SEOBM Notes

NPR, the land of pansies

2008-07-05T14:34:00.000-07:00

NPR is full of pansies who don't have the moral fortitude to say no to their own children. When was the last time you heard a controversial opinion from anybody there? Instead they tow the administrations line in their passive non-aggressive style. They are afraid to stick their heads up and get swatted. I suppose that's what happened with Bob Edwards. He had balls and said no and they fired him a day before his pension was to kick in. Apparently the Bush administrator that got hired to oversee NPR did have balls and knew that nobody else at NPR would stick up for Bob Edwards. He was right.

So why listen to NPR now? They tow the administrations line. It's just one lie after another and is no better than any of the other "news sources" you might watch on television. Perhaps a little less about police blotter and who's divorcing who. But it's not much better. There's very little reason to listen to their lies. They do talk about more important subjects. You can basically get an idea of what some of the important subjects are and the politically correct propaganda you are suppose to believe about them by listening to NPR. But to get the real information you need to listen to something that's not controlled by the Bush administration. Say www.democracynow.org.

I guess I'm ranting because NPR is 24x7 whereas www.democracynow.org is 1x5. Where can one go to get real information on the world? It's tough living in the English speaking world where propaganda is the rule rather than the exception.

The perfect scripting language?

2008-06-03T10:39:00.000-07:00

The "Linux Journal" has an article called "How to be a good (and lazy) System Administrator". It's interesting. It assumes you are good at writing bash scripts. It goes along with their heavy emphasis lately of Bash scripts.

Bash is far from being universal though. It's not on real unix boxes. And it's certainly not on windows boxes. There are no universal scripting languages. So which language to use? PHP obviously.

PHP is a clean language. Compare it to say PERL. PERL proudly claims there are more than one way to do anything you want. Problem is that everybody does it in their own goofy hard to follow style. It's a very dirty language that is difficult to understand because of this. Basically PERL has been built up by building scabs upon scabs upon scabs until anything and everything is a mess. PHP, Python, and the newer languages are clean. So if you want maintainability you do not use PERL but you can use PHP.

PHP has a good selection of library routines to cover almost anything you need. Whether you want to handle XML, HTML, CGI, CLI, Genetics, Math, Statistics, Physica, Chemistry, Text processing, etc., PHP has good free libraries for virtually everything. It's not as good as PERL. However the framework is in place if not complete and is actively being improved. Python and the other languages don't even have the framework in place.

Universal acceptance. PHP is available on most all boxes regardless of the OS. This makes the language boring to kiddies. But not to egoless programmers needing results PHP is perfect.

Why the Linux Journal still pushes niche scripting languages like BASH is disconcerting. Attempting to lead programmers down proprietary closed solutions is something I'd expect from M$, not the Linux Journal.

Checkoff list for good songs

2008-06-01T12:55:00.001-07:00

There are a few rules I'd follow if I were to ever come out with my own music.

The DONTS:
1) I would not moan after some love. Or pine for some love.
2) Cutsie didies that make your head bob up and down. These vacuous inane tunes have no place.
3) Religion. (Unless it is bashing it.)

The DOs:
1) Good rifts.
2) Lyrics that mean something useful. This could be stories on political times. Struggles. Useful common sense information. Etc..

Perhaps one could start with Isop'sfables and make songs based on them with modern day examples with a good rift to them. Then progress to Socrates and move on from there.

Hilary and her June statements

2008-06-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

Hilary keeps talking about how her Husband did not show signs of winning until June. When she's not mentioning that she is talking about how Kennedy was killed in June. That it would be premature to admit defeat a month before June. That the race is far from over as shown in the above two examples.

I have not heard any political pundits talk about how baseless her claims are because of most of the States across the nation have moved up their elections to the first half of the year. It's like comparing the amount of gold $10 could have bought you in 1840 with the gold it could buy you on todays market. You can't compare the 10ozs of gold $10 would buy then to the 1/1000 oz of gold $10 would buy now. So June of yesteryear probably had 1/3 of the delegates still up for grab. Probably the same number of delegates that would have been up for grab in say March of this current election.

Hilary really missed her calling. With all the lies and reality distortions coming out of her campaign and mouth she really should be running on the Republican side. Following Bush's lead. In fact she should have waited until the weak Democrats made fools of themselves for a term or two and then ran as a Republican. Following in the footsteps of the "greats" like Reagan and Bush. She would have fit right in!

Sleazy Ass Democratic Party

2008-06-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Fuck the Democrats. What a pile of shit. Worthless shit at that.

So the Democratic party told Michigan and Florida they were not allowed to move up their elections. Who knows the reason but it's their camp and they can do as they please. They probably told other States the same thing. However Florida and Michigan decided they'd do it anyways despite being told their votes would not count.

So the Democratic Party then warned the candidates not to campaign. Hilary decided to do put her name on the ballot and campaign anyways. Barak did not campaign though somebody put his name on the ballot in Florida but not Michigan. Barak honored the Democratic Patry rules. Obviously Hilary won in those two states and she made a big deal about it holding press conferences. You'd have thought at this point the Democratic party would have punished her.

Now with Hilary way behind she has been making a big stink about how unfair it is not to count these States. So what does the Democratic party do? They decide to count these states and give her half the votes.

Still she'll be far behind Barak. This keeps her in a little longer. Yet it shows just how weak and worthless the Democratic party is. They are spineless.

There are positives though. Several in fact. These immediately come to mind:

1) She will eat up probably 50 million more of her personal fortune. Hopefully leaving her broke.

2) It makes the Democratic party out to be totally spineless.

3) Hilary, basically another Joseph Libermann, will be ruined politically and never again threaten to hold political office.

Asta la vista bitch.

Blankets and Trailers

2008-05-28T05:10:00.000-07:00

Today I hear news that the trailers given to the Katrina victims to live in need to be destroyed because they have 5x more formaldehyde than the limit. These are the people the Republicans said, paraphrasing, "God removed those we've been trying to get rid of for decades". The insurance companies in most cases found excuses or delayed until the insured gave up. The Government was even worse. Now a few years later people have forgotten the whole mess. And so the trailers are scheduled to be destroyed and the victims thrown out. This organized governmental mean-spiritedness knows no bounds. Not even when we gave smallpox laced blankets to the Indians in the hopes of killing them were we so mean spirited. This new level of politics is so self destructive you'd think we've been invaded by another country bent on destroying us. Do our politicians get in to office because everybody is too scared to counter these disgusting bullies?

Fidel Castro Vs Barak Obama

2008-05-27T13:00:00.000-07:00

So Obama came out swinging saying he'll continue the embargo on Cuba. Stating it was totally undemocratic and unfair what Cuba has done to generations. I guess he forgot what the USA did to them up until Castro took back the country. Up until then the USA killed and abused the country as if they were a slave race. Fidel after hearing Obama spewing merely stated that despite Obama being the most progressive farsighted presidential candidate in 2008 he is still lacking. That prescribing the continuation of the embargo will ensure more suffering and hunger for Cuba.

Fidel seems to call most trends accurately long before they happen. Probably better than me. For instance a few years back he accurately described the problems with biofuel. Unfortunately any time he steps in and pontificates it's usually about something he has little control over. America merely stands up and says Fidel is crazy and contradicts him. Now however it's obvious to most people biofuel has caused world hunger and has not helped the green movement at all.

2008 3rd party presidential candidates

2008-05-25T04:30:00.000-07:00

So we've got Hillary, McCain, and Obama. All of which will continue the war in Iraq for years and years. There policies are all remarkably the same despite their images. Their images are McCain will be there for 100 years and beyond. Hillary as carrying on the current policy. And Obama to leave. Looking closely you'll see they all say, in the fine print, they'll be there as long as needed and have no intention of leaving soon.

There are alternatives. Like Ralph Nader and tens of others. As can be seen at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_third_party_presidential_candidates,_2008

The press will never give much if any press coverage to anybody but the Democrats and Republicans which they get their money from. You have to read up on these 3rd party candidates. Until people start voting for what they are really interested in, which they don't have the time for, we'll continue to get lobbyist owned Democrats and Republicans.

Hillary out of control

2008-05-24T19:22:00.000-07:00

This week was incredible. Hillary has compared her campaign to the blacks winning their freedom. Then she said she has to stay in the election because Obama may be killed next month in June like Kennedy was. She apologized for that so I guess even she saw that was way out. Then she compared the Jewish population in Florida to those living in Zimbabwe under Mugabe.

Then there are all those women who say the populace is sexist because they don't excuse Hillary for these incredible statements. I say if they want to find sexist problems they should invest in a mirror...

The Myamar Hunta Vs the Bush Hunta: Which is better?

2008-05-23T08:18:00.000-07:00

Myramar, as they like to call themselves, or Burma as the rest of the World which doesn't seem to like them has been making the news a lot. I don't know anything about that country. However they are now letting other countries help them out after the big cyclone. Our western press has been saying their dictators were keeping out humanitarian help from outside sources because they were evil, evil, evil. Well they have now opened up to all the outside sources.

Compare this with Bush after Katrina. So many countries had boats with doctors and laborers lined up off the shore afterwards waiting to help. Bush never let them in because they were contrary to his political beliefs.

It's obvious on this point Myranmar/Burma is much more open than the USA.

Hillary Clinton?

2007-12-22T19:55:00.000-08:00

“I was motivated to take action when I found out that there was embedded illicit sexual content in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The Entertainment Software Ratings Board was unaware of the embedded content. I called on the FTC to investigate the source of the content and, as a result, the company issued a recall of the game. When I am president, I will work to protect children from inappropriate video game content.”

So she wants to make us all a bunch of mediocre lemmings? Seems like she if falling right in line with all the imagery knuckle dragging red-necks conjour when describing females. I don't play computer games but that doesn't mean I want to censure them.

Hillary makes me sick. Though she's a woman she's no different than the others. She's right there with Bush and the others who are out to destroy all that's great about America so a few fat cats can get even fatter.

May she have a heart attack and leave us in peace.

My Power Supply Died

2007-12-16T19:13:00.000-08:00

I'm not positive but I'm pretty sure it's the power supply. I'll switch it out with a spare when I get the time. I believe I have a spare power supply ready to stick in it. However if it is I'll probably buy a new one. I saw a review on 8 1000W powersupplies at http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3173 which I'll go through. The computer that died has quite a few hard disks in it which may have contributed to the power supplies death.

The alternative is to go out and buy a server. I saw a $500 one tonight, 2nd hand of course, that's awesome. I need to upgrade. I need more time to figure out what is wrong though.

Linux Podcasts Rock

2007-12-16T19:00:00.000-08:00

I came across this site http://www.linuxreality.com/ this afternoon and it's great. I have not listened to many of them but the ones that I've listened to are good. They make excellent background noise.

It's so good that I started following the podcast references to other podcast shows that were mentioned. It's like a never ending string that is interesting to follow. I keep adding new stations to my RSS feed under a separate category called "podcasts". I'm up to nearly 10 now.

I recommend everybody follow these.

M$ FUD: Get The Facts!

2007-12-16T11:25:00.000-08:00

So I sat with about 150 other "technical decision makers" in a very
plush hotel in Holborn while representatives from Microsoft tried their
best to convince me that I should not be considering moving to Linux.
To run the discussion Microsoft had employed a fake-tan horror who had
clearly escaped from daytime TV. He was by turns chummy and
condescending. However being a reasonable man I will not hold Microsoft
responsible for his failings.

http://www.hlynes.com/get-the-facts/

I'm getting tired of seeing M$ talk about it's wonderful products. I know it's crap. This article exposes that crap.

However before you leave the M$ world be prepared for the Linux world. For the most part the linux world is dominated by script kiddies who can't be held down to complete a serious task if their lives depended on it. However there are decent people in the linux world. If you look hard enough.

Templates

2007-12-16T09:12:00.000-08:00

With all the stumbling I've been doing, perhaps getting close to 20 hours worth this week, some sites stand out as being more beautiful than others. A brief header at the top, the content on the left, an index on the right, and maybe some administrative stuff at the bottom seems to be the most pleasant. More importantly it seems to be backed by empirical data this is what most users want. See http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html for how this was determined.

So today I rearranged this blog to coincide with what has become obvious with useage.

That reminds me of the pathways throughout the world. Many were built upon the Roman roads. Or the campus at UCI before it became overgrown with buildings. The sidewalks were not put in until the dirt paths were trampled in by enough students to know which paths would be best.

Sqlite

2007-12-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

I was reading up on Sqlite and it looks fantastic. Supposedly faster than MySql at many things and it is file based instead of having to have a separate server up and running to access a database. This means backups are as simple as coppying the file somewhere else.

So in my world all scripts are written in PHP and all database stuff might be done with SqlLite. This would give the ability to universally run a script on any system whether it be windows, linux, hp-ux, bsd, osx, etc.. No setup and no fuss.

Stumbleupon is great!

2007-12-16T08:40:00.000-08:00

For a long time I've been using bloglines to keep myself informed. I have it set up with news sources from various countries from various perspectives for general news and plenty of specialized feeds too.

However it takes me a good hour to go through them each morning as I sip my coffee before the workout and to be quite candid I get bored with it. Not much seems to be new. However I have started to use stumbleupon and wow, what a difference, the internet has become much more fascinating. I keep finding new and interesting material every day.

Here's how stumble upon works. You put in your interests and then press the stumble upon key. It shows you what other people with similar interest find interesting. I'd recommend you use foxmarks and organize those interesting sites in your bookmarks. I'm not too organized but I've got folders and subfolders up the ying yang now. Stuff that might be interesting sometime in the future.

Best video card available

2007-12-14T04:30:00.000-08:00

This is PASSIVELY cooled so no fans to make noises and eventually wear out. Costs in the upper $200 range. Has all the fastest hardware in it by far. It's the obvious choice if you are looking for the fastest.

However probably none of it's cool features are supported by linux. Notice the link to the downloadable manual and drivers for the card. Notice there are 4 drivers for the board:
1) Windows 2000/XP 32 bit
2) Windows XP professional 64 bit
3) Windows Vista 32 bit
4) Windows Vista 64 bit
None of these drivers cover any version of BSD, LINUX, or even Apple. That means I'll have to wait a while, as in years, before I can expect to see this card fully supported by Ubuntu 32/64 bit. If even then. You'd think they'd come out with drivers for the major Operating Systems so to make their card a no-brainer to buy. :(

Model number : SF-PX86GT512U2-HP Passive
Graphics Processing : NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT
Core Clock : 540 MHz
Memory Type : 512MB DDR2
Memory Interface : 128-Bit
Shader Clock : 1190 Mhz
Bus Type : PCI-Express 16x
RAMDAC : 400 MHz

NVIDIA® unified architecture:
Fully unified shader core dynamically allocates processing power to geometry, vertex, physics, or pixel shading operations, delivering up to 2x the gaming performance of prior generation GPUs.

GigaThread™ Technology:
Massively multi-threaded architecture supports thousands of independent, simultaneous threads, providing extreme processing efficiency in advanced, next generation shader programs.

Full Microsoft® DirectX® 10 Support:
World's first DirectX 10 GPU with full Shader Model 4.0 support delivers unparalleled levels of graphics realism and film-quality effects.

NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology1:
Delivers up to 2x the performance of a single graphics card configuration for unequaled gaming experiences by allowing two graphics cards to run in parallel. The must-have feature for performance PCI Express® graphics, SLI dramatically scales performance on today's hottest games.

NVIDIA® Lumenex™ Engine:
Delivers stunning image quality and floating point accuracy with ultra-fast frame rates:
16X Anti-aliasing Technology:
Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.

16X Anti-aliasing Technology:
Lightning fast, high-quality anti-aliasing at up to 16x sample rates obliterates jagged edges.

128-bit Floating Point High Dynamic-Range (HDR) Lighting:
Twice the precision of prior generations for incredibly realistic lighting effects-now with support for anti-aliasing.

NVIDIA® Quantum Effects™ Technology:
Advanced shader processors architected for physics computation enable a new level of physics effects to be simulated and rendered on the GPU-all the while freeing the CPU to run the game engine and AI.

NVIDIA® ForceWare® Unified Driver Architecture (UDA):
Delivers a proven record of compatibility, reliability, and stability with the widest range of games and applications. ForceWare provides the best out-of-box experience for every user and delivers continuous performance and feature updates over the life of NVIDIA GeForce® GPUs.

OpenGL® 2.0 Optimizations and Support:
Ensures top-notch compatibility and performance for OpenGL applications.

NVIDIA® nView® Multi-Display Technology:
Advanced technology provides the ultimate in viewing flexibility and control for multiple monitors.

PCI Express Support:
Designed to run perfectly with the PCI Express bus architecture, which doubles the bandwidth of AGP 8X to deliver over 4 GB/sec. in both upstream and downstream data transfers.

Dual 400MHz RAMDACs:
Blazing-fast RAMDACs support dual QXGA displays with ultra-high, ergonomic refresh rates-up to 2048x1536@85Hz.

