Posts from — November 2005

Wired News: Boycott Sony

I like Sony. I should after buying a PSP on launch day and planning on buying a second one soon, along with owning a PS2 and 2 PS1s, and planning on buying a PS3 whenever they launch. But, Sony did wrong in putting some nasty code on CD's, effectively opening PC's to attack and putting some spyware on Macs, which I think has also been mentioned. (Check, googles, yep they did install kernel extensions, by a different company, read article from Gizmodo, Sony Mac Rootkit,which makes it an equal oppotunity offender)

Wired is calling for a boycott of Sony. Does that include SCEA. or is it the Sony music label? Decisions, decisions. I don't like ANY company that installs crap on my computer be it Microsoft or Sony or hell even Apple. I don't like companies telling me what I can or can not do with the things I buy, emphasis on buy. I don't like licensing my software and I doubt I'll be buying any of Sony's CD's for a while.

The major media companues treat ordinary consumers like criminals whenever they buy digital media, be it games, CD's or movies. If Cd's were priced better and not loaded with crap like Sony pulled, maybe it just might make piracy less viable. Some people in this world can't afford to buy a new $15 CD just for a song they like or if they want to try an new group.

I got a golden ticket for a wordpress.com account and I'm trying it out. I'm thinking about moving over here once they have the Blogger import tool back up and perhaps I can figure out how to empty my blogroll.

Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Pat Robertson Warns Pa. Town of Disaster

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) – Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday not to be surprised if disaster strikes there because "you just voted God out of your city" by ousting school board members who favored teaching "intelligent design."

Three tiny little letters: WTF?

ABC News: One Dead, 2 Hurt in Tenn. School Shooting

Another school shooting, rather close to me. Most likely, the Knoxville News Sentinel will have the shooting on its front page in the morning and more people will be calling for either banning of violent video games, guns or more metal detectors at school. School shouldn't be that way with armed guards and metal detectors almost like a prison in itself. When I was a freshman, I attended high school in Alamogordo, NM about 2 hours from the border. In a 2000 student school, there were 18 gangs, all with different colors and codes. Yet the most serious thing that happened was when they would have fights across the street in a vacant lot. Of course it may have changed since then. Sophomore year brought me to Monroe County and it was more about drinking and pot and sex than guns.

Banning guns or installing metal detectors or the latest fad, blaming violent video games isn't going to work. The parents need to take more responsibility for raising their kids rather than expecting the schools to do it for them. The schools should concentrate on educating the kids so they can have better jobs. Guns, that is a sticky wicket. Guns are useful for hunting and defending oneself, but what does one have to defend against at school?

Adults, that is responsible adults, should have the right to bear arms, yet you don't need to carry them in public unless you are on your way to the hunting range. My point is that guns are tools, and dangerous tools and should be treated as so, rather than a political talking point to garner votes.

Video games aren't the cause of shooting sprees. They may be a factor, but if a kid thinks that one can just shoot a person like in a video game and there won't be consequences needs a reality check as real life isn't a game where you can hit the reset button or reload a saved game. They are just bits and bytes with pretty pictures.

NA dnow, an assistant principal is dead and two others are injured, all because a kid was stupid enough to bring a gun and shoot somebody for whatever reason.

On Noveling
I signed up again this year to do NaNoWriMo and I am going a bit slow so far with a multtitude of distractions and demands. But I am determined this year to get 50K by Nov. 30, even if I have to pull a few all-nighters. My novel is called The Wish and its about a woman who gets a wish granted and is happy. I've read several books and stories where the protag gets a wish and nothing good happens, so I wanted to write one where the protag gets a wish granted and as a result is changed for the better.

On Politics
It seems there are a lot of rather interesting things coming out of Washington these days. Between the release of emails that Mike Brown wrote, the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito to fill retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and the indictments handed down by the grand jury convened by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, that there is plenty of verbiage being spewed by both the bloggers and the mainstream media.

My opinion is that something is seriously messed up in Washington.

First a very unqualified man is hired into an important post and frankly it showed. Then there was the nomination of Harriet Miers, whose only qualification to be a Supreme Court justice was that she had a law degree. You would think that somebody who would be called on to decide matters involving constitutionality of laws and other appeals would have a least some experience in deciding things like fair emplyment practices, the 1st amendment, civil rights, soveriegn immunity, etc.(List of issues facing the SCOTUS this term taken from On The Docket) Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination and 4 days Later President Bush nominates Judge Samuel Alito to the open seat. Bush made especial note of Judge Alito's judicial qualifications. I'm wondering if he was so qualified to begin with, why didn't Bush nominate him in the first place?

So I have a chance to read in-depth about the indictment handed down against "Scooter" Libby and i have had a rather interesting thought. A lot of the problems we as a country face boils down to the sheer incompetence of our elected leaders. Bush got breaks because of his daddy and didn't have to work as hard as the average American does to put food on the table and clothes on the kids.

2005 has so far seemed to be a rather odd year: Hurricanes named using the Greek alphabet, lots of natural disasters: Katrina, Rita, Wilma, earthquake in Pakistan, landslides in Costa Rica and let's not forget the bird flu or even man made diasters: over 2K service men and women killed in Iraq in a war that shouldn't have been started in the first place, higher cost of living, and the odd news that the Seine-Saint-Denis region has been rioting for 8 days(9 days as of this writing) and it is just now getting wider circulation?