Time Warner decides to crash computers

Article

Ignore the actual article. Look at the advertising on the side. It's already playing some kind of Flash animation. And if you "mouse over" it starts playing a rather lengthy movie. Mouse over , as in you accidently moved your mouse over it , and then away ... too late sucker , it's now going to play. and if you have too many things going, or you're on dial up , or somehow playing a full MOVIE when you were just looking to read a text news article is bad for your system.... surprise !!!! down you go.

There's no stop button either.

This is advertising at it's most obnoxious. A simple four paragraph news story about some japanese minister committing suicide, and suddenly your computer is now running a full out movie that you cannot stop.

someone has got to start building in "movie blockers" into browsers, that do not start a movie until you press ok or something. This is just insane.

May27 reboot ubuntu

Had to reboot ubuntu today. It had become increadably laggy, though it was still running. Probably something I left open had a memory leak.

It lasted a number of weeks before crashing.
Think I'll make a note in my blog as to when I rebooted it , so I can tell how long before that happens again next time.

Israel vows to continue attacks against Hamas

Article

Temper temper.


JERUSALEM: An Israeli man died after his car was hit by a Qassam rocket launched from Gaza on Sunday, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed to continue Israel's military assault on Hamas as an effort to stop the rocket fire, warning that "no one involved in terror is immune."


Oh come now.
Just because the Hamas has vowed to destroy your nation, just because every time you negotiate a cease fire with them they decided that the cease fire doesn't include rockets and it's ok for them to keep on firing them but you shouldn't fire back , that's no reason to lose your calm , is it ?

But whats wrong with the whole palistinian attitude of "We should get to keep on shooting at you but you should stop shooting back at us" ? You've lived with it for decades , why are you suddenly losing your temper now ?

This is really rude of you, and I think that if you continue , the Hamas may just decide to pack up their bags and go play with some one else. We wouldn't want that would we ?

Would we ?

Ubuntu's Death Rattle

Article


"Having failed to turn a profit year, after year, Canonical/Ubuntu has put all of it's remaining energy into this deal: from the website...


Let me explain the concept of Free Software.
Volunteers write it. They don't get paid. They don't expect to. They do expect the software to be given away for free.

That some company or other riding on their coat tails fails to make a profit is irrelevant. They're not going to stop just because that company goes bankrupt. They were doing quite well with no company at all involved in the mix, and they'll continue to do well when that company goes away.

Put the Death Rattle away. The primary producers of Ubuntu don't care about profit at all.

Iran says it's uncovered spy rings from U.S., allies

Article

Do I personally believe these allegations ?

Absolutely yes.

The US has openly stated it has made an organization to bring democracy to Iran. It makes no secret of this. Most US Citizens returning to Iran bring with them experiance in a working democracy and are quick to tell the tale.

Is this "misinterperted" as spying and recruitment ?
No. They *ARE* after all , convincing people Democracy is a good thing. Meanwhile the Iranian Government is trying to convince you that Democracy is a bad things.

So yes, in the end , with a little thought , I'm sure you can see that the charges are more or less accurate.

What do I think of this blatent US Imperialism ?

Let me explain.
The Muslim's of Iraq (under Saddam Hussain) and Iran openly believe that the masses are a resource to be exploited and killed. Police officers demand bribes from citizens and if you don't have the money you are dead meat, the Iman's (Muslim Priest) use their congregation as a conscript army to send them off in an attack against people they don't like, we've all seen the stories of the mass graves and so on and so forth.

The Ruling Clique believe that the masses are to be exploited and killed.
Democracy beleives the Masses are to be paid attention to , protected , even occasionally obeyed.

I am one of the little guys on the ground , not part of any ruling Clique and not particurily interested in preserving the "rank and priviledge" of anyone.

What do I think of this blatent US Imperialism ?

Go uncle sam go ! Get them Iman's and other dictators and shut them down !

Thats what I think.

Dell's Ubuntu Lap top

Why Is Dell Hiding Their Ubuntu Boxes?

Article

They are.

My opinion is very simple.
Don't buy a computer from a company that feels ashamed to be selling it. You *WILL* get shafted.

