Archive for the 'Rants' Category

Windows Sucks!

Published on May 19, 2012 in Rants and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’m fixing a laptop for a friend of mine. It’s not something I have a lot of time for anymore, but this is a good friend, so I made an exception. Anyway, this box was completely fried, and of course, he didn’t have a recovery disk. So, after about 6 calls to India, we finally got one ordered, and it arrived yesterday. I got the Windows OS installed, and man was it SLOW! I could have installed Linux on 5 machines in the time it took to do 1 Windows install. Back to the story… After installing the OS and Dell specific drivers, I set him up a few open source apps to try to keep him away from the troublesome and very costly non-open apps that probably got him into trouble in the first place. First of all I deleted the Internet Explorer link from his panel, and replace it with Firefox. I also added Google Chrome so he could play around with it (I’ve been getting more fond of Chrome these days). I also added OpenOffice, and a few other odds and ends apps.

Here’s where it gets really frustrating. I was wrapping things up when I noticed an error message come up from his panel, and it said something like, “disk space low.” Well, I checked it out, and low and behold… the partitions were totally fricked up! Instead of giving me the option during install to do a clean format, it just installed it into one of the old partitions. I don’t even remember it letting me see a list of partitions during install! God, I have gotten so spoiled on Linux. Luckily though, I learned how to fix the problem without redoing the installation.

Afterwards, I noticed another error message that told me the system wasn’t protected with anti-virus software. I kind of giggled at the thought. “Anti-virus software,” …really? Such things are not even thought of in the Linux world. They’re unnecessary. Well, I went looking for a good, and free AV app, and I found one called ‘Avast.’ I installed it, and scanned the computer just to try it out. Much to my surprise, the thing already had 2 infected files! I hadn’t had this Windows box online for 3 hours, and it was already infected! I just have to say, there is no way in hell I would store any important data on such a volatile thing as a PC running the Windows OS. I wouldn’t even host my web sites and backup files with a company that runs Windows servers. I’m Apache, all the way!

That concludes my rant for the day, and remember… friends don’t let friends run Windows!

India… Breaking Bad?

Published on April 20, 2012 in In the News, Politics, Rants and Youtube. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Just a quick rant about India’s long-range missile test, global nuclear weapons proliferation, and our impending doom.

The Cove, a dolphin’s Hell

Published on December 16, 2011 in Rants and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’ve always loved dolphins. I’ve never had the opportunity to see one up close, but I’ve always had a desire to travel wherever they are, just to be near them, and maybe interact with them. They are a remarkable species; incredibly intelligent, gentle, and full of life. They are like living art as they glide through the water, traveling upwards of a hundred miles a day. Research has shown that these magnificent creatures may be just as intelligent, perhaps even more so than our selves. They use a sophisticated language that we are only now just  beginning to understand and appreciate. They live in complex social communities. They love their children just as we love ours. And they are often as curious of us as we are of them. Human history is filled with accounts of dolphins rescuing people at sea, and even placing themselves in harm’s way to protect us from predators. Indeed, they are one of the few species on planet earth that we could form a wonderful, equal, and meaningful relationship with.

Tonight Denice and I watch the documentary, The Cove. My stomach is still turning from watching the horrific violence that is done every year to the dolphins in Taiji, Japan. They are herded from their home in the ocean into a tiny cove, where they are brutally slaughtered by the thousands. They are butchered live common livestock. In once scene a baby dolphin desperately tries to fling itself onto the rocks, to escape the fishermen’s spears. This is so wrong! These creature should not be treated like this. I’m sorry, but dolphins are beautiful creatures, and they don’t deserve this. The future will judge this generation for allowing such barbarism to go on.

The few “lucky” dolphins that are chosen to escape the bloodbath are the ones that are sold into virtual slavery. They are the ones that are forced to perform for us at Sea World, or places where people go to ‘swim with the dolphins.’ I had no idea this is how these dolphins were obtained. Denice and I had ‘swimming with the dolphins’ on our unwritten bucket lists, but after watching this I WILL NEVER TAKE PART in this sick industry. If I ever get to see a dolphin or be close to one it will be on their turf, where we are both free, or not at all!

No texting while driving laws are a joke

Published on December 13, 2011 in In the News, Rants and Technology. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Texting while driving… yes, it’s a problem. It’s something I have done, and I’d be willing to bet that you’ve probably done. We know it’s dangerous, but we do it anyway. This is one of the big weaknesses of mankind. We tend to overestimate our abilities, and sometimes with lethal consequences. Of course, instead of admitting our weaknesses and making common sense accommodations for them, we pretend we don’t have them, and then enact laws to punish ourselves for doing things that we really can’t help.

