Month: January 2006

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Funtech

OK, so for several years now, Apple has been selling “MAc” products running a Unix OS. Now,

Apple Shows New Intel Notebooks, Software

Well, you knew it was coming. Apple’s been having trouble for years now, as its percentage slice of the personal computer market has waned to pitiful single digits, getting fabbing for its chipsets, and further improvements in speed and features? Nah, not happening all that much-because of the problem of getting fabbing for such comparatively small runs.

Sure, Jobs had “promised” (to some squealing from Macrodific users 🙂 last June to deliver Intel-based “Macs” (that just looks weird sitting there on the page: “Intel-based Macs”), but apparently, the Intel architecture is so easy to work with Apple’s ahead of schedule (*heh*).

Then, there’s the bow to Intel dominance in announcing new Intel versions of popular Mac-Mac (as opposed to Intel-Mac or MacIntel *snirk*) softwares.

Change ships and call the new one by the old name. Sure. It works in politics, so why not in personal computing? My only thought is, if he’s going to try selling an Intel computer running a Unix-based OS, why should people not just save a BIG chunk of cash and get a plain box PC and pop in something easy like Ubuntu Linux or Mandriva Linux or (for the ease of use, “Aunt Tilly” users) Linspire? Folks who don’t mind a little “rolling your own” work could easily use Redhator one of the other Linuxes or even Free BSD.

A McIntel personal computer. Nah. Not for me. YMMV, of course.

On other funtech fronts: Kinda enjoying my homebrew firewall/router. Was getting a lot of worm attack attempts from Chinese servers and was able to block a whole range of Asia/pacific Rim IP addresses that are known sources of malware/security attacks with just a download/script that updates a database of the worst addresses 3X weekly. Automatically. Nice. Reporting a buncha ping probes from another user IP within my ISP’s network to abuse was fun, too. Lots more detail than other firewalls I’ve used.

Still learning to nav its shell, some of the commands specific to the software and such. Touching base periodically with the user forum. It was pretty easy to build and configure once I decided on what firewalling software I’d use. Used SmoothWall Express 2.0 software. Built a few more network cables. After that, it was pretty easy. Kinda kicking myself for not doing this earlier.

  • Old AT-based server case with monster power supply and AT mobo
  • 64MB memory
  • first handy PCI vidcard I laid my hands on
  • a couple of network cards
  • old floppy and CDROM drives
  • old, spare 15″ monitor (for setup/troubleshooting)
  • keyboard

Was/is fun.

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Superstitious Glurge: a rant/OTA Day

Can anyone riddle me this? Why do otherwise normally intelligent people insist on sending out superstitious chain emails? You know, the one’s that start out with some pseudo-inspirational glurge and then promise you a blessing or a curse: a blessing if you forward the thing and a curse if you don’t.

What? Does someone, somewhere, have a voodoo doll of my email address? Ooooo. That’s scary. *yawn*

Of course, some of the participants in such chains are not otherwise normally intelligent people. You know the ones. They forward the thing as an attachment. Usually starts with AOL users doing it and they forward it to other AOL users who then keep up the assinine behavior of forwarding the thing as an attachment. Nested attachments. Do I have to recreate the filter that junks every email I get that has nested attachments? Again?

OTA Wednesday.

Open Trackback Alliance

Link to this post (http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2006/01/superstitious-glurge-rantota-day.html) and trackback (http://www.haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113699582957838138/). “Borrowing” (open theft) from Diane’s Stuff,
“If you use blogging software that doesn’t have “trackback” ability built in, Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pingeris an excellent resource to overcome that small problem as is Kalsey’s Simpletracks.”
Or use Haloscan‘s commenting and trackback service.

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Time Out

A little forced quiet on this lil loudmouthed blog, until my ISP figures out why a scant 1/4″ of rain can take down 576 customers’ connections.

Back on backup dialup, and I just can’t live like that. (Hugh: I feel your pain. 🙂

IF my ISP can find where a squirrel ran across their lines and opened the spigot on my information pipe, causing severe leakages (don’t worry about understanding that: it’s highly technical jargon–heh), then I’ll be back. Until then, enjoy the silence.

Or not.

(Like, I can tell you what to do? Fav response to the jejune “Have a nice day”–“You’re not the boss of me.” 🙂

Quick Update: just looked at the “576” number again… given where my ISP (the local cable company) markets its product, that would be… just about their entire customer base in America’s Third World County. Ought to make it easier to track down the problem, eh? I’m sure they will, eventually.