Dell wants to , only with the greatest of reluctance , sell a linux computer , and hides it to try NOT to sell it , and fears microsoft and their big stick... they're going to give you a cruddy deal , cruddy support , cruddy the whole nine yards and then blame *YOU* for while the sales initiative failed.

Forget it. Get a second hand lap top and load ubuntu on it yourself and steer away from this disaster in the making.

Ultra Annoying MS Ad : MS Forefront

I'm reading a news article , or trying to , from Wired Beta. But do I see the news article ? No. I see a totally blank page.

Except at the top. Where it's playing a microsoft ad for their new not-so-secure give-me-money-because-Im-too-stupid-to-make-a-secure-OS security product called Forefront. The whole page actually stops loading and you don't see nothing while this annoying ad plays. And only when it's done do you actually get to see the rest of the page.

Which was mostly ads as well , plus a tiny little part that was the actual article I was reading.

I'm not sure which outrages me more. The annoying extortionist tactic of making you watch the ad before the page finishes loading , or the even more extortionist activities of Microsoft for trying to make you pay for a security nightmare they made in the first place ! Thats like saying "I'm sorry for dumping excrement all over the floor, and if you give me 20 bucks I'll even clean it up."

It's probably the combination of the two put together that ticks me off.

Lap top Epiphany

Article = none : This is my personal opinion.

Dell has been advertising lap tops for 17$ / month (over a number of years of course). They've also been blathering on about how they will soon offer Ubuntu (my favorite variation of Linux) as an option instead of Windows Vista (I checked their website recently , 4 flavors of Vista , none of XP , and no Ubuntu yet).

So I've been waiting and considering. Linux , or windows on this lap top ?

When I consider the lap top a toy , and think I'm really just going to play games on it , I shudder at the price. In order to run Vista you need a 3ghz clock and 3gig of ram on the thing, if you want to run the latest games. And the price of that is out of sight. And Ubuntu won't run the latest games so it's not in the running. A cold shiver runs down my spine at this thought.

When I think of this lap top for "productivity" , I feel much better. Ubuntu runs good on my old clunker , it will certainly run just fine on a brand new lap top of even the most mediocre of statistics. (In my case, I'm trying to write a novel, my actual work is answering phones - tech support , and you can't really take that home with you).
Ubuntu makes me feel good. A cheap second hand lap top will do , no need to go further in hock to dell for another 3 years. It's basically immune to virii except for the few samples written for purposes of FUD, those virii can't make it into the wild without someone deliberately openning their network to it (I wouldn't put it past microsoft to do that ... they bought Red Hat and are now using it as a whipping boy , arn't they ? ) It comes with a wack of free software that's just perfect.

VYM = View Your Mind

It's not a complex piece of software. Little thought bubbles with writing inside it , but it's great for organizing your thoughts and moving things around. Too trivial for people to make a profit in windows (unless you sell it for a ridiculously high price for such a simple thing) such a product probably can only exist in the Linux environment where it's being given away by volunteers. It's my fave for figuring out what's gonna happen in the next chapter or so.

Abi Word Processor.
when it save to HTML format , it does it properly. I press space three times before the beginning of the line, you get three spaces ! Wow... I ran through like five other word processors that didn't understand that concept ,they all ignored the spaces and shoved the first line right up against the left border. That is correct HTML , but I don't care about correct HTML , I care about writing a novel , and it looks real funny when you do that. :)

To buy a windows based "productivity" lap top is a non starter.
You don't save a thing on the hard ware, it still wants high end stuff. And it now wants you to purchase an office suite for your word processing needs , nothing really comes with it. And it's susceptable to virii like all get out. My wife is certain to want to play with the new toy , and she doesn't know that much about computers. She presses one wrong button and that thing is infected to a fair thee well, I will probably lose all my hard work.

And what does all that extra fancy hardware get me ? Nothing , in a productivity machine. The hard ware speeds up , now you must buy fire walls and anti-virii and stuff and run it which slows it right down again. Not to mention that Vista itself is a pig of an operating system and will run like the dogs breakfast on anything less than 3gig ram /3gighz in any case.

