A recent article in the Chicago Sun Times (not necessarily a paper I read, but I found the article on the web) poignantly points out a problem with our politically correct culture. The article is about Heidi Zamecnik's attempt to wear a T-shirt that didn't support the gay lifestyle. On the day after the "Day of Silence" in 2006, Heidi wore a T-shirt that said "BE HAPPY, NOT GAY". The Dean of Students at her school told her to remove the T-shirt of leave because her message "offended others". Whoa... Apparently it is OK to offend Christians by promoting a lifestyle counter to God's command, but possibly offending other students is not OK.
Face it, Christianity is an offensive religion, at least in the eyes of the world. This has been true since Christ started his ministry on earth, and is just as true today as ever before. Now that the hair on the back of your neck is raised if you're a Christian, or you are chuckling to yourselves if you are not, let me explain. Christians believe that Christ and only Christ can redeem us from our sins and that he died on a cross to pay the penalty for our sins, past, present, and future. Christians believe that only a personal relationship with Christ can grant us everlasting life. I would imagine this is pretty offensive to the current culture that believes anything goes as long as it doesn't hurt someone.
The difficulty with that view is that how can you know whether you've hurt someone (including yourself) or not? To know whether you've hurt someone requires omniscient knowledge of the results of your actions. Unfortunately that isn't something we as humans can ever know. Almost by definition we can't be omniscient. We can't see into the future and see the results of our actions. Only an omniscient God can see the impact our decisions and actions make upon ourselves and others throughout all time.
Although there is almost universal belief that harming someone else without "cause" is bad, that belief is likewise faulty in that it assumes something about what is "cause" or "just", what is "bad", and what is "harm". The only way to have a real understanding of what is appropriate "cause" or suitably "just" or to really know whether something is harmful or not is to have measuring stick. If one uses the culture's measuring stick that is relative to one's background, feelings, belief, experiences, etc., then we can't know what is "just" or causes "harm" for someone else because it is all relative to what we believe and value. This is why we need the absolute truth of God to help us discern what is "just" or "bad" or "harmful". Again, only an omniscient God can know those things for everyone.
What does all of the above rambling mean? Well first that the relative truth of the world will only lead to conflict or sin as it ultimately leads to the conclusion that everything is truth, which obviously can't be the case. That to know what is really truth requires an intimate relationship with our creator who ultimately knows what is right and wrong or what is truth and what is lie. This is why Satan is referred to as the great deceiver as his "truth" is really a lie and he deceives us into believing that he has the truth. This is certainly going to "offend" those that believe anything goes as it means they are wrong.
What is really sad in the action taken by Bryan Wells, Dean of Students at Heidi's school, is that it is apparently OK to offend Christians by promoting a lifestyle that is offensive to God, but that it is not OK to offend those same people by advocating a different lifestyle. As Christians, we have been put on the defensive. The culture says it's OK to espouse Wiccan ideology, Satan worship, Scientology, or any other loony belief system, but promoting Christian beliefs has become "offensive" and doesn't deserve the same level of tolerance or acceptance that these other belief systems now receive. How sad is that.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Children deserve unconditional love
Apparently Alec Baldwin really doesn't get it. He at least admits to being sorry for getting angry, although whether he is sorry for what he said is hard to say. What's disturbing is that what he is most saddened about is that the recording was released to the media. Way to go Alec! Instead of being most saddened by the impact a tirade like that can have on his daughter's emotional well being, he instead rationalizes his behavior by stating "...told by numerous people not to worry too much, as all parents lose their patience with their kids...". I think there is a difference between losing your patience and unleashing a tirade that most likely cut to the core of his daughter's sense of self worth and value. It's a pretty safe bet that even without all this press, his daughter will never forget those words. How could anyone forget words like that when spoken by a parent and directed at your person.
As parents, I believe it helpful to follow God's example. God loves us no matter what we do, yet He doesn't necessarily love what we do. The difference is that one focuses on the person and the other focuses on the behavior. We need to love our children no matter what. Yet we don't have to love their behavior. Love the sinner, but not the sin. If more people would get that, I believe we'd have a lot less conflict and hurting people in the world. I also believe this is why Christianity is sometimes portrayed in a bad light.
Take the issues of homosexuality, pornography, gambling, alcoholism, etc. As a Christian one must remember that we are to love God first and people second. Not that we are to love the lovable people second. As Christ said in Luke chapter 6, even sinner's love the lovable. We're called to love sinners and our enemies. Christ showed this sort of love with the adulterous woman. He loved her as a person by stopping her impending stoning. Yet he commanded her to stop her adulterous ways. Love the sinner, not the sin. Separate the person from their actions. Alec Baldwin confused the two when he uttered "You are a rude, thoughtless little pig, OK?" or "You don't have the brains or the decency as a human being."
I pray that some good will come out of all the publicity this story is receiving. I hope that some parents will "get it" and understand that their words cut deeper than the sharpest knife. Lift your children up instead of beating them down.
As parents, I believe it helpful to follow God's example. God loves us no matter what we do, yet He doesn't necessarily love what we do. The difference is that one focuses on the person and the other focuses on the behavior. We need to love our children no matter what. Yet we don't have to love their behavior. Love the sinner, but not the sin. If more people would get that, I believe we'd have a lot less conflict and hurting people in the world. I also believe this is why Christianity is sometimes portrayed in a bad light.
