have season tickets for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO). In the past, the music director was Yuri Temirkanov, a Russian who was big into the classics (Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Mozart, etc). Then, a few years ago, the BSO selected Marin Alsop to become the first female music director of a major national symphony. All well and good. Except that Alsop is big on, er, um, contemporary music. Frankly, based on what I've heard, "contemporary crap" is a redundancy. Let me put it another way. How do you tell if what you're about to hear is equivalent to cat's mating in a back alley? Look for the word "dissonance" in the program. That is the catch word. Last week, we went to a show in which the program spoke of "ascending skyward" or some such. The name of one of the piece's was "UFO", written by a contemporary composer by the name of Michael Daugherty. It was written as a one-person percussion piece and was to be played by Evelyn Glennie, oh, excuse me, Dame Evelyn Glennie. According to her website, she's a "Musician, Motivational Speaker, Composer, Educationalist, Jewellery designer."

Danger! Danger!

The first part of the concert was a piece by Wagner. Actually, quite good. Then Evelyn made her appearance. She was dressed just like every feminist professor from back in my days at Purdue. Sun dress, long gray hair, the works. And she was playing something that appeared to be a discone antenna. It was supposed to be "other worldly", I'm guessing. I just wished it had stayed in that other world. She ratcheted up to playing a marimba and xylophone, along with (I'm not making this up...) a 55 gallon drum. There were also many "instruments" that I, even though I have a background as a drummer, did not recognize. The worst part? When she used a violin bow and ran it across the edge of a cymbal. Imagine a hundred kids running their fingernails over a chalkboard. THAT'S what that sounded like. I literally cringed and began curling up into the fetal position. I was almost to the point of sobbing, muttering "Please, mommy, make it stop!" when my prayers were answered. It was over.

Of course, many people in the audience were on their feet, clapping and howling. I was clapping simply because it was over.

I imagine some will consider me uncultured. And I would call you a sycophant. It was a cacophony not of sound, but noise. If you want to hear percussion that is truly a pleasant sound (loud though it is at times), I highly recommend the show "Stomp". I had the opportunity to see that several years ago. I remember going into the show and being seated near a lot of kids. I remember thinking, "Oh, this does not bode well." The wife and I had recently attended a show of the Beijing acrobats. We were near a group of kids who made the show a nightmare. We actually left early. But this time was different. When the first person of the "Stomp" cast made his appearance on stage, the kids quieted down. And they never had a chance to get bored. The show just kept them, and me, in awe. THAT was a truly worthwhile show. THAT was percussion. Evelyn's show, by contrast, was the equivalent of a talented child banging pots and pans in the kitchen.

The UFO (which stands for "Unendingly Frickin Odious") finally took back off. Good riddance.

Opera at Nats Park

2008-09-15T21:20:00.002-05:00

Opera at Nationals Park in Washington, DC. Kids were playing in front of a large screen down on the ballfield.

We're doomed

2008-09-15T19:54:00.003-05:00

This just in. A scientist involved with the development of the Large Hadron Collider has completely destroyed the fabric of space-time in a single quote.

We're doomed.

BRAS for Everyone

2008-09-11T20:10:00.003-05:00

I'm taking a graduate class, "Digital Telephony". I have to write a research paper. The topic is going to be a comparison of different broadband services to the home. I'm already researching different types of broadband services, including FTTH (Fiber to the home, which Verizon markets as "FiOS") and DSL (Digital Subscriber Line). While looking through different documents for DSL, I kept seeing the word "BRAS".

That got a Tim Allen, "Bah-ROO!?!?"

It stands for "broadband remote access server". That's a special box in the network that allows for a great deal more of data to flow.

The question is whether the engineers who came up with that acronym were hard up, or just have a sense of humor.

My money is on both.

From the Archive: Republicans are 12.329 Times Better than Democrats, and I Have the Proof!

2008-09-06T10:58:00.002-05:00

I originally posted this on my personal web site back in 2003. I decided to add it to my blog. Yes, it's political. I want to transfer as much as possible from the site because it's going to be completely changed.

The original post, with one minor correction, is as follows:

On 11 September 2001, Al-Qaeda mass murderers committed the most egregious attacks against the U.S. that she has ever suffered. Ever since that day, Congress and the American public have asked the question of, "How could the U.S. Government have allowed such a thing to happen?" Mind you, the U.S. had been subjected to attacks from Al-Qaeda before, namely the attacks against the World Trade Center (the first time in 1993), the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, the attacks against our soldiers in Mogadishu, Somalia, the USS Cole, and the simultaneous bombings of our embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on the African continent. All of these attacks occurred during the administration of Bill Clinton, who entered office on 20 January 1993. The first attack was the bombing of the World Trade Center on 26 February 1993. He had from that date until he left office on 20 January 2001, a total of 2885 days, to deal with the problem. His maximal effort was the launching of cruise missiles at a couple of sites in Sudan and Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 9/11, everyone began pointing the finger at George W. Bush as responsible for "letting this happen". Mind you, he had only been in office since 20 January 2001, a total of 234 days.

Doing a quick bit of math, that means that George W. Bush was being held to the same standard as Bill Clinton. Since Bush only had 234 days to deal with the same problems that Clinton had 2885 days with which to deal, this means that we, the US citizenry, consider Bush, a Republican, to be 2885 / 234 = 12.329 time better than Clinton, a Democrat.

Hence, Republicans are 12.329 times better than Democrats. At least, this is how I see it.

It's At Times Like This That Homeownership Sucks

2008-09-05T22:45:00.005-05:00

I was walking through the family room, in an area right next to our laundry room, when I noticed that the floor is wet. I didn't think anything of it since it's raining outside. It wasn't until a short while later that my wife called me into the kitchen to tell me that there was no hot water. Long story short, the new hot water heater installed less than 2 months ago has a leak. It's not in the water heater itself, but on the output pipe. It's at a difficult-to-reach area between the heater and a wall. It's not hard to imagine that the plumber who connected the pipe had an equally difficult time getting back there to seal it.

Unfortunately, we had water out under out carpet to a radius of about 3 feet. I shop vacced it as well as possible. Then we pulled the carpet, shop vacced it some more, then sat it over some chairs. We have a fan blowing over it. Hopefully, it and the padding will be dry before the weekend is over.