I can tell most businesses run on inertia because the business case for Vista , or even most windows , sucks bad. Lot of people just havn't come to realize that yet.

To buy a game playing windows vista lap top ... is out of my price range. Plain and simple. To buy a Linux lap top ... is the price of the hardware and not much else, and cheap hardware like that , nothing like what I would need to run Vista. Even if Dell backs out on selling new hardware with ubuntu, I may yet stop by this place selling refurbished computers that I know and pick me up an old lap top.

Call it an epiphany. Windows priced itself out of my market , and when you add it up, I don't have the cash for that. And the games arn't that important ,they can wait.

PS:
Everquest 2 sucks. The promised "solo" content isn't there, the player population is dropping like a rock so there's fewer and fewer people , waste of time. Who wants to play a multiplayer on line game on an empty server ?

Matrix Online : Even worse... they're down to what ? Three servers ? Everyone is max level and there are darn few beginners coming in to team up with ? Again , might be a nice game but who wants to play on an empty server ?

Back to World of Warcraft for me. I know, I said it was boring ... but there's always new faces and in the end that may be far more important than the game mechanics themselves.

Microsoft, Cisco face off over office comms

Article


Speaking at this week's Reuters Global Technology, Media and Telecoms Summit, executives from Cisco and Microsoft touted their own products to deliver "unified communications," which combines Voice over Internet Protocol phone calls, email, instant messages and conferencing technology.


Wow, one sentence ... so many errors.

Ok , lets start at the top. Bundling.
I want to sell you VOIP phone (phone that runs over the internet , not the regular phone system) , email , instant messages , and video conferencing. But what if you don't want it all ? What ifyou just want , say the phones and nothing else ? Too bad, All or nothing, no picking at what you want.

This is called bundling, and it's evil. Why am I paying for stuff I can't use ? Because everyone bundles the same stuff together and I have no choice. Or there's only one provider for what I want and I'm forced to buy all this other extra junk I don't want with it.

Second. VOIP , the unwanted three humped camel of the internet.
Lets say I'm an ISP (Internet Service provider). I sell my services , my customers can surf, check mail , the whole nine yards. But VOIP uses up my bandwidth terribly, far more than regular surfing or game playing or anything. And someone else is collecting on it, not me ! As an ISP I have two choices. One , get into the VOIP market with my own phones and sabatage the opposition somehow. Two , simply sabatage the competition to get them off my network and reduce my bandwidth costs. How do you sabatage the competition ? Well , our internet is great for surfing and game playing because no one cares about the occasional dropped package, but Voip is highly affected by these dropped packettes , and the customers complain bitterly that they keep hearing cackling in their ear piece. Sorry , it's not our Voip , call the distributer. We did they blame you for it. Sorry , we never claimed *THEIR* product would work on *OUR* network. They're making that statement , they have to back it up.

Third. VOIP on the open internet.
Every ISP only owns a certain small piece of the network. Even if VOIP works fine on their little piece, the open internet is another matter. The VOIP signils , which are LARGE amounts of data compared to a web page , still have to cross a bunch of other networks that often feel they are being unfairly put upon by having to put up with this extra bandwidth for a product or service they never agreed to run in the first place. Sabatage time again.

How do you sabatage VOIP ? Simple. You make your network easily handle small packettes so that things like chat programs , games and web pages go great. Larger packets get broken up and get there, eventually , but maybe out of order. And in any real time application packets that arrive out of order are simply dropped, as if they were never received, and your video or audio communications just gets a blank spot or static spike at that point instead. And when people protest you just shrug and say "I only certified it for web pages and email. You're on your own for anything else. "


Rogers Cable of Ottawa is thinking of making it's own specially dedicated network , just for VOIP no regular internet traffic allowed. A rogers to rogers phone call would probably be a very high quality experience.

Unfortunately , when the guy came knocking on my door to sell it to me it was actually more expensive than my regular land line phone. Plus it would use my existing modem , slowing down my online gaming. And my wife is notorious for being on the phone for hours at a time , so the slow down would be near constant. I passed on that offer.

