Geek Palaver

Posted By runwolf13 on January 21, 2010

There is currently a growing controversy surrounding the acquisition of high quality military rifle sights for the Army and Marines.  It seems the manufacturer, Trijion, has since it’s earliest days, included a biblical verse in the serial number of their products.  The verse, inscribed in what “ABC News” refers to as “code” is a sort of model number.  Each model has a different verse attached to it.

The “code” is that the verse actually doesn’t appear on the rifle site.  The code for their high in special ops sight is JN8:12.   That’s all the sight says… at the end of the serial number.  In the example shown on ABC news, the whole inscription is AC064X32JN8:12.

Now ABC News, and others that have latched onto this growing controversy, want to claim that this biblical message violates the anti-proselytization law.  To avoid the appearance of a crusade, US Troops are barred from attempting to spread their own religious views in theater.

What I’d really like someone to explain to me is how that serial number, which for point one is so small that they had to magnify it significantly to show it on TV, is spreading anything?  Prior to this news story, the US Army was unaware that the ending codes on the serial number meant anything other than the model number.  Not to mention you have to have some understanding of what the “code” is to know what bible verse the serial number even refers to.

Putting aside the obvious ethical issues of putting bible verses on sights designed to help people kill people, saying that the sights are designed to convert our enemies to Christianity is a bit silly.  It is hardly the first time “secret” messages have been hidden in plain sight.  One other example that leaps to mind is Apple Computer’s first alert “tone” on the Macintosh.  After Apple settled with Apple Music over the use of the name by agreeing to not let the computer play music (and in 1975, who thought a computer would ever play music?) Apple changed its mind in 1984 with the Macintosh.  The alert tone, one of several available, was quite musical and was called “sosumi.”  Years later it was revealed it was a open taunt to Apple Music (which held the rights to the music of The Beatles) to sue Apple Computer over the change.  (sosumi= So, Sue Me.)

There have even been less veiled religious icons used in the military for far longer than the Trijion sights.  Anyone know what the symbol worn by every doctor in the Military is?  Oh yea, the symbol of a Greek God.

I’m sorry, but ABCNews and the anti-war crowd have created a controversy with this one.  This should be a non-issue.  The army bought the JN8:12 sight because it is the best.  Not to let the person on the receiving end of the bullet know that God loves them.

Category: Venom, spirit | 3 Comments »
Tags:

Posted By runwolf13 on January 11, 2010

So we went to the Tennessee Aquarium this weekend. And once again, my six year old son proved he’s smarter than me.

On the way there, he saw a sign for the Aquarium that advertised their penguin exhibit.  Very cool, and he got excited.  He asked me if they had “Macaroni Penguins.”  I tried not to laugh, I mean really… Macaroni?  But told him we’d have to see.

We get there, and our tour guide takes us first to see the Penguins.  Now this is an overnight trip where we slept at the Aquarium and got to see all sorts of stuff behind the scenes.  So the boy asks again…  ”Will we see Macaroni Penguins?”

Since the tour guide would be dealing with kids all night long, I figured this is a good chance to see how she handles silly questions.  So I told the boy to ask the guide.  Which he did.

Imagine my surprise when she said “We sure do.  We have 11 adults and a baby.”

Wait.  There really are Macaroni Penguins?

So I ask the boy where he heard about them.  ”Diego.”

Score one for Nick Jr.

Category: Media | 2 Comments »
Tags: silly

Posted By Russell on January 3, 2010

Yes, I’m going for a massive amount of hits for this one.

Full disclosure: I am a newbie to Macs. I bought my first iMac in 2007 right after they switched to Intel. I went in to get a Mac Mini thinking it would be fun to play with, but when I looked at the cost of adding a monitor, keyboard, mouse, etc., I decided that a 19″ iMac might be a better deal (especially since they were on sale at the time).

We took it with us on vacation, and I fell in love the moment I took it out of the box. Apple knows what they’re doing with the purchasing experience. I had never (I’ve owned approximately 30 computers dating back to the Commodore PET! that loaded programs from a tape deck, and could only play Space Invaders.) opened a box, plugged in the power cord, mouse, keyboard and had a fully usable computer within 20 minutes. The first thing most PCs require at setup is a clean install to clear off the crapware in order to make the system usable. (This is, of course, not true of the systems I’ve built myself, but those systems take days to purchase, build, and setup.)

The iMac was a thing of beauty coming out of the box, but it wasn’t enough to convince me to switch. That occurred when I bought my first iPhone, but that’s a different posting. This is about windows.