Dual Dual-link DVI Support:
Able to drive the industry's largest and highest resolution flat-panel displays up to 2560x1600.

Built for Microsoft® Windows Vista™:
NVIDIA's fourth-generation GPU architecture built for Windows Vista gives users the best possible experience with the Windows Aero 3D graphical user interface, included in the upcoming operating system (OS) from Microsoft.

NVIDIA® PureVideo™ HD Technology2
The combination of high-definition video processors and decoder software delivers unprecedented picture clarity, smooth video, accurate color, and precise image scaling for all video content to turn your PC into a high-end home theater.

Discrete, Programmable Video Processor:
NVIDIA PureVideo is a discrete programmable processing core in NVIDIA GPUs that provides superb picture quality and ultra-smooth movies with low CPU utilization and power.

Hardware Decode Acceleration:
Provides ultra-smooth playback of H.264, VC-1, WMV and MPEG-2 HD and SD movies.

HDCP Capable3:
Designed to meet the output protecttion management (HDCP) and security specifications of the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD formats, allowing the playback of encrypted movie content on PCs when connected to HDCP-compliant displays.

Spatial-Temporal De-Interlacing:
Sharpens HD and standard definition interlaced content on progressive displays, delivering a crisp, clear picture that rivals high-end home-theater systems.

High-Quality Scaling:
Enlarges lower resolution movies and videos to HDTV resolutions, up to 1080i, while maintaining a clear, clean image. Also provides downscaling of videos, including high-definition, while preserving image detail.

Inverse Telecine (3:2 & 2:2 Pulldown Correction):
Recovers original film images from films-converted-to-video, providing more accurate movie playback and superior picture quality.

Bad Edit Correction:
When videos are edited after they have been converted from 24 to 25 or 30 frames, the edits can disrupt the normal 3:2 or 2:2 pulldown cadence. PureVideo uses advanced processing techniques to detect poor edits, recover the original content, and display perfect picture detail frame after frame for smooth, natural looking video.

Noise Reduction:
Improves movie image quality by removing unwanted artifacts.

Edge Enhancement:
Sharpens movie images by providing higher contrast around lines and objects.

1 - NVIDIA SLI certified versions of GeForce PCI Express GPUs only.
2 - Feature requires supported video software. Features may vary by product.
3 - Requires other HDCP-compatible components

Newegg doesn't carry server boards?

2007-11-14T07:11:00.000-08:00

I went looking through their site, www.newegg.com, trying to find MBs with 64GB ram support. Nothing. Went looking for 32GB ram support. I found only 4 boards. I looked at each of these 4 boards. They all had just 4 memory slots! Like I'd waste my money buying 8GB memory cards, if they are even available, at astronomical prices. I want to buy my memory at the sweet spot which appears to be 2GB sticks. And I want ECC ram. So I want lots of memory slots on my next board. I left them a message saying something similar to what I've said here. That they have a product gap basically and they probably don't want to miss that market. I'll see what they have to say if they ever reply. I don't know if I'd want the s5400sf unless it were more than $250. I think that's my cutoff. Maybe they'll figure out some better solution with a CPU combo or something that makes my life easy. I'm confused when it comes to what works with what.

www.1and1.com bad support and tricks

2007-11-13T08:42:00.000-08:00

Ok, so I have now got two domain names with www.1and1.com and some experience with them.

First off they required me to call them to verify I was who I was. That was ok. I like them to be thorough. I spoke with a guy who sounded like he was gargling the whole time. He was polite and understood what he was talking about though.

Today I called tech support because I could not get a second mail account going for my second domain name. This time the support was an Indian lady who hadn't a fucking clue technically and very limited verbal skills. She was one of those yes people who always said yes and then started talking about something else. I kept telling her to stop and listen to the words I said. That she needed to understand the customer instead of rambling. And her rambles I could not understand either. She'd start going on with words so badly mis pronounced I had to ask her to spell them. Her name was Jeraline (sp?) Jacalan. She kept trying though I kept asking for a supervisor or somebody who spoke English and had a technical clue. Finally I got somebody else despite her best efforts to be a hindrance.

The next guy tried to shove me down the road of only one email account per customer despite the customer owning multiple domains. I explained to him that I wanted a 2GB email account for each domain name I purchased. He kept playing stupid but eventually told me I had to transfer ownership of my second domain to a new account. And that because it was being done internally I could disregard the $7 charge the web page makes you agree to. I don't trust him so I'll check at the end of the month my bill. (He said he'd check it himself in a few hours and correct it but I don't trust him.)

So then I get an email stating I have to do a few additional steps. The email makes no sense what so ever. Written by somebody who doesn't understand English obviously. Or maybe understands English but has not got a fucking clue. I tried improvising as best I could but nothing was similar to what was described in the email. I'll call tomorrow morining when I have the time to go through the hold pattern again.

Well, godaddy did have excellent american speaking technical support. Their web admin site could have been better but it worked. As long as you logged in with windows and IE. (They later fixed it.) However I will never go back to them. I hate Bush too much to ever give business to a rabid Bush supporter like the owner of godaddy is...

2007-11-13T05:42:00.000-08:00

They are willing to spend 1,000,0000 rather than 130,000 just to burn hydrogen. And where are they going to get they hydrogen? It's likely to cost them 10x more than the cost of gas or diesel. Is this suppose to help their tourism?

On the positive it will help focus attention on hydrogen and possibly help set up an industry to supply hydrogen.

London buys hydrogen-fuelled red buses
Tue Nov 13, 2007 5:46am EST

LONDON (Reuters) - London's mayor said on Tuesday he had signed a 10 million-pound ($20.7 million) deal for ten hydrogen-powered buses to help reduce pollution and CO2 emissions in the UK capital.

Five of the traditional red buses, to be built by U.S. manufacturer ISE Corp, will be powered by hydrogen fuel cells and five will burn hydrogen in conventional internal combustion engines.

"London is now the first city in Europe to commit to a hydrogen bus fleet of this size, which will match traditional diesel buses in terms of performance," London Mayor Ken Livingstone said.

"This represents a huge step forward from the previous hydrogen trials in the capital and is an important step towards my target of having five per cent of all public sector fleet vehicles powered by hydrogen by 2015," he added.

Mike Weston, Operations Director for London Buses, told Reuters the diesel buses they would replace would normally cost around 130,000 pounds each, but the hydrogen buses produced no emissions beyond water vapor and were worth the extra cost.

The hydrogen vehicle industry needs an initial commitment from cities like London to help drive down costs in future, he added.

The buses will be operated by FirstGroup and join a fleet of 8,000 in London, many of which are diesel hybrids.

http://www.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=USL1320605720071113

24 hour fitness problems

2007-11-12T16:40:00.000-08:00

Conflicts Regarding Use: Please don't linger on the equipment because other members may want to use it. No member should monopolize the equipment or weights. If there is a sign-up list for the use of the equipment and a maximum time limit on its use, 24 Hour Fitness expects all the members to follow the Rules. In short, observe gym etiquette. If there is a conflict over use, let 24 Hour Fitness Management resolve it.

Normally I work out early in the morning when there is no conflict with machines. However today I was feeling wimpy and told myself I'd get my upper body in the evening. So today I went in to do a little upper body. The place was packed. And full of little whiner military kids. One of which was watching tv while leaning against the weight machine I wanted to use. I went up to him, got his attention, and told him I wanted to use the machine. I noticed he was wearing those t-shirts that are slashed down the sides to show definition and had big arms. He said he was in the middle of his reps. Well he hadn't moved in 3 minutes while I had been on the other machines. I asked him kindly to move again but then the identical machine that was getting use opened up and they offered it to me. So I used it.

I have no idea what's wrong with kids but they are so fucking stupid they need to be put off on their own island. Or perhaps sent to Iraq. If they survive that then maybe they'll get a SUV and hopefully drive it around a turn too quickly and remove themselves from the human race. Idiots.

It's not really just him. It's the human race. You get kids like him who have definition and muscles until their early 30s if they are lucky before they lose it. And the women until their late 20s before they lose it. And they aren't that strong even in their prime. Then they lose it and all you want to do is throw up when you look at them. It's a rare human who maintains their body their entire life. Some of us do though. Some better than others.

Wall Street Journal reports...

2007-11-12T08:19:00.000-08:00

According to Democracy Now the Wall Street Journal published today the plans we have of building our new Naval Headquarters on top of the Iraqi Oil Terminal which also overlooks Iran. Didn't Greenspan just publicly say we are in Iraq only for the Oil. Now we may leave Baghdad but we will not ever give up control of the Iraqi oil...

2007-11-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

This all looks great. I'm interested in the "15 server dual-core and quad-core 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors" but the article does not go into them at all. I'm imagining a board that can take two quad core Xeon processors with a 128GBs of cheap ECC ram which could be populated with the least expensive per GB sticks for a total of 64GBs. And I'm looking to find one on ebay or craig's list from a business going under that will sell it on the cheap...

Intel's 45nm Penryn desktop expected to pack a big wallop
Sharon Gaudin

Click here to find out more!

November 12, 2007 (Computerworld) Intel Corp.'s new 45-nanometer chip for the desktop, part of the newly released Penryn family, should give gamers, researchers and serious multitaskers a significant performance boost, according to analysts.

And that is not good news for rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which recently started shipping its quad-core Barcelona processor -- built using a 65nm manufacturing process. AMD isn't expected to move to 45nm technology until the second half of 2008.

The release of Intel's Core 2 Extreme quad-core processor came as part of a larger release of Penryn processors, including 15 server dual-core and quad-core 45nm Hi-k Intel Xeon processors. To make the move from 65nm to 45nm processors, Intel designed a new transistor, stemming leakage and improving energy efficiency. With 820 million of these newly designed transistors in just one chip, Intel is calling it one of its biggest advancements.

On the desktop side, all of this should add up to a major performance boost.

Dean Freeman, an analyst at Gartner Inc., said he expects Penryn will be 20% to 50% faster than Intel's previous chip releases in general purpose applications and 10% to 40% faster in technical applications, multimedia and games. For example, someone using Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint should see a 20% to 50% boost, while an Adobe Photoshop user should see a 10% to 40% increase.

"It's going to mean a faster desktop. It's a more powerful tool, operating applications faster," said Freeman. "Basically, it means that for those of us who are concerned about the speed at which applications work on our desktop, the good news is that it will work faster."

Boyd Davis, a general manager at Intel, said a larger L2 cache and support for new SSE4 media instructions are part of the chip's performance boost.

And while no one will be expectantly lining up around the block for the new chips, Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT Inc. in Hayward, Calif., said that Penryn is a "step up" from previous Intel designs and should appeal to the high-end gamers and workstation customers.

"The Penryn architecture blends notably high performance with significant steps forward in power efficiency," he added. "It's a bit like a new sports car that hits a higher top speed than previous models, while simultaneously delivering better gas mileage."

Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group Inc., said the Penryn desktop won't just appeal to the gaming community. Power users with more than 10 applications open at once, video editors and researchers are going to be eager for a performance boost.

Olds added that with this "big step forward" for desktop performance, he's not sure what AMD has to respond with.

"AMD has their work cut out for them," he said. "[Penryn] will be hands-down the fastest desktop chips in existence ... And it's not just this generation. Intel will just crank this thing faster and faster, and it will be a challenge for AMD to respond."

Intel last month opened a new $3 billion manufacturing facility in Chandler, Ariz., kicking off mass production of its new 45nm microprocessors. Freeman has previously noted that the opening of the new Arizona facility, named Fab 32, is expected to boost production of 45nm wafers from 5,000 a month in the pilot program at an Oregon facility to 25,000 to 30,000 wafers a month. Davis added that two other new 45nm fabrication sites -- one in Israel and one in New Mexico -- are expected to go online, boosting 45nm production over Intel's 65nm production by the second half of 2008.

Today, Intel is coming out with one Core 2 Extreme processor, which is geared to the high-end gaming and research market. The company is slated to unveil Core 2 Quad processors and Core 2 Duo processors in the first quarter of 2008, pushing the new chips from the high-end desktop market out to the general market.

Movie Review: Blades Of Glory

2007-11-11T19:33:00.001-08:00

I put off seeing this movie for a long time. I've never liked anything Ferrel has done. However this movie didn't make me heave like all his others. It was actually a good parody of ice skaters. Obviously I'm not a fan of ice skating. To me it's a bunch of thunder thighed women dressed like hookers moving their hands about artistically. Of course I'm a guy and just don't get ice skating and horse riding. Maybe women become such big slobs and bloat out that the only time they can feel like they are moving is when they slide on ice. Women in general are so sad. And unfortunately guys will plug anything that lets them so we are just as sad.

It sure would be nice if the human race quit breeding every chance it got.

wwww.1and1.com much better than www.godaddy.com

2007-11-11T12:29:00.000-08:00

One of the emails I received full of veterans propaganda was from www.godaddy.com. This set me off. I did a search on this company and discovered the owner is a right wing war hawk. So I went looking for alternatives thinking I would have to pay more and get less to avoid this nut case...

... Not at all. Much to my surprise www.1and1.com offers much more at a much better price. For instance with a .biz domain name you get:
Private domain registration free instead of having to pay $7
You get ICANN free instead of paying $.20
You get 2,000MBs of email space instead of only 25MBs for free
You get the domain name for either $3 or $7 rather than a flat $10.

I don't know if 1and1 are right wing war hawks but a quick google search didn't find anything about them. I think I'll get a new domain name from 1and1 and try it out. I'll do another search on their political views first. If they aren't war hawks I'll move all my domain names to them.

I did another google search and found nothing. I did find that godaddy advertises in football games. And they do sexy adverts that get banned. I kind of like them but oh well. I don't like their political views.

Veterans Day

2007-11-11T12:17:00.000-08:00

Well it's that time of the year again. We all have to put up with emails and broadcast propaganda about why we should support our vets. It's not like the vets did anything but support our crooked politicians help their parent lobbyist companies get rich. I don't normally encourage that type of thing. It used to be they were drafted and had no choice. I could have sympathy for that. However that's not the case for most of the vets these days. And if they were at some point forced to join they can now quit at any point they want. Sure they might get a "dishonorable discharge" but should they give a damn. They should just say they are gay and get kicked out. Plain and simple. They could then run up a flag saying gay, proud, and discharged because of it and stand tall. But due to greed and such they stay in. Not my problem. And I certainly have no plans on supporting them. The older generation should have taken care of themselves by now and do not need my help. Again it's not my problem.

Sure I feel sorry for all the poor and badly educated kids who go in to the armed forces. However I can't be responsible for everybody. Let the politicians do something useful and keep these kids out. Put them in to college for free. Put them in programs that actually help America. Not bring it down.

Movie Ideas

2007-11-11T11:57:00.000-08:00

While in blockbusters waiting in line I watched the preview of "Back To The Future" on the monitors. I noticed how the kid was way cooler than the parent and that this theme probably always plays out to the younger movie going generation. Here the kid goes back in time and helps out his dad, who is now the same age as the kid, get past his peeping tom tendencies and bad case of nerdishness.

Now lets grab the idea by the ears and flip it upside down. How about the parent invents the time machine. Much more likely. And how about the parent knows much more than the stupid kid. Again much more likely. How about the parent goes back in time, brings his younger self back to the future, in the hopes of his cool younger self helping out his stupid kids.

Plot complications? Hmmm. Having a kid who is cool and follows the rules could be very entertaining. Imagine the kid who implicitly trusts the parent. By following the parents choice he keeps avoiding the problems his "relative" falls into. On the other hand he has the freedom to make the individual choices that make him "cool" and popular. This could, with enough imagination, be made in to a fantastic movie. Maybe a series...

Water boarding should have been used on Michael Mukasey

2007-11-09T05:44:00.000-08:00

I have a solution. If our new puppet judge has no problem with wateboarding and does not think it is torture then congress should have used waterboarding on him to help determine when and when he was not speaking the truth. Damn we missed a perfect opportunity.

And if he still didn't think it was torture then we should have used it on the 53 senators who voted for him. It really is time to stamp out hypocrisy in our government.

New US attorney general confirmed
Human rights groups have opposed Mukasey's appointment [AFP]

Michael Mukasey, a retired judge who has refused to denounce interrogation methods viewed worldwide as torture, has been confirmed as the new US attorney general by a divided senate.

Mukasey's election on Thursday by 53 to 40 votes was split mosty on party lines. Democrats opposed him due to his resistance to declare simulated drowning unlawful.

He has been appointed as the country's chief law enforcement officer after his predecessor Alberto Gonzales resigned under pressure in September.

Gonzales had been critcised as a political tool of the Bush government.

Mitch McConnell, the senate Republican leader, defended Mukasey, saying: "Tonight, a clear bipartisan majority of the US senate voted to confirm Judge Mukasey because he is one of the most qualified candidates ever nominated to the position of attorney general".