I'm still debating on whether or not cell phones will kill all forms of land lines entirely, including VOIP. I give it 50 50 all phones go cell eventually.

CRTC approves more TV ads

Article


Currently, broadcasters can show up to 12 minutes of advertising per hour, including segments promoting programs in their lineups.

As of Sept. 1, this will increase to a maximum of 14 minutes of advertising in prime time — between 7 p.m. and 11 p.m.

A year later, the limit will increase to 15 minutes across all time periods. As of September 2008, all advertising time restrictions will be lifted. The CRTC will review the impact of these increased ad times in spring 2008.


Ok. First off, you're not throwing 12 min of advertising in an hour. You're throwing 38 minutes. Of course this is likely to mean "local" advertising , as opposed to stuff the us channels stick in there. so while the total may be 38 minutes of ads in an hour only 12 min of those ads is local.

So ... where does the xtra three minutes come from when you throw in three extra minutes of local ads ? do you chop 3 minutes of american ads ? ( I seriously doubt it) or do you take three more minutes out of actual show time and replace it with ads. ( Most likely.)

So ...22 minutes per hour of show time suddenly becomes 19 min / hour ? And 41 min of commercials per hour ?

I say go for it.

Why ? Because the biggest gripe people have with tv is that there's too many ads. That you're paying , paying 60$ a month and there's more ads on than actual show ! Now there'll be slightly more than twice as much ad as there is show !

And of course, because I hate television. Nothing but a huge waste of time. Go ahead, turn it into the non-stop shopping channel , save yourself the aggrivation of trying to make these annoying drama's or reality shows or what not...just go straight to pure advertising.

Mean time , did I mention I don't watch tv ? I just surf the net.

Reliability of Windows Server over Linux

(An ad I found while reading the news)

click on the ad....

"Get the Facts" On Windows Server and Linux

Topic of Interest : Reliability


Study: Win Server 2003 Has Fewer Vulnerabilities Over Time Than Two Leading Linux Enterprise Distributions Study: Win Server 2003 Has Fewer Vulnerabilities Over Time Than Two Leading Linux Enterprise Distributions

Microsoft (December 2006): In a comparison of relative security, this study of third party vulnerability data found Windows Server 2003 to have fewer vulnerabilities than Red Hat ES3 and ES 4


Ummm....excuse me , Billy Boy. But you *OWN* Red Hat Linux. You do remember paying 348$ million for it , don't you ? Or is such an amount chump change to you and you forgot that ?

So , what you're saying here is "My Windows is better than My Linux because I hate Red Hat so I never throw any money at it for fixing bugs. In fact I even forgot that I own it sometimes, I'm so busy using it as a whipping boy ... "

Ha ha. The real joke is that this is on the microsoft site and he's really using it to try and sell windows to people over linux.

Sad , just sad.

iCoke.ca

The iCoke scam.

Bought a bottle of diet coke today. Odd , had an internet address on it, and under the cap was a number.

Go to the web site and what do I see ? Apparently you can enter tonnes and tonnes of these numbers , each counting as some kind of iCoke coin , and win valuable prizes. Oh yes, they want your email address.

You know how allergic I am to giving out my email address , don't you ? Every spammer in the world wants it with the soul intention of sinking it with massive amounts of adverts for their product. Dell is horrible for this , I had to put them into my spam list just so I could read the regular mail.

No email address in the world has a life span of much longer than six months , if you ask me, save a very few that are not actually used.

I'm not giving them my email. and i'm not filling out a form with an endless amount of 10 digit alphanumeric numbers , one for each coin. And then having them tell me "sorry , you didn't win , but hey ! We'll be glad to send you tonnes of spam ! Spam you actually have to open up and read ! Because it might be a message declaring you a winner !"

Microsoft takes on the free world

Article


Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."


Lemme see , you wanna sue some people for writing software and giving it away. It's their software and why can't they give it away ? And you've copywrited a number of things that arn't yours , AFTER somoene else wrote them, and now claim copy write infringement. BUT , here's the kicker. You wont' say which copy writes are being infringed upon.


