Archive for October, 2005
Quote of the week: October 31st
31
Oct
“You’re a college person so you can like speak burpanese in like…complete sentences…” – CJ
Jack Thompson wants to censor you!
30
Oct
Jack Thompson:
This guy has really made himself a credible source for irrationality and brought many smiles to sane peoples faces. The mainstream press loves this guy too. The hot coffee mod “scandal” in GTA3 is but his latest whipping boy. This guy has scored a lot of prime time interviews and news stories on major outlets since the early ’90s with, among other things, demands that 2 Live Crew’s “As Nasty As They Wanna Be” and Ice T’s “Cop Killer” be banned (those were big news items at the time), been a major factor behind several indecency fines Howard Stern received from the FCC, and been a part of damn near every news story on the dangers of violent video games.
This is the guy who insisted that Columbine was caused by DOOM being a “murder simulator”. He has sued, among others Time Warner Inc., Polygram Film Entertainment Distribution Inc., Palm Pictures, Island Pictures and New Line Cinema, Atari Corp., Nintendo of America, Sega of America Inc. and Sony Computer Entertainment under Federal Product Liability laws after a different school shooting.
His allegations led Dateline NBC to report that Lee Boyd Malvo, the beltway sniper, had “trained extensively using Halo”. He has been interviewed numerous times on CBS, including one famous instance in which he compared Doug Lowesnstein of the ESA to Joseph Goebbels. He has appeared on 60 minutes to discuss how Grand Theft Auto (he alleges) trained a young man to murder two police officers.
You all may want to check out the ChatterBox interview with Gabe and Tycho. Gabe talks a little about his recent conversations with Jack Thompson. Apparently the first thing Jack said after calling Gabe up and establishing his identity was:
“Let me tell you something, idiot.”
This utter professionalism is well-reflected in the text of his fax to the Seattle police.
“There are a bunch of computer geeks out there who think…”
“These idiots have been so careless as to…”
I can only imagine what some of his non-game-related correspondence is like.
The deeper you dig… the crazier Jack Thompson seems to be. Apparently he ran against Janet Reno for the Office of Dade County State Attorney back in 88. He made some pretty ridiculous claims, including that Janet Reno uses call girls. He’s also gotten in an e-mail flamewar with a 14-year old, and his quips make the youngster look like Socrates by comparison.
I hope if the mainstream media begins to give Jack Thompson more air time, since he is fast becoming a “celebrity”, these past deeds are brought up. To ignore them does not accurately portray his real character.
About “The Ex” – Part 2
29
Oct
My worst realization during the divorce process. My oldest had been late, or not at school at all, for 72 days out of the school year for the most recent school year, and 66 days in the previous year. Needless to say, this was about 1/3 of the days she attended school each year. Many things ran though my head such as “our house was within walking distance to the school – four blocks away – how in the hell could she have been late or not at school that many times?!”. Well needless to say, I was shocked and felt betrayed – not only for myself but for my daughter as well.
Last night (9/24), I saw her, her mom, her sister, and my daughters all at a resteraunt – my oldest daughter was wearing the same thing I sent her to school in the day before. Nice way to teach her good hygiene. Oh well, I guess they can only teach her what they know again – and I’ll have to teach her what’s right…again.
My youngest daughter has really been coming along as far as getting up to speed for her age. It’s been a group effort between myself, her teachers at pre-school, and her day care. When me and my ex split, our youngest was not even close to being up to speed as far as speech and language comprehension go for her age. She was 4 years old when tested and it was found that she was speaking and understanding at a 2 year old level.
She certainly wasn’t mentally handicapped, but rather handicapped in the attention area. She’s actually a pretty smart little girl. The problem was that my ex would rather sit and watch her triathalon of morning TV shows which included Judge Joe Brown, Judge Judy, and Jerry Springer, rather than teach our youngest, whom she was with all day long, how to speak or expand her language skills. When her shows were done, she’d put my youngest in front of the “electronic babysitter” a.k.a. the TV with a DVD playing.
If that isn’t enough, my youngest is about to turn 5 next month and has just finished up becoming potty trained over the last two months. Again, this was a major effort between myself, her day care, and her pre-school teachers to get her up to speed. And once again, you would have thought that she could have been potty trained by her stay-at-home-mom, but no, the morning TV triathalon was more important apparently. My daughter was neglected terribly by her mother, but yet her mother is constantly playing the victim. She can say anything she wants, but when it comes down to it, the proof was meeting my youngest and seeing things for yourself. Her day care saw it. Her pre-school teachers saw it. Finally, everyone else has pretty much seen through her “poor me” stories. There are no excuses for what my youngest had been put through.
Yes, I worked with her as much as I could while married, but I had to work long hours just to keep up with the bills that my ex had been creating. It was difficult to spend time with the girls because of work and school, but I did so as much as I could. I’m so glad I’m out of that situation now.
More about the finalization of the divorce to come – watch for Part 3…
MS-sponsored TCO Report
28
Oct
To be “fair”, here is a Windows vs Linux TCO study that was sponsored by Microsoft. What’s that? Oh, of course it’s fair…Microsoft wouldn’t lie to us to sell their product now would they?
Anyway, it’s still good for a laugh…
Megadeth – When
28
Oct
My most favorite Megadeth song of all time – “When” from the album “The World Needs a Hero”. Here are the lyrics:
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
{Dave Mustaine speaking…}
-
No one hears a word I say
And my prayers are never answered
But you’ll never see the pain inside of me
Stabbing me over and over and over
I trusted you and I loved you
And you spit back in my face
How could you do this to me?
When will you stop trying to hurt me?
I’ve walked a minefield for you
A career in hell with you
I have made it through the things
Others would surely die just watching
And the oath I take on this day
Is to know that you will be repaid
One day the the sun will die and the night will crawl
Until then, until I see your world implode
I wish you death and suffering
Misery to spare
Time to rehearse your pain
Face the last enemy
I am the last thing you will know
The last thing you will see
I see your death surrounding me
I know you, yes I do
I know you
{Guitar fill solo – Mustaine…song begins}
When no words are spoken and please are ignored
Your tears go unnoticed, will you say enough?
When prayers are unanswered and your calls are unheard
The pain cuts right through you, have you seen enough?
It all seems so deceitful and the verdict is lies
A black cloud of indecision compromised your life
When judgement has failed you
When your own heart’s impaled you
Your wandering mind has destroyed you
Will you ever know when?
When you give everything and the feeling is gone
All the giving is fake, did you fake enough?
When you take everything and you stay too long
When there’s nothing left, did you take enough?
It all seems so deceitful and the verdict is lies
A black cloud of indecision compromised your life
When judgement has failed you
When your own heart’s impaled you
Your wandering mind has destroyed you
Will you ever know when?
Signs
27
Oct
Attempting to find less obvious signs led me to examples that I had found in my personal life and my work life.
Verbal signs, such as someone speaking with sarcasm, somone speaking with a harsh sounding voice, and someone speaking with a smile on their face, could all be examples of verbal signs rather than physical signs. When interacting with others, both verbal signs and body language could be taken into consideration when looking for “non-obvious” signs.
More “obvious signs” would be street signs and safety warning labels – at least one would think so anyway. Here is one example of a set of very confusing signs. Needless to say, the signs do not make things obvious.
ENG-113 Assignment 8
Linux Tills
26
Oct
A lot of tills are running Windows XP Embedded for their OS. After speaking with someone working at the local Subway (I noticed the WinXP default screensaver going), I found out that the tills need to be restarted at least twice a day. My issue with this, of course, is that the bloated Windows desktop isn’t really required, but you can’t buy Windows without the desktop. It’s funny that people “upgrade” their OS just because it’s the “latest and greatest”, but did they really need to in the first place? Chances are they didn’t unless the OS was no longer supported (such as NT4 or Windows 2000). Even then, if they’re reliable, why upgrade?
UK retailer Matalan has migrated 2,800 tills to Linux for several reasons – two are that the tills would be more secure and easier to support. They have been doing so since the end of 2004 and haven’t looked back. They compared Windows XP Embedded, but chose not to switch to XPe because of virii that target XP systems, performance issues, and didn’t feel that XPe was a mature enough system yet. The regular version of XP has services packs that are issued, but would “require a lot of testing and customizing on XPe before being applied”.