Silver Adept (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
silveradept) wrote2007-07-24 12:53 am
silveradept) wrote2007-07-24 12:53 am
And further onward - 23 July 2007
Ah, idle days are nice, after all that activity. Lets you catch up and keep up with things as they happen, or something. In any case, ship’s balanced, things are righted, all’s well. I continue to wonder what life will be like when there is work taking up the majority of it, and how things will shift around socially and such. But until that happens, I fly the holding pattern, waiting for clearance, arranging interviews for jobs in what could very well be turning into a bit of a ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
silveradept tour. Check in with us for dates and times of appearances. I could be coming to a town near you.
Xenu is loose!. (Flash, d00ds). A concept waaaaaaay to good to pass up without mention: A Scientology Musical. It’s across the pond right now, though, and I don’t think it’ll be touring around me any time soon. Mr. Cruise might get angry, or something. On a similar note, introducing Baconator.
Newt Gingrich, still undecided about declaring for the United States Presidency, spreads F.U.D. about Iraq, claiming that Islamic dictatorships in America is a likely consequence if the United States withdraws. Because it’s a perfectly logical progression from removing our presence in Iraq to having the United States overthrown or electing people to office that would turn it into the Islamic States of America. Get your head out of your ass, Newt. We’re probably in more danger from the possibility of America becoming a police state (and this warning from someone who has memory, if not experience, in what conservatism used to be) because of the current administration’s policies than we are from a foreign threat deciding to invade. And sporadic terrorism, while flashier and often rather immediate in effect, is less dangerous that directed erosion of the rule of law and the currently ludicrous idea that the Executive is somehow exempted from enforcing the laws he passes, or has the interpretative authority to not enforce a law he passes. Or an executive that denies a Congressman sitting on the Homeland Security council access to plans that are supposedly in place in case of a terrorist attack that cripples the government. The Congressman was looking into them because he feared there was some sort of conspiracy in place. And supposedly the request was first approved, and then denied. So, if the Executive wanted to say “Nope, no conspiracy here, nothing to look at, citizen”, then they totally went about it backwards. Way to inspire confidence in your plans. Did we mention that some lawyers are arguing that the mere mention of Mr. Bush's name will prejudice a jury?
After continuing to express her intent to run for Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional seat if she didn’t introduce articles of impeachment, Cindy Sheehan and forty-five others were arrested for "disorderly conduct" inside the office of Representative John Conyers (Democrat from Michigan). Unfortunately, as is the case with many of these things, the details are light on what exactly it was that caused the arrest. The Congressman continued to say that there weren’t enough votes on impeachment to move forward. Which is a nice-sounding blurb, yes, but if you’ve got the evidence and the material that can make a excellent impeachment case, then even if you can’t get enough votes for it, moving forward on it would be an improvement over nothing. That way everyone knows who is in favor and who is against the matter. And can be pressured one way or another by the citizenry.
Quality care from the VA has been swamped with problems, including the Walter Reed scandal of some time ago. Now, injured Iraq veterans are suing the VA for not providing them with appropriate care, including attempts to get war-induced PTSD reclassified as a pre-existing personality disorder so that the VA wouldn’t have to pay for the treatment. For all we know, the VA probably knew that they were going to have a lot more people to care for once we started going into Iraq, and the administration may have told them not to expect any more funding, since it would be going toward financing the ground operations. That the VA appears to behaving like the worst of insurance companies is a sad thing indeed. Even worse, though, where are they going to find the money to do things appropriately? We’re already in defecit spending, and with the track record that the current administration has with regard to relief for disasters, I don’t think they’re going to be doing much for approval of additional funding. War is expensive. This is why it should only be undertaken where necessary, y’know.
United States Department of Defense, meet Hari Seldon. Computer simulations of the real world may be the perfect thing for testing out possible scenarios, and war games. Possibly for doing as psychohistory did and predicting the movements and reactions of masses of peoples. We’ll see whether it can then turn itself into a giant Sims game, with each individual person modeled in some fashion. Considering there will be a contest between poker masters and a computer upcoming, with the masters saying that the computer is likely to do really well, perhaps such worldwide simulations will be able to make some good guesses.