Waterboarding furore

Mukasey had been given initial support from senators who saw him as a fair and independent-minded nominee.

But the former judge was criticsed after he told the senate judiciary committee at his confirmation hearing last month that torture violated the US constitution, but he was unsure if waterboarding was unlawful.

In a follow-up letter Mukasey said that he finds waterboarding "repugnant", but would be unable to determine its legality until he examined classified US interrogation policies.

Harry Reid, the senate Democratic leader, expressed doubts concerning Mukasey: "Judge Mukasey's answer to the waterboarding question was important in itself, but it also raised for me serious doubts about whether he is prepared to be the truly independent voice that the justice department so desperately needs.

"If he cannot stand up to the president on such a question of profound importance with a clear legal answer, how can we be sure that he would be more than just another mouthpiece for an administration that treasures secrecy and loyalty above all?" Reid asked.

Mukasey's confirmation promises included the enforcement of any new laws that specifically bans waterboarding.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EBA32F1D-5E70-4DBD-9BE1-D7E4E8F666BC.htm

Motherboards that can take 64GBs thread

2007-11-07T03:55:00.000-08:00

I'm going to use this thread to keep track of those boards that can handle 64GBs. There should not be too many which hopefully will make it easy.

http://www.fadfusion.com/selection.php?product_item_number=10024003225

Howto make a ramdisk in ubuntu

2007-11-04T16:56:00.000-08:00

I would like to make a huge multi gigabyte ramdisk to hold everything I do. I found this code:

Things Linux Can Do That Some Idiots Think It Can't Do

lol... remember my post earlier on about how you can't create big ramdisks on Linux? It was under the title "Things Linux Can't Do". Well, I wanted to make a huge ramdisk for some reason, and I found that the HOWTOs on the web only told me how to create small ramdisks of a couple of megabytes each.

Linux Format magazine has just run a feature on little tricks you can use in Linux, and one of them is about how to create a ramdisk of any size! Here's the code they give for creating a 64 megabyte ramdisk:

sudo mkfs -t ext3 -q /dev/ram1 65536
sudo mkdir -p /ramdisk
sudo mount /dev/ram1 /ramdisk -o defaults,rw

Alter the number "65536" for a larger or smaller ramdisk, alter /dev/ram1 to another RAM device if you are creating multiple ramdisks, or for an extra speed boost you could probably alter "ext3" to "xfs".

Now, I've just got to find some reason to use it... :-)

http://bigbolshevik.blogs.friendster.com/a_man_and_his_penguin/ubuntu/index.html

Ok, like most things in the computer world, the above was bullshit. The guy never tested it. Larger sizes came back with an error of:
sudo mkfs -t ext3 -q /dev/ram2 1048576
mkfs.ext3: Filesystem larger than apparent device size.
Proceed anyway? (y,n) y
mkfs.ext3: Invalid argument while zeroing block 262128 at end of filesystem

And trying xfs did not help either

sudo mkfs -t xfs -q /dev/ram2 1048576
mkfs.xfs: No such file or directory

I wish people were more thorough.

In search of the perfect workstation/server

2007-11-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

So I'm pretty much over RAID. Now I'm thinking bootable thumb and or dvd drives and RAM disks with no hard drives in the picture at all. That way you are safe from viruses.

I'm thinking 8GBs is adequate for the OS and apps. Certainly a 16GB thumb drive is adequate. MBs now support 64GBs of ram. Fill up a 64GB unit with 32GBs of ram for $130*16=$2000.

Get a fast graphics card for $800 and a 1920x1200 LCD screen.

A symmetric 20 or 30Mb internet connection.

The system would rock!

Except the noise from the fans. Power, CPU, and grapic fans. I can get away without a graphics fan if I don't play games. Which I don't. The power fans are almost totally noiseless. So then it comes down to the CPU fans. I'd best start paying attention to them.

learning

2007-11-02T07:58:00.000-07:00

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00500.x

Current Directions in Psychological Science

Volume 16 Issue 4 Page 183-186, August 2007

To cite this article: Doug Rohrer, Harold Pashler (2007)
Increasing Retention Without Increasing Study Time
Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (4), 183–186.
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8721.2007.00500.x
Prev Article Next Article
Abstract
Increasing Retention Without Increasing Study Time

* Doug Rohrer11University of South Florida and and
* Harold Pashler22University of California, San Diego

*
1University of South Florida and 2University of California, San Diego

Address correspondence to Doug Rohrer, Department of Psychology, PCD4118G, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620; e-mail: drohrer@cas.usf.edu.
Abstract

ABSTRACT—Because people forget much of what they learn, students could benefit from learning strategies that yield long-lasting knowledge. Yet surprisingly little is known about how long-term retention is most efficiently achieved. Here we examine how retention is affected by two variables: the duration of a study session and the temporal distribution of study time across multiple sessions. Our results suggest that a single session devoted to the study of some material should continue long enough to ensure that mastery is achieved but that immediate further study of the same material is an inefficient use of time. Our data also show that the benefit of distributing a fixed amount of study time across two study sessions—the spacing effect—depends jointly on the interval between study sessions and the interval between study and test. We discuss the practical implications of both findings, especially in regard to mathematics learning.

How to get music for free.

2007-11-02T07:46:00.001-07:00

I haven't read the following article. However I wouldn't be surprised if it gets pulled very quickly because it's like waving a red flag, blowing a loud horn, and throwing a rock at a bull. In this case the bull is probably the record industry with their army of attorneys. So here's the article in all it's glory: http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.cgi?page_name=cheat_the_music_industry_never_pay_for_music;action=display;category=Play

When I get the time to listen to music I'll read it.

Despite the continual legal pursuit of music file-sharing "criminals" by the "RIAA ( )"<>, the ability to find great music and create a significant music library at virtually no cost is still quite feasible. So we'll start by dividing this into categories and giving a few examples of what we know. But it's up to you to fill in the blanks.
THE GOOD (Legal and Somewhat Free)
Amie Street

Offers music downloads with a very innovative fee structure - tracks start out free, and the price scales with the number of people who download them, capped at 98 cents. There is even the possibility of making money - if you recommend a track before it rockets up in price, you are rewarded with store credit. Has a large and growing selection, including the Barenaked Ladies, Tiesto, Jonathon Coulton, etc. Also recently announced a large amount of funding from Amazon.
Lala.com

Lala.com launched in June 2006 as a membership service that facilitated CD swaps. The site lets music fans list the CDs they own and the CDs they want, and then it arranges trades. Each transaction costs $1.75, which pays for a nifty Netflix-like envelope, 75 cents in shipping, a roughly 20-cent honorarium deposited into a trust fund for artists, and, of course, a fee for the middleman. Lala.com's founder, Bill Nguyen says a portion of this fee goes to the performers. This may also temporary assuage the suit-happy RIAA. The arrangement exploits a loophole in copyright law: While distributing duplicates is verboten, it's perfectly legal to trade your own property. (And there's nothing to prevent Lala users from ripping a copy of a disc before they send the original off to someone else.) In February 2007, Lala added CD sales to its offerings.

Starting in November, Lala will offer unlimited on-demand streams of music from two of the four major labels (the company's still negotiating with the other two) using the internet radio station that Lala.com owns, WOXY. Users can immediately buy any track they hear on WOXY.
Last.fm

Last.fm is a social music site that allows users to subscribe to radio stations based on their tastes and favourite artists. It is possible to use the service from within popular music players on Windows, Linux or OS X, though it does rely on having a decent internet connection with no caps or limits. The range of music available is very good, and the intention behind the site is to expose listeners to stuff they may not have experienced. Major label artists are well represented, but it's also pretty simple to add and tag your own content to the site if you're a producer.
Deezer.com

A free radio site, with excellent selection.
Spiralfrog.com

Spiralfrog offers free music downloads from a large library, in exchange for clicking through a certain number of ads per month.
THE BAD (Mostly Legal & Mostly Free)
THE UGLY (Illegal & Free, unless the catch you)

Torrents, torrents, torrents. Without a doubt, torrents can be the easiest way to share music (as well as other media formats) without cost and the center of the latest attack by the recording industry on the "free from fee" community. In case the use of the BitTorrent protocal momentarily escapes you, check our rather thorough How To Use BitTorrent.

The way files are shared using the BitTorrent protocol is through torrent trackers. The list of torrent trackers seems to be growing daily but here's a few of the most notable ones.
The Pirate Bay - BOiNK

Indisputably the most notorious of torrent trackers, these Swedes constantly thumb their noses at legal threats and stern warnings alike. In addition their main website, they also maintain music specific site BOiNK, a descendant of OiNK, a site that was most recently, shuttered.
"The success of BOiNK will mainly depend on the former OiNK community, who will be asked to upload their old OiNK torrents," says TorrrentFreak's Ernesto, the Pirate Bay's blogging Voice To The World.
Blin.com

Thomas Crampton, who writes for the New York Times and others, has posted an interesting interview Kaiser Kuo of Ogilvy, a Chinese PR firm. Kuo talks about up and coming Chinese web services, specifically Blin.cn, which Kuo claims offers streaming downloads at 50 times the speed of BitTorrent and can play DVD quality video in near real time.
Albumbase

This site allows users to download entire albums for free. Rather than sharing files from their own computers, users upload compressed folders containing entire albums to sites like Rapidshare that host sub-100MB files for free. Then, they submit the temporary Rapidshare URL to Albumbase. Their motivation? Users who submit links earn points that can be redeemed for cash prizes.

Once the albums' URLs are in the Albumbase system, other users then browse or search those albums and download them from their temporary locations. When the links expire, users can notify the system easily, so dead links get weeded out and replaced by live ones in near-real-time.

The site requires confirmed email registration (for the advanced version of the service, cellphone number confirmation), and the file hosting sites that provide the backbone for the service might keep logs of the IP addresses of uploaders and downloads. The RIAA has a potential trail to follow in order to sue users of the service, but rather than providing subpoena-ing an ISP with an IP address in order to identify an alleged infringer the way they normally do, the RIAA lawyers would have to use the service to get a temporary link for a file and then subpoena the service providing the link. These companies are often located abroad, which could turn Albumbase into a major headache for the record industry (but a potential source of solace for ousted OiNK users).

Movie Review: Evan Almighty

2007-10-30T08:43:00.000-07:00

Is this what goes through the minds of religious folk? Or is the movie an attempt to poke fun at the whole idea of a God and Moses and those who believe in the stuff?

Either way I would not recommend watching the movie. However I think Steve Carell and the President of Iran could use each other for shaving mirrors. Take a look and see what I mean http://www.president.ir/fa/

Maybe. Just maybe... There can be some comical movies made with Steve Carrell playing the president...

I'd like to see him calling Bush Satan in the U.N. and then doing a little dance...

I'm sooo sorry... NOT

2007-10-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

This is incredible. Those poor gamblers getting their jackpots yanked out from under them. I can't say I feel bad about it though. I don't like gamblers and I don't like casinos. It makes me feel quite good to see this happen.

Now if SUV owners got taxed through the roof next I'd be even happier.

Yet Another Casino Yanks Jackpot Prize, Claiming Faulty Software
from the unlucky-sevens dept

Apparently faulty slot machines that always seem to malfunction when someone wins big are becoming more popular at casinos -- and they're now not awarding larger sums. Last year, we wrote about two guys in Canada who thought they had won $209,000 using a slot machine, only to be told that they didn't win and it was all a computer glitch. Earlier this year there was a similar story of a man apparently not winning $102,000 at a new casino in Pennsylvania. In that case, the negative press coverage convinced the casino to pay up. The latest such case takes place at the Sandia Resort and Casino in New Mexico, where a guy was told that his $1.6 million slot machine win was actually a computer malfunction. He's suing, but he might not have much of a case -- especially since the casino is on an Indian reservation, and not subject to the US court system. Also, in this case, it's a little more reasonable to understand why the guy might not have a strong case: apparently the machine clearly stated that the payouts were limited to $2,500. Still, it makes you wonder: for all these slot machines with faulty software that's suddenly discovered after people win... what happens when machines screw up the other way? Somehow, we doubt that the casinos call them up to a room in the back (as always seems to happen in these cases) and tells them the machine screwed up and they actually won.

http://techdirt.com/articles/20071026/022323.shtml

M$ does it again

2007-10-28T06:40:00.000-07:00

People are surprised? This is M$ people. They are the ones who build in backdoors to all their OSs. They are the ones that force you to register again if you upgrade hardware. This latest development should not be a surprise to anybody.

However despite this I hear they are capturing the server market. Taking it away from Linux. You'd think people would be smarter than this.

I am never amazed at how stupid the world can be.

Windows Update Screws Up Again; Pissed Off Users Discover Desktop Search Auto Installed
from the not-what-the-IT-admin-ordered dept

A month ago, there was a story that made that rounds about Microsoft Windows' auto-update feature automatically installing stuff, even if people had turned off the auto-install option. This pissed off a lot of people, but we didn't write about it at the time, assuming it was a one-off glitch. Apparently not. Now reports are coming out that plenty of folks who had auto-update turned off are discovering that a recent patch automatically installed and began running Windows Desktop Search. Once installed, the app started indexing everything, chewing up resources. On top of that, if you want to uninstall WDS, you need to reboot your computer, which is quite a nuisance for many people. Needless to say plenty of folks are pissed off. The specific problem appears to be that this patch simply looked at whether or not a person had approved an earlier (from February) patch -- and if that had been installed, then this one was automatically installed as a "revision." It just so happens that it also included WDS -- even if it wasn't wanted. While the article notes that the Windows Server group had admitted it made a mistake, it doesn't read much like an admission or an apology. Rather, it's just an explanation, which doesn't seem to be placating pissed off users everywhere.

2007-10-28T06:32:00.000-07:00

McCarthy era all over again. I'll bet if I'm not on it now I will before it's over with. The only thing they don't realize is that when they do things like this it makes the public even more unhappy. And soon they will be spying on everybody. Even their coworkers. Finally it will topple. It's just a matter of when.

It all starts when you don't give people enough time to be with the family. Forcing both spouses to work usually more than 40 hours a week, not counting preparation time, 50 weeks a week, is a recipe for a societies downfall. Soon you get an Orwellian society like we have now.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-23-Watchlist_N.htm

Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000
By Mimi Hall, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — The government's terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list's effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

"It undermines the authority of the list," says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. "There's just no rational, reasonable estimate that there's anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists."

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who plans a hearing on the report today, says "serious hurdles remain if (the list) is to be as effective as we need it to be. Some of the concerns stem from its rapid growth, which could call into question the quality of the list itself."

About 53,000 people on the list were questioned since 2004, according to the GAO, which says the Homeland Security Department doesn't keep records on how many were denied entry or allowed into the country after questioning. Most were apparently released and allowed to enter, the GAO says.

Leonard Boyle, director of the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, which maintains the list, says in testimony to be given today that 269 foreigners were denied entry in fiscal 2006.

The GAO report also says:

•The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) could not specify how many people on its no-fly list, which is a small subset of the watch list, might have slipped through screening and been allowed on domestic flights.

•TSA data show "a number of individuals" on the no-fly list passed undetected through screening and boarded international flights bound for the United States. Several planes have been diverted once officials realized that people named on the watch lists were on board.

•Homeland Security has not done enough to use the list more broadly in the private sector, where workers applying for jobs in sensitive places such as chemical factories could do harm.

Boyle also urges that the list be used by for screening at businesses where workers could "carry out attacks on our critical infrastructure that could harm large numbers of persons or cause immense economic damage."

But the sheer size of the watch list raised the most alarms.

"They are quickly galloping towards the million mark — a mark of real distinction because the list is already cumbersome and is approaching absolutely useless," said Tim Sparapani of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, says "creating and maintaining a comprehensive terrorist watch list is an enormous endeavor fraught with technical and tactical challenges."

The report, she says, "underscores the need to make the watch lists more accurate, to improve screening procedures at airports and the ports of entry, and to provide individuals with the ability to seek redress if they believe they have been wrongfully targeted."

San Diego FEMA Fire Propaganda

2007-10-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

Why isn't this getting the coverage it should? Because it worked! It worked so well that nobody is questioning why most of our firefighting equipment is in Iraq. That all which is left here in CA is the stuff that was too old to be taken.

Effective propaganda is great. Never mind the fact that we were not able to tell where the fires were. That the websites were all down. Just put a happy face on it and say it was all run perfectly. The lemmings will believe it.

Basically you've got to protect your own property from fires. The fire departments have a proven track record of not doing it. The insurance companies have so many small print clauses to let them back out. It's totally up to the owner now to take care of what's his.

It's a shame what our government has become.

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-102507-femabriefing,0,7426549.story?coll=chi_news_opinion_ugc
chicagotribune.com
FEMA sorry for fake news briefing

By Spencer S. Hsu

Washington Post

6:33 PM CDT, October 26, 2007

WASHINGTON

The Federal Emergency Management Agency's No. 2 official apologized Friday for leading a staged news conference Tuesday in which FEMA employees posed as reporters while real reporters listened on a telephone conference line and were barred from asking questions.

