Posts

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Pasty-Blasty

(No, not “pasty” as in pallid; “pass-ty” as in past. *sigh* I really need to work on the way my mind “hears” things… 🙂 )

Well, notsomuch a blast from the past, really. I never really made XP an environment I used much at all, skipping from Win2K to Linux/other ‘nix, bypassing XP and Vista for my own use. But here I am using a Windows XP Home compy to post.

Why would I do that to myself?!? Yeh, yeh, I use Windows 7 now on a daily basis, and I run some ‘nix environments on it in VMs (“My blankie!” *heh*) and even a WinXp Vm for a reference machine for when folks using it have difficulties and for some reason I can’t remotely log onto their computer to help ’em out.

But. Doing stuff on a native WinXp machine is just… weird. First of all the clunkiness factor. Then the fact that this is my dad’s old machine and really crufted up. He left it here after Lovely Daughter’s wedding weekend since he took his new computer home with him. Yeh, getting this one uncrufted enough to serve him would have taken far too long, and besides, he deserved a new one, and I had just the thing for him, since it was just one generation off current and was running a fresh install of WinXP Pro–no real learning curve for him.

So, while my Wonder Woman has left me for her annual MASL conference, I figured why not decruft this puppy and see if it can be made even marginally useful. I can’t really scrub the hard drives clean, yet, as I’d like to make sure we got all of his data transferred to the new computer before I do that. when I do, though, this thing’s gonna be the next PCBSD computer here at twc central. Sure, it’s just an old 1.3 Ghz processor and only has 512 MB of RAM and a mere 120GB of storage, but that’s pretty good specs for a PCBSD machine.

I can hardly wait. Seriously. Son& Heir will probably have a blast with it, and I KNOW I’d like another PCBSD box here at twc central. Just a really slick OS with lots of apps for everyday use. It’ll make a good all-around machine for when I get my office moved into the room Lovely Daughter has moved out of. 🙂

Oh, look at the time. No wonder my eyes are getting heavy. I need to get to bed soon, so I can wake up in a couple of hours and be an insomniac the rest of the night. *heh*

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What The Ø!’s Policies Seem Aimed to Accomplish

This.

[T]he crucial issue in Kyrgyzstan was that the prices were driven up by government fiat, albeit following a decision to remove subsidies which had enabled energy to be sold at less than the cost of production. It can be assumed, from this, that where government action is directly responsible for price hikes, governments will take the flak.

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LIAR!

“I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” (B. Hussein Obama-Soetoro, Dover, NH)

Emphasis unnecessarily added.

Translation: “firm pledge” = “bald-faced lie”. Go ahead: read his lips.

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Almost Prime Time

Microsoft offers some decent free services through its Windows Live stuff. And some crap. Among the crap is Windows Live Mail, truly an abomination. Among the decent services, Skydrive’s 25GB of free storage, accessible from anywhere you can fire up any web browser, in any OS I’ve tried, is pretty handy.

In the middle, stuck on “pretty good idea, lousy implementation” is Windows Live Mesh (in beta), a service that allows you to share devices’ resources on the web. Nice, but implementation sucks. Only 5GB direct storage, but that’s OK. “Likes” only Internet Exploder. Must use Active X controls. Nu-uh. Not going there. Bad juju. Requires adding the Windows Live Mesh application to enable access. Access from a ‘nix box? Notsomuch.

Opera Unite allows sharing files, media, etc., via a simple browser interface. Much easier, simple access and access control. All inside the browser. Opera, that is. Since I already use Opera for almost all my browsing anyway, that’s just fine by me.

Uninstalling the Mesh app. I have no use for it, since it really only “likes” Internet Exploder and requires using Active X, and I’m just not going to do that. Nice try, M$, but that one is definitely in need of some serious changes.

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Makes Me Smile

And not in the sour,  schadenfreude-laden manner D.C. politicians make me smile on the rare occasions when they do.

This.

OK, so Sarah Palin’s not the deepest thinker on the block (and the shallow “tax freedom day” comment is telling–tax freedom day is far, far later in the year than represented), and her policy suggestions reflect that. Still,  as opposed to most other politicians, she does embody a wholesome approach to political decisions that’s sorely lacking in national politics.

Makes me smile.

And the fact that she makes leftard asshats froth at the mouth and act like rabid skunks says a lot in her favor.

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Spinning the Moral Compass

First, the lede:

Morality is modified in the lab

Scientists have shown they can change people’s moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.

Now, the crux:

“The study suggests that this region – the RTPJ – is necessary for moral reasoning.

“What is interesting is that this is a region that is very late developing – into adolescence and beyond right into the 20s.

“The next step would be to look at how or whether moral development changes through childhood into adulthood.”

As far as I’m concerned, this adds weight to parents setting clear limits and doling out consequences for misbehavior that gives children a “moral compass” to guide them through childhood and youth.

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Unintended Consequences Usually Result From Thoughtless Actions

Well, thoughtless or uncaring or both. I really despise arrogant stupidity. Case in point today: the FDA. Anyone with more active brain cells than a head of cabbage could have foreseen this:

A centuries-old drug [colchicine] used to treat excruciating gout pain had cost just pennies a tablet—until last year. Now, the retail price has skyrocketed to more than $5 and some of the manufacturers have ceased production amid a battle over marketing rights.

You see, the FDA decided a few years ago that in order to bring “grandfathered” drugs under its umbrella, it’d offer exclusive marketing rights to market such drugs to pharmas that would place them in FDA-approved clinical trials to establish FDA-approved dosages, side-effects and what not–despite the fact that such grandfathered drugs all have long enough histories of use to establish such things already.

Long enough histories? Well, for colchicine, that’s certainly the case!

The price increase is an unintended consequence of the FDA’s nearly four-year-old initiative to regulate unapproved drugs. These medicines were sold before the FDA was established, and therefore weren’t required to undergo approval. After decades of use, the medicines are considered safe by doctors, but haven’t been proven to satisfy the agency’s standards. Colchicine’s use has been traced back to the sixth century, according to the FDA.

URL Pharma did just that with colchicine and now is charging a price for the drug that is commensurate with its need to make a profit–and recover the costs of the FDA-approval-process clinical trials it paid a third party to run.

Anyone with even one active brain cell more than a head of cabbage could have foreseen that result. Since I assume there must be more than one active brain cell at the FDA, then “unintended consequences” simply means that the one (or perhaps more–hey! it could happen!) active brain cells at the FDA either just didn’t care about “unintended consequences” or any active brain cells at the FDA are simple too stupid or immoral (not giving a damn about the consequences of one’s actions is definitely immoral) to be classed as human.

The same government that gives us the Post Office, the EPA, the Department of “Education” and the FDA is going to determine what you can and can’t do regarding your health care on a much, much more intimate basis come soon. Now, isn’t that rally good news?

Imagine how much aspirin would cost if the FDA lures some pharma into this procedure–IF it could even pass FDA-approved clinical trials given all its negative side effects!

Just shoot me.