Take the issues of homosexuality, pornography, gambling, alcoholism, etc. As a Christian one must remember that we are to love God first and people second. Not that we are to love the lovable people second. As Christ said in Luke chapter 6, even sinner's love the lovable. We're called to love sinners and our enemies. Christ showed this sort of love with the adulterous woman. He loved her as a person by stopping her impending stoning. Yet he commanded her to stop her adulterous ways. Love the sinner, not the sin. Separate the person from their actions. Alec Baldwin confused the two when he uttered "You are a rude, thoughtless little pig, OK?" or "You don't have the brains or the decency as a human being."
I pray that some good will come out of all the publicity this story is receiving. I hope that some parents will "get it" and understand that their words cut deeper than the sharpest knife. Lift your children up instead of beating them down.
Friday, April 20, 2007
James 1:19
I've always heard that we have two ears and one mouth because we should listen twice as much as we speak. Paul tells us in the book of James that we should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Although not especially relevant to the listening part, perhaps Alec Baldwin should heed a little of what Paul teaches. His latest tirade against his daughter is utterly dismaying. The sad part is how many of us have heard explosive comments like that growing up. Condemnations of person and character that slowly and surely destroy one's sense of self worth; often said in anger.
As one who struggled with anger that I learned from an example set by my father, I regret all the inappropriate outbursts I made before taming my tongue. I pray that others can learn from Alec Baldwin's much publicized outburst. Learn that you can't take back words once they've left your mouth. Learn that however angry you may be, taking it out on your children is more damaging than you can imagine. Learn that there are healthier ways to deal with your anger and that maybe counting to 10 before launching a tirade might just let you discover what your anger is all about and keep you from saying something you may regret for the rest of your life.
As one who struggled with anger that I learned from an example set by my father, I regret all the inappropriate outbursts I made before taming my tongue. I pray that others can learn from Alec Baldwin's much publicized outburst. Learn that you can't take back words once they've left your mouth. Learn that however angry you may be, taking it out on your children is more damaging than you can imagine. Learn that there are healthier ways to deal with your anger and that maybe counting to 10 before launching a tirade might just let you discover what your anger is all about and keep you from saying something you may regret for the rest of your life.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The running of the bloodsuckers
Well, after completing 4 income tax returns and assisting with 2 others, and paying an obscene amount of taxes, I've come to the conclusion that our taxing system is completely and totally screwed up! I'm sure that doesn't come as news to anyone. A simple example is the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Because our tax code is so riddled with social engineering and special interest promotion, certain high-income people were managing to avoid paying much tax at all. Apparently CONgress learned in 1969 that 155 families earning more than $200,000 hadn't paid any taxes. So their solution was to come up with a tax add-on that would eventually turn into a parallel tax code that was supposed to target high-income families. The difficulty is that the definition of high-income wasn't indexed to inflation. Thus millions of tax payers are now paying additional taxes. According to the Congressional Budget Office over 1/3 of all tax payers in the $50,000 - $100,000 range will pay AMT in 2006. The IRS estimates that 1/3 of ALL individual tax payers will have to pay AMT by 2010.
On a related note, as a tax payer with 3 household members in college, I notice that because I have been fiscally responsible and saved money since I was in college, I'm not eligible for any educational financial assistance from the government. On top of that, the tax breaks for college tuition and fees don't apply to me either because an investment I made in 1979 paid a large dividend to me and bumped me temporarily into a tax bracket that prohibits those tax breaks. Even without that dividend, taxable income from my other savings push me out of the eligible income ranges. What I glean from all this is that federal government doesn't want people to save their money. After all, I get taxed on the income from my savings, I am excluded from many tax breaks and/or aid options simply because I have been frugal and am not counting on the federal government ever paying me back a penny of the nearly $100,000 they've taken from me in social security taxes over the last 30+ years. Perhaps this is why in 2005 the US national savings rate dipped into negative territory for the only time other than the Great Depression. I'm not suggesting people not save, I'm just curious as to why the government penalizes people that save quite so much?
Another interesting tidbit about AMT is that it must certainly violate constitution guarantees. Under AMT rules, if you exercise ISO stock option (options granted you to reward performance or help ensure employee retention), you are taxed on the difference between the exercise price and the current market price. "Say What?" you say? So my company grants me 1000 options at $10/share. If I then buy the stock that those options allow me to buy some years later, I will pay a total of $10,000 for those shares. Yet if the market price for the stock is now $60/share, according to AMT, I just made $50,000, although you won't find that $50,000 in any of my accounts. Had I just bought those 1000 shares for $10 and now the price of those shares is $60, I have $60,000 worth of shares, that I will pay taxes on WHEN and IF I sell them, i.e., when I actually have money in my hands as a result of the stock transaction. But NOOOOO, with AMT, I get to pay for the stocks, AND pay for the increase in value that at the moment is only on paper. What a ripoff!