Q is Overrated; Barney Collier is Underrated

2008-09-04T19:44:00.000-05:00

Face it, Barney Collier is the be-all, end-all of engineers. As the electronics whiz in "Mission: Impossible" from 1966 - 1973, he was the US response to Great Britains "Q". But he was not simply Q's equal. Barney was the true master. Q was a pompous, beancounting REMF who was not worthy to work Barney's slide rule. Barney didn't put things together, hand them off to the team, and say, "Here ya go. And bring it back in pristine order!" He was right there in the field working them himself. For Q, field work was the exception, not the rule. We never saw Barney in a lab environment, unless it was a field-expedient one. I'll bet Barney didn't even own a lab coat. Q tended to make things that were complex; Barney understood that "complicated" meant "more things that can fail". Barney provided enough technology to solve a problem. Barney, being a field operative, understood all too well that sometimes things go wrong and that the primary law of fieldwork is Murphy's. And if something went wrong, he was there to fix it on the spot. Not sitting back in a lab chiding a field operator for not returning some piece of equipment.

There hasn't been anyone like him since. In the 1980s, "Revenge of the Nerds" premiered. It set back engineering as a respectable profession by two decades. "Nerds" reinforced the stereotype of engineers as spectacle-wearing, pocket-protectored social inepts. Greg Morris, the man who brought Collier to life and a truly underrated actor, refused to play stereotypes. Of any kind. After "M:I", he would fall into obscurity because he refused to play stereotypical black roles. As an engineer, he never played a stereotypical technology buff. He looked just as comfortable in a suit with cufflinks as he did in dirt-covered coveralls. He knew and practiced analog and digital circuit design, electromagnetics, chemistry, physics, and power engineering. But he had no problem with social occasions. I'll bet he knew wines as well as he knew Ohm's law.

You may argue that there are others. MacGyver, for example. He's a tree-hugging hippy liberal, so far as I'm concerned. Doesn't want to pick up a gun? Great. Tell that to a man running at you firing a weapon. Barney never had a problem pulling the trigger if he had to. And sometimes, he did. Put it this way, who would you rather have at your side if you're doing an op? Barney? Or MacGyver?

I thought so.

I'm an Extremist? Yeah, baby!

2008-09-02T21:27:00.005-05:00

So, according to a study done by two professors from Oxford University (though one has now moved to University of Durham, England), engineers make up the highest percentage of jihadis. Go figure. You're highly trained in all things technical, where watching a TV show that the guy says "Today, we're going to learn to make plutonium from common household items" sounds like a good time, but you can't get a job because you don't know the right person to bribe.

Oh, and women are strictly verboten.

You have an overabundance of hormones, no outlet, and after graduation, golly, gee, you also have a lot of free time.

Here's what gets me. Engineers are upset by this, calling it "ethnic profiling".

WHAAAAAAAAT!?

Ethnic profiling? Oh, get a clue. Better yet, here's a nickel. Go get a personality. And bring me back my change. I never realized wearing pocket protectors and glasses-with-tape-on-the-bridge made me a legit ethnic group. If so, do my flood pants put me in an extra special category?

Okay, I, a Purdue-trained electrical engineer, am not the least bit surprised by this finding. Not even a little bit. Unfortunately, it's not something I can put into words. I just understand it.

Second, it's this type of information that, if accurate, will help us to either (a) root out these "engineers" and kill them or (b) stop them from becoming bombers and extremists. It's another data point.

So, all you who are calling this "ethnic profiling" need to grow up. Stop trying to kill the messenger. Deal with the message.

UPDATE: I just checked and the paper is not available from the author's web site. Shouldn't be too hard to find elsewhere on the Internet, though.

From 1 to 60 in One Blog

2008-08-25T03:47:00.004-05:00

Seems I've made it. Big time. Skippy's List dropped a little love on me during what he coined Operation Leafblower.

I went from 1 comment in 3 years to 60 in a couple of hours. And among the more notable comments, I have:

You might want to see about making posting easier.
I'm going to say that you probably need to write more entries. You've been around nearly three years, but you only total in at 30 entries.
Turn off owner approval for your comments. You can always go back and delete any offensive/spam comments later.

To which I'd have to reply:

I'll be posting more often, and I've made it much easier to post.
Based on the very perceptive comment posted on Skippy's List, to wit: "good gods, his stuff is dry and boring. Maybe a few booger jokes would increase his traffic." Ya think? Which is why I point people towards "Skippy's List". He and his cohorts are far better writers than I. Face it. Anyone who comes up with the list of things they are not allowed to do because they lived it (as opposed to just fantasized about it) is probably going to be a bit more fun than I. Sorry. Besides, I don't know any booger jokes. Would a good fart joke count?
I've now turned off owner approval for comments. They should go directly to the page once you've posted them.

And, for the record, yet another comment back on Skippy's site was: "He’s gonna check his admin page one day and shit bricks at all the comments there." Yes. I did. I was actually trying to figure out how to make a simple change to the page using the "poke and hope" method when I clicked on the tab for comments and saw... everything. I thought, "Holy Crap! The spammers have found me!" Then I started reading the comments and realized, "No, these are for real." THEN I kept seeing "Skippy says Hi", and "Skippy this" and "Skippy that".

Didn't take long to realize that Skippy had passed some love my way.

To which I can only reply, "Thanks, Skip. I owe you one."

Okay, one more rant...

2008-08-24T20:59:00.002-05:00

I said in my previous post that I'd turned over a new leaf. I was going to simply blog on technical subjects, especially my interest in the scientific programming of Freemat. Unfortunately, I have to break my fast on all things opinionated.

I'm about to start a graduate program. It's been awhile since I was an undergrad, so I need to freshen up my classroom skills. I've been studying probability, and it's led me to remember one thing I truly hated about textbooks. It's that textbook authors have a penchant for using phrases such as, "it's clear", "it's obvious", "it's easy to see", and "it is apparent". Frankly, those words should be instantly banned from any textbook. Period. Knowledge is a journey with pit stops along the way. The path from one stop to the next is only obvious to those who have been down the path before. Authors must always bear in mind that they've been down a particular path probably many times. The people reading their material, most likely students, have not.