...when the Supreme Court stated in a unanimous opinion that patents have been issued too readily for the past two decades, and lots are probably invalid. For a variety of technical reasons, many dispassionate observers suspect that software patents are especially vulnerable to court challenge.


Oopsie.... so most of your patents are going bye bye if they get challenged.


At the same time, Smith was having Microsoft's lawyers figure out how many of its patents were being infringed by free and open-source software. Gutierrez refuses to identify specific patents or explain how they're being infringed, lest FOSS advocates start filing challenges to them.

But he does break down the total number allegedly violated - 235 - into categories. He says that the Linux kernel - the deepest layer of the free operating system, which interacts most directly with the computer hardware - violates 42 Microsoft patents. The Linux graphical user interfaces - essentially, the way design elements like menus and toolbars are set up - run afoul of another 65, he claims. The Open Office suite of programs, which is analogous to Microsoft Office, infringes 45 more. E-mail programs infringe 15, while other assorted FOSS programs allegedly transgress 68.


You're breaking our patents ! But we're not going to tell you which ones or how because you might ctually try to defend yourself or challenge our accusations in court. Just stop doing what you're doing , roll over and die , and everything will be hunky dory for us.


Now that Microsoft had identified the infringements, it could try to seek royalties. But from whom? FOSS isn't made by a company but by a loose-knit community of hundreds of individuals and companies.


And how ? Excuse me , I think you should stop writing software and giving it away for free or we'll sue you , thanks. Sue you for what ? Every penny you made selling the stuff ... oh ..you're not selling it are you .... lol ... not a happening thing !


So they came up with a twist: Microsoft and Novell agreed not to sue each other's customers for patent infringement. That would be okay, because it's something that the GPL does not address.


You're going to sue the end user ? For what ? Not buying Windows ? Ohh..the backlash from that one is going to bankrupt you , Bill Gates. People are ornery and short tempered. You can't sue them into buying your product , they'll give you the finger and swear off anything to do with your company forever.


FOSS developers, who do not have the resources to defend themselves against a Microsoft patent suit, felt safe as long as powerful corporate Linux users shared their cause. But now the big boys could just buy their Linux from a royalty-paying vendor like Novell, getting protection from lawsuits and leaving the little guys to fend for themselves. What the shortsighted corporate types didn't grasp was that without the little-guy developers there might not be any high-quality FOSS for them to use five years down the road.



And that is the hole in all of this.

Linux is written by volunteers. What do you think is running through those volunteers mind when Microsoft , the enemey of free software , buys up Red Hat Linux and declares them all unpaid employees, declares that it's going to make a profit off *YOUR* hard work and you arnt' going to get a dime out of the deal ?

I don't know. But I do know they're going to hit the road and find some other free software project to work on, and Red Hat will suddenly stall and die. In fact it's already showing signs of this , the bright star of the Linux world a few years ago is today the laughing stock of it. The bad boy traiter / Bill Gates servant.

You can't buy volunteers, they go where they will. Congradulations Bill Gates, you have now purchased a several year out of date single version of linux and driven out all the volunteers that were working on the next version , so there will be no next version for you.

Mean while, the next version of ubuntu linux truely does rock , I have to admit. It's almost as if all those highly experianced and skilled volunteers suddenly found a new home ....

Whats that ? Going to sue the "employee's" for breech of contract , for taking a hike with the company secrets ? How odd, I don't seem to recall any of them signing any contracts. And any code on their machine would be their personal property , now wouldn't it ? Since they're not actual employee's of anyone, it's hobby code ! Something they're doing for thier own amusement , they are the only possible owner of that code.

You can't buy volunteers , Billy Boy Gates. So I gots to wonder , what did you pay 348$ million for ?

Nutrition labels not accurate, researcher says

Article


Consumers who scan nutrition labels on pre-packaged foods for fat content might be surprised to learn that some of the information may not be accurate, according to a Canadian researcher who has tested hundreds of products.


Oh great. We get a law that makes you tell us whats in the stuff, and you openly lie on the label ?