Even though I switched to Mac during the Vista era, I am not a Vista hater. I was an early adopter. As soon as it was available preinstalled on the Lenovo ThinkPad (T61), I ordered Ultimate and was quite happy. Yes, I had trouble with drivers for printers (All-in-Ones from HP were notoriously slow being released), but I was quite happy with the laptop, and with Vista as a whole.

Here’s the problem. I’m setting up a desktop that’s been sitting in the corner collecting dust for my brother-in-law. (Yes, I’m that guy, but then the “Geek” in the title of the blog really should have been a giveaway.) This is a machine that I built, so I’m not blaming any manufacturer other than myself. As I said, this machine has been sitting in a corner, so it needed to be updated. There were approximately 60 critical updates that needed to be applied, including Vista SP1.

Everything was going along slowly but surely until I finally got to SP1. Then, I got the dreaded Windows Update Error message stating that the SP1 patch could not be applied.

It seems that there are many people who have had problems with this very same issue. It also seems that the only way to fix this issue is to disable everything that can be disabled in Windows, and reinstall them from the Setup disk. In short, to install a service pack to make Vista secure and stable, I need to reinstall Vista again.

As ridiculous as this is, it by itself isn’t why Windows sucks. Windows sucks not because it breaks sometimes. It sucks because one of the richest companies in the world, which is owned by one of the richest men in the world, decided that it needed to be just a little bit richer and require that costumers who had paid for the software jump though hoops of “Authentication” when trying to fix problems that Microsoft itself should have fixed long ago. SP1 was released nearly 2 years ago. (Authentication only affects honest customers. The dishonest ones have long since circumvented this problem.)

Why should I have to go through this trouble of proving to Microsoft that the software I bought, and authenticated three years ago, needs to be shown to be authentic again? Especially just to update the software to the latest version?

This is why I switched to Macs: Microsoft is a monopoly that has no reason to be concerned about the User experience. If they lose one, so what! We have millions of others who are willing to put up with being hassled for no reason whatsoever.

Category: Tech, geek | 2 Comments »
Tags: authentication, drm, macs, sp1, vista, windows

Posted By Russell on December 31, 2009

The Dark Knight wishes you a good one.

Category: Worm, geek | Comments Off
Tags: batman, gordan, happy new year

Posted By Russell on December 25, 2009

Nothing geeky today, just two stories.

Last night Emma was in bed, trying to fall asleep when she heard the dog, Charlie, start to bark. She looked at Laurel with an irrepressible grin and asked, “Do you think Charlie’s barking at Santa?” Being unable to help smiling, Laurel says, “I don’t know, but we better at least pretend to be asleep.” Lying still, but giggling to herself; she drops off.

This morning, Matthew was bouncing on the indoor trampoline, holding Buzz and Woody, when I handed him a car set that Laurel had bought for him. He sat down to look at it, and I went to help Emma open something else. A few seconds later, Matthew walks over to me and puts the box with the cars into my hand as if to say, “Here dad, could you open this for me.”

No child’s toy has ever been opened faster.

Merry Christmas to all!

Category: spirit | Comments Off
Tags: charlie, christmas, emma, matthew, stories

Posted By runwolf13 on December 17, 2009

A good friend of mine in Chicago posted an excellent article about God speaking to us in unusual and unlikely ways. In this case, Brian makes some good points about this likely not coming from God himself/herself/itself.  Brian, God bless him, is a devout Catholic, so his point of view is a bit different than my own liberal baptist, but I have to agree with him on this one.

Seems the Joilet Jackhammer’s minor league baseball team wants to get a celebrity spokesperson of the highest order, and inked a deal with the Lord to support the team.  I don’t know the specifics of the contract, but apparently the deal, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, includes a a tithe of 10% to the church (or charity of the customer’s choice) for every ticket sold in December.

Now the campaign seems to be successful.  They are nearly double their normal December season ticket sales.  But on the whole, I think the campaign is in poor taste.  I guess it just goes to show you that there really is no such thing a bad publicity.

But it does make me wonder, if God was to really ink a deal with an advertiser, who would it be?  It’s a fun exercise in ethical and moral thinking that is, of course, meaningless and therefore perfect fodder for Geek Palaver.

I’m sure Mr. Ed and Russ will have vastly different opinions on the matter than my own.  After all I’m the token pro-business conservative on the site.  So in the interest of what will hopefully be an exciting discussion, here’s my top ten (we love top tens here at Geek Palaver) ad deals God is most likely to sign.

