First linux kernel compile in the 3.x era

The 2.6 branch of the linux kernel is now in maintenance mode only. Torvalds jumped to version 3.x to celebrate the kernel's twentieth birthday. There wasn't really any major changes in architecture, as was the case in going from versions 2.2 to 2.4, or from 2.4 to 2.6. From the outside, it looks like Torvalds caught the same version number bug that was going around this summer. The grass is greener phenomenon is typified by Mozilla's changing their numbering scheme for firefox. They abandoned their 3.6.x series, in favor of 4.x, 5.x, etc. and it is currently at 8.0.1.

Here is a spoke-wheel graphic showing the space used by the modules of the two most recently compiled kernels.

This kernel is more stable with my hardware, i.e. using Intel chipsets (i9xx).

Update: 2011-12-17 I applied the patch, recompiled and installed the 3.1.5 update to avoid more nasty bugs on my hardware.

Update: 2011-12-29 Same drill to update to 3.1.6. Version 3.1.5 choked when compiling firefox 9.0.1 on my hardware. The kernel, version 3.1.6, compiled firefox in about an hour.

Update: 2012-01-05 Same drill to update to 3.2.0. Still having some crash issues on 3.1.6. The last crash seemed to be related to wireless networking.

New look for Google+

Google+ changed to a dropdown menu as part of their new look and feel. The menu has a link to google documents, as part of the push to keep information online. I am mostly using Amazon S3, but google documents seem to be a quick and dirty method to share spreadsheets and formatted documents. The window also has the built in voice/video/telephone plugin, which competes nicely with skype.

Here is a composite screenshot.

The future of employment in a digital world

What jobs will be left for humans when computers/robots take more ground in manufacturing? This is the debate that began with workers questioning how they could compete with machines that could do their job better and more efficiently than they could. Their response was to throw shoes into the machinery; the root word of sabotage is sabot. The trend gained more momentum with Ford's assembly line at the beginning of the 20th century, and continues to accelerate in this century. It manifests with highly automated factories producing motherboards, cell phones, pharmaceuticals, and anything involving any repetitive task.

I joined today's On Point in the middle. It sounded very interesting and I am going to download the podcast. Let me know if you'd like the audio cached here.

Download mp3

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Good Default Printer for Slackware

I just noticed this slackbuild that creates a virtual pdf printer. This printer could be useful when used on live-usb system as the default printer. One improvement would be the ability to query the user for the filename to use. That would be very similar to "print to file" on other OSs.

A Funny Comic (Rage Meme)

I found this online. I wish I could find the original poster to give proper credit.

Updated Google Talk plugin for Slackware

I finally got around to checking if google voice was working any better than it had been in the past. When I first tried it last year, the quality was lacking, especially when compared to skype. Now that Microsoft has completed their acquisition of Skype, I thought that it was time to see if any improvements have been made to google's offering. I did some simple tests and I think it's now working on par with Skype. Yeah! That's good news because it allows free video calling from computers to other google users, and free voice-only calls from computers to real telephone numbers in the United States, and other voice calls to real telephone numbers at rates comparable, or cheaper than skype (YMMV). Skype offers the same, except at $0.02 for calls in the US, and other rates worldwide.

Getting it working
Here is the procedure I followed to get this working.

• Downloaded the Debian 32-bit package from google talk/chat.


• -- verify md5sum: c6d5d8f881960483f6cb9a84d955a8e9 google-talkplugin_current_i386.deb


• Downloaded the slackbuild for Slackware 13.37, as maintained by Erik Hanson.


• -- The slackbuild repackages the Debian package, and it worked without incident- including automatically building the 2.3.2.0 version without modifying the slackbuild.


• Installed the package, per the normal slackware drill


• Restarted firefox, and voila, the talk plugin with video capability is now present in a google mail window (it is on the left, with the chat the sidebar

When firefox is restarted, you should see the google-talk addin listed:

Configuration tweaks
It can be tricky to find where to setup your devices, especially because the phone works as plugin within a browser. The phone is part of the "chat" component. I've seen it shown on the lefthand sidebar within two windows: google mail and google+ (when viewing "stream" content). To setup your devices, look for "options -> chat settings." You can change your device settings from that page.


By the way, I ran these tests while using a live USB version of Slackware 13.37. Let me know if you'd like my prebuilt package to apply directly to your devices.

• 19faaaa2752fda7eaf555f67b2b931bd google-talkplugin-2.3.2.0-i386-1_SBo.tgz

Update: 2011-11-27 The talk plugin has been updated to version 2.5.6. The same installation drill applies. Also, let me know if you'd like a slack package.

• fda69b2b6d1b59f080b9c5c84ae5f9cd google-talkplugin-2.5.6.0-i386-1_SBo.tgz

Interview: Darger family

Radio West:
This is the family that inspired HBO's Big Love: 1 husband, 3 wives, 24 children.

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Interview: Brad Pitt in Michael Lewis' Moneyball

Terry Gross interviewed Brad Pitt today about a new movie, Moneyball.

I want to listen to this sometime soon: (mp3). Let me know if you'd like the audio cached.

