Shameless Words from Shameless Geeks

I remember not long ago when owning a Gigabyte Hard Drive was a big deal. Now I own a terabyte hard drive and plan to buy another in a few weeks because I have already filled my first terabyte hard drive. DVD’s however have been stuck around a few Gigabyte but soon even that will change, thanks to this break thru that is no more. All that we have left is for the Terra byte data sticks to appear and Petabyte will be the new Gigabyte.

Video blanking redaction is a subject that can often send an experienced engineer into a recursive state of paniced hysteresis, but it isn’t really all that magical. All you need to remember is that is is based on a few simple pseudo-scientific principles. The entire process can be broken into three statistically irrelevent stages that are easily stumbled through on an Ohm by Ohm basis.

The first stage is the virtual mastication of astable signal domains. This can be accomplished using one of two perpendicularly obtuse methods. The first is the use of a Forward Projected Glandular Analysis (FPGA) chip to perforate any magnetic bubble anomalies that can occur as a result of the repressed injection of Esoteric System Distinctions (ESDs). If you don’t have access to an FPGA chip, the same ESDs can be obstructed by using a high-end micro-reluctor with a cross-compiled refactoring front end and a virtualization restricting back end. Once this step is complete, the retrograde registers should be exponentially masticated and ready for the next stage

The second stage involves the cross-correlated flagellation of system RAM using a soft-decision Viterbi insertion array. This is a simple matter of recursively applying a Heisenberg null generator to the resident parameters of the local BIOS structure and feeding the resultant petrified bits into an oscillating Reed-Solomon clock suppressor. The open pseudo-source for this should be readily available online in the video redaction aisle of your local hobby shop.

The final stage, known as planar reciprocal defecation, is where quantum electro-mechanical process redundancies are applied to the resident co-axial database in preparation for excretion. The simplest way to do this is using a repulsive monastic CODEC feeding a Fourier jitter enhancement driver. If all has gone well, your redundant retraction filter should now contain a logarithmically extended no-op.

That’s about it. Video blanking redaction should now be complete, and you can forward it to your repartitioning GUI. I hope I have explained this in an obtuse enough manner to answer any irrelevant questions.

–Shameless

It looks like our long running gag of Duke Nukem Forever has come to a sad end. Sadly, there will be no Duke Nukem Forever. The company that was producing the game finally ran out of money, shutdown and canceled Duke Nukem Forever. I am sadden by this but at least I did not preorder it.

According to /., SCO’s life support is about to run out. I know that anything said against them now would sound a little like piling on, but I’d rather be accused of that than be accused of speaking ill of the dead. It looks like I only have a short time to speak up. If they go chapter 7 as the post suggests, that’s the business equivalent of an estate sale, and it means that the company is already dead.

I’m really glad that SCO got squashed. I genuinely feel sorry for the little people that got hurt in the process, but the company had to be an example of what happens when you try to rape open source. Can you imagine what would have happened if they got away with it? There’s no telling how it would have affected the whole IT business. Suddenly, everyone running an instance of Linux would owe money to SCO. What would have followed was a lawyers goldrush as every company who had ever been in the same room as a piece of Linux source code tried to make a similar claim. Just think… Hundreds of server farms, thousands of home routers, millions of critical embedded systems, all shut down due to greed.

The worst part about the whole thing was that the SCO who brought on the lawsuit had no real tie to the one that was around for the disputed project with IBM. They were several deep in mergers, acquisitions, and licenses. And even after you followed that seemingly endless chain of ownership, you wouldn’t find a company with a clear title, just one who “suspected” that someone may have used code that they both worked on at one time. They never even were able to point out which code… just a vague “some function that did this".

The annoying part here is that the sleazy lawyers and even sleazier entrepreneurs at the top of the company found a way to get rich anyway… mostly via funding traceable to Microsoft. Those are the guys I would like to see go “Chapter 7″.