Instead of this "progressive" income tax system that we currently have that in effect discourages people from earning money, and penalizes you more and more the better at making money you are, and discourages savings, why not move to a consumption based tax? He who spends more pays more, with some obvious threshold(s) applied. As well tax heavily those items you want to reduce such as energy consumption, oil consumption, etc.
Well, in any case, the bloodsuckers got their pound of flesh from me this year!
On a related note, as a tax payer with 3 household members in college, I notice that because I have been fiscally responsible and saved money since I was in college, I'm not eligible for any educational financial assistance from the government. On top of that, the tax breaks for college tuition and fees don't apply to me either because an investment I made in 1979 paid a large dividend to me and bumped me temporarily into a tax bracket that prohibits those tax breaks. Even without that dividend, taxable income from my other savings push me out of the eligible income ranges. What I glean from all this is that federal government doesn't want people to save their money. After all, I get taxed on the income from my savings, I am excluded from many tax breaks and/or aid options simply because I have been frugal and am not counting on the federal government ever paying me back a penny of the nearly $100,000 they've taken from me in social security taxes over the last 30+ years. Perhaps this is why in 2005 the US national savings rate dipped into negative territory for the only time other than the Great Depression. I'm not suggesting people not save, I'm just curious as to why the government penalizes people that save quite so much?
Another interesting tidbit about AMT is that it must certainly violate constitution guarantees. Under AMT rules, if you exercise ISO stock option (options granted you to reward performance or help ensure employee retention), you are taxed on the difference between the exercise price and the current market price. "Say What?" you say? So my company grants me 1000 options at $10/share. If I then buy the stock that those options allow me to buy some years later, I will pay a total of $10,000 for those shares. Yet if the market price for the stock is now $60/share, according to AMT, I just made $50,000, although you won't find that $50,000 in any of my accounts. Had I just bought those 1000 shares for $10 and now the price of those shares is $60, I have $60,000 worth of shares, that I will pay taxes on WHEN and IF I sell them, i.e., when I actually have money in my hands as a result of the stock transaction. But NOOOOO, with AMT, I get to pay for the stocks, AND pay for the increase in value that at the moment is only on paper. What a ripoff!
Instead of this "progressive" income tax system that we currently have that in effect discourages people from earning money, and penalizes you more and more the better at making money you are, and discourages savings, why not move to a consumption based tax? He who spends more pays more, with some obvious threshold(s) applied. As well tax heavily those items you want to reduce such as energy consumption, oil consumption, etc.
Well, in any case, the bloodsuckers got their pound of flesh from me this year!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Apple's plan to destroy Windows
I'm not particularly a Microsoft fan, in fact, I'm far from it. Yet my experiences with Apple has been equally bad if not worse. As I've blogged before, I think the iPod is a total POC and Apple should be shot for selling something with such incredibly bad software on it. iTunes and Quicktime have also caused me more pain than gain. Most recently I was trying to scan images from my network attached scanner. As the web based print server delivered the images in TIFF format, the Quicktime plugin handily scarfed the image. But I wanted the image in a file so my son could manipulate it for a school project. To do that with Quicktime would have required purchasing Quicktime Pro! Just to save an image to disk that I created with something other than Quicktime. Brilliant piece of work Apple. On top of this, the Quicktime plugin manages to kill both Internet Explorer and Firefox. Nice work guys!
Some other time I'll write about trying to use iTunes on a library of thousands of songs. Combine that with their proprietary DRM system, has convinced me to become Apple free. All this stuff may work just great on OS X, but I don't really care to run OS X. So Apple, take your software somewhere else.
Some other time I'll write about trying to use iTunes on a library of thousands of songs. Combine that with their proprietary DRM system, has convinced me to become Apple free. All this stuff may work just great on OS X, but I don't really care to run OS X. So Apple, take your software somewhere else.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Tired of shredding applications
After receiving my 3rd or 4th offer from American Express this week for a credit card plus who knows how many other offers from other banks/issuers, I have come to the conclusion we should make it trivial to file bankruptcy and that personal bankruptcy should be expunged from your record within 1 year of filing. Until it becomes painful to the credit industry, they will not clean up their act. When our pets receive credit card offers, something is definitely wrong. With personal debt at an all time high, and personal savings at a near all time low (below zero last year), people are obviously availing themselves of these credit offers. So if credit card companies are so quick to offer credit to less than credit worthy people or to non-people (our pets) or to people who have specifically registered with every possible opt-out mechanism, maybe eating a bunch of write-off losses will get them the message.
Yet the credit industry whines to congress that it is too easy for people to file personal bankruptcy. Perhaps if the credit industry encouraged financial responsibility instead of pushing credit cards, there wouldn't be as much of an issue with people over extending themselves due to accepting unsolicited credit card offers. Maybe we should allow filing personal bankruptcy monthly until the credit card industry gets a clue and becomes responsible for their own behavior.
Yet the credit industry whines to congress that it is too easy for people to file personal bankruptcy. Perhaps if the credit industry encouraged financial responsibility instead of pushing credit cards, there wouldn't be as much of an issue with people over extending themselves due to accepting unsolicited credit card offers. Maybe we should allow filing personal bankruptcy monthly until the credit card industry gets a clue and becomes responsible for their own behavior.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Companies I will never do business with
Just another rant...