"We are reviewing our press procedures and will make the changes necessary to ensure that all of our communications are straight forward and transparent," Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson Jr., FEMA's deputy administrator, said in a four-paragraph statement.

"We can and must do better, and apologize for this error in judgment," Johnson said, a view repeated Friday by press officers at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, who criticized the event.

FEMA announced the news conference at its headquarters here about 15 minutes before it was to begin Tuesday afternoon, making it unlikely that reporters could attend. Instead, FEMA set up a telephone conference line so reporters could listen.

In the briefing, parts of which were televised live by cable news channels, Johnson stood behind a lectern, called on questioners who did not disclose that they were FEMA employees, and gave replies emphasizing that his agency's response to this week's California wildfires was far better than its response to Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

"It was absolutely a bad decision. I regret it happened. Certainly ... I should have stopped it," said John "Pat" Philbin, FEMA's director of external affairs. "I hope readers understand we're working very hard to establish credibility and integrity, and I would hope this does not undermine it."

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Friday that "it is not a practice that we would employ here at the White House. We certainly don't condone it. We didn't know about it beforehand. ... They, I'm sure, will not do it again."

Department of Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke called the staged briefing "totally unacceptable," adding, "While it is an isolated incident, that does not make it any more tolerable." He said reprimands are "very probable." FEMA is part of DHS.

"Trying to manipulate the press and the public will only tarnish their (FEMA's) current success," House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said.

Philbin's last scheduled day at FEMA was Thursday. He has been named as the new head of public affairs at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, ODNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines said.

Copyright © 2007, Chicago Tribune

All Government Whistleblowers Exposed

2007-10-28T06:07:00.000-07:00

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/27/1128243&from=rss

You should never be a whistleblower. If you do become one you open yourself up to things like this. And even if they didn't make incredibly stupid incompetent mistakes like this they'd still be sending information to the VP. It's like inviting the fox in to eat the defenders of the chickens.

If you are ever in a position to be a whistleblower you'd best think twice. What you really want to do is find a plausible way of denying you ever knew anything. Hopefully as you are taking a job somewhere else so that you can get away from whatever is going on that shouldn't.

Where will the war on terror go?

2007-10-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

We had the war on drugs, the war on education, the war on blah blah blah. Now the figure they can get their kicks on the so called war-on-terror. All of these wars start with lots of fan fare but the fizzle. This one could be different but will it?

Here's why it may not continue. The public is fed up with us torturing people. Everybody is aware of how Bush and company has made a fool of our country. There hasn't been one successful case against any of the terrorists. That I'm aware of. This week the latest group of terrorists were exonerated. Again it was our government lying to us. We can't afford to continue. When the democrats take power their funding will be dropped. There are more important things for us to do. Like fix our educational system, our courts, our streets, our economy. All these factors conspire against the real terrorists, our country, continuing their evil ways against the world.

So in about 4 more years this mess should dry up and we will start working on getting ourselves out of the big economic depression we will be in.

HPs Data Center in India

2007-10-24T04:48:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. I wonder if this is the HP place I visited back in the late 90s when we worked closely with HP. It was fun working there between the power outages. And the crap in the air from all the pollution was, uh, breath taking. Too bad the article doesn't show pictures of the outside.

Lessing says 9/11 not so bad

2007-10-24T04:35:00.000-07:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7057601.stm

Can't agree more. The IRA was real. I remember bombs going off everywhere there and train trips being constantly delayed.

9/11 was just one attack, probably totally created by our administration. If we got rid of Bush and company we wouldn't be at risk any longer. If Bush never got into office then he would never have been able to set it up.

Anyway, that's my belief. 9/11 was totally an inside job. If it wasn't carried out by right wing republicans it was done with their help. The whole thing has let our war time president to make huge profits for all the republicans at the expense of our future. And probably there are many of them ready to leave our country and live abroad away from our laws as soon as Bush leaves office.

SSD Drives again

2007-10-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

This anandtech article, http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3133, got me thinking again.

Wouldn't it be great to have a raid 6 set up using SSDs? I think I'll go this route if I need a quiet workstation.

The normal problem with a large raid array is that each disk must move it's heads into place. This requires a huge delay. Once there it can stream the data very quickly. Once there. With SSD there would be almost no latency. It would be immediate 800MB/s streaming. Well, given enough disks. Since SSD disks are slow you'd probably need 16 of them to give 800MB/s streaming. Maybe even 24. But 2.5 inch disks are so small, require little or no power, and are so totally silent, it might be an option even in a single tower. Say 2x12, 3x8, or 4x6. Something must be doable.

Hmmm, once again it might be better to use thumb drives rather than SSDs.

Maybe I'm once again off target. I should be thinking about large ram disks that get preloaded with the OS and all relevant files. These files should then get written back to the disk as background tasks.

I know you can buy server boards that hold 32GBs. I wonder if any hold even more RAM?

Football players shave their legs?

2007-10-21T09:43:00.000-07:00

What the hell! HS football players get super bug infection because of shared razor. A razor for their legs?! This was on NPRs Saturday Weekend Edition.

I'm so impressed. They make lots of grunting sounds. They wear tight pants. They are always patting each others butts. They stick their hands next to some guys balls and say hut hut hut. They get into huddles. And they are all about bumping each other.

I guess it's ok to be gay but if you are straight would you ever want to play football? Not me. I don't get turned on with a bunch of guys shaving each others legs with one razor.

Is nothing safe?

The Evil Within

2007-10-21T08:14:00.000-07:00

I just listened to Diane Rehm interview Cheney's wife. This evil witch is the perfect example of what has taken over the World. She sounds so down to earth and reasonable. By gosh she's just a hard working person who believes in no fences and blue skies.

She says she is the balance. That NPR funding should be cut because they are not balanced. That who could have imagined no more attacks after 9/11 but thanks to men like her husband there have not been any. That Saddam harbored terrorists within Iraq. We did the right thing going in to Iraq. That the justifications we used to get into Iraq were not skewed. She does all this lying with sincere sounding integrity. However anybody who knows the facts knows she is lying through her teeth. She's the holier than thou preacher who leads the KKK at night. Or in this case the preachers wife.

But with America unwilling to remember what was said before only the latest round of bold faced lies will be believed. And as long as everybody is stuck in the rat race they don't have time to stop and think about just what was said before and note all the contradictions. It's all about how sincere and persuasive you can spin lies. No need to worry about fact checking. So we will have to tolerate more Hitlers, Cheneys, and future blights on humanity in the future.

When will history look back and sadly point out it was Cheney who was responsible for the deaths of some million Iraqis. The mass exodus of probably 5 million Iraqis to other countries. And the robbing of our governmentss treasury to make a few very rich CEOs even richer.

SSD again, exposing the lies this time.

2007-10-20T10:23:00.000-07:00

There's a site at http://www.storagesearch.com/ssdmyths-endurance.html which pretends to be non biased yet isn't. They do present good information. They just spin it like FOX News does.

Here he eloquently muddles the picture talking about how things are complicated but the vendors have your best interests at heart. That they have done all sorts of work but won't tell you because they are afraid others will steal their great algorithms. Then he talks about the hypothetical nightmare scenario from hell. He figures worst case scenarios and concludes a disk will last 55 or maybe 80 plus years. And that's worst case. Well if you managed to make it down to where he starts off his BS you probably were jaded and half asleep. I'll cut to the chase.

He assumes a write is done evenly across the whole disk. Well to write across the whole disk rather is not worst case. Lets get real. People fill their disks up to capacity and then your paging and data file get rewritten to the same spot over and over again. Not across the whole disk.

Lets take the paging/cache file. It's going to hit the same part of the disk over and over. So all of a sudden you have taken it down from their 64GBs down to 1/2GB. All of a sudden you are working with a life span of half a year.

Now if we want to say they have good algorithms then they must be a lot of behind the scene disk management. Like it must have it's own OS that intelligently keeps track of what data is not getting rewritten often and what is. Kind of like a real time disk defragger. Do any of these SSD devices have that. I don't think so. So basically the redistribution is only being done when file space is returned and available for redistribution.

As your imagination can hopefully deduce now only open standard real time defrag programs, running on their own chip on their own OS on the SSD drive has the ability to spread the data evenly like the author claims happens. Until then you have to have the smarts to know whether a SSD disk works for you. Maybe they'll start shipping this, along with cache, to utilize the SSD properly. But it's still years off.

I'd like to know why this author is so biased in favor of SSD. Though it does not matter.

James Watson, another Mensa idiot?

2007-10-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

I've noticed people are about the same everywhere. "Dumb" people are often quite smart. "Smart" people are incredibly stupid. Usually people get good in whatever they do. Period. That's it. However when somebody spends time in a field that's suppose to be reserved for intelligent people their heads swell. Look at chess masters. Or doctors. Rocket scientists. And everyone of the 20 or so mensa members I've known. They all want you to take the mensa test. Tell you your mensa material. And then say the stupidest bullshit you ever heard. The last time was in a meetup group. This lady was telling me how incredibly smart she was, lived most of her adult life in South America, approved of the right wing death squads and how we had to forcefully keep world population down.

Now if this Watson guy looked at some studies and found black people did not do as well in those tests he might have wanted to ask some questions. Especially if those tests were administered in the United Racist States of America. Where everything is about keeping the black person down. I hope he is allowed to do what he is good at. However I hope he learns to keep his mouth shut about things he has no experience in. Fucking idiot.

Or is he? Do we have proof he said that? Could he be like that Iranian president who reputedly said there were no Gays in Iran. Only to discover later he said no gays in Iran suffer. So unless it can be verified with context I'll take back my remarks about Watson and assume the best.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gABa4j54SO7AOYzd43DWHwZhocJg

Top US scientist suspended by lab for "racist" remarks

1 day ago

NEW YORK (AFP) — A US Nobel Prize-winning scientist who triggered a storm with reportedly racist comments canceled his British book tour Friday to return home, where his lab has suspended him from duty.

"The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Board of Trustees decided to suspend the administrative responsibilities of Chancellor James D. Watson, PhD, pending further deliberation by the board," the lab said in a statement.

Watson, who won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1962 for his part in discovering the structure of DNA, had been in London for a book tour when an interview he gave to the Sunday Times sparked a furore.

He had been the number two at the Long Island laboratory, just outside New York. But the lab said Watson was suspended "after the board's public statement yesterday disagreeing with the comments attributed to Dr Watson in the October 14, 2007 edition of The Sunday Times."

Watson told the British weekly he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really."

Lab president Bruce Stillman said the board of trustees "vehemently disagree with these statements and are bewildered and saddened if he indeed made such comments."

Such remarks were Watson's "own personal statements and in no way reflect the mission, goals, or principles of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory's Board, administration or faculty," he said in a separate statement.

"Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory does not engage in any research that could even form the basis of the statements attributed to Dr. Watson."

Earlier Friday, Watson said in a statement that he was "mortified about what has happened."

"More importantly, I cannot understand how I could have said what I am quoted as having said. I can certainly understand why people, reading those words, have reacted in the ways they have.

"To all those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. That is not what I meant. More importantly from my point of view, there is no scientific basis for such a belief."

His publicist revealed that Watson, who arrived in London this week and had been due to take part in several events until October 25, had pulled out of the British book tour Friday and gone home.

Kate Farquhar-Thomson, head of publicity in the academic division of publishers Oxford University Press, said Watson left because he "felt that he needed to go back to the States" for discussions with his laboratory.

Watson, the 79-year-old chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state, had been due to give a series of lectures promoting his new book "Avoid Boring People: Lessons From A Life In Science."

But the Science Museum in London on Thursday canceled his scheduled Friday talk, saying Watson's comments had "gone beyond the point of acceptable debate."

And the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a leading US scientific organization, said it was "outraged" by the remarks attributed to Watson, describing them as "racist" and "vicious."

Professor Steven Rose, a neurobiologist from the Open University, told the BBC that Watson was "notorious over a long history of his life in shooting from the hip and making remarks which are racist, sexist, homophobic, profoundly offensive."

Watson reportedly whipped up a storm when he said women should have the right to abort their babies if tests could determine that their child carried homosexual genes.

And the scientist considered "the grandfather of DNA" has also argued that one day it might be possible to modify the genetic code to make people more beautiful -- especially women.

Hogwarts school headmaster Albus Dumbledore, is gay

2007-10-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

She said she regarded her novels as a "prolonged argument for tolerance" and urged her fans to "question authority".

But she added that not everyone likes her work. Christian groups have alleged the books promote witchcraft. The author said her revelation about Dumbledore would give them one more reason.

Wow. To be honest I lost interest in her series halfway through book six and skimmed the last half. And I haven't had the desire to start the last book. (I did read the last chapter on the day it came out, but well, that genre just does not interest me.) This changes everything. Before I had thought she was a money grubbing meanie. This prolonged argument for tolerance, questioning authority, and disregard for Christians puts her in my respected camp.

But how is it she is only 42 and looks like she is 68? I'm older than her but I would not have interest in her unless I was 70. It's a shame to see people prematurely age. Especially people I respect.

Movie Review: Transformers

2007-10-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Looks like our Government has decided that the best way to get its recruiting numbers back up is to load movies up with American propaganda. This movie is a prime example of our Governments best attempt at it this year.

We have a nerd with a sex drive that just won't stop. We have the wholesome girl next door who has blossomed at an early age and will look like your ugly grandmother by 30 as lust material. We have the cool Latin marine who has ESP and can't stop talking mexican. He's there for a role model for the Latin faction of our military. We have the white marine as a role model for sex starved nerd kids. They too can mate with beautiful women and have beautiful children and he's proof. And we have the aliens.

Now the aliens are much more advanced technologically advanced than us. And the movie starts off by 10 minutes of demonstrating how just one could probably wipe out our entire planet. Once this has been demonstrated the rest of the movie goes down hard and leaves a crater so deep you wish you could have said you died while watching it.

Somehow it turns out that the aliens must hack into the the most sensitive databases our nation has in order to complete their mission. (Though a simple 10 second ebay search would have given them all the info they needed.) This however gives them a chance to introduce a blond HS bimbo with glasses who can hack into anything. And a fat black who pretends to be addicted to dance dance revolution but obviously isn't or else he wouldn't be the tubby he is. Somehow he's the world best hacker. He must be the role model for Blacks. I think she's just more bimbo material to attract nerds.

So for some reason one of the good robots decides to be his personal car. Why the hell doesn't the robot just say I need the map on your grandfathers glasses and I'll pay your asking price. The robot doesn't. Instead it makes situation comedy. Turns out that all the robots have to show up. Then they have to explain in long dialoges why courage is so important. Why the human race is so important. Blah blah blah. The parents demonstrate why the kid would want to join the military. The mom talks about why he shouldn't be ashamed of masturbating. (Apparently that's what most of the kids in Iraq do with their spare time right there in the bunks with their buddies.) They are elated to find a girl in the room with him. This is probably a good thing because otherwise he'd probably turn out to be a druggy. This way there's a chance he'll be an easily controlled piece of white trash with a trailor full of kids he has to support by the time he's 25. Prime military material. Whoa be it to any film to introduce the wild idea that the kids go to college, start a business, become an asset to society and the world, and all the while have fun before getting a bimbo and rug rats.

As the movie goes along the robots become less and less a threat. The one protecting him can actually be tied up and hauled away with no problem. And the ones after him no longer are much of a threat either. The military becomes the good guys. And the robots give him stupid military tasks that he might get if he were in the military. Never mind they could easily accomplish any of the tasks given to him much faster. Not that any of the tasks were needed in the first place. Why for instance would he need to take the cube to the top of a building to hand it off to a chopper? These mindless tasks that don't get accomplished and have no purpose are so mind numbingly stupid.

However the movie may get some new military recruits. And that, unfortunately, is what this movie is all about.Actually that may not be a bad thing. We don't need idiots in America. Though I do think there must be better things for them to do than join the military...

Finally a politician makes an honest remark

2007-10-20T04:56:00.000-07:00

During a debate on children's health care Thursday, Rep. Pete Stark accused Republicans of sending troops to Iraq to "get their heads blown off for the president's amusement."

I wish more politicians would have the courage to say the truth. Of course Nancy Pelosi, who's in bed with the lobbyists, condemned him. I wish she'd just shrivel up and go away. Who would have imagined she would turn out to be so ownable.

Raid market wide open

2007-10-19T12:35:00.000-07:00

I like Ubuntu as my primary OS. However lots of things are not supported well. Like RAID cards. Sure my 3Ware card *works*. However that's about it. None of the fancy software to configure the disks and monitor their health works with Ubuntu. If I want to do something I have to write a host of utilities to issue and parse their low level command api. I probably should do that but I don't. Instead I reboot the system and use the bios to check things. I am not pleased.