The problem I have is that, every time I see these phrases, if I'm having a difficult time with the material, I begin to feel like an idiot. I mean, the author said "it can be clearly seen", which makes me feel as if I'm on the front of the Titanic, the lookout is screaming "Iceberg ahead!", and I can't see anything but water. Why do they do that? Is it easier than actually spelling out that which is "apparent"? Does it give them a feeling of superiority? Both? Neither?

Regardless, I reiterate my belief these phrases should be banned from all textbooks everywhere.

Obviously.

A New Leaf

2008-08-12T11:22:00.004-05:00

Let's see. I've been online now for well over a year, and received a whopping 1 comment for any of my articles. The "Hmmm" factor is going gangbusters here. Considering that most of my posts have been political in nature, and considering that I obviously cannot write a well thought out political piece, I'd say that's a wrap. End of story. Full stop. Think I'll simply point people towards others, such as Mike the Marine and Blackfive (for military discussions) and Skippys List (for humor).Instead, I think I'll concentrate on technical discussions, primarily concerning Freemat and its many uses.
UPDATE: Okay, so I can't read a calendar. I've actually had this blog since November 2005. That means that I've been here for almost *3* years, with only one comment to show for it. One.
Sigh.

One Helicopter Away from Two Pieces of Lead

2008-03-03T10:23:00.002-05:00

I'm one of those people that looks at history and imagines what would be if things had happened slightly differently. For example, what if the bomb placed under the table as Hitler was working in early 1945 had worked as planned? On that one, I think the war in Europe would have ended several months sooner. Berlin may not have fallen to the Russians because the Germans would have sued for peace with the Western Allies and surrendered to us. So long as we were able to get the Russians to stop right now.

I look at today's news and the BBC has an article on Mahmoud's visit to Iraq. All hugs, kisses, and kumbye-allah. He even said, and I quote, "Without the presence of the foreign troops the region will live in peace and brotherhood."

And I wonder, what if we hadn't lost all of those helicopters during the raid into Tehran in 1980? What if those Delta operators managed to get into the trucks, as planned, blown out the section of wall on the outside of the US embassy compound, and stormed the embassy? Old Mahmoud is lucky. Very lucky. Because when the Delta guys were storming the building, those holding our people captive were going to get a very special gift, courtesy of Uncle Sam. They were going to get two pieces of lead. Right between the eyes. Despite the fact that this was going to make our then-Secretary of State a bit queasy, they were going to meet their 72 virgins. (And, as Jeff Dunham said, did they realize that no one has ever said those virgins had to be female?)

There wouldn't be any doubt about Mahmoud's complicity in the takeover of our embassy. Because, buried in a file somewhere, would be a picture of his lifeless eyes staring into space, two (probably just one) neat holes dead set between them.

You got lucky once, Mahmoud. Once.

More Linux Frustrations

2008-01-04T23:28:00.000-05:00

As stated in my previous post, I've managed to load Ubuntu Linux (my version of Ubuntu is a GUI over a Gnome Linux kernel), dual-boot my computer between Linux and WinXP, and start some very basic programming.

Er, I may have left out that last part about the programming.

I used Synaptic Package Manager to load the Gnu C Compiler (gcc) into Ubuntu. I even managed to get the basic "Hello, world!" program made and compiled. And that's when the frustrations started.

I went a step beyond the "Hello, world!" by writing a really small program that would calculate and display the value of sin(1). That's it. Nothing fancy. Just wanted to see how the output would look. How many digits it would display.

Here's the program:

#include
#include

main()

{

double x;

x = sin(1);

printf("%f", x);

}

As I said, absolutely nothing fancy. I could have probably made it simpler, but this was simple enough. Then, I compiled it with the following command:

gcc complex.c -o complex

and got the following message:

/tmp/ccNjXwiK.o: In function `main':
complex.c:(.text+0x17): undefined reference to `sin'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

Those of you who are used to programming in Linux have seen the error. I did not include a link to the math libraries, meaning I didn't add the "-lm" switch with the command. Hence, my command should have been:

gcc complex.c -o complex -lm

That little switch tells the compiler to link to the math library.

Here's my obviously really stupid question: WHY do I have to link to the math library when I have #include math.h in the header of the program? When I compiled this exact same program in my Windows box, I received absolutely no errors with the following command:

cl complex.c

See how simple that was? Just typed in the command for the compiler, and it compiled. Wow! What a thought? Who would have thunk it?

Instead, I have to manually put in a switch telling the compiler to load the math library. When I have math.h in the header.

Yeah, Linux is so much better than Windows.

Its the New Year... And Now For Something Completely the Same

2008-01-01T13:39:00.001-05:00

This will be a working log of my efforts to:

a) take a computer currently loaded with Windows XP Home edition,
b) re-partition the hard drive,
c) install Ubuntu Linux onto one of the new partitions,
d) install Windows 98 onto the remaining partition,
e) create a multi-boot system and
f) use the Ubuntu Linux system, along with Gnu C Compiler (GCC) to learn C programming.

To start, the system in question is a re-built Dell Dimension 4600. It currently holds 512 MB RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, and two generic CD-ROMs.

I'm initially going to try to use Symantec's Partition Magic 8.0 to re-partition the hard drive.

UPDATE: Using Partition Magic 8.0, I was able to re-partition the 160 GB hard drive into four logical drives. They are a 120 GB drive (C:, for Windows XP), a 20 GB, a 1.5 GB, and a 10 GB. These are all approximate sizes. But, combined, they take up all of the hard drives physical space. I formatted the 20 GB and the 10 GB drives as EXT3, the current standard Linux format. The third I created as a Linux SWAP drive. To go a bit more in-depth, I partitioned the hard drive between the primary (C:, where WinXP resides) and an extended. From the extended, I created the other three logical drives.

My next step was to install Ubuntu. I started with an Ubuntu 6 (6.10) CD. I placed it in the drive, re-started the computer, and then ensured that the computer booted from the CD-ROM. It did, and I was brought up in a standard Ubuntu Linux desktop graphical environment. One of the icons stated "Install Ubuntu". I double-clicked that icon. In short order, I was asked to provide my name, a name for my user account, and a password. I was also asked to confirm the date and time. The next screens were the important ones.