Certain companies have business practices that I find repugnant enough to warrant never doing business with them. One such company is American Express. They seem to be incapable of honoring my requests to remove my address from their mailing lists. I continue to get mailings soliciting credit cards contrary to my preferences as registered with the various credit reporting agencies and against my previous requests to them to remove my address. Apparently they feel free to ignore my preferences and requests and simply keep mailing me these offers.
I'll add others as I come across them...
Certain companies have business practices that I find repugnant enough to warrant never doing business with them. One such company is American Express. They seem to be incapable of honoring my requests to remove my address from their mailing lists. I continue to get mailings soliciting credit cards contrary to my preferences as registered with the various credit reporting agencies and against my previous requests to them to remove my address. Apparently they feel free to ignore my preferences and requests and simply keep mailing me these offers.
I'll add others as I come across them...
Saturday, December 30, 2006
Computer Maintenance
Something else Kelsey asked me to give her was some advice on things she can do to make her computer run smoother. Well here are some possibilities:
PS No, I don't always practice what I preach. But I try!
- All the time, make sure you have a good virus scanner running that keeps its virus definitions up-to-date.
- All the time, use a good firewall that detects both incoming intrusions as well as outgoing connection attempts. Windows XP has a reasonable one built in. Use it!
- Weekly empty the recycle bin.
- Weekly run Spyware/Malware detection/removal tools such as (freebies):
- Spybot Search & Destroy.
- Lavasoft Ad-Aware.
- Yahoo or other Internet service provider's software.
- Or better yet, purchase one that does real-time scanning.
- Monthly defragment your hard drives. If required do an offline defragmentation to defragment system files like the pagefile.
- Monthly or more often back up your system. At least back up your documents and other files not easily replaced. Ideally copy them to something that is removable and can be stored in another location in case of fire.
- Every 6 months or so, vacuum your computer. If you feel comfortable, open the case and gently vacuum the inside of the case to remove dust/hair buildup, especially near inlets to the case. As well vacuum the outside. Use some compressed air to blow the dust out of your CD or DVD drives.
- Every 2 years reinstall Windows. Seriously, this isn't a bad idea as Windows still tends to get cluttered up and this also forces you to clean things out.
PS No, I don't always practice what I preach. But I try!
Friday, December 29, 2006
Buying sites
Kelsey asked me to send her the list of where I shop for things on-line. I'll do one better and post it here for everyone to see:
http://bensbargains.net/
http://www.slickdeals.net/
http://www.techbargains.com/
http://www.edealinfo.com/
http://shopper.cnet.com/
http://www.pricegrabber.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.mysimon.com/
http://www.nextag.com/
The reviews, both user and professional at shopper.com (shopper.cnet.com) are often very good. Please guard the above list with your life. :-)
http://bensbargains.net/
http://www.slickdeals.net/
http://www.techbargains.com/
http://www.edealinfo.com/
http://shopper.cnet.com/
http://www.pricegrabber.com/
http://www.pricewatch.com/
http://www.mysimon.com/
http://www.nextag.com/
The reviews, both user and professional at shopper.com (shopper.cnet.com) are often very good. Please guard the above list with your life. :-)
Someone please depose the iPod
I am soooooo sick of trying to repair, recover, upgrade, whatever, my daughters' iPods I could scream. An iPod must be the single most user unfriendly device ever when it comes to problems. Sure, Apple nailed the user interface when everything works well, but heaven forbid there be a problem. What happens when there is a problem? You get "Generic error message #42" or in iPod speak, a folder with an exclamation mark in it indicating you should go to www.apple.com/support/ipod for some totally useless advice. Diagnostics? What diagnostics? If you are fortunate enough to be able to get your iPod into "diagnostic" mode (and I use the quotation marks as it can hardly be called a set of diagnostics. Diagnostics are those things that point out what is wrong with a device. Every failing iPod I've come across has always had all the diagnostics indicate everything is great. Yet the device won't function, refuses to associate with the computer, and even in disk mode won't act like a normal USB hard drive. Back the rant already in progress...) the "diagnostics" never indicate a problem. Reminds me of the old Digital VAX/VMS diagnostics. They would find no problems, yet VMS wouldn't boot because of some hardware problem.
I mean really Apple, how hard is it to tell the user what's wrong with the device? If the boot loader can be smart enough to tell you to go to www.apple.com/support/ipod, can't it at least give out some hexadecimal error code that I could look up? Even Microsoft software can do that! And what's with a disk mode that doesn't let you access the device? How hard can it be to emulate a USB hard drive? Even a $19 device that includes an enclosure and power supply can do that. Yet my daughter's $300-400 60GB iPod photo seems unable to do that.
I mean really Apple, how hard is it to tell the user what's wrong with the device? If the boot loader can be smart enough to tell you to go to www.apple.com/support/ipod, can't it at least give out some hexadecimal error code that I could look up? Even Microsoft software can do that! And what's with a disk mode that doesn't let you access the device? How hard can it be to emulate a USB hard drive? Even a $19 device that includes an enclosure and power supply can do that. Yet my daughter's $300-400 60GB iPod photo seems unable to do that.
