Ha. We beat Texas.

Texas may be speeding up executions, but we are expanding them beyond killers. CNN has an article up about a movement to allow the death penalty in the case of repeat child rapists. Frankly I don’t know what to think about this.


My understanding is that pedophilia has proven most resistant to eradication in an individual. The most effective, and most instances only, long term means of stopping repeat offenders is to remove all possibility or opportunity for the person to commit a repeat offense. That usually means prolonged incarceration or removal to locations without child populace. The question is whether people who go out of their way to repeat offend, don’t want to stop, and have irreparably damaged the lives of multiple children should be locked away forever, or should they be put to death.

Frankly I don’t know. It’s really expensive to lock people up forever. I would entertain the idea that they help offset some of the cost of their incarceration. Anyway, it’ll probably get shot down as unconstitutional, or it won’t pass at all.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

Alright, one overused “Matrix” quote and now it’s on with the show. I just finished reading Martyr, fifth in the New Frontier series written by Peter David. I currently have about twice as many fiction books as non-fiction in my stack of to be read, so I’m reading two fiction to every nonfiction. It’s working out to be a nice little break between the nonfiction works. And now back to our irregularly scheduled Ramble.


This is the 5^th in the series of books and therefore carries a lot over form the previous reviews below. Captain Calhoun and the Excalibur are trying to prioritize what needs to be done first in the collapsed Thallonian Empire to help seed stability and freedom. They are contacted by a rather isolationist planet that see’s Calhoun as the coming of the once prophesied Savior that would bring peace to a centuries old civil war. Another group of religious zealots see him as a false messiah and therefore seek to destroy him. And wackiness ensues.

Peter David does his usual bang up job with making a compelling story, adding small human touches and humor, and getting you interested in the next story in the series. It’s a nice read to take a break form other things. Now on to another Peter David book in a completely different century.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

I must down to the seas again

I must thank John Masefield for the reference to “Sea Fever” above. I remember the first time I heard its most famous line was in “The Omega Glory” episode of Star Trek: TOS. Of course it appeared several times after that as well. I thought it appropriate as I look at the fourth book in the Hinges of History Series, Sailing the Wine Dark See: Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill. Ramble on with me for a minute or so.


This is a natural continuation of the series of books. Cahill starts at the earliest recorded history of the Greeks and begins to draw for the reader the arc of their civilization from dawn to dusk. At which point it becomes clear that pieces of Greek civilization were merely reborn again in the Roman Empire only to fade during the Dark Ages and reemerge in outstanding brilliance during the Renaissance. Therefore understanding the Greeks is one more essential step in understanding of the Western world.

It took me a while to get through this book. I think it was a combination of other things happening and denser material. Let me tell you, it is jam packed with stuff. It reminded me more of the first book in the series How the Irish Saved Civilization. I think that has as much to do with the age and availability of sources as anything. This book was stronger than the previous two in the series. Cahill takes up his familiar love of the subject and approaches it in a way most people will understand and spark their interest. It’s funny how many of the recent books I’ve read deal with Greeks and growth and change of civilization. It’s like looking through the facets of a gemstone. Each one is slightly different, but they all cover the same material. I can’t help but feel I missed a lot during the reading and would probably benefit from reading it again. Maybe later, right now I have lots of other things to read.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Equitability

Not much going on this weekend, except family and myself searching for a possible house to purchase. I’ve been told by friends that I have to stay in Clemson, but the way things look that means having to start a “Keep Me in Clemson” fund. The housing market here is outrageous, so liberty might be as close as I can get. But this post is way to short. Let me ramble about some other things of interest.

Ars has a little piece up about AT&T saying they support network neutrality. The thing is how can you have premium bandwidth services without that service degrading standard service? The only way you can do it is by running that service through its own separate conduit and have that be self supporting, cost wise. To use a highway analogy they want to put in HOV lanes for premium customers. That’s fine if they add lanes to the road for the premium customers, but I have a sneaking suspicion that all they are going to do is make some of the existing lanes HOV without adding as many new lanes as they should. That mans standard customers will be crammed into fewer lanes and service will be degraded without directly attacking it. Sneaky. It’s like saying you didn’t touch the water coming out of the shower. You only flushed the toilet. The shower turning scalding was a side effect.

Ars has an article up about the Cato Insitute has released a report(pdf) about the serious side effects of the DMCA and some examples of why it is so wrong. I haven’t read the entire report, because I have been rather busy this weekend with house hunting and being out of town. I’ll probably kill a tree Monday and print the thing. I can read much faster on paper than on computer screen. I hope some of the tablet and digital ink technology might help with that in the near future.