At one point during the install, I was brought to the screen where I have to select an option to partition the hard drive. Apparently, the Partition Magic didn't do everything that Ubuntu wanted in order to install the OS. The first screen provided three options:

Resize the primary partition (hda1) & use the freed space.
Erase the entire disk (NOTE: Self-defeating. Not an option.)
Manually edit the partition table.

I selected the third option to manually edit the partition table. I set the 20 GB partition as the root ("/") drive, the 10 GB partition as the media drive, and the 1.5 GB drive as the swap drive. I made sure that all other drives were removed (select the blank option at each menu), and checked "reformat drive" next to the three Linux drives. I then clicked on "Next". The screen that came up said that it was ready to install Ubuntu and it would install "Grub" on "hd0". Grub is the program used to select the particular OS in a multi-boot environment. I clicked on "Install". Ubuntu required ~20 minutes to install the Linux OS.

After install, the system re-started and the Grub program kicked in. The menu that came up had three options for Ubuntu (normal mode, safe mode, and a memory test) and one for Windows XP. I selected the normal mode (which was highlighted by default), and Ubuntu came up properly. Ubuntu popped up a window telling me to download certain updates. I did so, which took some time. There were 217 updates! After that, Ubuntu re-started. This time, Grub had 5 options for Ubuntu (6.10, 6.12) and one for WinXP. I selected the top one (highlighted by default) and came up in the Ubuntu environment. I then upgraded Ubuntu to the latest version (7.04). Again, after re-starting, there were now 7 options for Ubuntu (6.10, 6.12, and 7.04) in Grub. Selected the default entry for Ubuntu 7.04 and entered the Ubuntu environment.

Once it finished loading, I started up Firefox and web surfed. Everything worked properly.

I re-started the computer and selected Windows XP. WinXP also came up properly. However, Skypemate and Norton Anti-Virus no longer have icons in the system tray. This probably has nothing to do with the partitioning of the hard drive. The last thing I did in WinXP was to load both some Windows updates and some Norton updates. Most likely, these created some hiccup in the system.

Re-booted back into Ubuntu. I've noticed that Ubuntu comes up much faster than previously when I'd loaded it onto a different computer.

Started Synaptic (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager). Discovered that the GNU C Compiler is already installed. I know this because I checked under "Development" and "gcc" (which stands for GNU C Compiler) was already checked. I opened a command terminal and typed "gcc". When I hit enter, it replied, "gcc: no input files". It appears to be working.

I've now re-partitioned the hard drive (step (b) is complete), installed Ubuntu Linux on the other partition (step (c) is complete), created a multi-boot system (step (e) is partially complete) and GCC is loaded onto the Linux system (I'm ready for step (f)).

Showing "Cred"

2007-12-30T22:36:00.000-05:00

This from CNN, concerning how much "cred" the candidates have. Gotta love John Edwards response of "I was with Benazir Bhutto in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East just a few years ago. We spoke at the same conference..." Geez, John. That close? You know, I was with George W. Bush. Yes, my wife and I had dinner in DC just last week. And Dubya himself was in town parked at the White House. Our restaurant was just down the street. So, you know, my wife and I are, like, in. We, of course, couldn't help but stop in and give The Man himself some pointers on how he can not look like a complete ass.

I realize CNN couldn't help but finish the article by throwing a jab at Dubya. They ended by stating,

But ignorance of Pakistan's travails may not necessarily prove damaging to a candidate's political aspirations. In 1999, shortly after Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup, a Boston television reporter asked a U.S. presidential candidate if he could name the general in charge.

"A new Pakistani general has just been elected," the candidate responded, then corrected himself. "He's not elected. This guy took over office. He appears he's going to bring stability to the country, and I think that's good news for the subcontinent."

"And you can name him?" the reporter asked.

"General. I can name the general," the candidate said.
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"And it's?" the reporter pressed.

"General," said Texas Gov. George W. Bush.

Oh, you go, guys. Now, let me throw a hypothetical at you. Tomorrow, the head of the country of Yemen announces that they've killed Osama bin Laden and will be providing his body for confirmation to any country with interest. (I know, I know. Fat chance. But this is a hypothetical.) Okay, who would that person be?

Why All Big Companies Suck

2007-12-16T21:38:00.000-05:00

I work for a big company. A VERY big company. And, frankly, it sucks. Don't know if its because of the example shown by the Bush administration (Ve must ave all power at ze top!) or what. But the amount of bullying we, the American people, are allowing is, well, bad. And getting worse.

My bitch today? I use Mathcad. A lot. And today it won't run. Don't know the reason. But when a piece of software, for which I've paid over one thousand dollars to have the rare privilege of running, doesn't work, what is the first thing most Internet-savvy people do? They go to that company's web site and look under "Support". When Mathsoft owned Mathcad, it was complicated enough. Mathsoft became a big company. And it was a pain. Log in, find the right forum, dig for the answer. It was truly annoying. Now, what happens when a big company gets bought out by an even bigger company? It becomes even more of a pain. Tell me this. Why does a person have to "log in" when looking for tech support? Is there some deep, dark secret waiting in the bowels of the support web site? Or, as I suspect, is it that the company wants to watch what you're looking for to figure out if you should be targeted better for ads? Of these two, which is more likely?

Okay, I've made my point that having to log in for tech support, again for a program for which I paid over a thousand dollars, is annoying. What's more annoying than that is when I have to re-sign up every time the company switches hands. Mathsoft was bought by PTC (whoever the *#*@&! they are). So, now, I have to re-sign up through PTC to gain access to their tech support, again for a program for which I paid over one THOUSAND dollars! (Are you getting a hint here that when the price goes over several weeks of income the support should go up accordingly?)

What a complete, total, utter crock.

UPDATE: It works now. No thanks to PTC (which obviously stands for "Pathetic Total Cockbreaths"), either. Turns out that they have a special licensing program running in the background. I thought that Paint Shop Pro had loaded that. Nope. It was Mathcad. I turned that licensing program off just yesterday. When I turned it back on, lo & behold! It works again! As for PTC, when I finally logged in, I discovered that I don't have the "privileges" to peruse the technical support! UFB!