Sunday, November 05, 2006
Gone Phishing
It never ceases to amaze me how some people can turn something good into something so bad or dangerous. I am reminded of this as I sort through my e-mail and diligently report any phishing attemps (as well as any other spam (try Spamcop) Phishing in e-mail? What does that mean? What can I catch? How do I do it?
Well, to make sure no one has the wrong impression, I am not going to tell you how to phish. Regardless of the expression about giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish, I'm not going to help you commit identity theft. That's right, identity theft. You seen, phishing is a technique for trying to steal someone's private or confidential information. It's much like an on-line con-game.
The way phishing normally works is you receive an e-mail from someone that claims to be from a company that you do business with. Often these e-mail messages are along the lines of "There is someting wrong with your accout." And an apparent link to the company's website. In fact the link is a forgery and takes you to a web site thas has been copied to look like the one you think you are going to. At that imposter website, they generally ask for confidential information such as your social security number, account name and password, etc. With that information they can then impersonate you and potentially rob you blind.
Please be very careful when clicking on links in an e-mail and revealing sensitive information. See Phishing at Wikipedia. Don't be a phish!
-tl
Well, to make sure no one has the wrong impression, I am not going to tell you how to phish. Regardless of the expression about giving someone a fish versus teaching them to fish, I'm not going to help you commit identity theft. That's right, identity theft. You seen, phishing is a technique for trying to steal someone's private or confidential information. It's much like an on-line con-game.
The way phishing normally works is you receive an e-mail from someone that claims to be from a company that you do business with. Often these e-mail messages are along the lines of "There is someting wrong with your accout." And an apparent link to the company's website. In fact the link is a forgery and takes you to a web site thas has been copied to look like the one you think you are going to. At that imposter website, they generally ask for confidential information such as your social security number, account name and password, etc. With that information they can then impersonate you and potentially rob you blind.
Please be very careful when clicking on links in an e-mail and revealing sensitive information. See Phishing at Wikipedia. Don't be a phish!
-tl
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Random Stuff
I can't believe I've posted nothing since Feb. How sad. I have so much to say and so few words to say it in... No, that doesn't sounds right... In any case, on to some favorites rants and pants.
I'm still struggling to set up my homebrew personal digital video recorders. Now I understand why people pay big bucks for a HD TiVo or other such beast. But then how much would I learn doing that? Seems as though the journey is half the fun, or in this case, maybe most of the fun. My current attempt has been based on Mythdora and I have much of it working. Yet there are still some wrinkles, so I'll try updating it one more time, sigh.
Kelsey and I just got back from a trip to Europe. Well actually Kelsey only saw London and I went on to Rome, Madrid, Brussels, and back to London. We had a blast. I'm sure Kelsey has some more info on her blog.
A word of warning. PLEASE USE SPYWARE SCANNERS. It seems as though almost everyone I know has had one or more run ins with spyware, malware, adware, etc. While we were in London, two young ladies from Spain were down in the hotel office trying to get one of their laptops back in usable condition. It apparently had been completely infected with adware and the like. You can prevent these things from getting out of hand. Please make sure you run programs like AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, etc., at least a couple of times a week. And run 2 or 3 of them, not just one. If you don't, it's simply a matter of time before your computer WILL be infected.
Finally, I'm having a blast with my new phone, a Cingular 8125. This device is convergence device meaning that it is not only a phone, but runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and can connect via IrDA, Bluetooth, GPRS, and WiFi. So you can talk and browse the Internet and drive all at the same time. Well, just kidding about the driving and browsing the Internet. Even the hard core multi-taskers should probably avoid that combination. At the moment I'm just trying to find all the cool software that's available, and trying to figure out how to connect my laptop to the Internet via GPRS when I'm travelling and not near a hotspot.
More l8r...
I'm still struggling to set up my homebrew personal digital video recorders. Now I understand why people pay big bucks for a HD TiVo or other such beast. But then how much would I learn doing that? Seems as though the journey is half the fun, or in this case, maybe most of the fun. My current attempt has been based on Mythdora and I have much of it working. Yet there are still some wrinkles, so I'll try updating it one more time, sigh.
Kelsey and I just got back from a trip to Europe. Well actually Kelsey only saw London and I went on to Rome, Madrid, Brussels, and back to London. We had a blast. I'm sure Kelsey has some more info on her blog.
A word of warning. PLEASE USE SPYWARE SCANNERS. It seems as though almost everyone I know has had one or more run ins with spyware, malware, adware, etc. While we were in London, two young ladies from Spain were down in the hotel office trying to get one of their laptops back in usable condition. It apparently had been completely infected with adware and the like. You can prevent these things from getting out of hand. Please make sure you run programs like AdAware, Spybot Search & Destroy, etc., at least a couple of times a week. And run 2 or 3 of them, not just one. If you don't, it's simply a matter of time before your computer WILL be infected.
Finally, I'm having a blast with my new phone, a Cingular 8125. This device is convergence device meaning that it is not only a phone, but runs Windows Mobile 5.0 and can connect via IrDA, Bluetooth, GPRS, and WiFi. So you can talk and browse the Internet and drive all at the same time. Well, just kidding about the driving and browsing the Internet. Even the hard core multi-taskers should probably avoid that combination. At the moment I'm just trying to find all the cool software that's available, and trying to figure out how to connect my laptop to the Internet via GPRS when I'm travelling and not near a hotspot.