There’s a first time for everything, we’re told. In this case, it happens to be that for the first time, a member of the RIAA was ordered to pay attorney's fees and other costs on one of their copright infringement suits. Everywhere, a little hope returned to people’s lives. Or something. I don’t know if I’m reading this right, but it looks like the defendants successfully argued that Capitol was on a fishing expedition when it sued them, and that without specific details of the infringements, they didn’t have a case. I could be wrong, though. Too bad that the “intentionally causing harm” part was dismissed. That would have been nice to have stick as well. For those who crusade against unnecessary restrictions placed on content that you own, it appears that the latest incarnation of Windows Media DRM has been cracked, providing content free of restrictions with no degradation. This is the latest salvo, it looks like. The reprisal from Microsoft will likely be swift, if not likely to be decisive.
Drew Carey, come on down. You're the next host for 'The Price is Right'. Which could be good, or could be awful. Time will tell, I suppose. And then we’ll see whether Drew continues on into his eighties, like Bob did.
The New Wave of solid-state flash memory is... nanocrystals? A new process for creating uniform-distance and uniform-size nanocrystals may result in more storage that draws less power. And possibly even a near-infinite rewritability for said flash media. Higer storage at power power draws? That sounds pretty cool.
The Steampunk Workshop has once again attracted the attention of our Cool Things department with the Steampunk LCD monitor. They also would like to offer an entertaining mental exercise, courtesy of Davezilla: if fruits had a class structure, what would it look like?
Last off the line are two things about communication - one is how to get rid of people who are going to distract you from your work. Although, in my work environment, generally the distractions are the users, and thus I need to pay attention to them, even while they’re giving me more work to do. The other is making yourself happier by deciding to make a certain number of friends at any new situation. Some of them you may not see again at all, but if you make some new friends, you feel happier. (And on occasion, they do come back next year and notice you, especially if you wear the same thing and continue to try and get people involved.)
As it lies, we’ve come to the end of another entry. Somewhere along the line, I wonder whether some digital archivist is going to stumble across this and say “Oh, wow. What a nice collection of random things.” and go about filing it or something like that. Good luck as to whether all the links will work, though. I suspect that if I went back through the years that I’ve done and rechecked all the links for accuracy and non-404-ness, I’d probably lose a lot of them to the constantly shifting sands of the Internet. That’s another reason why libraries are cool, kids. Books, while being bound and printed and non-hyperlinked, tend to last a bit longer than the average webpage. When you want to show your kids the stuff you read as a kid, the books will probably still be there. The webpages? Probably not.
G’night everybody.
silveradept tour. Check in with us for dates and times of appearances. I could be coming to a town near you. Xenu is loose!. (Flash, d00ds). A concept waaaaaaay to good to pass up without mention: A Scientology Musical. It’s across the pond right now, though, and I don’t think it’ll be touring around me any time soon. Mr. Cruise might get angry, or something. On a similar note, introducing Baconator.
Newt Gingrich, still undecided about declaring for the United States Presidency, spreads F.U.D. about Iraq, claiming that Islamic dictatorships in America is a likely consequence if the United States withdraws. Because it’s a perfectly logical progression from removing our presence in Iraq to having the United States overthrown or electing people to office that would turn it into the Islamic States of America. Get your head out of your ass, Newt. We’re probably in more danger from the possibility of America becoming a police state (and this warning from someone who has memory, if not experience, in what conservatism used to be) because of the current administration’s policies than we are from a foreign threat deciding to invade. And sporadic terrorism, while flashier and often rather immediate in effect, is less dangerous that directed erosion of the rule of law and the currently ludicrous idea that the Executive is somehow exempted from enforcing the laws he passes, or has the interpretative authority to not enforce a law he passes. Or an executive that denies a Congressman sitting on the Homeland Security council access to plans that are supposedly in place in case of a terrorist attack that cripples the government. The Congressman was looking into them because he feared there was some sort of conspiracy in place. And supposedly the request was first approved, and then denied. So, if the Executive wanted to say “Nope, no conspiracy here, nothing to look at, citizen”, then they totally went about it backwards. Way to inspire confidence in your plans. Did we mention that some lawyers are arguing that the mere mention of Mr. Bush's name will prejudice a jury?
