seriously… what the fuck is up with you people? yeah the last 4 years have been GREAT, having a republican prez and republican-controlled house and senate. i've lost faith in this country. canada, invade us, PLEASE!!! (or at least the blue states)
i'm just about to end another 12 hour shift at work. gonna go home pack up and drive 90 minutes up to LA, where i'm registered to vote. i slacked on the absentee thing due to work/laziness and my only option now is to actually go there. i cannot NOT vote tomorrow. if Florida 2000 happens all over again, i wouldn't be able to live it down. so i'm gonna hit the polls when they open, try not to miss too much work and get back within the 2 hours they give us to vote. i know little to nothing about the propositions or local candidates, so i'm not going to vote on anything i'm not informed about. i'm just doin this for Kerry!
i haven't posted in a while but i gotta vent…
why does every single tiny insignificant windows program have to be shareware? i'm looking for a world clock program that will let me view the times in various zones worldwide. i need this for work so that i can announce test times on our test server for people here and for our euro players across the pond, and i thought i had it figured out, but this whole daylight savings time bullshit is throwing me off. so anyways, i go looking for a program that will do this and 99% of them are shareware — $25 for a clock program? are you kidding me?? i could easily find a program for linux that will do the same. it wouldn't surprise me if it was already built in to my distro. to all the greedy shareware devs out there… GRRRRR.
if it wasn’t for the advent of personal computers, i could see myself working in the field of astronomy and space exploration. my fascination with outer space started in the 3rd grade. i used to go through my parents’ encyclopedia and read through all about NASA’s rockets and their missions. Mercury. Gemini. Apollo. i can still remember this diagram that had all these rockets drawn side by side and compared them to the size of a person. i was in awe that we could create such a huge and powerful machine. at that point, i was hooked on everything that had to do with outer space. when we had those book orders in school, i wanted to get every single book that talked about our solar system and space exploration. i even had a favorite planet — Saturn. i can still remember our grade school field trip that we took to Griffith Observatory. i never wanted to leave the place. soon after, my parents got me a telescope. it was basically a toy but i didn’t care. i used to spend many nights in my backyard looking at the stars and the moon. i didn’t think it could get any better. then came the Space Shuttle. we had learned about it in class and what made it unique from all the other rockets we’ve launched into space. Space Shuttle Columbia launched in April of 1981 — Mission STS-1. i can’t say that i remember watching the launch, but i do remember all the news and headlines of the mission and collecting any bits of information i could about it — even if that meant cutting up my parents’ newspaper and copy of Newsweek. if it was possible for an 8-year old kid to be in love, then i can say that i loved Shuttle Columbia. i had a huge poster of Columbia’s first liftoff in my room, and had studied over so many pictures this beautiful machine that i could practically draw the shuttle and all its details and markings by heart. i thought for sure that i was going to grow up and be involved with space exploration, in some way or form. fast forward 20 years and like most everyone else, i became jaded about our shuttle missions and the huge interest i had as a child in the space program had all but disappeared. i didn’t know when our shuttles launched for another mission. i only knew when they came back and just happened to hear and feel the sonic boom that it created on reentry, or when the launchings and landings just happened to get a 15-second blurb in the evening news. i think that’s what saddened me most about the Columbia Tragedy. i didn’t get a chance to appreciate what her crew has accomplished and all the history and milestones that Columbia was a part of, and that i will never get to see her fly again. and it’s even more tragic that the crew included the first Indian-born woman and first Israeli astronaut to be sent out to space. RIP Columbia and her crew of STS-107.