Gaming has lost another great, David Arneson passed away a few days ago. David Arneson was the co-creator of D&D. I wish I could say something but the sadness over the loss of another gaming great has left me without words.

Well, it looks like the French said “no” to “three strikes”. Unfortunately, It looks like they will “pitch” it again later.

The interesting thing is that the vote was “poorly attended". Could it be that politicians were smart enough to stay away from an unpopular vote pushed by the entertainment industry? Vote in favor, lose the next election. Vote against, lose lots of campaign contributions AND the bully pulpit of the entertainment industry. It’s a no-win situation for them.

Again, we see the bloated and over-hyped numbers attributed to losses due to piracy. These are always based on the number of downloads observed, with a big multiplier for those that they think they missed. Most of the downloaders wouldn’t have purchased the pirated content anyway.

Your average person doesn’t mind paying a reasonable fee for entertainment. The amount people are willing to pay for a movie theater seat is proof of that. It’s just that, in an age of easy distribution, nobody wants to pay huge profits to a company whose only contribution is an outdated distribution network.

The New York Times today posted a good article about the new French system to stop piracy. This is the same system Steven Soderbergh proposed to congress and what the movie and record industry want in the USA. Hopefully this law will not pass in the USA, the privacy violations alone make me shudder.

I do not know why, but I really want to read Batman 116 from 1958. Lets see there is one of three ways, through finding it in a trade paperback (a collection of several comic books), by buying the issue on the secondary market or if I am really lucky at a store or convention. Oh poo, I am not lucky, the local store in town will not let me and there are no comic book conventions in Austin right now. Double whammy, there is no trade paperback that contains a copy of Batman 116. So on to the last option, to buy a copy from the secondary market. So off to Mile High Comics I go, ah there it is, no too bad it’s out of stock. Off to MyComicShop.com, ah too bad they are out too. Well there always EBay, hey look there it is in Spanish, no I do not want to read Brave and Bold 116, ah there it is two copies. Ah man this urge is going cost me a lot, one is 69.99 with 4 days left and the other copy is over Two hundred dollars. Logging into PayPal, darn it I am broke. Maybe I should not have bought the State Puff Marshmallow Man last week, man was he expensive. Did enjoy eating him and I even crossed streams.
Hold on what’s this you say there is a digital copy available? Hot dog, so how much? Free you say? Bonus, hold on here a moment, isn’t download comics off the Internet illegal. Why yes it is. As Nancy Regan told us say I am just going to have to say NO to your crack, excuse me digital comic book. But darn it, I really want to read Batman 116. So begins the trail down dark path that creates a Pirate.
Wait there is hope, to stop me from turn into one of those evil Pirate. DC Comics could create a way so I can legally buy digital copies of your books; all it takes is a little work. Marvel already lets me, why not you?

Ah Internet Piracy, the scourge that never goes away. Hollywood and music industry have been struggling with it for years. Yet no matter what they do it seems to never go away or even really decrease. When is the movie and music industry going learn the story of the sun and the wind? What is the story of the sun and wind, well it goes like this: One time the wind bet the sun he could get a guy walking down the road he could get him to take off his coat. So the wind blew and blew on the guy and all it did was to get to him button up tighter and tighter. Then the sun took his turn and he raised himself high in the air and with in seconds the coat was gone. The moral of the story is for the movie industry is stop attacking the pirates; they just get better at hiding from you. Instead create a system so we can access any movie at any time with out nasty DRM for an affordable price and no $15 a movie is not affordable. Guess what Hollywood, that system is already in place its called Netflix. To kill the vast majority of the movie pirate all Hollywood has do is make all the movies viewable not just the small list they currently have. Then again this Hollywood, they will continue to attack p2p like the wind. Hollywood when you wake up and become the sun make sure there is no DRM, Shameless hates DRM.