So I was thinking of buying a new card. One with better Ubuntu support. Real Ubuntu support. I decided I'd find every manufacturer and search their website for the word Ubuntu. Out of the 9 sites only 2 had the word Ubuntu on their site. 3Ware and Adaptec. You'd think one of these 9 companies would realize that if they catered to the 3rd largest market out there, behind M$ and Apple, they'd get lots of money.

It seems to me if I were to take the time to make a nice interface to the 3ware card and market it I'd make oodles of money. I'll just store that idea here and maybe come back to it at sometime in the future.

Here are the URLs for anybody interested in checking out how badly RAID card manufacturers support Ubuntu. You might want to bookmark them all as a single tabbed entry so you can pull up the entire bunch in one click to easily monitor any changes:

3Ware
ARECA
HighPoint
Promise
CIPRICO
Adaptec
ENGEN
LSI
TEKRAM

If I had a news show

2007-10-18T07:24:00.000-07:00

I would not show any talking heads. These freaks that dominate our news make me puke. And the bullshit that comes out of their mouths makes me immediately switch. Not only that but the material they cover is not important. I don't care about what they think is important.

Now if I did a news show I'd have insightful information. I'd divide the screen into four sections. The top left would be the latest news. Below that would be a one line summary heading and below that the text of what the person was saying. So you wouldn't have to have the volume up. On the right hand side I'd have the opposing view. And the bottom square would be the summary and text.

So if Bush is saying he doesn't know why Congress would bring up the Turkish genocide 90 years later other than as a political move to undermine his presidency I'd show it on the left hand side. On the right hand side I'd have him giving his campaign promises that if he were elected president the first thing he'd do would be to condemn Turkey and label their atrocities a mass genocide.

Most of today's political news could be handled like this. Showing what they are saying now on the left and what they promised on the right. I bet this would leave the bible thumpers who are too fucking stupid to remember yesterday or any facts flabbergasted. Maybe they might be so disgusted they would do the right thing and kick these politicians out of office forever.

First A380 Monday: BBC owned by Airbus

2007-10-14T09:00:00.000-07:00

The first A380 will be delivered on Monday.

BBC spends the entire article talking about why it was delayed by a mere 18 months. Like it is a big thing. They really should be talking about the safety of the airline. And what steps are being put in place to safeguard the public. The fact that they totally ignore this is in keeping with their bias for all things monetary. As can be seen by their support of M$ too.

How can the public monitor this? Are scheduled maintenance and costs public along with actual empirical maintenance, cost, and unexpected emergency repair? I suspect before the year 2015 we will start seeing major problems if not unexplained major accidents. I can hardly wait to say I told you so. Regardless of how bad that sounds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7043812.stm

Computer World: A worthless rag

2007-10-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

I can't say enough bad about ComputerWorld. Maybe I should concentrate on the positive. It's much easier to cover. They do bring up interesting topics which gives you the opportunity to research. Kind of like watching the Bush administration. Can't get anything right. Or, probably more likely, they are out to dupe you so they can make profits through the back door. Doing good doesn't pay because it's expected. To cover for the thief doing the wrong thing you can always expect a pay back.

Lets check out this article from Computerworld taken from the link in the title above and break it down to salient points:

64GB solid-state disk! Very nice. Very interesting.

Dell owns Alienware. (So you can probably expect the same bad Indian support crew.)

"Unlike traditional hard drives, solid-state drives contain no moving parts that can be damaged or worn over time." With this bad information it starts to go downhill. Flash drives wear out in less than a million reads or writes making them only good for things that rarely get accessed. Like cameras, MP3 players, backup storage, etc.. Normal hard disks outlast solid-state drives by huge margins.

"improved power consumption and speed of solid-state drives leapfrogs hard drive technology". More bullshit. Speed is usually much slower. It's a mixed bag heavily weighted against solid-state disks. However there are specialized cases where it is faster. I'm going to assume they got it right on the power but I probably should verify it considering the source.

"the flash-based technology's steep price point continues to hamper adoption, analysts say." Uh huh. This analysts says that's not the only factor that limits it. The steep price is what allows companies to pay for glowing reviews in magazines like Computerworld. It is not what keeps it from being adopted.

'Hybrid we consider to be a Band-Aid approach to solid state," said Diana. "Solid state pretty much puts hybrid in an obsolete class right now."' Uh, she obviously is looking for a career at M$ or in politics. A HD with a GB of cache on it will certainly handle most market niches far far better than any solid-state disk on the market. Or in development currently. If there were a fundamental change in the physics behind solid-state disks that allowed them not to wear out after a hundred thousand writes or a million reads it might be a different story. Then they could work on the speed. But as it stands right now it is buyer beware. Solid state disks are only good for niche markets with very specific access patterns. And Computerworld readers need to understand what Computerworld offers...

Here's the article in all its glory:

Alienware supercharges desktop with 64GB solid-state drives
Plans to add drives to other PCs next year; stays mum on parent Dell's plans
Brian Fonseca
October 09, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Alienware Tuesday introduced a 64GB solid-state storage option for its Alienware Area-51 ALX and Aurora ALX desktop computers.

Marc Diana, product marketing manager at Miami-based Alienware said the company plans to add solid-state functionality to its other desktop offerings by mid-2008.

Diana would not say whether Alienware's parent firm, Dell Inc., also plans to use the solid-state storage options in its personal computers. Dell officials could not be reached for comment.

Earlier this year, Dell announced a 32GB solid-state option for its Latitude D420 and D629 ATG notebook computers. The PC vendor has been relatively silent on the solid-state front ever since.

Unlike traditional hard drives, solid-state drives contain no moving parts that can be damaged or worn over time. While the reliability, improved power consumption and speed of solid-state drives leapfrogs hard drive technology, the flash-based technology's steep price point continues to hamper adoption, analysts say.

"Using solid-state drives completely as a primary solution right now is a significant price premium to traditional hard drives," said Jeff Janukowicz, an analyst at Framingham, Mass.-based IDC.

Still, IDC foresees growing interest in the emerging storage technology. A report released by the IT research firm in July predicted that sales of solid-state drives will skyrocket from $373 million in 2006 to $5.4 billion in 2011.

Despite admitting solid-state technology is "very expensive" and isn't yet "mature enough" for the mainstream market, Diana downplayed swirling interest in hybrid flash memory/disk drives, such as the new Seagate Technology LLC offering announced on Monday.

"Hybrid we consider to be a Band-Aid approach to solid state," said Diana. "Solid state pretty much puts hybrid in an obsolete class right now."

Evil Religion: Death Penalty

2007-10-05T06:43:00.000-07:00

According to democracy now there are some 30 or so states that "still have the death penalty". They were talking about how these people on death row are there unfairly. That the drugs they use to kill these unfairly convicted people are inhumanly painful and how these states are going to delay further executions.

I see no reason for killing these people in a painful manner. Why not just kill them with carbon monoxide so they just go to sleep comfortably and never wake up. Why is this so difficult. This is probably due to bible thumpers wanting to punish.

The next problem I see is how corrupt our system is. Our judicial system is totally corrupt. It needs a total overhaul. Unfortunately it's the bible thumpers that just want to hate that keeps this system going.

The last problem is the prison system. The prison system is just like the military industrial complex. It has a big lobby that keeps itself going. The people who run it can act like mini-gods and they don't have to do anything to keep the money going. It's to their benefit not to kill people, if we were able to find people deserving death, and keep their prisons filled. We need to change the system so people who cheat others are put in jobs that pay back our society. Say cleaning beaches, highways, etc.. Not something that just keeps a prison system going. However they are using religion to keep from executing people so that they can have fuller prison systems and make more money. Again religion is the problem.

Movie Review: Knocked Up

2007-10-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

So what's the point of this movie? It's suppose to be humorous and done in a respectful way. However I have issues about the respectful way part. I don't have the time to go into it.

Movie Review: Death Proof

2007-10-02T11:16:00.000-07:00

Imagine nine year old kids at a go-kart range with the boys and the girls bumping it out. Now imagine the bully boy taking on the girls by himself. Imagine the bully turns into a 40 year old white trailer trash candidate, i.e., Kurt Russel, and he's still trying to hit girls with his grown up go-kart. That's all there is to this movie. He wins the first round, the second set of girls win in the second round.

Very boring and I hate myself for watching it.

I find it amazing people pay to see Kurt Russel. He turns my stomach. I suppose that makes him perfect for all those roles requiring creeping bottom feeders of society.

Dubai is where it's at!

2007-09-30T07:45:00.000-07:00

http://www.oddee.com/item_88597.aspx

Dubai is incredible. Apparently it's like the new world mecca. All the richests of the rich gather to live there free from worries about laws in America, taxes, and legal woes. Dubai does not appear to honor any other countries laws. It's a haven for all the scoundrels in the world that have made obscene amounts of money and now want to live the good life. So companies like Cheney's Haliburton have fled our shores along with many other questionable companies to seek refuge there.

The most important question in my mind... Why the fuck am I not filthy rich and living the good life in Dubai? For that matter why am I so damn poor I can't even buy a decent server and have a bit more spare time on my hands? Damn, living in America sucks.

Hardware planning

2007-09-26T07:27:00.000-07:00

1) Get my KVM switch back that I lent.
2) Hook in my old box I'll convert over to a dual wan firewall.
3) OCTOBER: Buy a new server box I can start throwing things into including 12 3.5 disks and 2 DVDs.
4) NOVEMBER: Buy a super power supply for it.
5) DECEMBER: Buy a MB/CPU for it capable of holding 16GBs of ECC.
6) JANUARY: Buy a RAID card. I need to make sure it fully supports ubuntu.
7) FEBUARY: Start buying disks. System should be totally usable now as my server.

iPhone Nerds

2007-09-26T06:52:00.001-07:00

The news today is all about Apple updating the firmware to prevent people from hacking their gadgets. Apparently hacked iPhones will turn into expensive bricks and Apple is bragging about that. Then there are teams of lawyers who say this may be illegal. Naturally. And iPhone hacker teams saying it's ok, they'll figure out a hack for the firmware.

Don't these people have something better to do? Even if you were a nerd and turned on by iPhones don't you have other things to do? Why support Apple? Why not support the free linux iPhone versions. Then you can modify you nerd toy to do useful things without paying that evil empire called Apple a cent. And if you say MS is the evil company just remember they own Apple. Kind of like the lobbyists own the Democrats and Republicans. So can you guys just get out of my face? I don't want to see anything more about iPhones.

While looking through the news today I saw this article too.
http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39289595,00.htm

Greenspan

2007-09-24T14:12:00.000-07:00

Alan Greenspan talks on DemocracyNow.Org today at http://ia341210.us.archive.org/0/items/dn2007-0924/dn2007-0924-1.ogg.

He says kids in America do well compared to the rest of the worlds kids. However by the time they are in 12th grade they are far far behind the rest of the world. His solution is to let in all the better educated people in the world so the wages of skilled people can go down to the level found in third world countries. This is good capitalism according to him.

Why don't we better our educational system? And why is it good to lower the wages of higher skilled people to that of third world nations? Who gains by this? CEOs? I don't get it.

No wonder Wall Street loved this guy. He seems to be saying it's ok to rape America. No wonder CEOs started at 40x the average salaries pay and now makes over 400x the average employees.

Apparently this guy talks about how he would talk gibberish to the press for his entire time in office so nobody could take him apart. Why can't we immediately get rid of people who make no sense and replace them with people who do. Maybe Greenspan is responsible for most of the countries downfall...

So many cases...

2007-09-23T16:07:00.000-07:00

http://www.tagan.com/index.php?c_id=36&products_id=157&p_cata_id=86
http://www.directron.com/csblackpearl.html#caption
or
http://www.directron.com/pcv2000bplusii.html#caption
http://www.directron.com/fullall.html

It's good to know I don't have to wait for Antec for a quiet case. However I don't have $300 for a case. Not to mention the cost of a top end power supply to run the disks. Or the mother board. And it's memory. And the CPU. And the graphics card. Does the list ever end?

I guess with cases like these I'd be more concerned about making it into a SAN. Extra RAM might be good. I'd move my RAID card over to it and be done.

VisionTek X1050

2007-09-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

I ended up going to Frys twice. The first card did not work properly in the linux or xp system. So I took it back and bought the VisionTek 1050. It works in both my linux 1680x1050 LCD and my 1600x1200 XP CRT. It's an AGP 8x with 256MBs, no fan, and a lifetime warranty. I paid $94 or so for it.

I see from here http://computers.pricegrabber.com/video-cards/visiontek/m/36761617/sort_type=bottomline
I could have bought the card for much less. I'm just happy to have found such a good card on short notice. This will be my new AGP card of choice until I move to PCIe cards when I get a new MBs.

Graphics card death

2007-09-23T08:25:00.000-07:00

The graphics card on my main computer died this morning. It's lasted me a few years. Unfortunately it had a fan on it that from time to time make noises. I think it finally quit working. So I need to buy a new card. Hopefully much less than the $250 I spend on the old one.

This time around I'm looking for a under $100 graphics card that can handle huge resolutions in full color and has no fan. That is supported by linux too. That takes little power though if it doesn't have a fan it probably takes little power already. I don't play computer games so I don't need anything fancy.

I'll start by looking at tom's hardware reviews.

There's really not much to say about the Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB except that it's incredibly powerful for the price.

Compared to its 8800 GTX and 8800 GTS 640MB brethren, the only notable performance difference appears at resolutions 1600x1200 and above. This does not mean that the 8800 GTS 320MB can't handle some 1920x1200 gaming mind you, the GTX will just be faster.

For $280, there's no better videocard you can put in your machine, period.

Yikes. $280 and a fan. This is from his low cost build it yourself article. Must be a low cost gamer rig or something.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/17/sbm_low_cost_system/page5.html#video_card_evga_geforce_8800_gts_320mb

This one looks much better and it's only $85!:

We chose Gigabyte's Radeon HD 2600 Pro. It has 256-MB GDDR2 memory running at 800 MHz, a 600-MHz chip clock speed and dual-DVI interfaces. You can always convert DVI interfaces to attach an analog S-Sub display, but you will be thankful to get two DVI ports if you ever want to hook up two TFT displays. Lastly, this graphics card requires little idle power and is passively cooled, which is important if you want the system to be quiet and energy efficient. Make sure your case is properly ventilated to ensure stable operation. If you cannot or if you live in a really hot environment, we recommend investing in a graphics card that has a fan.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/09/10/the_500_gaming_machine_2007_edition/page4.html

I see it advertised on google for about $50 more than expected and it has a big hunking fan. What's going on?

Finally found it at newegg. It is not compatible with my system. Grrr. I guess this is going to be harder than I expected. I need an older card...

Gutsy entrails, i.e., the shit

2007-09-21T05:10:00.000-07:00

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/3700666

I have been hearing lots of bad things about Ubuntu's latest release. This article, which I haven't yet read, may be summarizing them.

I hear the next release will have fancy windows that giggle when moved. Well, use compiz by default, and lots of other foo foo bullshit, uh nerdshit, turned on by default. Having hung around the Ubuntu IRC channels I expect the worst in this release. Ubuntu is run by a bunch of kids who for the most part don't know how to use vi, edit a web page directly, and think reading Hex would make them cool beyond their wildest dreams. Few have experience coding in C or C++ or any other language. In other words they are losers who only know how to use high level applications. Hopefully they have added some functionality but I fear it will only be UI crap that hopefully can be turned off.

2007-09-21T04:56:00.000-07:00

I posted about the dreamliner here questioning its safety, http://seobm.blogspot.com/2007/07/dreamliner.html, and at the time I think I was the only one doing so. It seemed obvious to me. Now others are starting to look at things instead of glossing over them:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/dan-rather-make.html which though reads as a paid by Boeing article refers to others. They keep talking about how particular parts are stronger than older materials. They fail to mention that because they are stronger they use far less of them. They mention some parts are used in other aircraft and such. They fail to mention the nightmareliner, my new name for Boeing's dreamliner, is using the materials in sizes never before tested.

Boeing is being very gutsy. Not many companies would risk everything by trusting lab boy theory without a solid track record grounded in reality. Boeing has. With America spiraling down the toilet in respects to almost all other industrialized countries this is probably a gamble they have to take. Or go out of business. I wish them the best of luck.

Robert Jordan dies, two books unfinished

2007-09-17T04:33:00.000-07:00

I can't help but laugh at the Robert Jordan fans who will be heart broken that their favorite series has been left unfinished. The series was basically a sadistic love affair. Readers just wanted to bog down other readers in trying to keep millions of worthless details. I quit reading it after the first few books when I realized it was an unfinished time sink unlikely to ever get finished.

Maybe his readers will be forced to get a life and lose their sadistic ways.