Why Linux Will Never Be More Popular than Windows

2007-09-22T11:58:00.000-05:00

I tried to jump on the Linux bandwagon. It's free and I had an older computer, a Linux CD, and I loaded the latter onto the former. Worked great. No problems. Loaded sans errors. All that did, however, was give me the basic operating system. Which means that I have a box that I can look at (using my video screen), move a mouse around on (using my mouse) and occasionally type away at (using my keyboard).

But I want my computer to do more than that. I actually want it to work. The first thing I did was to load OpenOffice. Think of OpenOffice as the open-source version of Microsoft Office. It has a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database program. In the Windows environment, loading a new program simply involves locating the appropriate .exe file, double-clicking it with the mouse, and (typically) voila! It now works. Things aren't so simple in Linux. Loading things in Linux involve command lines ("sudo apt-get install X"), moving around directories, compiling, creating source code, the list ~~seems~~ is endless. When things don't work as they are supposed to, it can take days to work through the problem. The OpenOffice did load fairly quickly and (somewhat) painlessly. It was also a steep learning curve. At that time, I learned about being a root user ("su") and permissions and authentications and a myriad of other details.

Shortly thereafter, I wanted to be able to print what I was writing or reading. Here we go again. Command lines, CUPS, printer daemons, on and on and on. I managed to get the printer working, even though its on a network server. Again, another day and a half of getting it to work.

But the flatbed scanner remains on my primary system, which remains as Windows. Why? you ask. For the simple reason that I just tried to get a small USB-to-phone box working on my Linux system. I've now spent well over 12 hours trying to get it working. I believe I've now seen every form of computer error code known to mankind. I may have even seen some unique ones. For all that effort, it still does not work. Do you know how long it took to get it to work on the Windows box? About five minutes. The same goes for my many external hard drives, my 12-in-1 external card reader, my gaming joystick, my iPaq cradle, on and on.

Yes, all you Linux geeks out there can mock Windoze or M$ or Micro$oft or Winblows or whatever spurious name you wish to give it. But it works. And it works simply

I already hear the Linux protesters out there. "Everything is designed for Windows. Almost no one designs things for Linux!" True. Why do you think everyone designs their products for Windows? Yes, it's the most popular operating system. But I also see people writing software and designing products for Macs. Frankly, I think there's an issue thats bigger than the OS popularity. It's commonality. One copy of Windows XP Home is the same as another. And a copy of Mac OS X is the same as another. But Linux? Let's see, you have Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, the list ~~seems~~ is endless.

Oh, and don't bother boring me with the "One is the OS and the other is a GUI". I don't care. To me, the GUI is the OS. They're one and the same. I'm a user. I. Just. Need. It. To. Work. And I need it to work simply. I hate the command line. I don't want to have to load development libraries and worry about whether I have the correct authentication.

I. Just. Need. It. To. Work.

In the meantime, we Windows users will continue to make Bill Gates the second wealthiest ~~man~~ person in the world. Not that I'm happy about that, but until we see some commonality and simpler interfaces in the Linux world, the watch-word for Bill Gates will continue to be "ka-CHING".

And Then What...?

2007-09-16T09:19:00.000-05:00

I see that the protesters are at it again.

Do something in Darfur!

Here's my question, Do what? Send in troops? Not on a bet. You geniuses believe that the best way to "stop the war" in Iraq is to "Bring the troops home". Yeah. Do that. Bring'em home. That will end the war.

Not.

All that will do is allow all the various factions (Sunni, Shia, al-Qaeda, whomever) to have a simple crack at each other. The war will not only not end, it will get worse.

So, instead, we should pull them out and send them into Darfur? Huh-unh. How many times have we sent in troops in amongst an Islamic factional feud, a pan-Arab feud, or a pan-African feud and actually had a lasting peace? Anyone? Anyone?

Give yourself a cookie if you said, "Zero!" That's right. A big, fat goose egg for ya. Let's tally up the scoresheet, shall we?

Beirut, Lebanon - 1957 - 1958
Afghanistan - 1980s
Beirut, Lebanon - 1983
Somalia - 1992
The Balkans - 1990s
Afghanistan - 2001
Iraq - 2003

Note that, of all of these fights, we can only take credit for starting one (Iraq, 2003). All of the others were the people of the region themselves picking up arms and starting the slaughter. We came in afterwards and tried to help. We wound up getting our troops killed instead. Mind you, these people have been killing each other for centuries without any help from us.

Ending a war is similar to making psychological therapy work; it will only happen if the patient (combatants) want it to happen. The Arabs and Muslims (many times one and the same) seem to have a gene that says, "I must fight, kill and die!" Hence, we can try to "negotiate, compromise, rationalize" with them all we want. And it won't do a damn bit of good.

The best thing to do: Cut'em off. I mean completely. Forget simple embargoes. I mean totally, absolutely, ruthlessly. Don't send our troops into a region. Surround the region. Nothing goes in. Nothing comes out. Our troops have a much easier time of telling who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. The good guys are the guys already outside the war zone. The bad guys are anyone inside the war zone. No one leaves, no one goes in. Same for anything animal, vegetable, or mineral. Negotiations for a permanent peace begin once everyone has used up all of his ammo, food, and/or people. When whoever is left shows up at the border waving white flags, then and only then will we discuss things.

Until then, do anything in Darfur? Not a chance.

More Islamic Alarmism

2007-09-14T16:26:00.000-05:00

One of the latest headlines out of that most useful of "world bodies", the United Nations, once again points to just how worthless that body is.

"Islamaphobia on rise, especially in Europe - U.N. envoy"

Mr. Doudou Diene, the UN special rapporteur on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance, (Did you know that, the longer your title, the lower your position?) states that the amount of "intolerance" against Islam world-wide points towards a serious problem. His evidence?

"Recent acts of defamation in the shape of blasphemous sketches in Sweden and posters in Switzerland reinforce this conclusion."

Huh? That's the best you can do? Point towards a single cartoon of Muhammed, and it points towards the terrible intolerance of the Western nations? Tell me this: How does a caricature show intolerance? And where is the anger when someone puts a Christian cross in urine and calls it "art"?

Next question: Did that cartoon actually kill anyone? You'll have to forgive me here, but on 9/11, I lost almost 3,000 of my fellow citizens. How many people did that cartoon kill? Okay, more than one. Why? Because the Islamists got so pissed off, they actually went out and killed other Islamists.