*sigh*

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Social Security: Pricking the Ponzi Scheme Balloon

I try as often as possible to not only actually cruise through my blogroll (usually by hitting high points via RSS feeds, since there are soooo very many worthwhile reads out there), skim through news, google up (or otherwise search out) reads on the internet on topic that strike a momentary fancy and read a few books a week. The books can be fiction or non-fiction (which often means “reality-based fantasy” when reading an academica nut’s view of history or politics), eBook or dead tree, new to me or pulled off a shelf or dug out of a box for a re-read. (Current book-of-the-day: an online html edition of Einstein Defiant: Genius versus Genius in the Quantum Revolution )

And then there’s “real life”… which brings me back to my post’s title that ties in very well with a brief article I recently read in Credenda Agenda (one I’d somehow missed on first reading of the issue it’s in). Here’s a taste. Speaking of the Social Security Administration,

…If any private insurance corporation handled their funds the way the government does, the board of directors would all be in chokey.

Nevertheless (for some mysterious reason), the SSA does keep track of all the payments you have made into the system, and those figures are available. We should consider retirement age as that point when the government has agreed, in a plea bargain, to start making restitution. We should therefore gladly receive the checks, cashing them all, until the amount we paid into the system (plus twenty percent) is fully restored to us. At that point, we should compose a letter thanking them for the restitution, and begin mailing back the checks.

Now, that’s a moral and ethical challenge. One most people will fail to meet. I know it may be hard to turn down “free money” when I reach SS payout age (not that far off: I’ve been getting-and trashing-mailouts from the Gray Mafia, AKA AARP, for years). But once I do and then eventually reach “payback+20%”-or whatever I compute to be a fair (just, equitable) return on the monies I paid in, I will need to have made a tough decision to either return future checks of monies extorted from working taxpayers or become an accomplice in the felonious behavior of the government.

Perhaps a better way would be to fund the entire federal government out of one pot, as the Fair Tax proposal would have us do. That way, when taxes are applied to federal adventurism not authorized by the Constitution (any more, just about 90% of everything outside defense) it would at least have the merit of being “honest theft”.

The Fair Tax Book

The check’s in the mail at Basil’s Blog, NIF and Jo’s Cafe.

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No Records; Just More Bullshit/OP

The Junior Bloviator from Massachusetts on the NYT-induced twitter about Bush administration electronic surveillance of known terrorists’ communications:

”The leak in the White House was an effort to destroy somebody and his family and attack them for telling the truth… The leak that took place in this case is a leak that — I’m not excusing it — is to tell the truth about something that violates the rights of Americans and doesn’t uphold our Constitution.“

Here, Jean Fraud sKerry compares the lame Plame case with the so-called “domestic spying” flap. His statement is so full of lies and distortions (with the little bonus of a flip-flop) that it’s a classic sKerryism. First, as even the 9/11 Commission knows and said in its report, Joe Wilson lied himself blue in his weak leak. So any, mention of bias on his part-and a possible reason for that bias-by a White House source coyuld only “destroy somebody and his family ” if it were true. The cannard that Plame was a covert agent and in danger if her CIA employment were revealed is demonstrably false. Otherwise, why was Scooter Libby not charged under the law forbidding disclosing a covert agent’s identity?

The whole Plame Game was bullshit. Jean Fraud sKerry’s a lawyer (of sorts), was a member of the Senate that passed the law. He knows he’s lying through his teeth. The whole foundation of his comparison is a lie. Typical of sKerry.

Then rthe sKerryist flip-flop: he excuses the leaks harming the effort to gather intelligence on foreign agents planning terrorist attacks on you and me. Then he says he’s not excusing the leaks. And then, of course, he finishes his excusing of the leaks (flip-flop-flip) with another lie: that the leaked information (and their presentation as domestic surveillance) is the truth.

Well, as always with Jean Fraud, yes and no. Yes, of course the NSa (and probably darned near everyone in law enforcement and intelligence circles, except for the feebs at the CIA and the FBI–those agencies once primarily tasked with the job) want to and have listened in on known savage Islamofascist butchers’ communications as often as possible. What?!? You want folks dialing numbers, emailing email addresses, that are known Al-Qaeda contacts to have free rein? Even if those calls originated inside the U.S., the monitoring was of the email accounts and phone numbers of known contacts outside the U.S.

Jean Fraud (and the NYT and all the other squawkers in the Mass Media Podpeople’s Army, the Loony Left Moonbat Brigade and their ilk) knows this, and lies about it anyway.

Why? Because he knows he’s not going to be held accountable for his lies. He’s lied his way through life. And what did he get out of it? Well, to name a few things, a wonderful Christmas Vacation in Cambodia that is “seared, seared” in his memory; a cushy Senate seat as the Senior Bloviator from Massachusett’s lapdog; a rich sugah mommie to pay for his snowboarding, etc.

Oh, and a free ride on his lies that he would (and then did) release his records. If you’ve released them, Jean Fraud, where are they? And if you have nothing to fear in the actual records, why are they still not available?

Where’s the beef, Jean Fraud?

The poster boy for Bullshit in the new millennium as featured on the No More Bullshit button:

No More sKerry BS_button

See Cao’s post today, and


Join the blogbursts to help FREE Kerry’s 180 every Tuesday!
We’ve formed a blogburst group and here are the bloggers who are contributing so far. If you want to join the blogroll for Free Kerry’s 180, click here to email me, include the url for your blog. The blogburst is every Tuesday, so don’t forget to blog about it. All you have to do is encourage Kerry to set his 180 FREE, I’ll send you the code for the blogroll.