After continuing to express her intent to run for Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional seat if she didn’t introduce articles of impeachment, Cindy Sheehan and forty-five others were arrested for "disorderly conduct" inside the office of Representative John Conyers (Democrat from Michigan). Unfortunately, as is the case with many of these things, the details are light on what exactly it was that caused the arrest. The Congressman continued to say that there weren’t enough votes on impeachment to move forward. Which is a nice-sounding blurb, yes, but if you’ve got the evidence and the material that can make a excellent impeachment case, then even if you can’t get enough votes for it, moving forward on it would be an improvement over nothing. That way everyone knows who is in favor and who is against the matter. And can be pressured one way or another by the citizenry.
Quality care from the VA has been swamped with problems, including the Walter Reed scandal of some time ago. Now, injured Iraq veterans are suing the VA for not providing them with appropriate care, including attempts to get war-induced PTSD reclassified as a pre-existing personality disorder so that the VA wouldn’t have to pay for the treatment. For all we know, the VA probably knew that they were going to have a lot more people to care for once we started going into Iraq, and the administration may have told them not to expect any more funding, since it would be going toward financing the ground operations. That the VA appears to behaving like the worst of insurance companies is a sad thing indeed. Even worse, though, where are they going to find the money to do things appropriately? We’re already in defecit spending, and with the track record that the current administration has with regard to relief for disasters, I don’t think they’re going to be doing much for approval of additional funding. War is expensive. This is why it should only be undertaken where necessary, y’know.
United States Department of Defense, meet Hari Seldon. Computer simulations of the real world may be the perfect thing for testing out possible scenarios, and war games. Possibly for doing as psychohistory did and predicting the movements and reactions of masses of peoples. We’ll see whether it can then turn itself into a giant Sims game, with each individual person modeled in some fashion. Considering there will be a contest between poker masters and a computer upcoming, with the masters saying that the computer is likely to do really well, perhaps such worldwide simulations will be able to make some good guesses.
There’s a first time for everything, we’re told. In this case, it happens to be that for the first time, a member of the RIAA was ordered to pay attorney's fees and other costs on one of their copright infringement suits. Everywhere, a little hope returned to people’s lives. Or something. I don’t know if I’m reading this right, but it looks like the defendants successfully argued that Capitol was on a fishing expedition when it sued them, and that without specific details of the infringements, they didn’t have a case. I could be wrong, though. Too bad that the “intentionally causing harm” part was dismissed. That would have been nice to have stick as well. For those who crusade against unnecessary restrictions placed on content that you own, it appears that the latest incarnation of Windows Media DRM has been cracked, providing content free of restrictions with no degradation. This is the latest salvo, it looks like. The reprisal from Microsoft will likely be swift, if not likely to be decisive.
Drew Carey, come on down. You're the next host for 'The Price is Right'. Which could be good, or could be awful. Time will tell, I suppose. And then we’ll see whether Drew continues on into his eighties, like Bob did.
The New Wave of solid-state flash memory is... nanocrystals? A new process for creating uniform-distance and uniform-size nanocrystals may result in more storage that draws less power. And possibly even a near-infinite rewritability for said flash media. Higer storage at power power draws? That sounds pretty cool.
The Steampunk Workshop has once again attracted the attention of our Cool Things department with the Steampunk LCD monitor. They also would like to offer an entertaining mental exercise, courtesy of Davezilla: if fruits had a class structure, what would it look like?
Last off the line are two things about communication - one is how to get rid of people who are going to distract you from your work. Although, in my work environment, generally the distractions are the users, and thus I need to pay attention to them, even while they’re giving me more work to do. The other is making yourself happier by deciding to make a certain number of friends at any new situation. Some of them you may not see again at all, but if you make some new friends, you feel happier. (And on occasion, they do come back next year and notice you, especially if you wear the same thing and continue to try and get people involved.)
As it lies, we’ve come to the end of another entry. Somewhere along the line, I wonder whether some digital archivist is going to stumble across this and say “Oh, wow. What a nice collection of random things.” and go about filing it or something like that. Good luck as to whether all the links will work, though. I suspect that if I went back through the years that I’ve done and rechecked all the links for accuracy and non-404-ness, I’d probably lose a lot of them to the constantly shifting sands of the Internet. That’s another reason why libraries are cool, kids. Books, while being bound and printed and non-hyperlinked, tend to last a bit longer than the average webpage. When you want to show your kids the stuff you read as a kid, the books will probably still be there. The webpages? Probably not.
G’night everybody.