More l8r...
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Replace Congress
The more I learn about Congress, the more I appreciate the joke about con being the opposite of pro so what's the opposite of progress? Apparently our elected officials think that obfuscation is better than honesty. The practice of earmarks (more affectionatly called pork) is just one of many practices that must be excised from the current practices of congress. Our government is supposed to exist for the common good (read the preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America) of the people of the United States. Pork puts individual interests above the common good and exploits the present at the expense of the future. Newsweek columnist Robert J. Samuelson recently wrote: "We face a choice between a society where people accept modest sacrifices for a common good or a more contentious society where groups selfishly protect their own benefits." Congress has definitely fallen into the latter category protecting their own self interests at the expense of the nation as a whole.
Combine the self serving attitude that members of congress seem to have adopted with the "need" to get re-elected and you have a formula for disaster. Basically Congress is for sale and the biggest contributor takes all. I propose that we skip terms limits and go straight to single terms. Then there wouldn't be any need to accept donations in exchange for preferential treatment. It would also help eliminate the current culture of pork. In fact, I propose we start this movement with a complete and total re-election of all of congress barring any incumbents from running. To keep the rotating schedule we have right now, some members would be newly elected for 2 years, some for 4 years, and some for 6 years.
Given that the above will never happen (what member of congress is going to vote himself out of a cushy job?), what is the next best alternative? I'm not sure but clearly there has to be a better way. Maybe the media should take back its role as exposer of the sort of self serving behavior that exists now and move away from the drama (Have you seen the front page of the Daily Herald's coverage of the Olympics? We now have drama awards by the paper? What next? Survivor as an Olympic sport? Puhleeze!) it tends towards. Maybe we should make deception in congress a punishable act? That way when some congressmen puts an earmark for some park in his own district into a transportation funding bill (what exactly does a park have to do with transportation funding?) we can throw that congressmen and all those that voted for it in jail! Yeah!
More on the elected morons later...
Combine the self serving attitude that members of congress seem to have adopted with the "need" to get re-elected and you have a formula for disaster. Basically Congress is for sale and the biggest contributor takes all. I propose that we skip terms limits and go straight to single terms. Then there wouldn't be any need to accept donations in exchange for preferential treatment. It would also help eliminate the current culture of pork. In fact, I propose we start this movement with a complete and total re-election of all of congress barring any incumbents from running. To keep the rotating schedule we have right now, some members would be newly elected for 2 years, some for 4 years, and some for 6 years.
Given that the above will never happen (what member of congress is going to vote himself out of a cushy job?), what is the next best alternative? I'm not sure but clearly there has to be a better way. Maybe the media should take back its role as exposer of the sort of self serving behavior that exists now and move away from the drama (Have you seen the front page of the Daily Herald's coverage of the Olympics? We now have drama awards by the paper? What next? Survivor as an Olympic sport? Puhleeze!) it tends towards. Maybe we should make deception in congress a punishable act? That way when some congressmen puts an earmark for some park in his own district into a transportation funding bill (what exactly does a park have to do with transportation funding?) we can throw that congressmen and all those that voted for it in jail! Yeah!
More on the elected morons later...
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Addendum to financial disaster
As an additional bleak thought, the current national savings rate in the US is now officially negative. That means on average, people spent more money last year than they earned. This hasn't happened since the great depresssion. Combine that the fact that for many Americans, their biggest investment is in their house, means little in the way of liquid assets. Why does this portend a financial disaster. My prediction is that as baby boomers start to retire in mass, they are going to destroy the housing market. If many (most?) of them need to sell their homes to fund the lifestyle they are accustomed to, what is that going to do to housing prices? Combine this potential significant drop in housing prices and the probably upcoming Social Security debacle, and we have the potential of having a country filled with the ederly living in poverty.
Pending financial disaster
I feel sorry for the post baby boomer generation. Our government is setting up to saddle them with expenses they'll have a difficult time paying. What I'm referring to are Social Security and Medicare. I've already resigned myself to the likelihood I'll only receive back a fraction of the money I paid into those systems. Why? Because they are essentially bankrupt. Instead of saving our money for us, the government has used the revenue from those taxes to pay for other programs. This works as long as employment is growing faster than the number of people drawing on those programs. As the baby boomers retire, that isn't going to be the case. The number of retired people will increase substantially while the number of active employees contributing to the system decreases.
What does this mean for the post baby boomers? Likely large increases in taxes and decreases in government services. As well they will need to make some very difficult decisions on tax and benefit issues that will significantly affect the financial status of their parents. What does it mean for the baby boomers? Well if you're like most, you'll have counted on Social Security for a substantial portion of your retirement and you're likely to find those benefits cut some. If you're like me and have aggresively saved over the years for retirement, you'll probably find you don't get anything from Social Security, or will be taxed such an amount in retirement that it will have little positive effect on your financial situation.
Is it too late to change this? Depends upon who you believe. Are we headed in the right direction? As Bill Cosby says in his Noah skit: Riiight.