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds…and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of…wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I’ve topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
‘High Flight’ by John Gillespie Magee, Jr.
yesterday, Dmitry Sklyarov, delivered his testimony in the trial against Elcomsoft. you’ll remember me posting about this last last july, so this has been a long wait. since this is the first trial regarding the DMCA, the outcome of this trial will likely set precedence over future similar trials regarding copyright and fair use. when will the companies get it thru their collective greedy heads that no matter what copy-protection they implement, or laws that they create and abuse, that people will always find away to get around it. yes, that means there will be a number of people who will make copies and distribute it to people who haven’t purchased the prodect themselves, but in Adobe’s case, they have yet to find an e-book that was cracked using Elcomsoft’s software. as far as music distribution goes, i think the record companies have screwed themselves by shutting down napster and all other p2p services and websites that offer mp3s. how has this affected me? well, i’ve downloaded maybe just 2 or 3 mp3s since the shutdown of napster (record co’s might think that’s good), but i’ve bought way less CDs as a result of not being able to sample electronic music, which doesn’t get much radio airplay. not that i listen to the radio, because they’re all pretty much controlled by the same company *cough*clearchannel*cough* and they play the same shit over and over again. oh and the music they play between the same shit is the same too. and rock music? i’ve only been buying CDs from artists that i already know. so who gets screwed over? the record companies because they missed out on their cut of my non-CD purchase, and the promising new musicians because they didn’t get their 13 cents. i think this wouldn’t be a problem if CDs were more affordable in the first place. why is it that i can pay up to $18 for a CD when 10 years ago, they could be had for $12? it’s really hard to justify a CD purchase when i can get a feature-length movie DVD for the same price, or less. anyways, about this trial. we should all be pretty concerned about the outcome of this. i’d like to think that i actually own the stuff i purchase.
so i finished reading Free As In Freedom and i just started reading a new book: Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. i’m in the middle of the first chapter and it has rekindled the anger and frustration i had felt over the 2000 presidential elections. as much as the media hyped it, it wasn’t about those stupid hanging and dangling chads. it was about Katherine Harris going through the voter list and removing anyone “suspected” of being a former felon (ex-felons cannot vote in FL) in the summer of 99. you’d think that was bad in itself but how they did it was even worse. the company responsible for going through the list were instructed to check people with the same name, birthdates or social security numbers as known felons, and if there was an 80% match with this criteria, they would be added to the ineligible voter list. well this was a pretty big net and it comes as no surprise that thousands of eligible voters weren’t allowed to vote. 173,000 registered voters in FL were permanently wiped off the list. in one county, 66% of the voters removed were black. in another county, 54% were black. black voters are overwhelmingly democrat. hmmmm… it was about the fact that 8,000 additional voters were wiped off the list thanks to a felon list supplied by another state. it turns out that the felons on this list had already served time and had their voting rights reinstated, and there were people on this list who had only committed misdemeanors — littering, parking violations, etc. this was so screwed up that Linda Howell, who was not a felon, wasn’t allowed to vote. who’s Linda Howell? just the Elections Supervisor for Madison County, FL. what was this state that provided this extra felon list? Texas. hmmm… it was about the fact that while the FL result was still too close to call, one network, Fox News, declared that Bush had won FL (which caused the other news networks to jump on the bandwagon, fearing that they would look slow or not up to date otherwise). and who was in charge of Fox’s election coverage? John Ellis, first cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush. hmmmm… there are more facts in this chapter about the exile of elected President Gore. i’ve just touched on a few points. it should be noted that the author of this book did not vote for Gore, and i’m expecting to see some democrat bashing in this book as well, if the liner notes in the book cover are any clue. well i wish i could read more of this book right now, but it’s getting late and i need to rest up for work. oh, speaking of work, i got my head scanned in the other day so there’s a chance i could be in this game! yaaayyy!