While federal regulations legally allow for 20 per cent variability on the food labels, Holub said that up to 15 per cent of products surveyed exceeded the legal limit. Holub identified two products, breaded fish sticks and frozen breakfast waffles, as two offenders but he declined to name the companies that produced the products.


They're *ALLOWED* to lie to us by 20% , but even that isn't enough for them ?

And you're not going to tell us who they are ? Thanks for the "feel good but worthless" news article.


In 2006, the CFIA investigated 123 food label complaints. Six companies were taken to court and received fines.


Ah..... the hacker in me rises again. Court cases are public arn't they ? I wonder if I can pull that up ...

... got one....

Article
Certain imported food products have failed to declare milk protein on their labels, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has advised.

BenCafe International Flavors’ instant coffee mix is being voluntarily recalled.


Wow, the cbc archives health and recall advisories is a gold mine !


People with allergies to egg proteins should not eat President's Choice brand pork and ham pâté, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Friday.

The manufacturer, Charcuterie La Tour Eiffel Inc., failed to list egg on its label.


Maybe I'll stop looking up that year old stuff and move on to more modern incidents


Thursday, April 26, 2007 | 12:42 PM ET

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has recalled 16 kinds of sandwiches sold in Alberta and British Columbia because they contain egg, milk and soy that are not declared on the label.

The sandwiches, made by Mrs. Willman’s Baking Ltd. under the brand names Take Away Café and North Country Foods, have "best before" dates up to and including 07 MA 15 (May 15, 2007).



Thursday, March 29, 2007 | 01:04 PM ET

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has warned people with allergies to five different items to avoid nine flavours of Tickleberry’s chocolate-covered dried fruits.

The Tickleberry's products, sold in 100-gram packages all over the country, contain undeclared milk, soy, sulphites, peanuts and wheat.

The products include blueberries, pastel cherries, dark cherries, strawberries, raspberries, apricots, cranberries, white cranberries and cherries with no sugar added.

Tickleberry's, of Okanagan Falls, B.C., has recalled the products.



Friday, March 16, 2007 | 08:05 AM ET

Certain Laura Secord dark chocolate products are being recalled because they contain milk protein that wasn't declared on their labels, Canada's food watchdog says.

The products were distributed nationally, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Thursday. The recall involves:


Thats silly. How can you *NOT* know that ice cream contains milk ?


The CFIA's alert also covers a second product - Jermuk Classic brand Medicinal-Table Natural Mineral Water Sparkling. The label for this product states that the water is from Jermuk Group in Armenia. The water may be available across Canada.

There have been no reported illnesses associated with the consumption of these products. Arsenic is a toxic substance and is a known cause of cancer in humans.


Medicinal brand bottled water ... good for your health ! May contain arsenic ! Only from Armenia !


Ok ok , thats enough of the copy and paste I think.

My source for all of this is http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/recalls/health_food/ , by the way, if you want to take a gander at the stuff I skipped over , and there's a lot of it !

THE widow of July 7 suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan was among four people arrested today in connection with the attacks in 2005.

First, before I begin ranting, I'd like to complain about how TWO pop ups apeared over the text of this article, blocking my ability to read it , and because I'm on firefox and I'm blocking pop ups , clicking on them did absolutely nothing.

it apears that the manchester evening news deeply enjoys being annoying. (www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk)

Article


THE widow of July 7 suicide bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan was among four people arrested today in connection with the attacks in 2005



Normally I would be highly doubtful that some criminals wife was in on the deal. Unfortunately , the suicide bomber is a different breed of animal. They are fanatics. What is a fanatic ? A fanatic is someone who wont shut up and won't change the subject. The part about blowing themselves up usually comes later.

What does this mean ?

It means the british bobbies are going to put her in a room with camera's and recorders going, and then some nice woman dressed in proper muslim dress , but sorry don't speak arabic I came from some other part of the world could we try english please ? Is going to come into the room , and agree with everything she says , be generally sympathetic and give her a shoulder to cry on.