Paint Your Wagon...really

Radio West: So rugged and mountainous, this interview by Doug Fabrizio was interesting.

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One tidbit fact: it really was a good idea to paint your wagon. Linseed oil helped to waterproof the canvas.

main title from the 1969 movie

New Firefox for Slackware 13.x

Here is a screenshot of Firefox 3.6.22 running on my dm-live project (Slackware 13.37 based)
. Apparently, it's so new, that it's an unknown version of Firefox.

Let me know if you'd like a link to a slackware package to update your live-usb devices.

Update: The official slackware package has been released. You can get it here or another slackware mirror. Check valid signature here

Update: 2011-09-27 Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6.23. As before, let me know if you'd like a link to a slackware package to update your live-usb devices.

Tea Party Politics: Introducing Rick Parry (or Rick Perry?)

Today's Fresh Air was as scary of program that has been aired on NPR, including earlier this year when Terry had a guest that described the insane Plumb-bob tests in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. This program was at least as scary because it described a planned religious war between Christians and Muslims. The first plank in their platform: tolerance is the greatest evil on planet Earth. You've been warned. Listen at your peril.

Download mp3.

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Is a tablet form factor patentable?

Here is a misc. slashdot
headline. I'll have to rewatch that part of 2001 to see if they are using tablets. I remember for sure that Star Trek and Star Trek TNG made extensive use of handheld electronic devices. But even with all that futuristic hardware somehow Kirk still needed a yoeman to help with the ship's log.

Electric Guitar Tech

I heard part of Bob Edwards Weekend yesterday. The discussion was about developments and improvements to the electric guitar that made it possible to define new genres of music (rock and roll, bakersfield country, etc) They discuss the instruments played by the legends (Les Paul, Chet Atkins, Jimmy Page, George Harrison, etc.) Manufacturers discussed: Fender, Gibson, and Gretsch.

Update (2011-08-24): I guess the only option was to listen to this live. For whatever reason, the podcast has gone away.

Rosanne Cash interviewed on Fresh Air (rebroadcast)

This interview was very interesting. The interview centered on Cash's interpretation of songs on Johnny Cash's list of 100 essential American songs. Her interpretation of Patsy Cline's She's Got You does it justice. A lot of singers are afraid to touch Cline's music for fear of not measuring up.

Download audio (mp3)

This sparked the question in my mind of what songs would be on my list of 100 essential songs. Don't Fear the Reaper is going to be on that list. More cowbell! Going back to my childhood: Garry Lewis and the Playboys' This Diamond Ring, Bobby Vinton's Blue on Blue, Marty Robbins' El Paso, the Beatles' Hard Days Night are probably the first songs I remember.

Bye Bye Slashdot

Slashdot, if you're reading this, take notice! Yeah, right, as if they care about what I think! It could be I'm a drop in the bucket, but perhaps there are a lot of drops falling into the pail.

I'm quitting Slashdot because it is just too frustrating to try to read user comments, no matter how inciteful, using their interface. Their original interface (circa 1997) is better than the current offering! Compared to competitor reddit, it's interface is in the stone age. Slashdot is going to be a remnant of the early internet if they don't adapt. Their first competitor, digg, is a fading memory in the rear view mirror. reddit looks to be a long term survivor. It has interesting features, especially when using the greasemonkey based "reddit enhancement suite."

It also appears that reddit has dealt with crashes and downtime due to the cpu/storage intensive requirements of generating the website. I will probably continue to read the Slashdot headlines, out of habit, but I think I'm done commenting at all. The reddit board and its "subreddits" are poised to be another nail in the coffin of not only slashdot, but the venerable usenet protocol as well.

Update 2011-09-05: Wow! Taco Resigned within a couple of weeks after this post. Maybe, somebody is listening. ;) Yeah, right! original slashdot story

Interview with two leading economists on jobs

NPR's John Ydstie interviewed economists Joseph Stiglitz and John Taylor about ways to strengthen the economy.
NPR audio, mp3. Let me know if you'd like the audio cached.

Barack Obama, Sr. (the president's father)

Dave Davies interviewed Sally H. Jacobs about her new biography of President Barack Obama's father, The Other Barack. This was an interesting show- the part about racial issues with immigration forcing him out of Harvard appears to have been a pivotal point in his life.


NPR audio, mp3. Let me know if you'd like the audio cached.

p.s.Here is a post about another interview about Obama's mother.

Aliases and Imposters on Facebook

Not the Susan Arnout Smith you were looking for?

Facebook users face a problem, the non-uniqueness of given names. Up until recently anyone could create a facebook profile page using whatever name they wanted. The movie catfish shows the case where non-existent people are created for sock-puppetry and fraud. Consider this radio show as Catfish, Chapter 2. This story details another side of the same coin: people maliciously creating believable imposter pages to damage the reputation of real people. The individual targeted for identity forgery was novelist Susan Arnout Smith. At the end the program, the host mentions that their program was successful in reaching a customer service department at facebook, who say that more safety checks are in place now to properly identify potential fraud. This radio show can get results where mere mortals cannot, very much in the style of getting results only after shining the bright light media scrutiny.