Wow… I think LeakeNova has a point there. There are several problems I see with the sudden shift in pricing:

1. Was there any advance warning to those who were signing contracts with TWC? I would hate to see people who signed up for unlimited bandwidth, paid for the in-home equipment, then got shafted by the new pricing structure. I also would see any attempt by TWC to fine people for breaking these contracts as a criminal offense. Bait and switch.

2. Does TWC intend to do anything for those who fall far short of their bandwidth cap? I doubt it. Rollover bits would be nice, but I doubt you will see those either. I’d love to be able to save up bandwidth for the November gaming season when all of the new Christmas games show up on Steam.

3. As usual, the punishment for going over your limit is SEVERE. Why does everything over the limit cost many times as much as everything under the limit? I could never get that. Does the over-the-limit bandwidth suddenly cost more for the company to transfer? NO. They are the same bits. It’s really either a punishment, or a way to force you into a more expensive plan. It’s almost like the provider considers themselves judge, jury and executioner. They will, however, tend to be lenient if you throw money at them.

Lucky for me, I’m not troubled by these problems… yet. I feel for you LeakeNova. I’d be annoyed too.

Lets hope, for all of our sake, that TWC does a face-to-floor dance because of this. i would hate this example to spread to my neighborhood.

BTW… I the rats and roaches agreed to start paying rent, as long as I guaranteed them unlimited network access. The basement is no longer available. Sorry.

Well after a very long disappearance I have returned to blogosphere. Why you ask? Simple to mock, okay complain, Time Warner Cable decision to charge for the amount we download. This decision is horrible for me. I watch streaming movies from Netflix daily, I download video games from Steam, and I use a ton of bandwidth when I work from home which I do pretty much everyday for at least 1-2 hours. Thanks to Time Warner Cables decision I will not be doing any of those things anymore, I can not afford the bill. To make matters worse, thanks to where I live the only high speed provider I have access to is Time Warner Cable. Austin is looking less grand everyday, shudder the thought I may be moving back to Virginia. Shameless is the basement still for rent?

It looks like Colbert has pulled off another public relations coup. He managed to get the most votes in a NASA naming contest. Of course, you have to read the fine print here. The top vote-getter won’t necessarily be the name used.

You have to give the guy credit. Whether his name is actually used or not, he managed to prove that a group of rocket scientists isn’t necessarily smart.

Of course… There is always the chance that NASA could turn this back in their favor. Wouldn’t it be nice if they put Colbert’s name on a big plaque over top of the “Colbert Bathroom"?

We’ve all heard about the new president’s inappropriate joke on the Leno show. Of course, my opinion about this kind of thing remains the same. Though the president was in the wrong and was right to apologize, the response was equally inappropriate. People need to grow a thicker skin about offhand comments. Overreacting to something that wasn’t meant to harm you makes you as guilty as the person you are reacting to.

I think that an absolutely perfect response came from Kolan McConiughey, a Special Olympics bowler. He’s challenged President Obama to a bowl-off. Of course, the president has very little chance of beating a man with five 300 games to his credit.

I can’t think of a more appropriate way to make someone eat their words publicly and without malice. I’d love to see it! The President would be suitably humiliated in public, and you can bet that he’d never make the same mistake. It can all be done without name-calling, and all would be forgiven when it was over.

So, what do you say, Jay? This would be a perfect event for you to televise. I know I would stay up late to watch it!

A soft news item that has been making the rounds lately about a postcard arriving 47 years after it was sent is something that really shouldn’t surprise anyone. IMHO, it proves one of two rumors:

1) Snail Mail deserves it’s name.

or

2) It really still IS 1962 in Montana.

Either way, no surprise here.

BTW… does anyone have any data on how long it would take a snail to travel from Montana to Ohio? I guess It’s a difficult experiment to do. It can’t be easy to find a snail that can live for 47 years.

I saw this article about employers using the web to disqualify candidates. There isn’t much depth there, but it shows a serious perception problem that a lot of people have.

