Movie Review: Evan Almighty

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.