The sticky notes at the front of the page

for my 3 MPs (no, not my MP3s...)

Blogroll has moved to a new page. It was just too huge (close to 1000 blogs in Bloglines) and helps the page load time tremendously. Blogrolling.com just sucks, and Bloglines has too much. Oh, and I have updated Blogrolling.

Have a nice day!

Monday, November 28

Sorry, but I've been a bit busy.  

Yeah, I know. There haven't been many posts for awhile.

My computer was really starting to act funky, and it really wasn't any fun at all to play with it. So last week, I got myself a new 200 gig hard drive, and installed Windows 2003 Server Standard on it, and converted it into a workstation. Thanks to MSFN.ORG for the handy cheat sheet.

Today, I finally got my spam program and email program (Thunderbird) running. I tried to use the new AOL AIM Triton. First thing I had to do was tell the download program (it's only a download program, not an install program, which I find quite stupid) that it's running under Windows XP. It then downloaded and installed it. After many retries, I finally managed to get logged in. Today, after a few reboots, I find that it's not automatically logging me on. I try to logon. Tells my it can't. I retype the password. Can't work. I retype the password again. Can't get logged in. I uninstall it (and then reboot, and then clean up after it), download the old AIM for 95/98/ME, and it works just fine, I get logged in with the password that I typed correctly the first time. The only thing I can figure is that the server for logging into Triton is overloaded. Other than that, I dunno.

I've got some little nits. My wallpaper changing program was working. Now it's not. So I guess I get to find another wallpaper program, but I'm not sure that will fix it either. A bit of a bummer.

I wanted to use Trend Micro for AV here, but that won't work on 2003. I have Norton 2006, but I keep hearing about how badly that's been screwed up, chewing memory and CPU. Norton Corporate AV is supposed to be better in that regard, so I decided to try that. First off, there doesn't seem to be much of an indication when it's actually doing a scan, which it proceeds to do (a quick one, but still) after installation. This is a problem, because it causes LiveUpdate to fail. And if you don't understand what's going on, you wonder what the problem is. I checked processes, and saw what it was doing. Still, the update I got Friday was a corrupt update. Symantec kept puking on it, and reverting to an earlier copy. Every time I rebooted, and I was having to reboot for one thing or another. I got another update Saturday, and no more puking.

2003 updates itself slowly. I've seen 20+ minutes from when I get the first graphical boot screen, then it blanks the screen, and then… nothing happens for quite some time (including no disk activity) and then 20 minutes later, it continues to boot. This might have to do with the bad virus update. I also tweaked how long Windows 2003 waits before dealing with stuck services and processes, which might also have fixed this later. Today, I've been rebooting without much of a pause, so who knows.

I've also set up a shadow copy of my entire application space (i.e. everything under C:\Documents and Settings\Bryan Price\) to see how that works. That seems to be working. I've installed the freaking printer twice on another computer. I don't understand why I can't get it to just work. It appears, but it doesn't connect. Yes, I have this configured as a print server. I've got another printer to install here, and I think that the kids will get my old one. An HP 855C. A good printer that's 10 years old. I bought it to replace my less than 1 year old Epson LQ570, as 8 hours to print 10+ pages was a bit much. The paper pickup needs to be cleaned every now and then. The new printer is an Epson R300, which I plan on using more for directly printing on CDRs and DVDRs than anything else. I'd still like to pick up an all in one printer as well. If I knew one that also printed on CDRs and DVDRs, I would have just gone with that one.

I bought a USB to IDE cable. Boy, has it been worth that little scratch. Instead of trying to cram 80 gigabytes onto an already crowded 160 gigger, I've been able to connect and unconnect my old 80 gig drive with easy. Just need to grab something from it again. Easy enough to do. Just a USB connecter on one end, and an IDE connector on the other, with a power brick supplying the current for power. And it came with an adapter for 2.5" drives too.

My backup flash needs to have the batch file updated. I found out that the Mozilla I was backing up was my old Mozilla Suite, not Firefox. Oh well, good thing I had my old hard drive available.

I couldn't install the software that came with my HP DVD burner. I've run into that before, server software is kicked out, for no reason as far as I'm concerned. Roxio installed just fine, as did Daemon Tools with the new 4.0 version. I doubt that I'll install much more for that (like Alcohol 120%, or Nero) maybe the DVDInfo program. I've got my phone software installed, but I haven't installed my bluetooth dongle yet. I may not install that, since I seem to have everything under control with the USB cable.

I've got plenty of other things to write about as well, and hopefully I'll get caught up on them later this week.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/28/2005 08:05:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

Saturday, November 12

Commentary - updated  

Originally written 11/10 2:58PM
Norman Podhoretz:

Among the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate over Iraq, one in particular stands out above all others. This is the charge that George W. Bush misled us into an immoral and/or unnecessary war in Iraq by telling a series of lies that have now been definitively exposed.