Mission Bay Boat Race

2007-09-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

This weekend they have blocked off most all beaches facing the bay. Putting up fences and forcing people to pay to get in. I did not realize it was possible to do this. Yet as I biked around the bay and through Fiesta Island most all the beaches facing the race were blocked with fences. Despite this the sounds of huge boat engines blotted out even the road noise of all the big SUVs with their RVs towed behind. So many flags too. They all seemed to have big beer bellies and have families so fat and ugly you'd think they'd want to do something other than put lawn chairs up and watch boats race. I don't really get it. Despite their poor physical health and taste they must be doing something right financially to be able to afford all the play toys they have. Big RVs and pickup trucks to haul them along with the assorted toys don't come cheap.

The saddest thing about these slobs and their wasteful ways are what they do to the native birds. I lost count of the injured seagulls with broken wings hiding away from the tourists who damaged them. I wish the people who organized the races would pay for the care of these birds. Judging from the crowd though they'd more than likely just break the birds necks and throw them in the dumpsters justifying it by saying they are mercy killing the birds.

Maybe these spectators are in some way the best of what America has to offer. I just don't get it though.

Netgear FVS124G Review: Dual WAN, Gigabit LAN, 25 tunnels

2007-09-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

My main concern is a fast dual WAN system.
I'm not sure if this would best be accomplished via a Linkysys/netgear/cisco solution or a BSD solution.
Probably the BSD solution is the most robust.
However I'd like to know the options.

THE GOOD
Dual WAN
Gigabit LAN ports

THE BAD
Lousy suppor
Slow Failover on Dual WAN
No Jumbo frame support
12MB/s max throughput

UNKNOWN
QOS up and down?
SPI Firewall? (Stateful Packet Inspection)
Max VPN connections?
Act as a DHCP server?
Supports SNMP?
Anti-virus software?
Where is support located?
What does Newegg and Amazon say?

ALTERNATIVES:
Cisco ASA 5505.
Netgear FVX538 ProSafe VPN Firewall 200

Seagate to offer solid-state drives in 2008

2007-08-30T07:13:00.000-07:00

Because solid state drives can only be written and read from a finite number of times they have a very limited life expectancy. For example if you ran a benchmark test against the disk that updates it say 100,000 times the disk will be toast. These disks really need a disk manager that shows what percentage of it's life has been used and how long it will last based on the useage similar to what it has experienced in the last day, week, month, or some user specified period of time.

As it stands currently these disks are really only good for data that doesn't change and only needs to be read once in to ram each time the computer is powered on. Anything more and you are asking for trouble. Probably not many people realize these hard disks are about as worthless as the batteries built into many products. That is they are engineered to break down.

What's the solution? This product screams for a new market niche. This new market niche will consist of third party products that configure ram disks and management software to avoid using the SS Drives more than absolutely necessary. Here's how I see them working:
1) You need a motherboard that can hold 10+ GBs of RAM
2) You need a driver that partitions some amount of RAM into a RAM disk.
3) Calls to the SS drive are intercepted by the driver and read into the RAM disk and then the RAM disk feeds the program that called for the data.
4) A separate database resides on the ram disk specifying what files have been written to and when, the frequency of the writes, basically disk useage stats. All of these stats are read into the ram drive at boot up.
5) Programs doing virus scans and such, that do not change the files, should be blocked by the disk management software from actually reading the SS drive. Imagine a firewall doing this.
6) Writes back to the SS drive should be done intelligently. Say on power down, on important changes, at specific times.
7) Ideally the ram could be part of a RAID controller card that has battery back up.
8) Frequently used data could be prefetched when the cpu are not in use.
9) You'd want a web interface so it would be as portable as a linksys firewall. And like linksys you'd want the upgrades to be managed over the web with just a click of a button.

This type of software would dramatically lengthen the SS disks life. Not to mention making all hard disks much much faster. The key is offloading all intelligence to a PCI-E card that can hold GBs of cache. The cheapest RAM could be used because it would be obviously much faster than any HD. You'd want a linux OS to control it. The hard part would be to getting the RAID working on it. Maybe a RAID 1 solution would be a great start.

M$ FUD machine's death throes

2007-08-30T05:53:00.000-07:00

I will never go back to M$. Everything is better or equivalent to M$ with Ubuntu. I think M$ realizes this and is doing everything they possibly can to stir up some interest in their POS OS. Good luck to them but it's too late. Nothing they can do, short of paying every hardware vendor not to write drivers for Ubuntu, will stop Ubuntu from rolling over them.

On August 23, Microsoft pulled plug on the “Get the Facts” site, replacing it with a new Windows Server “Compare” site.

The goal of the site is to offer more in-depth information and customer-to-customer opinions about many of the issues IT administrators face,” a company spokeswoman said. “It turns out people wanted 3rd party validation in addition to people’s experiences making OS purchasing decisions so in addition to customer case studies, research reports that compare platforms the site will also offer guidance around best practices, web casts, etc.”

Get the Facts had a long and controversial role in Microsoft’s battle against open-source software vendors. Recently, it came to light that Microsoft tried to influence some of the analysts it hired to perform studies in 2002 comparing Windows and Linux to portray Microsoft offerings in a more favorable light. Microsoft’s whole policy of sponsoring analysts to conduct studies comparing its products to open-source ones — which many company observers believed would naturally show Microsoft products and strategies to be superior — had been a bone of contention since the site launched at the start of this decade.

Ocean Swimming

2007-08-22T22:26:00.000-07:00

Crawling through the water is boring. There's got to be ways of making it more enjoyable. However I don't know any. When I look at the horizon and realize I'll be out there for an hour or two demoralizes me. Crawling on my hands for miles, that is what swimming is, is mind numbing.

I need to think of games to play. Here are some:
1) Keeping my arms strong the whole stroke and feeling my strokes turbulence hit my feet.
2) Harmonizing breaths and strokes to the swells.
3) Spotting on every stroke and being aware of everything around me.
4) Timing myself?

I just saw the following tips:

1. Never swim alone. For safety purposes, always swim with a group or bring along a friend. Given the unknown elements, a dangerous situation may arise such as fog, currents, boats, etc. where you will be in much better shape with others around.

2. Adjust to cold water. If the water you are training in is cold, below 66 degrees fahrenheit, be prepared. Wetsuits are necessary. Wearing a swim cap and earplugs can help keep your head warm. Get in the water slowly and only get in for 5-20 minutes the first time out, gradually increasing your time in the water with each swim.

4. Upon exit of your cold water swim, drink warm fluids, take off your wetsuit, and dress warmly.

3. On sunny days, apply sunscreen 30 minutes before getting in (especially for those with light skin!).

4. Be careful of the fog. It is easy to get lost in foggy weather and lose sight of the shore.

5. Watch the seaweed. If you are ocean swimming and come across seaweed, stay high in the water and do not kick. The seaweed can wrap around you if your legs are kicking.

6. Never swim in a lightning storm.

7. Open water swimming can cause chaffing. Use petroleum jelly if this is a problem.

8. Goggle color. Use dark lenses on sunny days, blue lenses on cloudy days.

Open water swimming can be challenging, but for many it is FUN and a nice change from "following the black line" at the bottom of the pool. Enjoy, and remember, "when in doubt, get out."

1. Fuck that never swim alone bullshit. Swimming with others is a waste of time. Sure, get to know a place with friends. Once you know the place then don't waste time waiting for others. You've got to do it on your own because you can't count on others.

2. I partially agree with the cold water ideas. Keep in mind channel swimmers are out in 55 degree water for 30 hours or more. With no wet suits. And some of them are quite thin. However they've conditioned themselves. They have done this gradually over months or years swimming 4 days a week or more. Your body adapts.

3. Upon exit you won't have a wet suit on to remove hopefully. Because you are not one of those wimps who buy them. Because you swim 3 or 4 times a week you can handle temperatures all the way down to 50 degrees for an hour or two. However changing into warm clothe and drinking something warm might not be a bad idea. Your call. Duh.

4. Yeah, fog is crazy. You need techniques. Here are a few. There may be some swells you can use for direction. You may also be able to see the direction the current is pulling the sea weed. Perhaps you can hear something in the distance like barking seals?

5. Seaweed? uh huh. It's not a problem. It gets annoying when it's so thick you resort to pulling on it to get you about. Other than that it doesn't deserve attention.

6. Lightning storms are cool. It would be a great way to exit this life.

7. Yes, chafing is a problem. Use body glide for it. Most all wetsuit users need it. It's not needed as much for us swimmers who go natural.

8. Uh, don't use dark goggles at night or in fog. Duh.

The Microsoft FUD machine

2007-08-13T05:21:00.000-07:00

While on a linux site I came across an obnoxious M$ advert. I followed it to here M$ FUD and wondered. M$ does seem to be winning many markets. Just look at China for example. The Chinese were big on Linux. However M$ came in, offered them Vista for $0.05 a copy along with back doors for the government to spy the users with, and now China is 90% M$. What gets me is nobody considers selling M$ Vista for a nickel as dumping. Same thing is also happening with web servers. That is M$ is winning market ground. I don't know how it is possible considering Apache and Linux are the cats meow.

Maybe it's a good thing. Keeping users thinking it is too expensive, too complicated, etc., to ever attempt to learn. This makes for a world that anybody can make a good profit in. Oh well. What the heck. It's as evil as religion. I want nothing to do with it.

PHPUnit

2007-08-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

It appears PHP has standardized on unit testing methods. It appears many people use the package PHPUnit. However for some reason it doesn't come preinstalled or in the standard PEAR channels. Here are the instructions:

Installation
The PEAR channel (pear.phpunit.de) that is used to distribute PHPUnit needs to be registered with the local PEAR environment:

pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de

This has to be done only once. Now the PEAR Installer can be used to install packages from the PHPUnit channel:

pear install phpunit/PHPUnit

Previous installations of the PHPUnit and PHPUnit2 packages from the pear.php.net channel have to be uninstalled since PHPUnit is no longer hosted on PEAR.

Unfortunately that doesn't work. I get the error

Aug 12, 2007(10:13:15) [root@~]> pear channel-discover pear.phpunit.de
Channel "pear.phpunit.de" is already initialized
Aug 12, 2007(10:14:49) [root@~]> pear install phpunit/PHPUnit
phpunit/PHPUnit can optionally use PHP extension "pdo_mysql"
phpunit/PHPUnit requires PHP extension "xdebug" (version >= 2.0.0), installed version is 2.0.0RC4
No valid packages found
install failed
Aug 12, 2007(10:14:58) [root@~]>

Now if you'll notice the author's website appears to take feedback. The keyword is appear. It's currently busted and only lets you preview your posts. I think this package and his website are perfect examples of how bad the PHP support is. The ideas are great. The implementation is way behind...

Here's a tip for the smuck, err, Sebastian Bergmann. He should start testing his work with automated test tools. Similar to the ones he develops!

2007-08-09T12:18:00.000-07:00

'Marketplace' Report: High-School Econ Test

Day to Day, August 9, 2007 · One-third of the nation's high school seniors are required to pass an economics test. Results were released Wednesday, and scores were higher than officials expected. Students did better on the econ test than on more standard tests such as history and science. Amy Scott of Marketplace and Madeleine Brand test each other to see if they'd graduate on time.

There were two test questions they quoted. One of which the 52% of the HS kids got right. Unfortunately you didn't need to know anything other than be able to deduce the obvious to get right. I'm assuming those 48% didn't care to think about the question or purposely got it wrong because they are fed up with the stupid school system. A school system that would ask questions like the next.

If oil producing countries released more oil would
1) They receive more money
2) They would quit exploring for more oil.
3) The world would cut back on alternative energy investments
4) I forget, but very bogus and stupid.

The "correct" answer was they'd make more money. This is totally bogus. We don't know the curves. Maybe with more being sold they'd make less money. This is the reason milk companies toss good milk out into the desert. Or why the French government is trying to limit wine production currently. Or perhaps over the long term they would make much more money and at the present they don't need the excess money it would produce. So at best the question has multiple answers and can not be an answer. The correct answer is less money would be used on alternative energy. No wonder HS kids don't bother to answer these questions correctly. They get tired of giving the politically correct dumbed down answers.

So why am I upset? I should just jump on the PC bandwagon and join the powers that be. Screw everybody.

Nope, not me.

The new Battlestar Galactica

2007-08-08T17:50:00.000-07:00

I just discovered this series. It's interesting how bad their analytical abilities are. It's basically a soap opera wrapped in space. Where did these hollywood types come from? It's so bad I suspect the worst soap opera writers without jobs came up with this series.

How would I make it better? A simple clean up, keeping the drama, would simply be to add some logic to the characters. No one single person in charge of determing who are robots. And how could the robot lady be determined to be a robot in a matter of minutes while everybody else takes 11 hours. Hollywood idiots. The whole series is too stupid to watch or even waste more time typing about.

PHP PEAR Console/Getopt.php

2007-08-07T08:59:00.000-07:00

I am new to PHP though I've been using it off and on for years. PHP has a library of standard code much like all mature languages. Experienced coders like to build solid programs built around these standards. So I figured I would start using the command line get options library and start using standardized UNIX argument conventions. Unfortunately the PHP libraries are really quite immature. Sure it may be my environment. I'm using the latest release of Ubuntu, Feisty Fawn, so the version of PHP should be quite current but maybe it is not. Here's what I discovered:

1) The Console/Getopt.php does not pass the static tests if you turn error reporting on. What the hell? Do the developers write code and ignore the errors or do they even have error reporting turned on?! The pimply bozo developers need some maturity. To get around this I turned on the error reporting after including their libraries and calling their code. These kids who developed the code need a father figure to guide them.

2) There are no robust code examples or documentation on the PEAR site for this library. These script kiddies couldn't be bothered apparently.

3) If upper or mixed case keywords are used their libraries blow up with recursive stack problems. So basically their code will make your code look totally unprofessional the first time the user makes a typo.

I was going to post some bugs on the PEAR site but I don't want to be associated with this product. Instead I'll put a routine together that runs daily to test the code. If the code ever gets updated I'll get notification when the script runs. In the meantime these bozos who developed the library will hopefully mature.

!/usr/bin/php -q
require_once 'Console/Getopt.php';

$short_opts = "hf::";
$long_opts = array('help', 'file==');
$con = new Console_Getopt;
$args = $con->readPHPArgv();
$prog = array_shift($args);
$options = $con->getopt2($args, $short_opts, $long_opts);
ini_set("display_errors", 'On');
error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT);
print_r($options);

foreach ($options[0] as $option) {
printf("%3d %s=>%s\n", __LINE__, $options[0], $option);
switch ($option[0]) {
case 'h':
case '--help':
usage($prog);
break;
case 'f':
case '--file':
printf("%3d %s=>%s\n", __LINE__, $options[0], $option);
break;
}
}

function usage($prog) {
$usage = <<Usage: $prog [OPTIONS]
Serves as a skeleton example to be modified as needed
-f, --file=FILE Name of file
-h, --help Display usage

EOD;
fwrite(STDOUT,$usage);
exit(0);
}

?>

Solid State Drives

2007-07-26T07:48:00.000-07:00

I'm thinking Solid State Drives, SSDs, such as these could make economic sense.

It's getting to the point you will no longer need fans or any moving parts in your computer.

Tour De France

2007-07-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

I can't say I'm sorry to see this event die. All the news seems to be about how nobody is watching it. That everybody has tuned out because they don't want to see dopers.

I'd like to see this taken to another level. For instance I don't want to see the biking event in triathlons. Yep, take it out, get rid of it. Biking ruins the sport. It weeds out the people who can't afford a high priced bike and it is responsible for the deaths and hospitalization of numerous others. Bikes should be removed.

This is not likely to happen though. Bike companies would never allow it. So we need to start a new sport. The late Jim McCain, the head of the largest triathlon club in the world, started a new event called the Aquathon. An Aquathon consists of just the running and swimming.

I'd go one step further though and do away with wetsuits, goggles, and shoes. We need a sport where money doesn't buy you anything!

Ideally the sport would consist of a swim that would take about an hour and a run that would take about two hours. It would be done on a low tide day where the beaches would be open for miles.

Checkers AI now unbeatable

2007-07-21T09:14:00.000-07:00

It's unthinkable to most that chess would ever fall victim to something similar. I'm not so sure. I once took a computer course on the game of chess. On average there are about 42 choices per move if I remember correctly. Some 30 or 50 moves to the average game. As you can see at first glance chess seems impossible to program. You think you are dealing with 42**50 which could never be handled. Not at all like checkers. I bet somebody somewhere will figure out how to do it though. Say for example they might work backwards from different end game scenarios. So certain piece combinations, positioned in about any way, guarantees a win. This would eliminate a large percentage or possible choices. Likewise forced trades could eliminate many choices. As more creative types break the game of chess into various defined components maybe what's left could be totally handled. I bet in another hundred years they'll have Chess completely worked out.

Games capture imagination allowing people to put their very best into it.

Checkers 'solved' after years of number crunching

* 19:00 19 July 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Justin Mullins

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* Chinook
* Jonathan Schaeffer
* International Computer Games Association

The ancient game of checkers (or draughts) has been pronounced dead. The game was killed by the publication of a mathematical proof showing that draughts always results in a draw when neither player makes a mistake. For computer-game aficionados, the game is now "solved".