At which point it's all going to come gushing out. Her secret hatreds , how she was just pretending to be a civilized person for appearances sake , the so called friends she has that really she would like to knife in the back ... it's all going to come out in full technicolor and graphic detail.
Then the cops are going to pick through the mess, use only the parts that will convict her, and ditch the rest in the name of not inciting hatred against a racial group, and all the nastiest of that filth will be forever erased.
Until they get her in court. And she starts shouting "Death to the Infidels ! I'm glad to be a martyr ! "
Because they're fanatics. And they couldn't keep their mouth shut if their lives depended upon it. Which it does. But thats not a possibility.

The cops have spent too much time fighting criminals with actual brains. Now ,fighting these muslims , it's like a runner who's always trained with heavy weights on his legs, and suddenly you take the weights off.

maybe...if they weren't all the same race...
... every cop in the west wouldn't be staring at them....
maybe...if they didn't all attend to their religious duties with fevor thats almost holy ...
... every cop in the west couldn't simply make up a list of who attends
friday prayers religiously and who's fast and loose with it , and only
pay attention to the die hards ...
maybe...if they could keep their mouths shut for once in their lives ...
... every cop in the west is already staring at you. Bad time to run on on at...
the mouth.
maybe...if they actually had a brain between them....
... they'd stop listening to rich oil millionaires that inform them "You go die,
I'll stay here and guard the fort" ... and get just a little suspicious of
that set up.

But no. Not gonna happen.

Bunch of womans groups will swarm to her assistance. Right up to the point where they let her open her trap in court. Then any evidence amassed against her won't really matter as she'll self confess her profound hatred for us all live and in color.

New technology promises super-fast cable modems

Article


Comcast Corp. chief executive officer Brian Roberts dazzled a cable industry audience Tuesday with the first public showing of technology that enabled a data download speed of 150 megabits per second, or roughly 25 times faster than today's standard cable modems.


Yawn !

The technology, called DOCSIS 3.0, was developed by ...

DOCSIS isn't a technology. It's a standard.
Thats like ...developing new traffic rules that all drivers must learn and calling those new rules a new "traffic technology".


"It's an exponential step forward and we're very excited. What consumers actually do with all this speed is up to the imagination of the entrepreneurs of tomorrow."


The answer to that question is ... "diddly squat".

Why ?

The cable modems we have today already go up to 10 megabits and what does that get the owner ? Nothing but a larger cable bill. Your modem is your ability to receive data. But the server on the other end isn't going to send data at 10 megabits Uh uh !

Yahoo , you see, makes its money by servicing as many users as possible. And that means that it puts a cap on connection speed. It's only going to give you one megabit of connection (or less) , so that it can spread out it's bandwidth among as many users as it possibly can. And most other sites on the internet do exactly the same (though where they place the cap varies). And that means that if your modem goes faster than , say , about two megs, all the extra is totally wasted. The server won't send at ten megabits and that's just the end of that. You can't complain to them because yahoo (and the rest) are private business's, they run their servers the way they feel like running them and if anyone disagree's they give you the finger and tell you to plick off and mind your own business.

Now you want to tell me you have a new toy that goes 25 x's faster than this ? Wasted !

I suppose , maybe , it makes running a server cheaper, which means more people can do it. But hey , 150 megabits ... some manager's gonna say 1 megabit per connection is fine , the pages still download quite quickly and we can service 150 customers at once with that kind of speed cap.

Your new super fast modems will mean a lot of start up businesses will be able to put up a web site without outsourcing that component. A nice touch ... but the average home user see's no benefit. Beyond a lot more web sites suddenly popping up. Most of which will be fly by night operations.


(edit) how did they get a 25 fold speed increase out of 150 megabits ? The ones in Los Angeles can be run up to 10 megabits and they're just ordinary standard Docsis 2.0 cable modems ? Little bit of the advertising distortion there , I think.

Microsoft and the malware market

Article


It’s neither better nor worse than others, but Microsoft Corp.’s security offerings under its Forefront Security brand is worth taking a good look at, according to one Canadian IT security analyst.



Lemme see if I understand this right.