It really sucks when certain people discover that no right is absolute. Freedom of religion doesn't trump freedom of expression. That's what really pisses off those fundamentalist Muslims, isn't it? They want men to be supreme, women to be compliant, children to be unheard and unseen, and everyone else to know that Muhammed is, in actuality, God.

Bullshit.

That caricature did not incite to violence, as a Muslim TV show in Lebanon did recently. The "grandfather" of the current Muslim fundamentalist movement made much more violent statements, yet nothing is said of that. Of course not. The Western nations, especially the US, are responsible for all the worlds ills.

Well, we're not. We didn't start this crap. But we're having to deal with it. Do you know why Iraq is such a mess? It's because the people of the Middle East wouldn't know peace if it came up and bit them in the ass. Peace? They have no idea of the concept. The idea of compromise doesn't enter into their vocabulary. So stop with the exhortation that we're causing all of their problems by being "intolerant". When it comes to intolerance, the Western nations are even in the same league as those of the Middle East.

If you want a shorter response, here it is: Bite me.

Corel can kiss my ass!

2007-07-14T21:36:00.000-05:00

Corel sucks. There is not other way to say it. I finally took the plunge, plunked down $60 of my hard-earned dollars, and upgraded my copy of Paint Shop Pro from version 9 to version 11.

Big mistake.

I've now had more errors and problems with this version than with any previous version. I know what Corel will say, "In any complex undertaking, there will be problems and issues."

Bullshit.

I'm paying for a program that works! It should WORK! It should NOT crash, it should NOT lose a half-hours work, it should NOT lock up and lose my work! Period. End of story! If it DOES do any of this, then you guys NEED TO FIX IT! (Am I making myself understood here!?!? HELL-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!)

What's worse? Well, I want to send an e-mail to Corel saying, point blank, "WTF?" Guess what happens when you click on the link labelled "e-mail Corel technical support."

I won't bother telling you. I'll let you do it yourself. (Don't forget to use the "Back" button to come back here.)

That's right. The alleged e-mail link, in fact, simply dumps you to the general "Knowledge Base". TRY and find a link that will allow you to e-mail Corel. I can't find one. If it's there, they've done a fair job of hiding it. I've clicked on every link I can find on the page and I cannot find the support e-mail address.

Frankly, by now, it doesn't really matter. I'd only send them e-mail to tell them (a) how much Paint Shop Pro sucks now that Corel is in charge, (b) how much Corel sucks in general and (c) that I don't want anything more to do with either of them.

Corel, you can kiss my ass. I'm done with you. And I will do everything in my power to ensure that everyone in the world knows how much you suck. How much your products suck. And how they should be ANYTHING else before they buy from you.

Good riddance.

Let me IN!

2007-07-14T21:33:00.000-05:00

It took me 15 minutes to get into this *(&*#$^! account! I've been to it many times, although I haven't posted much. And now it decided that I was not who it thought I was. It would not accept my password. Mind you, I have my password written down (I keep a list, which there is little chance that some POS hacking from hundreds of miles away will ever see.) I know it was the right one. Then, when the *#&&^! system decided to not let me in, it added a new wrinkle. It put up one of those "Type in the letters you see" boxes.

Two words: F______ YOU!

Either make it so that my password works, or don't bother to put up the *#&! service! I guess I'm getting what I paid for. (It's free.)

To Mauritania Pilot: Git R DONE!

2007-02-16T12:30:00.000-05:00

The news was initially terrible. A hijacker had once again managed to smuggle a gun aboard an aircraft the overpower the crew while in flight. With the great desire of many Islamic extremists to kiss their 72 Virginians, it seemed that the crew was doomed. Fortunately, this hijacker was of the old-school variety. Further, he did not speak French. The pilot, while preparing the land, told the passengers his intention to make it a rough landing, which would knock the hijacker off-balance, then allow the passengers and crew to overpower him.

And it worked.

As Larry The Cable Guy would say, "Git r done!"

Gajimmy

Ricky Martin Demonstrates His Command of the English Language

2007-02-16T12:06:00.000-05:00

So, it seems that singer Ricky Martin is livin' la vida loco with his open defiance of The Power. Seems he's upset concerning the War in Iraq, so he directed his anger at President Bush.

Mind you, Bush had something to say back to him.

There are two things I'm noticing with those famous people opposed to the War in Iraq. First, they don't make their feelings openly known unless they are in front of a crowd. Secondly, they tend to be very simplistic with their feelings. Did the Dixie Chicks come out with a reasoned discourse of why they hated Bush during the concert in England? Nope. And Rickyboy's response to Bush was the ultimate in simplicity.

You go, Ricky! Bust a move!

Gajimmy

US Mocks Al Qaeda Deputy's Plan for Iraq

2007-01-22T21:00:00.000-05:00

President Bush, in a subtly worded press release, openly mocked the Al Qaeda deputy's plan for Iraq.

The US President, who has received much criticism at home for his plan to boost the number of troops in Iraq, released a statement stating:

"I must say that I just love Al-Zawahiri's plan for Iraq. I have to say that it is true simplicity, "Agree with us or we will kill you." It only has one two-syllable word in it. Every other word is is a single syllable. I doubt even the lowest echelon of Al Qaeda fighter will have his lips get tired reading it."

Al-Zawahiri was said to have replied to this press statement with a much lengthier statement. Unfortunately, most Western journalists were asleep within the first five minutes of the statement, and that was before he finished the statements saying that Allah wanted him to do all of this and.... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

A Spontaneous Protest? Yeah. Right.

2006-08-05T21:09:00.000-05:00

BBC News is carrying the story of a massive protest in downtown London. Thousands, perhaps as many as 100,000 people, descended on Westminster and 10 Downing Street. According to what I've been seeing and reading, the vast majority sided with Hezbollah. All were screaming for an end to the fighting, and most made it sound as if this were all Israel's fault. One can find fault with many things that Israel does, but, folks, this ain't one of 'em.