Draughts is merely the latest in a steady stream of games to have been solved using computers, following games such as Connect Four, which was solved more than 10 years ago.

The computer proof took Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer-games expert at the University of Alberta in Canada, 18 years to complete and is one of the longest running computations in history.

Draughts is played on an 8 x 8 chequered board with 16 pieces. This leads to 1020 different possible board positions. A player's pieces capture the opponent's by jumping over them until all are removed. Large numbers of pieces are quickly removed from play towards the end of a game.
Endgame database

The crucial part of Schaeffer's computer proof involved playing out every possible endgame involving fewer than 10 pieces. The result is an endgame database of 39 trillion positions. By contrast, there are only 19 different opening moves in draughts. Schaeffer's proof shows that each of these leads to a draw in the endgame database, providing neither player makes a mistake.

Schaeffer was able to get his result by searching only a subset of board positions rather than all of them, since some of them can be considered equivalent. He carried out a mere 1014 calculations to complete the proof in under two decades. "This pushes the envelope as far as artificial intelligence is concerned," he says.

At its peak, Schaeffer had 200 desktop computers working on the problem full time, although in later years he reduced this to 50 or so. "The problem is such that if I made a mistake 10 years ago, all the work from then on would be wrong," says Schaeffer. "So I've been fanatical about checking for errors."

Schaeffer believes the techniques he has developed could be applied to many real-world problems. He gives the example of scheduling the time and work required to build a complex machine such as the space shuttle. "With these techniques, you could optimise the use of your resources to build the shuttle for the least time or cost," he says.
Inevitable result

Schaeffer has also released an updated version of a draughts-playing programme called Chinook. In the 1990s, this program failed to beat the then world champion Marion Tinsley, who is widely regarded as the greatest Checkers player ever. Before his death, in 1995, Tinsley lost only 9 games in a 45-year playing career.

"I think Tinsley would be wistful about the proof," says Schaeffer.

The revamped Chinook, which is available online, cannot now be beaten. "The best result you can get is a draw," he admits.

David Levy, president of the International Computer Games Association in London, UK, says he isn't planning to play against Chinook. "There would be a certain inevitability about the result."

Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1144079)

What's wrong with NASA

2007-07-21T08:52:00.000-07:00

It's interesting how they are going back asking for help.

My perspective on the space program is a bit different than most peoples. Here's my perspective. After WWII America quickly nabbed all the rocket scientist in Germany, which at the time had all the expertise in the world, and made a special town for them in America. This town had newly built houses for them and their families. Everything they needed and all in German. Surprisingly though this town had a fence around it keeping the town separated from the rest of the world. The husbands all worked for what is today NASA. When kennedy wanted to go to the moon the slave labor, mental labor, all came from this town of Germans.

Well we had to transistion out of it eventually. The idea was that we could drop the old Germans with the space shuttle. The space shuttles were built by Americans who would do it right. These Americans sold the shuttle as being a magnitude cheaper and safer than the rockets the Germans designed and built. Unfortunately this didn't happen. The price per pound increased by a magnitude and we all know how infrequently the shuttles operate. While America has been dicking about with it's pathetic engineers the rest of the world has pretty much left us behind. So much so that when our Military wants to launch they use other countries.

Pretty pathetic. Why so pathetic you might ask? What is it about America that lowers everything to the level of a slum? Basically it's our two party political system. It can be bought out too easily by lobbyists who are working for coporations controlled by Wall Street analysts who only care about quartely gains instead of the big pictures. If we had a multiparty system like most other countries do we might not be doing fantastically but we certainly would be part of the pack rather than slipping on every front...

NASA asks Apollo engineers for help with Moon plans

* 19:52 20 July 2007
* NewScientist.com news service
* Ivan Semeniuk

On Friday, the 38th anniversary of the first manned Moon landing, NASA called in a group of retired engineers who had worked on the Apollo lunar programme in the 1960s and 70s. They were there to share their "lessons learned" with those now engaged in NASA's effort to return Americans to the Moon by 2020.

The veterans had worked as testers for the Grumman Corporation, the contractor that built the lunar module that took astronauts down to the Moon's surface. Before the meeting, Ivan Semeniuk asked two of the former Grumman engineers, Gerald Sandler and Joe Mule, for a taste of 1960s space expertise.

How closely did you work with the Apollo astronauts?

GS: Very closely. They would continually come into Grumman and they were on the inspection teams for the vehicles. Everyone who was working on the lunar module saw them personally and recognised that their lives depended on what we were doing. Having the astronauts involved and very visible played a key part in ensuring that people felt personally responsible. That was one of the reasons why the quality levels were so high.

JM: Whenever a problem wasn't getting attention I had a guy working in my group who used to say: "Are you going to tell the widows?" It was something we always kept in mind.

The lunar module had to perform in conditions that no one on Earth had experienced directly. How did you deal with the unknowns?

GS: We did a great deal of testing before we went to the Moon, to weed out problems. We still had problems when we got there, but what's interesting is that by the time we landed Apollo 17 - the last lunar landing - there were no more anomalies to report.

JM: We were gaining a great deal of knowledge as we went along. Another thing you have to keep in mind is that there was really no limit to the funding.

GS: We worried about the technical programme rather than how much it was going to cost. We wanted to make sure everything was done right from a success and safety standpoint.

You worked for the reliability team. What does "reliability" mean to an aerospace engineer?

GS: We used to call it the ability of something to perform its function. If it didn't do this, it was a failure.

Can you give me an example of a reliability failure you had to deal with on Apollo?

GS: Sure. On Apollo 14, the abort switch failed. It had a short circuit that put the lunar module in abort mode while the spacecraft was descending towards the Moon. Mission control had to rewrite the software in mid-flight and then relay it up to the module in time for engine ignition - which was done with minutes to spare. All of that got traced back to a particular switch. The switch was soldered in, but vibrations had shaken it loose, and while it was drifting around it caused the short circuit. That was a reliability problem. When it happened, the NASA programme manager and I X-rayed all the switches of a similar type that we could find in the remaining lunar modules and looked for loose solder.

JM: A great deal of the failures had to do with workmanship in connections, in solder joints, in crimps - in all of the mechanical fastening methods. They seemed to be quite vulnerable.

NASA is hoping you can pass on some lessons to the engineers working on the next lunar lander. What is the most important lesson you have to share?

GS: It's really the logic behind how you run the programme. One of the key features of the lunar module programme was that we had a very open environment; everybody could talk to everybody else. We had a multidisciplinary approach because the interfaces of all the systems - environmental control, propulsion, and so on - are pretty critical. The second thing is that we were encouraged to challenge each other, and not just accept what we were told. There was a big emphasis on looking at alternatives, and all the trade-offs that were associated with those alternatives.

What did you gain by working that way?

GS: One of the critical things was the trade-off between weight and reliability. Because weight was so critical, you had to make sure that every time you were trying to save a pound you weren't hurting reliability. We were always making these trades between weight, reliability and performance. One of the best decisions we made was putting more weight into the size of the lunar module's fuel tanks, for just the kind of situation that happened in Apollo 13, when the module was used as a lifeboat to bring the crew back. The ability to challenge each other had a lot to do with getting that right.

How did you create that kind of working environment?

JM: One way was by mastering the art of the "stand up" meeting. Every morning at 8.30 the managers of every department would have to attend this meeting to review the status of the entire programme, including failures, design problems and so on.

Space technology has changed a lot since Apollo. Are there technical factors that you think the engineers of the next lander should keep in mind?

GS: The thing that I'd be thinking about the most is software. As long as there's a weight problem - which there has to be - more and more functions will want to be put into software rather than into hardware. Software is a more difficult problem for reliability, because you can't test it the same way you test hardware. Debugging the software and simulating what it's doing during flight is going to be a real challenge, I think.

What do you think we will gain by sending humans back to the Moon?

GS: Human experience breeds new technology. I don't think you can foresee what's going to happen when you start out on these kinds of explorations, but history tells us that good things happen.

JM: Keep in mind that we were in the thick of the cold war last time. That was a huge national motivation. This time around, I think the scientific and technical spin-off will be the motivation.

Do you think that most Americans are motivated by the plans to go back to the Moon?

JM: Not in the same way. My concern about this present programme is that the public isn't aware of it. I am a little bit more than a casual observer of the space programme and I haven't heard a lot of information about the new programme.

GS: The national will is not evident yet.

Gerald Sandler joined the Grumman Corporation (now Northrup Grumman) in 1963, shortly after NASA awarded it the contract to build the Apollo lunar modules. He was group leader of system reliability before moving on to other space-related jobs within Grumman, eventually becoming deputy director of the company's Apollo effort. He now lives in Westbury, New York, not far from the Long Island plant where the lunar modules were built.

Joe Mule also joined Grumman in 1963. He began as a reliability engineer and became assistant manager for reliability. He lives in Delaware. Both men are now retired.

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/

2007-07-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ is an excellent starting point to educate oneself out of the Matrix. There's not much, if anything, I disagree with in this flick. It describes an old paradigm which unfortunately describes the past and present world accurately. The new world order will no longer revolve around this archaic system. Religion will die out shortly like it is in most of the world except America. And quality of life, perhaps eternal life through genetics, is replacing the need for obscene wealth and power. Within the next 50 years life will change dramatically.

However for the time being the movie http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/ should be watched. We have nut case dynastic families, like the Bush's, making money through war and lies. Nothing new here. Understanding why things are working allows you to model it. After you know what TV, religion, patriotism, etc., leads you don't get caught up in any of it. You can concentrate on what is really important.

Best random generator yet

2007-07-19T07:23:00.000-07:00

A good random generator is perhaps hard to find. One is now available at:
http://random.irb.hr/
There are many UIs being built around it. Save this post if you need one.

Corn biofuel 'dangerously oversold' as green energy

2007-07-18T15:08:00.000-07:00

What an incredible waste of money. Why don't we have these farmers do something useful.

Ethanol fuel made from corn may be being "dangerously oversold" as a green energy solution according to a new review of biofuels.

The report concludes that the rapidly growing and heavily subsidised corn ethanol industry in the US will cause significant environmental damage without significantly reducing the country's dependence on fossil fuels.

"There are smarter solutions than rushing straight to corn-based ethanol," says Scott Cullen of the Network for New Energy Choices (NNEC) and a co-author of the study. "It's just one piece of a more complex puzzle."

The report analyses hundreds of previous studies, and was compiled by the environmental advocacy groups Food and Water Watch, NNEC and the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment. The study was released as the US Congress debates key agriculture and energy laws that will determine biofuel policy for years to come.
Rapid growth

Of the country's entire corn crop for 2007, 27% is earmarked for biofuels. That figure is up from 20% in 2006 and is beginning to put a squeeze on corn for food production.

Yet, even if all corn grown in the US was used for fuel, it would only offset 15% of the country's gasoline use, according to the study. The same reduction could be achieved by a 3.5-mile-per-gallon increase in fuel efficiency standards for all cars and light trucks, according a federal figures cited in the report.

And using corn-derived ethanol does not necessarily even reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A number of recent studies have attempted to assess the total carbon footprint – from the field to the tailpipe – of the biofuel. Conclusions vary widely from being worse than gasoline to being about the same.

The report includes a recent study by the US Department of Energy (PDF), concluding that corn ethanol could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 18% to 28%.

The same study, however, also notes that cellulosic ethanol could reduce emissions by 87% compared to gasoline. Cellulosic ethanol produces fuel from non-food sources such as prairie grasses and woody plants, but production is still under development.
'Dead zones'

Further concerns are contained in a recent study from the World Resources Institute (PDF), cited in the report. It says the development of a corn-based ethanol market would only exacerbate problems already associated with large-scale corn production.

Such problems include groundwater depletion, soil erosion, algae blooms, and the formation of "dead zones" in waterways inundated with pesticide and fertilizer runoff.

"Corn-based ethanol hasn't been pursued because this is the best solution, it's been because this has been what's been pushed the hardest," Cullen says. The recent survey notes that Archer Daniels Midland, the largest US ethanol producer, received $10 billion in federal subsidies between 1980 and 1997.

But Brian Jennings, of the trade group, the American Coalition for Ethanol, disagrees. "We can release papers until we are blue in the face about what is theoretically going to be the best alternative to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and to reduce carbon emissions," he says. "But, from a practical standpoint, we have to start somewhere, and corn-based ethanol is the most viable alternative fuel on the planet today."

The current Farm Bill, which provides $16.5 billion in federal agricultural subsidies each year, will expire in September 2007. Proposals for a new Farm Bill are likely to include significant subsidies for the continued development of both corn-based ethanol and cellulosic ethanol.

Boycott Comcast?

2007-07-18T07:58:00.000-07:00

I don't know exactly what's going on here. They make it sound like Linux is not supported. If this is really the case it should be exposed.

July 17, 2007 |
Does Comcast hate Macs?
By David Cassel
They're the largest ISP in America. And they hate Macs. And the Firefox browser. At least, that's the impression you get from Comcast's installation procedure — and clues scattered across their home page.

Last month Dave Winer noted that Comcast's installation procedures require the use of Internet Explorer. Another Comcast user makes the same complaint. "They helpfully provide you with a CD that has a custom Comcast-branded version of IE5 for the Mac, because Apple hasn't shipped a Mac in quite a few years that has IE5 on it by default."

Even Comcast's web page shows an apparent bias against Mac users — or anyone not using Internet Explorer. When you click the page's "Games" hyperlink, an error message pops up, warning that the site "is not optimized for Firefox browsers or Macs."

"Our site is optimized for Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher, on Windows Operating System."

The web contains other stories — including one from a user group for Apple fans. One Mac owner reports he'd called Comcast to troubleshoot his cable modem. Comcast's technician told him he knew "nothing about *&@#$ing Macs,"eventually disappearing into his truck. By the time the technican returned, the customer had repaired the cable modem himself with a phone call to Comcast's support line.Now I'm afraid to ask how Comcast handles Linux….

Cocaine trade scents higher profit in Europe

2007-07-17T22:02:00.000-07:00

I think I might want to move to Amsterdam. Though I'm not into sex, drugs, or alcohol. If it were warmer and sunnier. Just something about living in a culture without the hangups we have in this culture.

Cocaine trade scents higher profit in Europe
Tue Jul 17, 2007 7:14PM EDT
By Henrique Almeida

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Saturday night and thrill-seekers from around the world crowd the streets of Amsterdam's red-light district ready to binge on sex, drugs and alcohol.

"Hey, mister, do you want some cocaine?" a man mutters from a dark corner while a blonde prostitute removes her bra in a shop window, to lure customers into her room.

It's no accident the dealer was offering cocaine before he moved on to other drugs. Cocaine use has almost tripled in Europe over the past decade, while U.S. consumption has stabilized, according to U.N. figures released in June.

"There is a certain glamour to cocaine in the media which has become very appealing to all sectors of European society," said Peter Thomas, a spokesman for European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) in Lisbon.

Portuguese police say a stronger euro is also attracting cocaine smugglers into European cities like Amsterdam, London and Madrid where party-goers can easily pay up to 60 euros ($82.78) to get high on a few lines of the white powder.

Wholesale, the drug in Europe fetches up to $77,000 per kg, almost twice the amount it sells for in the U.S., according to the U.S Drug Enforcement Administration.

"Dealers focus their trade in cities with money," Jose Braz, the director of the Department of Narcotics in Portugal, which has become a significant entry-point for cocaine into Europe, told Reuters. "There is more and more dirty money in euros."

AFRICA HUB

"There was a lot of euphoria with love-drugs like ecstasy 10 years ago but that is going away now," said an employee of the Magic Mushroom Smartshop near Amsterdam's night club scene in Rembrandtplein square. He identified himself simply as AR.

"Coke is cold and ego-boosting and allows people to forget about their insecurities. I suppose the world is becoming a colder place these days," he added.

Europe's demand for cocaine may be growing but the real test for the Latin American cartels is breaking into Europe's sophisticated external borders and airports.

The solution normally comes in the form of bribes.

According to the United Nations, cartels increasingly rely on corrupt officials in poor West African nations like Guinea Bissau, a tiny former Portuguese colony, to store the cocaine before it is smuggled into Europe's booming market.

"These criminals are entrepreneurs. They see a window of opportunity and immediately jump in," said Braz, who worked with Bissau police recently to help fight cocaine smuggling.

In April, Guinea Bissau's police was commended by the United Nations for seizing over 600 kg of cocaine -- worth more than 30 million euros -- but it was later discovered the traffickers had still managed to escape with about 2.5 tonnes of the drug.

"It is regrettable that the rest of the consignment was not intercepted, but hardly surprising as the police were woefully ill-equipped and often do not have enough gasoline to operate their vehicles," said Antonio Costa, the Executive Director of the U.N.'s Office of Drugs and Crime.