Our cellphone technology is at a place where they could easily be reprogrammed to simply not work, or at least not text when they are traveling faster than a certain speed. The GPS technology that can allow a phone or other mobile device to know exactly how fast it is moving is already there. All it would take is a download of a modified firmware, and wallah… your phone won’t send or received texts while you are driving. If you want to use it, then you will have to pull over. Or, even better, cars could be engineered to drive themselves, then you could talk or text all you wanted. If you take the human being out of the equation, then you take human error out of the equation.

People are going to keep texting while drive regardless of how many laws are passed against the practice. Laws get broken. This problem could be completely eliminated overnight with the intelligent application of existing technology. But, I know you’re probably thing, “That sound Orwellian. What about freedom!” Ah, freedom… I love it. Freedom is a wonderful thing, but like all good things it has a dark side. If freedom is absolute, then your neighbor has the freedom to not properly maintain his vehicle. One day he’s out driving his beater and the brakes fail. Guess what… his freedom to not maintain his shit mean you die. Does that sound like freedom? It sounds like stupidity to me. Let’s face it, there are some things that we suck at, and following vital safety practices is one of them. If we engineer our machines so that it is impossible to abuse them and endanger ourselves, then things will be better, not worse.

Ideally, I would love to live in a world where personal vehicle travel would be greatly reduced. Having machines cart us around everywhere is not healthy. It’s one of the big reasons why so many people are out of shape and unhealthy. You have two legs, use them every once in a while. Trust me, you’ll feel better.

 

 

I’m sorry, but your Vote really doesn’t count

Published on December 8, 2011 in Rants and Youtube. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I’m on vacation today, so I actually had time to put together a little Youtube video. It’s about politics, or the ineptness of the political system rather. The problems of our society are technical, not political, and they will only be solved once we liberate ourselves from the obsolete and primitive system that we call politics. We don’t lead leaders, we don’t need alphas… we need to grow up, and take control of our destiny. Hope you like it!

 

Your Xmas presents are going to end up in a landfill

Published on December 5, 2011 in Rants. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

I am trying really hard to word this post so that I don’t sound like Ebenezer Scrooge. I like getting gifts, and I enjoy giving them even more. In fact, I believe in sharing and giving as a way of life. So don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say. The good will and giving spirit of humanity is one of our best traits, but the corporations and marketing industry have perverted this wholesome attribute. Let me explain.

Today at work we had our yearly Angel Tree event. The Angel Tree is a Christmas tree that has a lot of cards attached to it with the names and wishes of local underprivileged children. People take a card, and buy whatever the child wants for Christmas. Seems good enough. However, as I stood there and marveled at the mountains of Walmart bags, it suddenly dawned on me… most of this stuff (if not all of it) was made in China by people who work at near slave labor wages. Hell, a lot of these little plastic trinkets were probably manufactured by children working in sweatshops. We purchase this stuff with little thought of where it comes from, and certainly no thought of where it will ultimately end up. Not only are these “toys” the fruits of suffering on the other side of the planet, but they are also going to be completely wasted in the end, and be added to the unfathomable hoards of trash in a landfill somewhere. No one recycles this shit… no one.

When I was a kid, I begged my parents for whatever useless piece of shit that the marketing industry was pushing at the time. GI Joes, Tonka Trucks, and Transformers were all the rage when I was growing up. I begged and pleaded, and I even wrote letters to the fat man at the North Pole. In the end, I usually got what I wanted, but did I every really want it? Looking back on this time in my life I can honestly say that I don’t think the desire to have this junk every really originated with me. I was programmed. I was a little purchasing machine… a tool that could easily be programmed to drive my parents crazy until they gave in and got me what I was crying for, but I never really ‘wanted’ the stuff. I played with the toys for a short season, grew tired of them, and now they are sitting in a landfill somewhere – poisoning the earth.

We are all trapped in this twisted game of cyclical consumption. We work and slave to buy things that we don’t need and don’t even really want. We only want the stuff because the marketing industry tells us that we have to have it. So, we but it, but it doesn’t last. Nothing can actually ‘last’ in this system. If it lasts, then we won’t need to buy the next useless piece of junk that is pumped out by the Chinese junk machine. No, it must fall apart (usually by design) or be made obsolete. It has to be this way because if it isn’t then the whole system would collapse. We have made our dwelling on top of a house of cards that is trembling beneath us.

I’m not saying don’t celebrate Christmas. Do what you want to do. I just want you to be aware of the true cost of all this mindless consumerism. I want you to know that while you are trampling over people to get your copy of Call of Duty 3 at Walmart… about a billion of your fellow human beings are on the brink of starvation, and are going to go to bed tonight without the basic necessities of life. If you want to get the Christmas spirit and really get into the giving moode… then we have some real work that needs to be done.

Bah Humbug! (Just kidding)