Dell is selling $10,000 gaming computers. That is probably why they bought Alienware. That’s also more than my truck cost. Spend a third of that and start buying a house instead. And get a haircut too. Damn hippies and geeks.

How much does it cost to sniff the cork? I wonder if it lingers on the palate. How did she crush the grapes? Is it full bodied? I suppose it has to be at least 18 years. Feel free to make up your own. It’s quite fun.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

What are you running?

Ars, one of my daily stops for a bit of everything, had a link in their journals to a find your inner OS quiz.

Which OS are You?

So apparently I straddle the line of brilliance and insanity. I've always said I have a well beaten path between sane and crazy. That's why I can switch back and forth so easy. It's the people don't know their way around that get lost. And I'm lazy, because I trade time for effort. Or maybe I'm just patient and think about things before making decisions. And that picture is just eerie.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Show Your Rights

DailyTech has an article about the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s push to support HR1201. They have a nice little form set up to automatically SMAP your congressperson about your view. So head on over and use it.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Hey where did everyone go?

It’s spring break here at Clemson, and I just realized it’s been 11 days since I last posted. Really there hasn’t been anything going on to speak of. So I’ll make up some crap and ramble to other things of interest that have popped by.

It’s Spring Break in Clemson right now, so things are pretty slow. I’ve been busy with some other things, so I haven’t even finished the book I’m reading yet. Like last week I spent much of my evenings working on a baby afghan for a friend of mine. Yes I crochet. Look at the About Me section of the page: Jack of All Trades. Anyway she’s due in April, so I wanted to finish it. It seems that baby afghans have become a standard gift from me to expecting friends. Anyway, on to more interesting stuff.

There have been some interesting developments over the past weeks. I’ll break them up by category and maybe chronology.

General politics:

I just wanted to throw this out there for a friend of mine who has been talking about a third party candidate being a real possibility for months now. It seems Smitty that Mr Greenspan agrees with you. I really like that he is retired and can really speak his mind about subjects he didn’t feel free to talk about before. I would actually like to see him do regular pieces in print or appearances on television. My grandfather taught graduate economics, so Mr. G reminds me a lot of him.

Advertising:

Some friends and I recently had a short conversation over e-mail about changes taking place in advertising. Specifically discussed was novel advertising and imbedded advertising. Sony apparently tried another new advertising campaign in the UK. Since I live in the US I have no way of actually finding one, but I did see examples of their graffiti based try in Atlanta. The UK ads look huge and very strange. Some strange is good, but a much of it is just strange. I think Sony needs to look for some better strange ideas. Then Ars had a nice article about the increasing amount of product placement taking place. Again sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s so obvious that it’s sad and turns one off from the product. Look at the picture on the page and realize that the poster on the window is backwards so that the camera inside the store can read it. Then again it can be done in an obvious and therefore humorous manner as well. They are testing the waters. They’ll sus out what they need to do before too long, but hopefully it won’t involve lawsuits, DRM, and broadcast flags.

Gadgetry:

As an interesting note, there is a brain training game for the Nintendo DS that appears to help fight back the effects of dementia in the aged members of society. Is there nothing games can’t do?

Another study indicates that a large portion of returns for consumer gadgets and electronics id because people can’t get the darned things to work. Most of the time it appears this is caused by poor design, design specifications, and lack of testing with users. Skip to the next section to skit the rant.{rant} I’ll tell you that I’ve used some software and hardware that was very difficult to figure out, and I’m usually pretty good at the “Install it, mess with it, and RTFM as a last resort.” I mean I can set the clock on most microwaves and car radios in 2 tries without touching the manual, but some things baffle me even with the manual. There’s inconsistent or confusing naming, undocumented sequences, strange placement of controls, simple features that would be very useful, aggravating features that you can’t turn off, and the list goes on. We have HP 9050 printers at work that require maintenance kits every 350,000 sheets of paper. After installing the kit you have to go through a power on key sequence to reset the counter for the new kit, except the instructions don’t work. We had to call HP and get transferred to an ENGINEER to find out the proper sequence. That’s nuts. Didn’t anyone test it first? {/rant} HP will probably put me on a list for that.

Crap this is getting long, but that’s why it’s in The Rambling.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of a Buck:

Hannibal over at Ars Technica has a nice article up about a panel discussion he went to about civil liberties and national security. It’s a good read, like most of Hannibal’s stuff.