Emphasis mine. Via Keith Devens

I don't get it. I'm sorry. "the many distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsifications that have emerged from the debate" have been coming from the pro-war side. I don't doubt that there haven't been some of the same things going on the other side of the debate, but the vast majority of the crap that is out there is from the pro-war side. That may be a subjective observation, but if it is, it's just as subjective as Norman Podhoretz's.

The problem I have is that there has been zero proof that anything that W said was actually true. No WMD, nothing to even hint that Iraq had any kind of weapons program on that would be worrisome to little ole US.

The first straw man is "Scooter" Libby and his indictment. The quote from the article by Patrick Fitzgerald is:

[t]his indictment is not about the war. This indictment is not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel.

Of course the indictment is not about the war. Just like Martha Stewart was indicted and convicted of not insider trading, but lying. The trouble I have with this issue, aside from the talking heads talking about this as if outing a secret agent is just politics (clue stick 8x8: It's not!) With the IRS warning a church about losing it's tax free status over an anti-war sermon, and hearing that war protesters are not "patriotic" (scare quotes used delibrately), this shows me a pattern that I don't like.

Off to pick up the kids. Maybe more on this later.

Update 11/12 1:30PM
I'm updating the date/time to move this up some.

I wanted to write more, but I find out that I don't have.

This is turning into a shitstorm. And I predict that it's going to come out badly for W.

Kash at Angry Bear comes out talking about the difference between how the NY Times and the Washington Post handle's the President's speech of 11/11/2005. He gives props to the Post for at least putting some critical thinking into the article.

Meanwhile (via Legal Fiction) Glenn Reynolds tries vainly to toe the President's line, which ends up needing a response wherein he tries to backpedal some, but still can't get the logic right. I think publius of Legal Fiction has a great analysis.

The Blogging of the President has a nice pair of articles that are in relation to the President's speech.

John Cole tries to bash Kevin Drum for supposedly take a quote from Glenn Reynolds out of context.

At any rate, the reason I write this is because of this thoroughly disingenuous post by Kevin Drum:

THE LAST REFUGE…Glenn Reynolds on Democrats who claim that George Bush misled us into war:
And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they're acting unpatriotically.
Glad we got that out in open.

Of course, the intent is to portray Glenn as stating that anyone who believes that we were misled into war is unpatriotic, and if you were to just look at that statement, it would be a fair interpretation. But in order to get to that little quote, you have to, as Kevin has chosen, selectively and intentionally ignore the rest of Glenn's comment (conveniently missing the entire point of the statement):

BUSH SLAMS HISTORICAL REVISIONISTS ON THE WAR: About time. Jeff Goldstein has more.
And read earlier posts on this subject here and here. Also here.
The White House needs to go on the offensive here in a big way—and Bush needs to be very plain that this is all about Democratic politicans pandering to the antiwar base, that it's deeply dishonest, and that it hurts our troops abroad.
And yes, he should question their patriotism. Because they're acting unpatriotically.

There is, as you can see, a big difference.

Sorry, but there isn't a difference. At currently 254 comments (I don't even want to think what would happen if I had that many with this current setup!), from what I'm scanning, most people are disagree with John as well. Just noticed this:

Note to potential commenters—If all you are going to do is launch a vicious or pointed attack at Glenn, Jeff, Kevin, or me, don't bother. I will just delete it and end comments on this post.

Nice way to encourage talk.

While I'm sure that Glenn Reynolds is a nice guy, especially in person, the fact of the matter is that since I've gotten started reading Bloglines, I've been reading Instapundit, and Glenn shows no compunction whatsoever in putting his foot in his mouth. But he will chew it completely off instead of admitting that anything he has written is wrong. In the Myers-Briggs Temperment Indicator, that's pretty much showing 100% J. I've raised one of those. Talk about turdheads.

I'll leave you with Matthew Yglesias' report on the matter.

Relevant Link

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/12/2005 01:30:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

Friday, November 11

What I'm reading—slowly  

For an excerpt of what I'm reading, go here: The Law of Accelerating Returns.

It's a thick book. It's certainly a thought provoking book. It's about the coming Singularity (which I might survive long enough to actually see, most certainly my kids will). Ray Kurzweil is certainly optimistic about the future. I'm taking my time reading it, understanding it, comprehending it. I'm certainly enjoying it.

If I talk other people into reading this copy (and they should, although they might not make it a priority), I then want to reread the book and do something I haven't done since college. Pick up a highlighter and highlight things, write notes in the margins. I will probably also note the copious footnotes that I want to follow up on, probably by writing down the chapter and footnote number on a sheet of paper.

It's a fantastic trip for a futurist's mind to go down. Ray does it quite well without too much seemingly technical stuff in the way. Then again, I've been following a lot of this before, so it may be more technical than other people can handle. I dunno at this point.

It's certainly been made clear to me that by the start of the 22nd century, we will have either killed off the human race or evolved to the next level. Ray again is very optimistic about this. Me, I'm not so sure. David Brin asks a question that has been posed to him about how to push Artificial Intelligence and Nanotechnology without scaring anybody off. I'm really not afraid of nanotechnology. I don't see the problem per se with nanotechnology. Yes, it's possible to make nanobots that do bad things to humans. It doesn't take nanotechnology to do that.