yeah it’s late. i’ve got a bad case of insomnia. anyways, i was bored and i just went through my webstats. there’s a cool section that shows the search strings that people entered into search engines and navigated to this page. surprisingly, underactive.net appeared on the first page of matches on google for “blueheart theme background”, “windows me theme and running xmms”, “absolute e enlightenment linux”, “mira sorvino background”, and “ps2 disc read errors”. with the exception of the last search string, all of the text came from the captions in my screenshots section, which makes me wonder if i should make a how-to on how to make the linux desktop look “l33t”. heh. it’s apparent that there’s still some interest in desktop linux, unlike what this ZDNet troll wants. and in response to his article, macs are damn cool, but i already have a PC and desktop linux works perfectly fine for me. i’ve got my browser, mail, chat, mp3 ripper/player, cd burner, dvd player, TV app… hell, i even have Quake3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein running smoothly (thank you, developers, for using OpenGL and not DirectX; and thank you, Nvidia, for the kickass linux drivers). and for everything else, there’s VMware for whenever i need to run windows in a window. now if Apple wakes up and realizes that they can make a shite-load of money and expand their user base by releasing OS X for x86 systems, count me in. i just wish Apple would realize that they don’t have to worry about losing hardware revenue from people buying x86 hardware to try OS X. Mac people are extremely loyal. if OS X for x86 comes out, they’re not gonna go out and buy x86 hardware — they already have a Mac! what Apple would gain would be a larger user base from people like me who already have a PC and are looking for Windows alternatives. but that hasn’t happened yet, so for now i’m sticking with my linux desktop. now i’m not saying that the linux desktop is perfect. there’s still some work to be done for it to gain mainstream acceptance. i think the top priority is getting better multimedia support. video in particular. right now, the only player that’s officially out there is Real, and that’s not saying much because it’s version 8 and nowhere near as robust as the Windows version. next is Windows media. i can play ASFs, DiVX AVIs and WMVs using mplayer pretty reliably, but the installation process was a little hairy (involved copying over win32 DLLs into the /usr/lib branch). and last but not least, there’s Apple Quicktime. mplayer plays old MOV files but the newer, better looking, and more common Sorensen codec-based movies don’t work. i can understand MS not releasing a linux-native media player, but i don’t see what Apple has to lose by creating Quicktime for linux. ah well. i just yawned. i think i’ll try sleeping now…
today was the first day since the attack that i haven’t cried. i know i haven’t written anything about it since then, and i don’t really know why. i guess i’ve just been in a really sensitive mood these past few days, to the point where seeing something on TV, or reading an article in the paper, or even listening to a song will bring me to tears. the last few days have been quite an emotional experience. i’ve felt shock, sorrow, pain, anger, pride. it’s a shame that it takes a tragic incident like this to bring the nation together. when i’m out in public, people just seem to be a little nicer than usual. perhaps this is because we all have a different outlook on life now, and the little things we used to bitch and complain about are nothing compared to what the victims, their family and friends had to experience. it’s good to see the nation coming together to unite, but what disheartens me are the reports of people threatening Arab-Americans and Muslims. haven’t these people learned from what we did to Japanese-Americans during WWII? these people love this country as much, if not more, than the rest of us do. otherwise, they would still be living in their homeland. no matter where you are from, it’s never right to threaten and terrorize innocent people.
i am living in a fucked up country. isn’t it ironic that China recently freed a U.S-based university teacher convicted and sentenced for spying, while here in the U.S., a foreign citizen is being held hostage not for anything as serious as spying, but for challenging the authority of a corporation. in case you don’t know what this is all about, i’m referring to Dmitry Sklyarov, who was arrested July 17 in Las Vegas, at the order of Adobe Systems, and was charged with distributing a product designed to circumvent copyright protection measures, in violation of the DMCA. here’s a site that explains it all:
here are some must-read articles on the first amendment, copyrights, the DMCA, and copy protection:
- First Amendment - Void where prohibited
- Copyrights and copywrongs: Why Thomas Jefferson Would Love Napster
- Putting a lock on e-Books: A New Cold War Looms Over Your Right to Read
- What’s Wrong with Copy Protection
another thing to think about… how would you feel if an American programmer got arrested in Russia for a law that didn’t even exist here? it’s hard to believe this is all happening here in the U.S., land of the free. the DMCA, which was created to make the digital world safe for software companies and movie studios, is now pushing the agenda of Big Business, at the expense of our personal freedoms. add to this that we’ve got an idiot in the White House who wasn’t elected by the people, and the recent “screw the world” Kyoto pact snub by the U.S. — the only world power (and also the world’s biggest polluter) to not accept the accord, i am deeply embarrassed that i am a U.S. citizen. we seriously need to reform our laws. hey Canada, got any vacancies up there, eh?