Remember, Israel left Lebanon. They pulled out of Lebanon. First Hamas then Hezbollah conducted raids into Israel, killing several soldiers and taking a total of three hostage. Both Hamas and Hezbollah rant and rave about how Israel is killing Lebanese. Er, um, yeah, they are. Only because they are firing back at the people firing at them. And the people firing at them, whether Hamas, Hezbollah, or Walter-the-paper-hanger, are using the Lebanese as human shields. The Hezbollah / Hamas / whatever want as many casualties as possible. The more, the merrier. Don't know if this has to do with they want as many people as possible to find their 72 virgins (or strum their golden harp because, according to the press, many casualties are Christians). What I do know is that, the more innocent people in Lebanon die, the better for Hamas.

But the story doesn't stop there. Israel very quickly began circulating the story that Iran was behind this. At first, to me, the unitiated, that seemed plausible, but strange. I thought Israel might be trying to shun responsibility. Now, it not only seems plausible or possible, it seems probable. As the Marines say, let me break it down shotgun style.

First, Iran re-started their nuclear program. The world is concerned because Iran now wants the bomb. You don't believe that? Consider this item: Iranian's President , when speaking about the United States, said,

"How do you justify this logic of having a full arsenal of nuclear weapons, but when it comes to nations such as ours, you do not even allow research?"

Ah, so now he's no longer saying that the nuclear program is for peaceful purposes, it's for research. Ahhhh! I see. Research for... what? Frankly, you have an elected President stating outright that he wishes for the demise of another country. That country, of course, is Israel.

Second, just when the European community and the US are about to come breathing down Iran's neck over its nuclear "research" program, Hamas and Hezbollah attack Israel. Coincidence? Perhaps. But I find it interesting that they attack almost the exact same day that the Western World gathered to discuss what to do with Iran.

Third, there are now protests in downtown Baghdad against the US, against Israel, and in support of Hezbollah.

It's a triple whammy.

Yet, that's not enough. Now the milquetoast liberals come out of the woodwork in London to rally against Israel and "for" the people of Lebanon. "Ceasefire now", many placards say. "Stop the fighting!", they scream. Except the "they" the protesters want to stop are the Israelis. The Hezbollah can kill as many as they want.

Getting to the Internet through Comcast

2006-06-04T18:04:00.000-05:00

Do you have a Comcast high-speed connection to the Internet? If so, are you having difficulties getting to the Internet? (Obviously, if you are, you're not on the computer from which you're having the difficulty. Either that, or you went through a particular connection and you went back to the old connection.)

Here's the typical scenario: You were connected using a particular computer, but you decided to add another system. So, you popped over to Best Buy and bought a router, such as are sold by Linksys or D-Link. Now, you can't get anywhere.

Here's why. First, some background. Every single ethernet connection is required to have a MAC (MAC = media access control) address. The MAC address, typically just called "the MAC", is essentially a serial number for each device. It uniquely defines that particular device. For example, you most likely have an Ethernet connection on your computer. It could either be a NIC (network interface connection) card or a connection that is direct on your motherboard. Either way, this connection has its own MAC address. If you are using a NIC card, such as made by D-Link or any of the others, it will have a MAC address. You can have two of the exact same make & model NIC cards, but they will each have a different MAC address. As I said, each device will have its own, unique MAC address.

The same goes for routers, wireless access points, on and on and on. Each will have its own MAC address.

What does this have to do with you not being able to connect to the Internet through Comcast? Simple. Let's say that your old connection was a PC connected directly to your cable modem. What happened was this: Comcast registered your connecting by using the MAC address of your computer. It's a form of security. If someone else tried to take over your connection, they wouldn't know your MAC address. (Yes, for those technical people out there, it's possible to spoof it. But that requires more work. Hackers tend to be, among other things, lazy.) Remember I said that every device has a different MAC address? Well, when you got that shiny, new router, it also had a MAC address. And it was different than that of your computer. When you plugged it into the cable modem, Comcast did not recognize that new MAC address. Therefore, it essentially locked you out. No Internet for you! (Note: That last sentence was said in the same voice as the "Soup Nazi" from "Seinfeld".)

But fear not! There is hope. You have two options. The first is to clone the MAC address of your old connection to your new router. The other option is to get Comcast to recognize the MAC address of your new router (or whatever new thing is connecting to the cable modem.)

To go with Option #1, use whatever method is necessary to configure your router (or whatever) and look for an option to clone the MAC address. On my Linksys router, for example, I open my Internet browser, open the web-based configuration page (by typing "http://192.168.1.1" into the address bar), then enter the administrator password. From the main "Setup" page, there's an option called "MAC Address Clone". On that page, I select "Enable" next to "MAC Clone Service". At that point, the "Clone" button is no longer greyed out. I press that button and it clones the MAC address of my computer. (NOTE: I don't know how it knows which MAC address to clone if there are multiple items connected to the router. It could be that it simply clones the MAC address of whatever computer is being used to set the configuration settings. Again, I don't know this for sure.) Finally, click the button at the bottom that says, "Save Settings".

From there, you should be able to connect to the Internet.

Option #2 is to simply disconnect your cable modem from the cable connection. You will need to leave it down for at least 12 hours. (Note: I've not tried this. I'm simply quoting what some others have reported.) At that time, Comcast will release your IP address. When you connect back to the Internet, it will allow you to re-register with a new MAC address.

Best of luck to you!

Gajimmy

Dixie Chicks: The Victims of Intolerance?

2006-05-14T18:45:00.000-05:00

The poor Dixie Chicks. Hard to not feel sorry for them. After their slamming the President and the war in Iraq, the Dixie Chicks tucked their tails between their legs and headed home. They were threatened, yelled at, had every epithet in the world thrown at them. All for merely speaking their mind. They told a London audience that they were ashamed that President Bush came from their home state of Texas.

After that, they were slammed in public and even threatened in private.

Now they are back on tour with a new album. It includes a new song, "Not Ready to Make Nice". This is a song they claim has to do with how they feel about the whole episode. After that incident, they put out some apologies, but no one seemed interested. Their reaction was, "We're being muzzled. We should be allowed to speak our minds."

Yup, that's absolutely right. But when other people, you know, us common folk, express our minds, don't act surprised. What were you expecting? Okay, here's another question: Why didn't you say this in Texas? Why did you have to fly 3600+ miles away from your "home" in Texas to speak your mind?

I know, I know, you were so muzzled in Texas. They're nothing but a bunch of hicks. Such simpletons. Only the English would understand.