Starforce makes software copy protection that some don’t view it as a good solution, indicating stability and performance problems they believe Starforce caused. As an apparent retaliation Starforce posted a link to an illegal download source for a game that doesn’t use their software. Dumnasses. Do they realize that legitimate games make me have to carry the CD if I want to play the game, while the pirated version has no such restriction? Ars has their take on it too. I’ve used No-CD cracks on legally purchased games just so I don’t have to carry 5 CDs with my laptop if I might want to play a game. Why do you want to piss off the people that actually bought the game?

Content producers had some interesting times as well. The music industry is cited in a class action suit for price fixing and overcharging customers for online music. If you have ever looked at some of the stipulations of the contracts they are outrageous. Apparently if company A and B have contracts and company C negotiates a contract paying more for each song, then A and B are obligated to increase their prices as well. WTF is that? But it’s not extortion to have you contract canceled.

Apparently DRM actually does shorten you life expectancy., well your battery life expectancy. All those hoops your battery operated gadgetry has to jump through to use your legally purchased or created media files sucks down more juice than using unprotected files. No surprises there, but it’s nice to have numbers to illustrate it.

The CRIA kind of shot themselves in the foot with a study the commissioned. Apparently the people trading music online actually buy more music than people that don’t trade music online. Imagine that. It’s like they like music or something. Plus it digs the foundation out form under the music industry’s assumption that each downloaded song is a lost sale. Many of the downloaded songs actually lead to later sales. I have friends that try the album before they buy instead of returning a crappy album later.

Free Range TV

One of the reasons that the copy protection system for DVDs was broken so soon was some weak hardware allowed access to information that sped up the process. Some later weaknesses allowed hardware to do things it wasn’t supposed to normally do. To prevent that with new HD content all sorts of systems are being developed. Intel has one that seeks mandatory fines if weak implementation leads to holes. I’m sure that every hardware maker wants to jump onboard something that is almost guaranteed to cause them fines. Next!

Here’s a rundown of how IPTV, television over the internet, looks to be working out. Yay faster Internet connections. Boo, all the bandwidth is eaten up when watching or recording more than one channel.

HDCP on HDMI video connections were created to only allow you control over HD content that the content creator deems appropriate. I think it’s because we are all dirty pirates at heart. Anyway it lead to a big scare that all the current analog HDTV sets would not be supported at full resolution by new components. Sony has said that their media will play at full resolution, but all other studios still have the ability to set lower resolutions. If they know what’s good for them they will follow Sony’s lead. I can’t believe I just said that. I think I threw up in my mouth a little. I need to go gargle. But then that begs the question of why we need to do away with analog and use HDCP and HDMI protection the first place.

Warner announces release dates for HD DVD versions of movies, and they look to cost a few bucks less than expected Blu-ray discs. Who gives a crap? I’m not buying any of them for at least 2 years anyway.

Hey, scroll down. I’m done with that page.

I’m glad Google fought the fight, even if it was probably to protect their technology. I love how the Judge handed down the ruling in the Google case and was going to decide the extent of complying later. Maybe he was too busy watching American Idol and voting for Taylor Hicks (Shameless plug for Smitty’s favorite) to get it all typed up. Then he came back and ruled Google would have to turn over 50,000 random web addresses but no search terms. I’m not sure what they will use the data for, but that sounds like a lot of work for something they could have done their own web crawl for. I’m kind hoping it’s useless. The future implications are interesting though, hence appreciating Google fighting it.

With all this talk about wiretapping and such VoIP tapping has become a concern as well. Leave it to the creator of PGP to come up with an encryption scheme for VoIP communications making them much harder to listen in on. This could be fun to watch.

New Wrinkle in Tiered Internet

Tiered Internet is a scheme to improve the transmission speed of certain traffic by prioritizing instead of upgrading the lines to bigger ones. That sounds fine until you realize it means the people who pay for “priority” get the short end of the stick, and if everyone pays then it’s the same as if no one does. You buy a connection of a certain speed, but you never see that speed because you didn’t pay extra for “priority.” It’s especially problematic for low or fixed income groups. So stepping up on the side of network neutrality is none other the AARP. I think the ISPs should throw in the towel.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Literary Consolidation 1-10

Or the Reader’s Digest Condensed Edition. The page length was getting pretty long with all the previously read books down there, so rather than remove them I decided to shift the oldest ten into post. I’ll give the picture as a link to where it can be purchased, in exchange for using the picture, a little bit about each book, and a link to my original take on the book.

10.

Charles Van Doren last out a lot of big picture changes to what society has seen as knowledge and taken for granted. This is an excellent book to read along with other big picture books like Guns Germs, and Steel below.

My Take


9.

I really like the two Stephen Hawking books I have read. In this book, he describes some of the most difficult theories of physics in ways most people can understand. Take back scientific understanding America.
My Take


8.