This is an Open Post. Link here and Trackback at Will (he won’t mind).

Searching for better stuff at Those Bastards!

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Well, I may actually watch 20/20 on Friday…

I can’t recall the last time I wasted an hour watching 20/20 (“Puff Ficto-Journalism for the Sheeple”), but this Friday, I may actually watch it, or at least tape it so I can skip the dull yappy-yappy airhead portions for something (possibly, we’ll see) a wee tad interesting by someone who’s not a complete idiot.

John Stossel is reportedly doing a segment asking “Are kids in the United States being cheated out of a quality education?”

I’m not holding my breath. While the broad strokes may actually have some validity, there’s no way Stossel’s going to have air time enough (assuming he has his data ducks in a row) to air the issue or make much of an answer to the question.

But he may at least have some information to offer, and he has a well-known POV and tendency to throw the Bullshit Flag.

May actually be worth watching. But probably not live.

Written on the blackboard (though scarcely 500 times–surely I’ve not been that bad?) at Committees of Correspondence, NIF and Jo’s Cafe’s Monday Specials.

UD: Is it a segment or the whole hour? Conflicting info. But an hour’s not enough to more than touch on the issue, anyway, but we’ll see. Comparing New Jersey students and Belgian students on a standardized test is just mean, though…

heh.

Update: In comments, Hugh weighs in with an observation I might quibble with in percentage breakdown only a small tad. A very wee tad, not substantive. And an observation concerning local SC state politics/education.

I agree that responsibility can be shared. The roughly approximate proportions are as follows: Parents: 60% (most probably more) * Administrators: 20% Legislators: 20% * Parents have the ability to vote. And, they can hold administrators feet to the fire. Alas, most parents are gutless wonders who REFUSE to take responsibility for their offspring. What I can vouch for is the statement(s) in the NewsMax item. What was written here about Gov. Sanford and SC is TRUE!

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Off-the-wall/0PEN P0ST

Every now and then, offbeat questions come to my mind (I know, I know–some of y’all already think that’s the only kind I ever entertain). Like, how many people can recognize their own neighborhood in aerial photos? I’d suspect a few more than can read a map accurately, but absent some academia nut somewhere weaseling some of YOUR money (and mine) from a spendthrift government, I don’t imagine we’ll have a fair ballpark guess on that any time soon.

Mystery01-b

0PEN P0ST for Monday—a few hours early. Link here and trackback. If you don’t know what to do, drop me a line or a comment and I’ll try to help you out. Note: for those of y’all still stuck on using the antiquated Internet Exploder, The World’s Crappiest Browser (hey, I understand: some folks are so conservative as to be positively reactionary in some areas. I have some of those areas, myself. :-), I understand scolling down to where IE has chopped up posts cos it can’t read the CSS specifying the cneter column size can be a pain. So, here’s the Trackback URI (right-click and copy, unless you have one of those even quainter one-button Mac mice, then it’s “Splat/options key+Click”–maybe, depending on your browser and how you hold your mout—heh). Or just copy and paste this: http://haloscan.com/tb/mnmus/113677098423922307 . The URL for the post itself is: http://thirdworldcounty.blogspot.com/2006/01/off-wall0pen-p0st.html

Can’t find the blogosphere with Mapquest, but Conservative Cat (who also has a—serious—DIRE WARNING from Ferdy about an email virus) can probably give you directions to current hotspots.

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An Answer to Murtha “Dhimmi-crats”

Michelle Malkin made the following video available for download. She also includes this snippet, as well as a link to the full transcript of the Murtha/Moran townhall meeting designed to elicit anti-war (really, anti-Bush and anti-victory) thetoric last week.

“… I think it’s a disgrace when members of our Congress –just as they did in 1975 when they sold out the south Vietnamese–are selling out our soldiers today in Iraq!”

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And just in case you missed it, in an earlier post, Michelle Malkin also provided the following clip of Sgt. Mark Seavey speaking to Murtha and Moran. (She has more from Sgt. Mark Seavey at her blog, linked above.)

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Poor players, strutting and fretting their hours upon the stage…

The Stupid Party needs to get some schooling in Texas Holdem, cos the Demoncraps are taking their shirts:

“Game Theory and Media Bias” by Todd Manzi:

It used to be that the press would report the happenings of politics. Somewhere along the line, the process became perverted, and politicians began playing to the press and engaging in behavior that was motivated solely because of the prospect of media coverage. The tail wagged the dog, and politicians learned they could manipulate the press. Today, the message of politics is delivered through a liberally biased prism. Not only do Reid and the Democrats make moves designed to get media coverage, they take full advantage of the premise that the people reporting the news are predisposed to liberal ideology.

And infusion of testosterone and an ability to call the Dem’s bluffs every now and then might make a difference in how the game is played in Washington…