In a statement to authorities in Bissau, Costa urged them to ensure that the seized cocaine would not "disappear" like previous drug busts.

The cocaine that eludes authorities is normally split among hundreds of smugglers willing to risk hefty jail sentences to enter Europe through countries like Portugal and Spain.

Last year, police in both countries, which have strong geographical and cultural ties with Africa and historic links with Latin America, seized a combined 70 tonnes of cocaine, about the same amount that was seized in all of Europe in 2004.

"We are now a key entry point of drugs into Europe," said Braz.

MULES

But record drug busts in 2006 and 2007 in Europe have prompted cartels to turn to people who are willing to fly to Europe with cocaine hidden in bags or inside their bodies for up to 5,000 euros -- a small sum considering the risks involved.

"What we have found is that drug mules have increasingly been used to smuggle the drug through airports," said Peter Thomas from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction.

Last week, two British teenage girls were arrested at Accra airport in Ghana, allegedly carrying 300,000 pounds ($609,500) worth of cocaine in laptop bags.

But unlike the movie Maria Full of Grace, which portrays a teenage women as a drug mule, most of the mules are still young men like Jackson, a 27-year-old architect from Venezuela, who was caught in Lisbon trying to bring the drug into Europe.

Trapped in a downward spiral of debt and with a family to provide for, Jackson boarded a flight from Caracas to Amsterdam via Lisbon in June last year with one kg of cocaine inside his stomach and two kg strapped around his body.

"The deal was to deliver 3 kilos of cocaine in Amsterdam but I couldn't swallow all the capsules and was afraid to die. So I hid some of the drugs on my body," Jackson told a Lisbon-based judge at his first hearing after being arrested.

He now faces at least five years in prison and fears reprisals against his family back home from the drug cartel which hired him to do the job, but he is lucky to be alive.

For Europeans, like the group of men waiting outside the bathroom of a popular club in Amsterdam to snort another line, the party goes on. Or so they hope.

"They may forget about their problems when they're high but reality will eventually sink in. I just hope most of them are able to cope with it," said AR.

(Additional reporting by Sofia Van Holle in Lisbon)

Doctors, Democrats scrutinize September 11 dust

2007-07-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

Basically you could look at the dust as a Darwinian test. Anybody who believed it was healthy really didn't have their heads screwed on right. We got it off of us as quickly as possible and then proceeded to watch from upwind. Never to get in it again. And though the officials said it posed no threat I don't know a single person who believed it.

But then we have lots of Bush supporters. Lots of Republican and Democrats. And a whole country full of religious people. Nothing more to be said...

Tue Jul 17, 2007 8:14PM EDT
By Ishani Ganguli

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Pilar Albarado spent five months after September 11, 2001, cleaning pulverized building material from apartment buildings and offices near the site of the World Trade Center. A chronic cough came two years later, and she is also battling asthma, memory loss and acid reflux.

Only now, almost six years after the attacks, is the extent of the medical toll on firefighters, police and others who worked on the cleanup coming to light, along with questions about how much the government knew of the danger.

Albarado, 44, cannot work because of her medical problems. Her acid reflux is so bad she cannot eat most foods.

She is being treated at the recently opened World Trade Center health clinic at Bellevue Hospital, but she said the medicines they give her do little to help.

"Our problems will be with us for life," she said during a protest outside congressional offices in June. "I will never be the same."

SICKENING DUST

Democrats in Congress say Albarado is one of thousands of people endangered when the Bush Administration knowingly played down the risks posed by the dust, which contained asbestos, lead and other contaminants.

Inhalation of dust-laden air has been implicated in at least two deaths -- from lung inflammation and scarring -- and connected to the respiratory illnesses and even cancers of thousands working and living within miles of Ground Zero, according to medical studies.

Mount Sinai Medical Center researchers found 69 percent of the nearly 10,000 first responders they examined had new or worsened lung problems after September 11, while doctors at New York University School of Medicine documented these problems in lower Manhattan residents.

The Bellevue program is currently treating more than 1,300 such patients, and others are on a waiting list.

Researchers are still working to understand the long-term effects of these exposures and how psychological distress from the event might contribute to physical problems.

"We're finding that there are respiratory problems that are persisting well beyond what we anticipated -- considering people were exposed six years ago," said Alison Geyh at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. "The question is why."

The World Trade Center Health Registry, which includes more than 71,000 directly exposed New York City residents and workers, will track their physical and mental health for up to 20 years and may provide some answers, Geyh said in a telephone interview.

CLEARING THE AIR

Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democratic who headed a House of Representatives hearing on the issue in June, said the Environmental Protection Agency issued falsely reassuring statements about air safety and asbestos levels.

This led first responders to work with inadequate protective equipment and New Yorkers to return to "homes, schools and workplaces that had not been properly tested."

Congressional Democrats also faulted the EPA for failing to meet its clean-up responsibilities.

Then Environment Secretary Christie Whitman told the congressional hearings she did not regret her comments, nor her role in reopening Manhattan workplaces on September 17.

She added that she acted on the scientific information she had been given at the time. "I will believe the scientists when they tell me what is safe to breathe," Whitman said.

But according to Geyh, who was at Ground Zero collecting environmental hazard data immediately after the attacks, the complicated circumstances did not warrant such early assurances.

An August 2003 report by the EPA's inspector general found that some of these statements were made without scientific evidence, and also implicated the White House in mitigating health warnings.

Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Whitman knowingly lied to New York residents about their health risks. The case is now under appeal.

Sunshine Could Help Prevent Cancer and Diabetes

2007-07-17T21:51:00.000-07:00

I guess like everything, moderation and variation are key to life. Get too much sun you get cancer. Get too little and you get cancer. I guess I'll continue to run or swim without my shirt for about an hour every day.

A San Diego researcher says that sunshine could be important in preventing many cancers and Type I diabetes. UC San Diego professor Cedric Garland thinks a high level of sunshine-produced Vitamin D is a key way help the body fight a host of serious diseases.

Garland: 25 hydroxy Vitamin D, which is a metabolite of Vitamin D, should be regularly measured in the blood.

Garland says five to 10 minutes of daily exposure to sunlight is enough to produce the required amount of Vitamin D. He says people can also take tablets to boost Vitamin D levels. Garland presented his findings Tuesday at the American Association for Clinical Chemistry meeting in San Diego.

A Supplement to Solar: Windmill Generators Make Green Electricity

2007-07-17T21:48:00.001-07:00

There's a picture on their webpage. It's a very small turbine on a very high tower. Beautiful though.

KPBS reporter Alison St John went back to Scotland recently to visit her brother Hugh, who lives on the west coast in a small community called Scoraig. It’s a remote spot, with no roads and no electricity, except what’s generated by wind power. Here’s her audio postcard of Hugh and his windmill.

Scoraig is a lovely place on the edge of a loch. Hugh took me out to the back of his house where his windmill was spinning gently in the breeze.

Alison St John: So this is the windmill that powers your whole house?
Hugh: Yes that’s right.

St John: It’s very quiet.

Hugh: It does have a slight humming noise -- a little musical note that if you appreciate that that’s generating free energy, is music to your ears. Obviously in stronger winds that can turn into a bit of a roar.

This being Scotland, stronger winds happen quite often, whipping the windmill blades to a blur.

St John: How tall is it?

Hugh: This one is about 75 feet tall, the reason being that the trees around are 40 feet tall, and it’s necessary to be well above the trees to catch the best wind energy. It really does pay off to have a tall tower. There’s no point in putting a windmill in a situation where there’s not enough wind. It’s like putting a solar panel in the shade.

St John: So that must be one of the most tricky things: deciding in the first place is if a windmill is going to work for you.

Hugh: Yes, it’s an area where a lot of people have got it quite badly wrong. Manufacturers are not really motivated to argue with you if you say you’ve got enough wind they’ll probably just go ahead a sell you the machinery, so it pays to have independent advice.

St John: Well what about birds?

Hugh: Well, wind turbines do kill birds; in my 30 years of experience I’ve only ever come across two dead birds; I have had anecdotes of situations where there have been multiple casualties, just due to the way the machines been sited and due to the habits of the birds in that particular area, but if you look at bird casualties overall compared to birds flying into windows, birds being driven into by vehicles, flying into power lines and even being massacred by domestic cats -- the amount of birds that are killed by wind turbines is pretty much insignificant.

St John: OK, so how much power does this generate?

Hugh: The power generated in kilowatts is much less important than the energy generated over time because it’s stored in batteries. In our house we use about five or six kilowatt hours of electrical energy a day. That’s a bit less than the UK average and quite substantially less than the US average which is more like 20 or 30 kilowatt hours a day.

Inside Hugh’s house, his wife Jytte is in the kitchen where there’s no shortage of electrical appliances.

Jytte: The microwave is electric, obviously, there’s the toaster, the food processor, but all these things you use for a very short time.

St John: Hugh was saying you might wait to vacuum till it was a bit windier?

Jytte: Yeah, it’s a good excuse not to do the washing if it’s not windy? ::laughs::

St John: And you’ve got a television; you can watch that whenever you want right?

Jytte: Yes we use it as an excuse to stop the kids from watching too much telly. The little ones, we say ‘there isn’t enough electricity to watch TV right now.’ But it’s really an excuse because it doesn’t really use that much.

Hugh and Jytte have lived off wind power for many years but Hugh admits it’s not for everyone.

St John: So are there any arguments for someone in somewhere like California to be using wind energy on a domestic basis?

Hugh: Well I would say yes. That’s a scenario where a lower cost wind system as a backup to a solar system does actually make sense, provided that whoever is buying it does look carefully at whether there is enough wind to make it worth the investment. And very often it will be cheaper to run a generator during those periods when there isn’t so much sun, but that’s a lot less satisfying than using renewable energy. When things are going well it’s completely maintenance-free, you can just enjoy the benefits and listen to the sweet music of electricity being generated from the wind.

That was KPBS reporter Alison St John’s brother Hugh, who is a small wind turbine consultant living on the west coast of Scotland.

Nuclear Waste at San Onofre Plant Supposedly Earthquake-Safe

2007-07-17T21:39:00.000-07:00

San Onofre nuclear plant officials say what happened during the recent earthquake in Japan won't happen here. KPBS reporter Ed Joyce explains.

The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or SONGS, is next to San Onofre State Beach in northern San Diego County. It's operated by Southern California Edison. The Japanese quake caused a leak of radioactive waste water that was flushed into the sea. SONGS Plant Manager Raymond Waldo says the facility here is designed to keep that from happening.

Waldo: Our spent fuel building is a concrete structure that, if the water were to spill out of the pool, would just go down to the basement of the building and collect there in a sump. So there is no direct line that would take it to the ocean.

He says the plant has never had any earthquake-related problems. The plant was built to withstand a major 7.0 magnitude earthquake.

Uh huh. Like I so believe them. What's this about water anyways? Nuclear proponents are always talking about spent fuel. Pretending that's the only waaste. They never admit that much of the waste is liquid.

We need more muslim politicians

2007-07-17T21:31:00.000-07:00

Published: July 17, 2007 at 7:21 PM

Critics: Muslim rep. likened Bush, Hitler
NEW YORK, July 17 (UPI) -- Minnesota Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of Congress, drew fire this week for comments about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Late last week Ellison told a Minnesota atheist group the Bush administration took advantage of the climate of fear after the destruction of the World Trade Center to expand its powers, much like Hitler was able to seize power in Germany after convincing the public Communists were responsible for the burning of the Reichstag, the New York Post reported.

Some critics said the statement amounted to accusing President George Bush of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, since Hitler staged the Reichstag fire. That view mirrors accusations by many conspiracy theorists that the Bush administration staged the attacks for political gain, then blamed them on Muslim terrorists.

But Ellison defended his statement, saying he meant that tragedy can be taken advantage of by politicians, the newspaper said.

It's about time we had some politicians who say it like it is. I should send her an email thanking her for the honesty.

Though he should have came right out and said Bush was responsible for 9/11. Everything points to it.

Harry Potter Spoiler

2007-07-17T21:26:00.000-07:00

I've read all the books so far. I'll read the last one eventually. But I'd like to know what happens now. If anybody cares to write up a brief synopsis here that would be great. I'd appreciate it.

2007-07-17T21:20:00.000-07:00

It's about time we start seeing some common sense in the court. This is in stark contrast to the idiots in Georgia who sentenced a kid to 10 years in prison for getting a blow job. The courts there, despite the parents of both kids, threw the boy in prison. Of course the boy was black and the girl white so it makes sense.

Darwin, in today's world, would have gone to Georgia. No doubt. See www.democracynow.org for the details.

Utah court clears girl, 13, of sex abuse
SALT LAKE CITY, July 17 (UPI) -- The Utah Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that finding a 13-year-old girl and her 12-year-old boyfriend guilty of sexually abusing each other is "absurd."

The high court dismissed the charge against the girl, identified in court documents only as Z.C. of Ogden, The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The boy had not appealed the finding of delinquency.

The girl was 13 when she became pregnant in October 2003. State authorities filed sexual abuses charges against her and the boy in July 2004.

Justice Jill Parrish, in the court's opinion, said the Legislature may have been trying to discourage reckless behavior by teenagers. But she said legislators could not have intended to treat both parties to a consensual sex act as simultaneously victims and perpetrators.

Parrish said the ruling applies only in cases where no victim can be identified and not to those where an adult has sex with a minor.

Microsoft Windows patent will spy for advertisers

2007-07-17T21:11:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has filed a patent that threatens to breathe life into Bill Gates' and Ray Ozzie's Frankenstein-like Windows Live "vision", unveiled in November 2005, for putting annoying, in-your-face internet adverts inside your most important Windows applications.

Here's the Patent.

I guess anybody who is stupid enough to still be using windows deserves what they get.

Linux-USB-Users mailing list

2007-07-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

This mailing list was a total let down. There was no systematic approach to USB problems. No consistent help. Instead it consisted of people asking for help and others saying it sounds like a hardware issue or you need to recompile your kernel. Or worse.

The best approach to USB problems is to do the research yourself. There are no experts where there should be. On the other hand if you wanted to be recognized as an expert it might be a good mailing list to take ownership of. It's something to consider...

If so check out https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/subscribe/linux-usb-users

Never buy from Sony!

2007-07-13T10:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/business/news/e3i214c26acb62c59b679bbbc3594def806

Sony, at the time, was making wise cracks about their root kits. At the time I was amazed Sony was making such public statements and supporting their root kits. Guess times have changed and they now are looking for scape goats. What's next, titles like "Military sues suppliers of weapons to Iraq" because they have lost the war. What ever happened to responsibility. Companies don't seem to have much responsibility. Bad management making bad decisions at dramatic pay is the norm. And if they can't blame others then they will take their golden parachutes and leave. Grrrr.

Not that I would mind the Military suing the weapons suppliers. Or that I mind Sony suing the root kit manufacturer. I wish them all long, expensive, bloody horrible ordeals. May they all lose everything. The human race doesn't need them.

Logitech MX Air

2007-07-13T09:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I like Logitech products. They have a new mouse. (It's wireless. So I'm not going to buy it. See my rants about batteries.) The "mouse" looks very interesting. Far too big. It's more like a first step into the future. Check it out at:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2158059,00.asp

(Logitech doesn't have it on their own website yet.)

Smart batteries?

2007-07-13T08:30:00.000-07:00

My last post got me thinking. In the past I have labelled battery cells. I put them in little sleaves and write out what their stated capacity is, when they were bought, their price, the actual capacity, and the number of charges. I'm tempted to go look at one and see what all I put down. I think I may include much more.

I only buy metal hydride batteries. I have a special charger for them. You can see it here:
http://www.amazon.com/Crosse-Technology-BC-900-AlphaPower-Battery/dp/B00077AA5Q
http://www.lacrossetechnology.com/900/index.php

This charger is by far the best currently on the market that I know of. I bought mine two or three years ago. The LCD display is horrible. And it will destroy itself if you charge alkaline or regular batteries in it. I have stupid kids about whom snuck in normal batteries into two of the slots. The batteries heated up releasing acids that drip down into the circuitry destroying the battery charger. (What can I say, kids are kids and you have got to protect yourself from them. If you don't it is nobodies fault but your own.) However, though the battery charger will breathe new life into old batteries wiping out their memories, tell you what the batteries actual capcities are, etc., it's not enough.

We need battery chargers controlled by the computer. So we can upgrade them on the fly with better intelligence. And so we can identify and monitor their lives in databases. How to automatically identify them? The best way would be to put a RFID like chip in them. Or just the circuitry to give it a serial number. No need to stop there. With technology where it is at now we might as well put a chip with some memory in. I'm thinking there must be something that can be done on an evolving basis. We start now with just the serial number.

With just a serial number and a charger controlled by a pc we could make a centralized database to hold all of the batteries lifetime information.

In the future it would be great to have the battery record it's power useage. Then we could get a much better idea how the batteries perform in differen environments. But that's another step.