Artificial Intelligence has the issue of once the AI becomes aware of itself, what will it do with its parents (us humans)? There is a comparison to the bad child. Perhaps. Looking at AI the way Ray does, what used to be considered AI is now just considered to be a computation. My feeling is that machine born AI will be by the nature of how it is developed, working in conjunction with human wetware, at least for the beginning period. Merging the two then becomes the defacto method of operation.

That's my thinking as of now. Give me a few more weeks with the book, and who knows what my outlook will be.

I'm already having issues with what Ray says where I'm currently reading, particularly about replacing the major organs of the body with nanobots. Yes, a nanobot might carry oxygen more efficiently. But there is no discussion about what more efficiently actually means. The nanobots are still going to be responsible for bringing oxygen to cells, and removing the carbon dioxide from the cells. Why are lungs no longer important? The nanobots will still need some sort of port to exchange the carbon dioxide for oxygen in the atmosphere. Or is the nanorobot just supposed to strip the oxygen out of the carbon dioxide and create a bunch of carbon atoms out of the residual carbon, and put that where? And yes, I do believe that we are going to have to keep the blood filtering organs around, such as the kidneys and the liver. We are also going to have to have our own nanobot organ that will filter out the damaged nanobots. And yes, there will be damaged nanobots. Maybe this gets addressed later.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/11/2005 09:16:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

And I thought Columbus was considered a cow town  

I went to a motivational seminar Tuesday at the Jacksonville Veteran's Memorial Arena.

The actual seminar itself was excellent for the most part. But this isn't about that.

Let's start out with the news that 10,000 people, extra people than most days no doubt, but only 10,000, were going to be going to this seminar. Everybody going downtown was told to avoid certain bridges and use Union Street. Of course, Union Street is the street that one was supposed to take to get to the seminar in the first place.

Can we take these people who evidently have no concept of how to get somewhere in this city and have their heads removed from their asses? Let's be honest, if a city the size of Jacksonville is unable to swallow an extra 10,000 people hitting the downtown, can this city be truly prepared to handle even a sell out at Alltel Stadium? Judging from the traffic before and afterward, the answer is no.

The whole day there seemed to be this complete showing of cluelessness going around. Parking was set up over a mile away from where the seminar was actually held at. Why? The Duval Agricultural Count Fair was going on (even though it didn't open up until when the seminar was over), and evidently the closer parking was reserved for that. That wouldn't have been too bad if the shuttle busses they had actually knew where they were picking people up and dropping them off at. The one bus that we boarded to get there stalled out and couldn't be restarted. No other busses showed up. We ended up walking through the stadium where there were two golf carts taking people back and forth. Yeah, they hold a whopping 6 people.

We got seats that supposedly we weren't supposed to be sitting in (a nice sign might have been nice to state what the heck the seats were for), but in the end, people were sitting in them. I'm still unsure on what the point was.

Lunch time was a fiasco. This restaruant had a buffet, but the line was ridiculous, the food was gone, and the staff was complete unprepared for what was happening. We ended up with drinks only for lunch, which meant I was starving by the time we ate dinner at Olive Garden. I had too many carbs for one meal, but I had less than I usually have for the day.

I plan on going to the seminar next time they have it, but if it's at the same place and during the same kind of time period, I'll be leaving at least an hour early. And quite possibly packing my own lunch.

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/10/2005 01:24:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

It's mine!  

My latest geek object that I'm proud of:



I love it! It's loud, so I can hear it (versus the C350 I had that could barely get my attention next to me, let alone in my pocket) I've already uploaded some ringtones that I've created from my MP3 collection to it, and snapped some pictures.

The outside keys are stiffer than the V600 that I was using previously (Thanks Mike!), so I'm not inadvertantly changing the ring (usually to silent…) or anything else. I also got an HS820 Bluetooth headset. Works great. Have no idea about battery issues with the headset. It works for me.

I really appreciate that I can charge the thing via my USB port. Not Yet Another Transformer To Plug In!

I also got the kids their own cell phones, and they are quite happy about that. Even the curmudgeon!

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/04/2005 11:56:00 AM    0 comments Links to this post

Tuesday, November 1

Mark's Sysinternals Blog  

Mark Russinovich:

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

I have to say either I'm not surprised, or I really wish these mother fsckers would curl up and die, considering what I've been doing in the past two weeks with the crap that's out there. Ugh!

Technorati tags: malware

Relevant Link

Permanent link posted by bytehead @ 11/01/2005 08:01:00 PM    0 comments Links to this post

 

Article Index

Nation's spending out of line
Sorry, but I've been a bit busy.
Upgraded to Firefox 1.5RC2
Commentary - updated
What color is my heart
What I'm reading—slowly
Salute to the veterans out there
And I thought Columbus was considered a cow town
Cat blogging again!
It's mine!
Right handed AND right brained!
Mark's Sysinternals Blog
List of American English words not used in British English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia