Cranky-D

I was watching CSI Los Angeles last night, and one of the plot points was this device that you can sit next to a computer and it will pick up all sorts of sensitive information without ever being connected to the computer. Right. Even if you can swallow that, they were trying to figure out what the code did, but they couldn’t tell because it was in Chinese.

Jeebus.

Machine language is machine language. I don’t even think there is a Chinese programming language (doubtful, because Chinese is not alphabetical, but you could still do it somehow if you like torturing yourself), but even if there were, it would still compile to binary, and disassembling that binary would result in assembly code in whatever language you would like to have it in (again, I don’t know if assembly language has been translated to something else but I highly doubt it).

Don’t believe anything you see on television. They get the stuff I know wrong all the time. That means they are getting plenty of other stuff wrong without me, or you, knowing about it.

Here is a good article on how one might create a theory and “verify” it with some statistical analysis while not proving one damn thing. No math is involved, though you have to understand what is meant by a “p-value (my interpretation is it measures the correlation of the theory with the data).”

Here is an article on how much pianos have changed over the last few hundred years. There are sound clips so you can compare the sound of a piano that the composers might have used to write the music with a modern piano sound. The difference is quite striking.

I was thinking that it might be possible to do something to duplicate the sound using sampling or other digital technology, and the feel by manufacturing special controller keyboards. It’s not the same as the real thing, of course, but antique pianos are not that common either.

Anyway, if you’re a music fan, I think it’s worth a read, and a listen.

Milton Friedman in a teevee interview some 45 years ago (at least) which is unfortunately still completely relevant today. Video here.

More Mark Stein.

But, even without launching a single missile, Iran [by acquiring nuclear weapons] will at a stroke have transformed much of the map – and not just in the Middle East, where the Sunni dictatorships face a choice between an unsought nuclear arms race or a future as Iranian client states. In Eastern Europe, a nuclear Iran will vastly advance Russia’s plans for a de facto reconstitution of its old empire: In an unstable world, Putin will offer himself as the protection racket you can rely on. And you’d be surprised how far west “Eastern” Europe extends: Moscow’s strategic view is of a continent not only energy-dependent on Russia but also security-dependent. And, when every European city is within range of Tehran and other psycho states, there’ll be plenty of takers for that when the alternative is an effete and feckless Washington.

More later, maybe. I’m currently annoyed with the performance of the US men’s curling team. Also, my head hurts from last night.

I don’t watch television as it is delivered because commercials drive me insane. Instead, I tend to avail myself of alternate delivery systems for teevee which allow me to watch the shows on my fantabulous 30in widescreen computer monitor (which, by the way, I ended up buying from my former employer because I really couldn’t give it up). So I am right now watching the CSI NY from last week(I guess) and they have car racing in the show, which is great because I like cars and machinery in general. However, they came up with this insanely ridiculous idea of a “Velocity Injection Chamber” which somehow stores the kinetic energy from braking and allows you to re-apply it to the wheels at some later time.

As I said on teh twitter, what a load of horseshit. First of all, braking converts the kinetic energy of the vehicle into heat, which is then dissipated to the surrounding air. Storing heat is really quite difficult. If you wanted a direct conversion, you would need a good way to store the heat energy in some other form and then re-apply it later. Good luck with that. Now, it’s possible to use the kinetic energy to power a generator and then store the energy electrically, and indeed hybrid cars do that to a greater or lesser extent to re-charge the batteries. That would not work on a race car.

Whatever. It did give me a huge laugh, which is always welcome. However, it should also serve as a reminder that they crap you see on teevee is often completely insane and unworkable. Most writers don’t know a whole lot about anything. Keep a skeptical mind.

Why does anyone think that government work is good? The fact is, if you work for the government, the money that pays for your wages has to come from people who do not work for the government. This is not hard to figure out out. The government earns no revenue that doesn’t come from taxes. The private sector earns revenue that comes from people.

All of the stimulus jobs, such as they are, are in the public sector. That means that they are not sustainable without more tax revenue. What I want is real susainable jobs, which means jobs that will survive a government influx of cashl, or a lack thereof.

Eh, well. It’s late (or early) and we are all doomed. It’s all over, kids. I hope you have lots of ammo and firesticks.

I’ve been getting back to my roots, as it were, since I’ve been unemployed. I have been a long-time fan of the Perry Mason teevee series, and have seen them all many times. However, I have probably never seen them as originally broadcast as they were about 52 minutes long and most of the time you are lucky to get 45 minutes of them on the telly. However, if you know where to look, you can get them for “free.” Yes, I’m a bad boy. If streaming video actually worked as promised I would just watch them on the CBS website, where they are all available for free, but streaming video still bites the big one as far as quality goes. I cannot abide hiccups in the delivery.

Anyway, I just queued up an episode, and I knew who the killer was within about 20 seconds. I paused it to write this. It’s really more about the process to me, since I usually recall the killer soon enough. I am hardly ever surprised any more. Still, it’s a lot of fun.

I’m that way with Star Trek: The Original Series as well. I can name the episode from watching the teaser. Yet somehow, I forget if I’ve taken my asthma medicine for any given morning. Early onset alzheimer’s, or just normal forgetfulness? Your call.

If you’re at least familiar with Metallica click here for an interesting cover of one of their songs. Worth it.

found on teh twitter

On twitter, someone pointed to this speech (youtube) by Ronald Reagan, made in 1964 during the Goldwater campaign. If you have the half-hour to spend, I strongly suggest that you watch it. It’s amazing how similar the problems back then are to the problems we still have today.

BTW, I don’t know if any of you watched Obama’s state of the union speech, but the Reagan speech reminds one how well a good public speaker can do. I hope we can find someone half as good soon, because we need that person to lead the small government fiscal conservatives to victory.

Go here to read about the Religion of Humanity and Obama’s place in it. Also, another good read here on the aims of progressives.

When I read the first article, I was reminded of the Star Trek - The Original Series episode “Return to Tomorrow.” In it, Sargon said something like, “Our minds had become so powerful, we dared think of ourselves as gods.” The minds of humans are not even close to being powerful, but so many think they know what’s best for so many others. It is quite frightening at times, but since they are apparently incredibly inept, their threat has been diminished for a time. Once one of them realizes that a gradual transformation is the only way to make it work, their successes will be more frequent, and they will eventually get their dystopia, all the while pretending it is actually utopia.

Links are from here

Another good read from Charles Krauthammer, another favorite political writer of mine. He is also a regular on the FauxNewz panel discussion on weekday afternoons. The only thing I have ever disagreed with him on is that he thinks private ownership of guns should be illegal. Even the best of us have blind spots.

I just saw the movie “New Moon” at the local cheapo theater down the street. I was curious about what the teenage kids like these days.

Wow. Just wow. That movie dragged like you wouldn’t believe. They could have cut 30 minutes out and not done it any damage. The only reason I can think to give it so much space is to give the little girls time to get done crying before the next plot point scene takes place. And the protagonist wallowed so much in her misery it was damn annoying at times. Sure, she had a reason to be upset, but she seemed to relish it.

Every young male in her life seemed tough but still sensitive. Her father was a doddering idiot at times. And we have 100 year old vampires going to high school for frel’s sake. Jeebus. I wouldn’t be going to high school. I’d be dressing up in period clothing from 200 years ago and wallowing in decadence and killing humans and stuff like that. I mean, if you’re going to hell already, why worry?

It could have been a lot better with some editing. The story was quite predictable, but it had some good action scenes. More of that would have been welcome. It really wasn’t as bad as it could have been, I guess, and it was pretty much what I expected, except too gosh darn long. Rent it if you’re curious.

That was such a chick flick, I think I just ovulated.

Mark Steyn is a favorite political writer of mine. Go here to read one of his latest pieces.

I watched/listened to the State of the Union address last night while participating in the live blog of the event at Ace of Spades HQ. I have never heard so many lies at once since, well, the last time I listened to one of our President’s speeches while live-blogging (or participating on twitter, I don’t remember which) the event. If you want a basic recap, the President did not “pivot” as so many pundits thought he would. Instead, he doubled down. He is not giving up on any of his policies despite the fact that they are not only overwhelmingly opposed by the public but that they will also damage the economy in a time that it cannot take many more hits.

Health care reform is still in play, as are Cap and Trade, at least in his mind (I don’t know how he’s going to get the legislature to go along with him, as most of them want to be re-elected). His solution to the problem of employment is a “jobs bill” which sounds a heck of a lot like another stimulus bill. We all know how well the last one worked out.

My favorite lies, because I agree that they are good ideas, are the claims that he wants more nuclear power and that he wants to drill for oil here in the U.S. Of course, no one is supposed to believe him. A few of the most blatant lies include the claim that he has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. I don’t remember any tax cuts, but I do recall some tax increases and proposals for more of them. However, one stupid big lie which might get talked about a bit is the part that the recent Supreme Court ruling that businesses cannot be kept from making campaign ads (which I think is a good ruling) somehow makes it legal for foreign corporations to participate in U.S. politics. That is flatly not true. The big story will be, however, that one could see Justice Alito mouth “not true” after the President said that.

The speech was his grand attempt to appear to be a populist while continuing his leftist ideology. He continued to blame Bush for his troubles, because of course he is not responsible for anything that goes wrong. He said he wants everyone to “come together” while making one of the most partisan speeches he has ever made. He berated Republicans for not compromising their principles. Overall he again proved that as Narcissist-in-Chief, he is the most divisive force in politics in this country. However, I expect him to continue to kid himself that he has now spoken the magic words that will bring us all together and let the healing begin.

If he keeps this up, he’s in for a rude awakening come November.

There is an interesting article here that states that some people cannot distinguish between a major and minor triad when they are played in succession. That just boggles my mind because the difference is so blindingly (or deafeningly) obvious to me. It was a little harder to pick out the difference when it was done in the midst of a chord progression, but I can hear it. I can also usually tell whether the key of a song is major or minor as well, though I can’t explain how I know it.

I wonder how people who can’t tell the difference manage to enjoy music. I guess they don’t hear it the way I do.

Here is a really good article about what is happening in the Chicago “inner city” which is my way of saying what it’s like to grow up and live in gang territory, and what is being done about it. Short answer: not a heck of a lot that will work.

In my open tabs I found another article on the subject.

The problem is one of absent fathers. A boy needs a man in his life to teach him how to be a man. Without that, it is much more likely he will grow up completely undisciplined. I’m not saying it will always be that way, but more often than not it will be.

How do you change a culture that accepts absent fathers as a norm? That sort of thing used to be kept under control by societal pressure. However, in our “no guilt” and “no shame” culture, people do what they want and no one tries to intervene and you get this mess which does not seem to have an end of any kind. We really need some guilt again, and shame. People who cannot feel guilty about doing the wrong thing will do the wrong thing way too often.

The whole thing is a disaster and I see no way out. It’s a sad, sick waste of lives. We as a country would be so much better if it was not happening. We are all Americans, and those who suffer living in that kind of sub-culture are no less American than I am. But how do you impart principles of personal responsibility to a child when no one around him demonstrates any such principles?

As part of the reward when we got the contract, the boss sent me a bad-ass 30 in monitor. Well, now that I’m funemployed he either wants me to send it back or pay for it. Of course, he broke his “word” which is effectually meaningless when he said he’d give me two months notice of my termination (though he gave me one month notice which is more than legally or “morally” required). He has decided that he will charge me the market price which is probably what people want to charge for them, not what people actually pay for them. I figure that if I pay about $600 for it then I’m not making a huge mistake. That will be my offer, and otherwise he can tell me how he wants it shipped back.

Perhaps I should just have him have a shipper come and get it.

Update: He wants $1200 for it. I told him I would have to wait and see if I can find work first.

Yay! I’m now funemployed! I’ve heard it’s all the rage these days. I have a lot more time to play video games and go to the gym and stuff like that.

Society, take heed, I may be about to become a burden on you. Or not.

Another way of putting it is that this recession has become a depression since now I’m one of the ones out of work.

Please quit calling me. Seriously, stop it. It’s pretty much over between us.

No, I don’t have any money to give you. I gave money to the campaign of Sarah Palin and that old guy (who I really did not like at all) who was running with her. I really couldn’t afford it, but I really can’t afford what the current president and congress is doing, so it was a trade-off. As long as you continue to back candidates who are not fiscal conservatives, 2nd amendment supporters, and supporters of the war on Islamo-fascism, I really have nothing to say to you either.

If I give any money, it will be to individual campaigns, not to the party. Just like last time. And I certainly didn’t provide my phone number to the Palin (and that old guy) campaign so you could harass me. I’m a little disappointed that they even gave you my number, but then again, I’m disappointed with the way the campaign was run by the old guy.

Find someone else to stalk. I’m done with you.