1. Jack Daniel’s Distillary – I hesitated to put this one at the top, but I think it really would be right up there at the top of the list.  After all, the good book says to Eat, Drink and be Merry and a bit of Jack’s finest would help that along.  My concern is that Jack isn’t owned by the Daniel’s anymore, so God may balk at signing with an international megacorp like Brown-Forman.  But I don’t know much about that company, so I’m going to pretend they are good people and God would give them the endorsement.
2. Five Guys Burgers and Fries – Again, eat drink and all that jazz…  but its more than that.  It’s a successful family business, started to put kids through college.  But they surpassed their father, took over the business and turned it into a national sensation.  And they make good fries.  I have to think God likes good fries.
3. Samual Adams Brewery – See a theme yet?  Good beer, available pricing for the masses…  If not Sam Adams, then some other fine craft brewery.
4. Hebrew National Hot Dogs – Do I really need to explain this one?
5. Apple, Inc. – Secretly, I think God owns a part of Apple.  No other megacorp could pull off near obscurity to national prominence the way Apple has.  If God’s not involved, then the competition is.  But I tend to think the competition is in bed with Microsoft.
6. Tesla Motors – Look, the company needs the endorsement.  They make eco-friendly electric cars.  One is a sports car.  It’s hyper-fast AND green?  Has God’s name written all over it.
7. Mike Rowe – Dirty Jobs AND the voice of Deadliest Catch?  Mike Rowe is awesome.  And has the second best voice in the business.  Next to God himself, which I have on great authority sounds just like James Earl Jones.
8. The Roman Catholic Church – No, not so much for what it is NOW, but for what it is in people’s hearts and minds.  At least, the faithful’s hearts and minds.  And I think the deal would obligate some radical changes in the church, much needed changes.  (Sorry Brian)
9. Trojan Condoms – I said there would be changes in the church, didn’t I?  Well, here’s one.  Plus, the widespread availability of condoms is one of the single greatest combatants in the war on poverty, overpopulation and human misery.  Read Chuck Yeager’s autobiography for an example.
10. GeekPalaver.com – Cause yea, I’m that modest.  I put it last, see?

Category: Media, geek, spirit | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Posted By Russell on December 15, 2009

“Consider Christmas—could Satan in his most malignant mood have devised a worse combination of graft plus bunkum than the system whereby several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the Western world is made ill from overeating—all in the name of the lowly Jesus?”

And

“The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery.”

–Upton Sinclair

Category: Polity, Venom | 1 Comment »
Tags:

Posted By runwolf13 on December 8, 2009

We’ve been told the science is done. That global warming is caused by man, and it is time for man to react and stop it. We’ve been told, time and again, that opposition to green movements means you must want the global warming catastrophe to occur… that you want to kill the earth.

If it’s all science, and all decided, then what the heck is going on in Copenhagen? Leaked documents upsetting developing nations. Emails concerning ways of silencing stanch scientific dissent from, of all people, climatologists.

Wait… I know what it is. Politics.

And that’s why politics has no place in science. There are plenty of people continually pointing out problems with the current models of climate change, not the least of which is why is Mars going through planetary warming too, that has yet to be explained away with anything resembling ease. Instead it is a case of “most scientists.” (Most scientists, at one time, thought the idea that vaccines were a Really Bad Idea)

So who do you believe? I have to think the answer is somewhere in the middle. I’m not sold on the whole carbon footprint basis of global warming, but look at the deserts of China and tell me over-grazing doesn’t have a widespread impact. Or at the fish stocks off the Atlantic seaboard. Or find me an old growth forest in Europe.

So let’s look at the SCIENCE behind climate issues. And get away from the politics.

I must be dreaming. That’ll never happen.

Category: Uncategorized | 12 Comments »
Tags: Climate Change

Posted By Russell on December 3, 2009

In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee today, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve and nominee for a second term, called for cutbacks in entitlement spending such as Social Security and Medicare. In his best imitation of Willie Sutton, Bernanke said, “That’s were the money is.”

Interestingly enough, the Defense Department’s budget, along with the recent announcement by President Obama’s decision to send 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan was not mentioned as an equally large bank of money.

In addition to the $660 billion dollar budget

"Take the money from entitlements!"

that the DoD and the Global War on Terror receive each year, we have fought two wars at a cost of $944 billion dollars over the past 8 years.

Bernanke is mistaken. Entitlement programs are not where the money is. The real money in America is not in helping people, but rather in killing them. We’ve had 8 months of debate over spending $800 billion over the next decade to provide health insurance to all of America. How much debate has occurred over spending more in a shorter time when we’re funding our multiple wars? We have to end these wars.

Category: Polity | 4 Comments »
Tags: bernanke, defense, healthcare, social security, war

Posted By Russell on December 2, 2009

Happy Birthday, MrEd!

Category: geek | 1 Comment »
Tags: birthday, zombies