Bruce Campbell, self proclaimed “Working Stiff,” is one of my favorite actors, primarily because he seems to be such a great guy. This book is hilarious and is a must read for anyone thinking about an acting career.

My Take


7.

This is the second of the return of Arthur books after Knight Life below. Peter David continues Arthur’s adventures in this well written and entertaining sequel.


My Take


6.

This Pulitzer Prize winning book covers a few events in the lives of the Founding Fathers of the United States in a ways that makes them seem more human and more understandable than any other book I’ve read.

My Take


5.

Harry Turtledove, the master of alternate history, constructs an exciting tale of fantasy around a rather strange yet familiar civil war.



My Take


4.

This is the first in Thomas Cahill’s hinges of History series. His love of the history of the Irish people is heartwarming.



My Take


3.

This fun little book is about King Arthur returning to modern day New York and running for mayor. Peter David is always entertaining in my book.



My Take


2.

This wonderful Pulitzer Prize winning book gives an overview of the environmental, knowledge, and biological pressures and gifts that lead to the current state of the modern world. For “Big Picture” books this is one of the best.

My Take


1.

It’s an interesting nonfiction book that covers a few events in history that have a tendency to be ignored or misrepresented in textbooks and history education in most schools.


My Take

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Off to New Frontiers

I just finished reading the first four books of the New Frontier series by Peter David. Don’t be too shocked, each of the books is only about 150 pages long. Given the font size of the books compared to other books I’ve read that means they weren’t that long. I read all 4 at once because they are basically one book, and allowed them only one place on the read list. In fact given a slightly smaller font they could easy have been combined into a 400 page book instead of a 600+ one. The books were sold at the lesser price of $4 to try to get people interested (My guess). I acquired two new ones and two used ones in excellent condition, and the books are old enough that the pulpy paper has started to yellow. I’ll put the covers up as I ramble.

I’ve talked about several Peter David books on here, and this is definitely him. The basic story is the beginning of a new Star Trek series that was created by David and John J. Ordover. David writes or edits all of the books in the series, as far as I know. That provides a consistency to plots, characters, back story, etc. that is usually not seen in ST shows until the middle of the second or beginning of the third season. In fact it is more like the Babylon 5 series in that regard. Anyway, that also means that the books are more serial in nature than many of the ST TV shows.

Anyway, the basic storyline is that the Thallonian Empire has essentially collapsed and the ruling family is basically dead. The space they controlled is suddenly rife with conflict now that the iron fist of peace the Empire wielded is gone. The Federation isn’t pleased by the chaos that is ensuing in the area, and after negotiations with nearby peoples, exert itself and decides to send in one lone Starship to map the unknown area and help stabilize what it can. The Captain chosen is Mackenzie Calhoun. At the age of 19 he led his people to throw an occupying force off his home planet. Since the planet is near that area, he knows some of the parties involved. He’s also battle hardened from the word go, quick of wit, crazy like a fox, an expert at infiltration and hand combat, and he knows how to handle despots. He’s either going to beat the sector into submission, or he is going to blow it up. And for this fun ride he takes along one of the oddest crews Starfleet has ever put together.

I liked the book about like I’ve liked most of the stuff I’ve read from PD. He puts enough humor in them to make them fun, and enough twists and problems to keep you thinking. One of the beauties of being a book is that he can have characters that would be nearly impossible to have one a TV show or movie. As you would expect, knowledge of the Star Trek universe is of great beneficial, but it isn’t required. In fact, it wouldn’t be PD without it, there are little jokes and touches that are added in that require knowledge if the TV series and movies to fully understand.

If you like ST and follow the series, then you will probably like these as well. I think they are little crack books. I seriously finished one a day. I’m going back to non-fiction now.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

That Which It Beheld

I hate Arthur C. Clarke like an addict hates his dealer. Every time I read one of his books, I get suckered in, and want to read more. Time’s Eye is one of those books, like when I read Light of Other Days. Then the book makes me want to ramble about it to everyone.

Time’s Eye is the first in a series of books called A Time Odyssey. The second one should be out now from what I understand. This is another book written by Clarke and Stephen Baxter. After finishing it I had the almost overwhelming urge to read the entire 2001-3001 Space Odyssey series and also the Manifold Series by Baxter. My understanding is that the series are similar in scope and idea. However rather than being in the same or parallel timelines they are more like orthogonal to each other. That idea is interesting, and it actually makes a lot of sense. I liked LoOD by Clarke and Baxter, and this one didn’t disappoint. Clarke and Baxter both seem to have a way of taking on big ideas and subjects in a well done manner. Working together seems to suit them.