Virii and malware *ONLY* exsit on windows. They do not exist on Mac's, they do not exist on Linux. Oh , occasionally microsoft hires some dope to write a linux virus so they can say "Look ! Even Linux has virii" but due to Linux's restictions it's a do nothing go no where totally helpless virus that can't survive in the wild and must be carefully nurtured to even exist.


Now they want to sell an anti-virus scanner and an anti-spam scanner , in effect make you PAY for their incompetance, for problems that ONLY exist on their operating system.

Why ? Because the others that were doing that (Norton , Symantec, McAfee , etc) were making too much money off of Microsofts incompetance , and now microsoft wants in on the action. (Of making money off their own incompetance).

If I could cry , I would.

Get off the microsoft wagon.
At the very least stop using the Internet explorer and switch to Firefox.
Better yet, switch to either apples or linux.

The only thing windows has going for it is that it runs the latest games. As far as productivity goes, get an apple. Or Linux. Or heck , even a game box consol of some kind and play games all you like !

Only techies like me who need to be able to say "I built my own computer from scratch" really NEED to deal with this junk. Everyone else is well advised to side step it entirely.

Businesses push for Ottawa casino

Article


"A casino is probably one of the singular most lucrative projects that could produce the revenue streams that would be needed to address or at least mitigate the budgetary gaps that the city is experiencing and will continue to experience," said Lepage.


There's a lot of sheep out there begging to be fleeced ! And we want to fleece them !


He added that the revenues will help fund programs for gambling addicts in Ontario.


We'll throw the social services a bone , even as we feed the very addiction they're fighting.


"I think it's a great idea," he said. "Since 70 per cent of revenues that are generated by the casino over in Hull is coming from residents of Ottawa,


They're fleecing our sheep ! We should be the one's fleecing them , not those darn quebecor's !!!

Baaaaa ! The wolves are fighting over a particularily large and tastey flock of sheep, and trying to get the sheperds (the elected officials elected to protect the average joe) to go along with the fleecing.

The quebec casino should never have been approved in the first place. Adding one in ottawa just makes it worse. What money you make off the casino , you lose on paying out an expanded welfare roll as these gambling addicts gamble away everything, sell off their life possessions to the pawn shops , and eventually wind up out of work because they were in the casino instead of on the job.

I vote no.

But I know no one is listening.

Me and My Belly

Saw the doctor on April 30th.

I'm able to walk half a mile now , and enjoy it, without break. I've lost several belt sizes but no weight , which Im' told by my favorite "Plumber" means that I lost fat and gained muscle to replace it , which is a good thing keep it up.

He also said "We have an opportunity here to get you in as good a condition as possible ..." and " ... this is major surgury , it's really going to knock you back..." See you in a couple of months, my secretary will call to make the apppointment.

*Sigh*

That we have an opportunity line sounds a lot like he's gonna keep putting it off until I get sick and he has to operate immediately. On the other hand , I didn't really want to get gutted like a pig this week anyways, so thats fine with me.

Feisty Fawn : The Nightmare on the Clunker

My linux clunker defaults to 800 x 600 screen resolution , which is pretty tiny now adays. And I didn't see any options to bring it up to the usual 1024 x 768.

Aha ! Proprietory drivers for my Nvidia card ! That will fix it up.
Nope. Didn't work. Uninstall them.

Those two sentences took half an hour by the way.
And when I uninstalled the drivers, Linux crashed. Total reinstall time.

This went around and around in a circle for about four times, which covered a couple of days. Linux, or Ubuntu 7.04 / Feisty Fawn , would install but stubbornly refuse any other video mode no matter what I did.

Then it crashed hard and could't read the the hard drive.
Then it worked ! A reinstall and it came right up on 1024 x 768 mode with the basic linux built in drivers and no need of proprietory or restricted stuff.

I can only conclude that Ubuntu is cheating. I'm telling it to do a clean install and ignore what's on the hard drive , but it's not listening, thus all previous installs were "inheriting" the corruption from before. Only when it couldn't read the hard drive at all, did it do a proper clean install and fix all the problems.

Four days to learn that. Better write it down somewhere ...