Mind you, I don't like the guy who threatened you. I think that idiot should be put in a nice, 6 x 9 cell with his roommate, Rufus T. Buttlove.

But those people who merely expressed anger and outrage at your antics and expressed it by NOT buying your albums, calling the local radio stations to request that they NOT play your music, well, you had that one coming.

How Microsoft Hijacked the Internet

2006-04-13T22:30:00.000-05:00

Remember when the Internet was first born? Remember how anyone with a simple command of HTML could post their own web page? And, so long as your browser supported the HTML *standard*, you could read that web page?

Obviously, that did not make Microsoft happy. Was it Netscape pushing Microsoft back into the corner & out of the limelight that did it? Who knows? What I can say is that they not only came back and pushed Netscape off of the map (Netscape who?), but they also took over the Internet. How many times have you gone to someone's web site and seen those dreaded words, "This site REQUIRES (my emphasis added) Internet Explorer Ver X or higher". What happened to the HTML standard? Did it die? Pull a MacArthur ("just faded away" for those of you who are a little short on history)?

Again, no. Microsoft said, "Hey, let's not only destroy Netscape, let's take over the Internet, too! HTML? BAH! We don't need no stinkin' HTML! We're MICROSOFT!"

So it goes. Obviously Microsoft was not content to merely suck the life blood from a competitor. Who would be?

Now I'm stuck occasionally having to use Internet Exploder, despite my wish to use Mozilla's Firefox whenever I can. I can say that I've noted several attempts (looking at firewall logs) of outside entities trying to get through to my computer. I've also noted that they line up perfectly for when I'm using IE as opposed to Firefox.

IE = lots of attempts
Firefox = all's quiet on the binary front.

Sigh.

Don't Bother, Bin Ladin

2006-01-19T21:48:00.000-05:00

I see bin Ladin has raised his ugly head. He scurried out of his rathole long enough to "warn" the US of future attacks, but to also diplomatically offer a "truce" if we pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, he wants us to return to the status quo ante.

The only problem is that we were in neither Afghanistan nor Iraq on 11 September 2001.

Enough said.

What else you got to sell, idiot.

The NSLU2: One, Big Linksys Bug Report

2006-01-02T12:16:00.000-05:00

I purchased a Linksys NSLU2 Network File Server some time back. I recently upgraded the firmware to the latest version (called 2.3R63). Some time after that, I noticed that the hard drive (a Maxtor OneTouch 120 GB USB 2.0 hard drive) was being accessed every 2 - 3 seconds. At first, I thought my NSLU2 had been hacked. I have several firewalls, all of which are logged. I checked them all and found nothing. Still, I loaded an old computer with Linux then ran Ethereal in promiscuous mode. Again, nothing. The only thing from the server was a standard broadcast letting the network know every now and then that it was there and alive.

So began my journey. Rather than walking step-by-step, let me summarize what I discovered:

* The problem of the disk being accessed constantly (every 2 - 3 seconds) is in the latest firmware (2.3R63). No matter what I tried, it always had that problem. I tried different format types (NTFS, FAT32, and the original EXT3). The only thing that worked was reverting to a previous firmware version (2.3R29).

* After reverting to the previous firmware version (2.3R29), I noticed that I could read and write much quicker.

* Resetting the box is not as easy as it sounds. I tried resetting the box, but found that some settings (the server name, DNS addresses, gateway address, e-mail address) always stayed. It took me a while to figure out how to actually ERASE EVERYTHING. I discovered one method to do a partial reset (Method #1 below) two methods to reset everything (#2 & #3 below):

- Method #1: Using the tip of a paper clip, push in the reset button for about 3 seconds and let go. The box should beep. Then push in the button until it beeps again (should take about 10 seconds). This resets the IP address to 192.168.1.77. The second time resets the password. Note that neither of these does anything with such settings as the DNS, gateway, or the e-mail address.

- Method #2: From the home page of the web interface, go to "Administration" followed by the "System" page. At the bottom of the page is a button called, "Restore Default Config". Hit this button and wait! It will take about two minutes for it to completely reset. At that time, all of the memory should have been dumped. Any accounts you set up should be gone as should all of the other settings.

- Method #3: Use a program downloaded from Linksys called "EraseAll". I downloaded it from Linksys in a file called "EraseAll.zip". It was a zipped (meaning "compressed") file. Inside was a program called "EraseAll (for EFG120).exe" Even though it says that it's for the EFG120 (another Linksys network server product), I tried it (out of desperation) and found that it worked. And by "worked", I mean that it completely erased the previous firmware, EVERY setting, and installed the new firmware. I also used it to go back to previous firmware versions. When I used it, it was as if I had just taken the unit right out of the box. NOTE: I used an older Windows 98 computer to use this program. I did not try it from my Windows XP box. It would probably work; I just did not attempt it.

* If you have had a hard drive connected to the NSLU2 under previous firmware versions (2.3R29 or earlier), it had to be formatted using the web interface. The format version is compatible with Linux. (As a matter of fact, I connected the hard drive directly to a computer running Fedora Core 4.0 Linux. It was able to read the hard drive, see the files, and read the filenames. However, I could not access any of them.) If you use the newest firmware (2.3R63), you will be able to format a drive using either NTFS (the NT/2000/XP) format or FAT32 (older Windows format) then connect it directly to the NSLU2.

* The Linksys NSLU2 manual says, in several places, not to disconnect a drive when the unit is powered on. Unfortunately, it does not say what the consequences are. Therefore, turn the unit off before connecting and disconnecting a drive.

* To turn the unit off, just push in the button on the front until the unit beeps. Then let go.

* When connecting a drive, turn the unit off (see above), connect the drive, turn the drive on, then turn the NSLU2 on. It will take about two minutes for everything to be ready.

Best of luck to you all!

Court TVs "Anatomy of Pursuit": Pursuing the Truth

2005-12-29T20:41:00.001-05:00

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?

2005-12-17T11:52:00.000-05:00

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!

2005-12-14T19:13:00.000-05:00

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?

2005-11-25T13:34:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-17T22:02:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-17T19:45:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-14T19:20:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-10T21:09:00.000-05:00

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?

2005-11-10T20:54:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-05T23:28:00.000-05:00

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

2005-11-05T20:54:00.000-05:00

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.