What does this mean for the post baby boomers? Likely large increases in taxes and decreases in government services. As well they will need to make some very difficult decisions on tax and benefit issues that will significantly affect the financial status of their parents. What does it mean for the baby boomers? Well if you're like most, you'll have counted on Social Security for a substantial portion of your retirement and you're likely to find those benefits cut some. If you're like me and have aggresively saved over the years for retirement, you'll probably find you don't get anything from Social Security, or will be taxed such an amount in retirement that it will have little positive effect on your financial situation.
Is it too late to change this? Depends upon who you believe. Are we headed in the right direction? As Bill Cosby says in his Noah skit: Riiight.
Stop electing morons
Do we have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find elected officials? Apparently our elected officials are too stupid to read the legislation they vote on. Last summer Congress (if con is the opposite of pro, what's the opposite of progress?) passed into law a bill erroneously titled "Junk Fax Prevention Act of 2005". This bill weakens the protections offered by the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and makes it easier for a company to send unsolicited junk faxes. Prior to this piece of festering dog doo legislation it was illegal to send an unsolicited fax to someone unless there was an established business relationship. This act basically makes it easier to claim such a relationship existed. And although it nows requires a removal number, my guess is that will be as effective as the similar requirement in the Can Spam act that congress also passed making it easier for spammers to spam you.
Unsolicited faxes essentially represent theft. They shift the burden of advertising costs from the advertiser to the recipient. How so? Instead of paying to have advertisements printed and mailed to you house for 25-45 cents per person, they can send you a fax for 3 cents and you pay for the ink/toner and paper.
So if anyone can figure out how S.714 (the number for the bill) prevents more spam, please let me know.
Oh yeah, one other thing. Is it a practice in Congress to take voice votes on bills they know aren't going to be liked by consumers? This bill apparently passed by voice vote so there is no way to know whether your friendly elected moron voted for it or not.
Unsolicited faxes essentially represent theft. They shift the burden of advertising costs from the advertiser to the recipient. How so? Instead of paying to have advertisements printed and mailed to you house for 25-45 cents per person, they can send you a fax for 3 cents and you pay for the ink/toner and paper.
So if anyone can figure out how S.714 (the number for the bill) prevents more spam, please let me know.
Oh yeah, one other thing. Is it a practice in Congress to take voice votes on bills they know aren't going to be liked by consumers? This bill apparently passed by voice vote so there is no way to know whether your friendly elected moron voted for it or not.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Broadcast DTV and the upcoming turn-off of analog broadcasts
I'm somewhat amused at the state of affairs in consumer electronics related to the upcoming shutdown of analog broadcast TV. The FCC has decided that we should all get the benefits of digital television and so has ordered the shutdown of analog television broadcasts. Actually they want to get rid of analog broadcast television because digitial television offers much more and is far more bandwidth efficient. In fact the broadcasters will get a benefit out of this as well as broadcast digital television requires far less power and televisions spend a large amount of money on electricity.
So why am I amused? Well the original date for the complete switch to digital television (DTV) was the end of 2006, but that has already been pushed out for a number of reasons. This is funny in of itself in that the decision to move to digital broadcasting was made nearly a decade ago. Is this going to be another one of those transitions like adopting the metric system? My cut at it is that it is caused be several factors, although I think the primary blame falls squarely on the consumer electronics companies.
For most people in the United States, watching a DTV signal is going to require the purchase of some equipment. At a minimum a DTV receiver is necessary as the hundreds of millions of existing analog television sets aren't going to be able to receive a digital signal. These receivers are often called set top boxes as they'll be somewhat like a cable box or satellite box. But try to buy one of these devices right now. My family tried to buy me one for Christmas and the one store that thought they knew something sold them an antenna! Yeah for consumer electronics sales people. They are so clueless about this technology and what's needed that it would laughable if it wasn't so sad. Add to this that there are not many set top boxes available and only a few consumer electronics stores in the area carry them, how is the average consumer ever going to get this sorted out? Oh, and to further complicate things, I suspect most consumers who bought an HDTV think they are reawdy for all this. Well it ain't so. The majority of HDTV sets people are buying are HDTV ready. All this means is that if they are given an already received HDTV signal, they can display it. So without a set top box, they won't see broadcast channels when the analog signals are shut off. This has all the earmarks of being another "metric adoption" fiasco.
So why am I amused? Well the original date for the complete switch to digital television (DTV) was the end of 2006, but that has already been pushed out for a number of reasons. This is funny in of itself in that the decision to move to digital broadcasting was made nearly a decade ago. Is this going to be another one of those transitions like adopting the metric system? My cut at it is that it is caused be several factors, although I think the primary blame falls squarely on the consumer electronics companies.
For most people in the United States, watching a DTV signal is going to require the purchase of some equipment. At a minimum a DTV receiver is necessary as the hundreds of millions of existing analog television sets aren't going to be able to receive a digital signal. These receivers are often called set top boxes as they'll be somewhat like a cable box or satellite box. But try to buy one of these devices right now. My family tried to buy me one for Christmas and the one store that thought they knew something sold them an antenna! Yeah for consumer electronics sales people. They are so clueless about this technology and what's needed that it would laughable if it wasn't so sad. Add to this that there are not many set top boxes available and only a few consumer electronics stores in the area carry them, how is the average consumer ever going to get this sorted out? Oh, and to further complicate things, I suspect most consumers who bought an HDTV think they are reawdy for all this. Well it ain't so. The majority of HDTV sets people are buying are HDTV ready. All this means is that if they are given an already received HDTV signal, they can display it. So without a set top box, they won't see broadcast channels when the analog signals are shut off. This has all the earmarks of being another "metric adoption" fiasco.