I honestly think that the writer has a deep misunderstanding of the concept of rights and responsibilities. Yes, you have the right to say what you want, but it’s tied to the responsibility that you stand up for what you say. For example: if you put up a blog that makes constant threats against someone, shouldn’t you be held accountable for those threats? For a more relevant example: If you put up a blog that constantly criticizes Microsoft and threatens to steal code from them, doesn’t the beast of Redmond have a right to know this when you apply for a job there?

If you are arguing that a potential employer shouldn’t know about that nude picture of you that got taken over spring break, you are still wrong. It is your responsibility to make sure that pictures like that don’t get out into public. In the past, that kind of thing would get publicized by sleazy journalists. Nowadays, that kind of thing gets published straight to You Tube. Same problem, different media.

There are times when being investigated by an employer is actually doing you a service. If you are going for a job that requires a security clearance, you should expect to get screened. All they are really looking for is a reason why you would be denied the clearance that is critical to your ability to perform the job. If you are going for a job that requires you to be a public representative of a company, they need to make sure that you don’t have any secrets that could damage the company. If you are applying for a job with a political organization, you deserve to be investigated. In every one of these examples, the employer is looking for something that would have gotten you fired anyway… possibly after a great deal of public shame.

In general, I doubt that it is a common practice to investigate someone without a pressing reason. Having been on the employers end of this scenario in the past, I can tell you that investigating someone’s political opinions, spring break habits, sexual orientation, or any other irrelevant tidbit is prohibitively expensive. It requires time to dig these things up, and there just isn’t enough bang for the buck here to make investigations useful.

As a final point, why would you want to work for an employer who uses irrelevant information to determine whether or not you should be hired? Really… you are better off somewhere else anyway.

For those of you monitoring the activity on this site (yes, i mean both of you), you probably noticed the lack of posts for the past couple of months. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth. Unfortunately, something in the blog options did.

After checking and rechecking the options over and over, the problem turned out to be a corrupt link in the database that kept me form logging on. The problem is fixed, and you should start to see posts more often.

I would apologize for the inconvenience, but I doubt that anyone noticed.

For now, I’ll keep the comments turned off. Most of them were links to porn sites anyway. God I hate spammers.

Last night, Groklaw posted the final judgment in the SCO case. At long last, SCO’s attempt to bleed the open source community is at an end. It looks like the $600 fee that they tried to extort from every copy of Linux will never happen.

I wish I could say something about how great the judgment is, but about all I can think of is “it’s about time this ended". This whole thing has been going on for so long that I hardly remember when it started. It’s funny how the only ones who got rich were the lawyers.

Speaking of lawyers… I wonder how many are going to work with RIAA? The concept of the litigation is pretty much the same… be a cash leech.

El Reg has an article about the passing of a legend. Gus, the current reigning champion of canine ugliness, is dead at the age of nine. Gus overcame a lot to reach the pinnacle of his career as a putrid-looking pooch. He was missing an eye, short one leg, had no fur, and was covered in blotches. Actually, I think I may have been set up with his twin sister on a blind date once. Yecch!

Was the infamous Duke Nukem vaporware actually released today? Can the granddaddy of all gaming jokes be at an end?

Naaaah. We can relax. It’s only a re-hash of the old Duke Nukem 3D title for XBox Live Arcade. They almost had me believing that Duke Nukem Forever was actually released. I suppose that I should have known better. The universe still exists, and hell is… well… still hell. Please go back to fragging.

OK… so maybe it’s just another study that relies on “expert” opinion to derive it’s numbers. In order to avoid being a hypocrite, I have to say that I don’t believe the results any more than I believe the studies that tell me how bad video games are for development.

That being said, it’s nice that psychologists “opinions” are beginning to balance out. Someday, I’d like to see the end of opinion based studies. Until that magical day comes, I’ll settle for a world where the “opinions” balance out to a no-op.