The book starts off with an interesting premise. Suddenly and without apparent warning, the earth is instantly carved up into pieces and then reassembled with different pieces being from different times. A UN helicopter from 2037 Afghanistan is hit by a RPG and crashes in front of a fort manned by British troops from 1885. The troops capture a pair of australopithecine, mother and child, less than 2 kilometers from the fort. A Soyuz capsule detached from the ISS and was directly over the helicopter at the instant of Discontinuity and is the only manmade object in orbit. The pictures they send to the downed chopper crew show a patchwork world. Acres of disjoint forest have appeared in the Sahara, odd geometric shapes of glaciers dot the northern hemisphere, England and Europe are lush with forest, the Americas are untouched except for a few square miles of what appears to be mid to late 1800’s Chicago surrounded by glacier pieces, campfires on the Asian steppes, and the only other radio signal is very powerful and is coming from the Euphrates river valley in a city that looks far to old and Babylonian to be broadcasting anything.

The Soyuz crew de-orbits into the steppes as planned, and the British fort discovers an army to a few days journey away. The British and UN crew discover it is a Macedonian army and are brought before one Alexander the Great. The Soyuz crew is captured by nomads and is brought before their leader Genghis Khan. Both parties set out for the radio signal, unbeknownst to each other. And then wackiness ensues. Well not wackiness. More like hardship and lots of death.

This is just a pretty dang good book. It has nice dialog and plot development. The characters are understandable and fairly well developed. The real jewel is the believability of the characters from the different times. The details that the authors fill in for activities, equipment, explaining ideas, and all of the small differences and large similarities between the different people are impressive. I feel that I actually have a better understanding of Alexander and Genghis and their worlds. It was just a great time and a competing read.

Then Baxter goes and mentions several alternate history books based on Alexander the Great, and makes me want to read them all. He does have an interesting point that most of the alternate histories revolve around Alexander’s early death, and that they almost inevitably end up creating a world worse off than we are today. More stuff to read. Crap.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Isn’t their finger getting cold?

I meant to post this the other day, but I was easily distra… Ooh shiny. Oh and in response to a friend of mine’s choice of esoteric titles, I challenge you to figure this one out. Ramble along with the rambling ramblebee.

The MPAA held a short talk to movie industry folks a few days ago talking about the steps they were taking stop piracy and eliminate the “Analog Hole.” Ars Technica, per usual, has a good article about it. The rapidly changing, difficult to use, and overly limiting technology changes being forced on consumers by the MPAA and others apparently has many of the content creators worried that these restrictions and difficulties are going to piss the consumers off and make them shy away from the new tech. I think they have good reason to worry. I would also expect them to have a lot of returns by people that buy new sets and equipment only to get it home and realize it won’t interface with any of the older stuff they have. It’s just not smart. Lets piss the people off that are buying the stuff. The funniest part is that the legal stuff won’t work very well, but the pirated content and non-crippled hardware will work great. Pirates must be loving this because it signals a lot more people will be looking for content that, to use an Apple phase, “Just Works.”

It reminds me of when George Lucas said he wasn’t going to release DVDs of Star Wars, because he was afraid of pirates. I personally think that it was a load of bunk cooked up by Lucas to drive up interest and therefore sales when the movies were finally released. I remember at the time that there was a petition that you could go to a web site, sign, and add a comment. I remember saying in the comment that the logic made no sense. The movies are already available for download, and at the time movies downloaded over the Internet looked much worse than DVD, because of the compression needed to shrink their size. The DVDs would therefore sell for quality reasons. I said that DVD had been out for a while and was growing quickly, and sales would far outweigh any piracy loses. Plus HDTV was coming, probably with a new video disc format as well. I said that if he sold SW now, he could sell an HD version to the same people in 5 years or so milking the cow twice. It turned out to be more like 8 years though. If he waited people would definitely seek out pirated copies to fill a need and then he might only be able to sell the movies one time. Logic said give it to them quick at a price that would flood the market with legitimate copies, and make pirating uneconomical.

The funniest part is that the legal content won’t work very well, but the pirated content and non-crippled hardware will work great. Pirates must love this because it signals a lot more people will be looking for content that, to use an Apple phrase, “Just Works.” The pirates will e able to do that, but the industry won’t.

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.

Just When I Needed You

It’s time for student body presidential elections on campus again, and the signs and flesh pressers are out in droves. I wanted to provide what little support I can for the most exciting candidate out there today. I want to remind everyone to:

Vote Robot

F0r teh \/\/1|\|

Click for the rest of the rambling >>.