Trials and tribulations of building a homebrew PVR
Some years ago I put together a PC that was specifically going to be used as a home theater PC. This was probably a little ahead of its time, but nonetheless wanted to give it a try. I made the disasterous mistake of purchasing an ATI Radeon All-in-Wonder TV tuner card. This card seemed to have everything I wanted. It included a TV tuner, at the time a reasonably high performance video card, and TV output. All seemed seemed well until I tried to use the ATI provided drivers and TV applications. What a joke. The system would lock up regularly, the applications only worked some of the time, and I later learned the drivers for this card are as buggy as the other ATI drivers. Even their Catalyst series of drivers appears to be full of problems.
So after struggling with this machine not making much of a PVR, I decided to try a linux based solution thinking that might be a better approach than using Windoze. There are some great packages out there for linux based PVRs including MythTV and Freevo. They provide many of the capabilities of TiVo, yet require no monthly fee and the ability to add many other features such as News, Weather, SNES emulation, web browsing, easy sharing of recorded programs, etc. But again I'm stuck with this dog of a TV tuner card. Apparently ATI won't share enough information about the Radeon All-in-Wonder card to allow good linux drivers to be written for it. So maybe this card is headed for the parts bin.
Frustrated but still plugging away...
So after struggling with this machine not making much of a PVR, I decided to try a linux based solution thinking that might be a better approach than using Windoze. There are some great packages out there for linux based PVRs including MythTV and Freevo. They provide many of the capabilities of TiVo, yet require no monthly fee and the ability to add many other features such as News, Weather, SNES emulation, web browsing, easy sharing of recorded programs, etc. But again I'm stuck with this dog of a TV tuner card. Apparently ATI won't share enough information about the Radeon All-in-Wonder card to allow good linux drivers to be written for it. So maybe this card is headed for the parts bin.
Frustrated but still plugging away...
Saturday, January 28, 2006
Beat him when he's down
Or take advantage of the disadvantaged...
Why does it strike me that the Lottery, paycheck Loans, and the like are simply more ways to keep poor or uneducated people poor? Take paycheck loans for example. Presumably the only reason someone would consider such a loan is if they were in rather desparate need. Yet the loan rates are usary at best. For example, a quick Google search yields MyCashNow who's banner claims "Quick and Affordable Payday Loans" and "Helping People Live Their Lives". Yet when you check their rates, they charge $18.62 per $100 financed for a 7-14 day loan. That works out to an APR (annual percentage rate) of almost 450%!!! And others have even higher rates. How is it legal to charge someone 450% interest?
And if the Lottery isn't a poor tax, I don't know what is. The expected payout of the lottery is 3-5 times worse than the expected payout at a casino. Casinos are regulated by law to payout a certain amount. For example, in many casinos the slot machines are required to payout around 90% on their slot machines. This means that over a long period of time, you'll win roughly 90 cents for every dollar played, i.e., you WILL lose money but only 10 cents on the dollar. The lotteries on the other hand generally only payout 40-60 cents on the dollar (In Search of a Fair Bet in the Lottery). This makes the average lottery about the worst bet someone can make.
Actually maybe all of this is part of the gotta have it now mentality that seems to be sweeping the country (world?)...
Why does it strike me that the Lottery, paycheck Loans, and the like are simply more ways to keep poor or uneducated people poor? Take paycheck loans for example. Presumably the only reason someone would consider such a loan is if they were in rather desparate need. Yet the loan rates are usary at best. For example, a quick Google search yields MyCashNow who's banner claims "Quick and Affordable Payday Loans" and "Helping People Live Their Lives". Yet when you check their rates, they charge $18.62 per $100 financed for a 7-14 day loan. That works out to an APR (annual percentage rate) of almost 450%!!! And others have even higher rates. How is it legal to charge someone 450% interest?
And if the Lottery isn't a poor tax, I don't know what is. The expected payout of the lottery is 3-5 times worse than the expected payout at a casino. Casinos are regulated by law to payout a certain amount. For example, in many casinos the slot machines are required to payout around 90% on their slot machines. This means that over a long period of time, you'll win roughly 90 cents for every dollar played, i.e., you WILL lose money but only 10 cents on the dollar. The lotteries on the other hand generally only payout 40-60 cents on the dollar (In Search of a Fair Bet in the Lottery). This makes the average lottery about the worst bet someone can make.
Actually maybe all of this is part of the gotta have it now mentality that seems to be sweeping the country (world?)...
Friday, January 27, 2006
Spammers rot in ...
I love it. I make a couple of initial posts and then not come back for quite a while. When I do come back, the only comment is by some moron spamming my blog for a mortgage! Get a life moron. What idiot is going to trust a spammer for a mortgage? Guess I need to turn on word verification.
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