Audio is cached here:
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All About Area 51

Terry Gross interviewed Annie Jacobsen on yesterday's Fresh Air about the secret Nevada test site, Area 51. Area 51 was used for the Plumbbob tests. The most scary thing for me was the nuclear test that involved scattering plutonium around the desert via a conventional explosion. I think this test was to simulate possible accident scenarios, such as, a B-52 crash, an accidental bomb drop of an unarmed weapon, etc. I think that the accident scenarios assume that the conventional explosive detonates, but does not cause a nuclear explosion- a dirty bomb scenario. The explosion scatters the core of the weapon, contaminating a wide area with plutonium particles. People were beyond crazy in this era. For whatever reason, after the army got their test results (which showed, I guess, the extent of the contamination), they did minimal cleanup at the test site. That sets up a scenario for desert dust storms containing very nasty radioactive particles. The author notes that this was a missed opportunity to learn how to deal with possible methods of cleanup. I am guessing that they army realized that it was very difficult to deal with the magnitude of the contaminated area- many square miles. Jacobsen notes that whatever they might have learned would've been useful in some accidents that have occurred since that test. Some accidents were actually very similar to the initial test parameters; the author cites a B-52 crash in Spain. The latest similar accident is the explosion of the spent fuel pool at reactor 3 at the Fukushima nuclear plant. The Fairewinds report stated that nuclear material (spent fuel pellets) have been found a mile or more from the site after one of the large explosions.

On to the UFO claims of Area 51. Those involve Mengele designing bodies which would look alien for the Soviet military. Area 51 houses a crashed flying object, but it's not from outer space; it's a Soviet jet-powered hover craft that was piloted by surgically modified dwarfs. Pause, and let that sink in... This strange idea has some value (I guess) for some world war three attack scenarios. Jacobsen cites cases where both Hitler and Stalin expressed interest in this idea because they wanted to repeat the scenario created during Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, and use it to their advantage. Stalin was especially interested in using the idea to mask a nuclear first strike. The idea is to induce confusion and mass panic preceding or during the attack. If the enemy doesn't know for sure where an attack is coming from, they might delay retaliation. It might make more sense to wait and see, especially when the "end of the world" is at stake, and especially when an attack is perceived as coming from outer space, and not the cold war rival. Actually, George C. Scott's General Turgidsen did the best job explaining this strategy for winning a nuclear war using the first strike strategy. The idea is to severely disable the enemy from the outset. Von Neumann's game theory is at play, too. (Some people also claim that the Dr. Stranglove character is modeled on Von Neumann.) Coincidentally, Von Neumann actually advocated the first strike strategy, especially when the enemy cannot be trusted to not defect and use a first strike strategy. It's a classic 4-square game theory payoff matrix, a slight variant of the classic prisoner's dilemma puzzle.

That Mengele based claim is pretty far out there. I guess when all of the layers are stripped back, then what is left has to be the truth. Still, whoah!

Note: This post required some edits.

First Update:
The author made the rounds on the media circuit, culminating with a visit to Jon Stewart.

Reports from Fukushima

Amy sent this link about the ongoing problems at the Japanese nuclear plant. The news reports have been dwindling away, but the disaster is far from being solved or contained. News reports over the weekend noted that the Japanese government had increased the exclusion zone by evacuating a town about 20 miles (30 km) from the plant. The US government recommended a 50 mile evacuation zone, if I remember correctly. Here is one report with the news from the weekend, skip to 6:20 for the details about Fukushima.

Education Debt vs. Employment Wages

This was an interesting report on Morning Edition this morning. It makes the direct statement that education costs should be weighed against potential future earnings in that future profession. That can be a wager in and of itself because of our uncertain future economy. There are enough wildcards that it can become a simple WAG as more and more professions are outsourced to the developing world. Who knows which professions are most likely to continue receiving first world level wages? Audio: (mp3) and cached here.

Also, here is another related discussion. Last week Terry Gross discussed for profit colleges vs. more traditional colleges (universities, community colleges, trade schools, etc.). Audio: (mp3) and cached here:
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Super Sad True Love Story

Terry Gross interviewed Gary Shteyngart on Friday's Fresh Air. I want to read his book in the next couple of weeks.

Audio: (mp3) and cached here:
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Update: 2011-05-21
I've started reading it, enough to get the flavor. It's a dystopian future and it's scary, all right. Unfortunately, his future world is plausible; it's a warning like Orwell's 1984, telling us to do something before it's too late. Set in the near future, the United States debt to China is 65 trillion Yuan-pegged dollars. The country is in the middle of being hollowed out to keep making the payments. Telling China to chill, you'll get your money! isn't working so well anymore. I have discussed the book's major themes on this blog: digital culture, economic trends, privacy, and freedom. His novel blends them all together and simply projects the current trend into the future.The vision is very much comparable to Judge's Idiocracy. People's attention spans have been reduced to the point that they haven't ever read any books. They haven't even read the Cliff Notes version. In the future, all information is streamed. Trying to get a message through that isn't streamed is not possible. It's also important to do things to keep the stream's ratings up- spice it up a little. It helps to intersperse your message (be it politics, cooking, live party streams) with the same characters doing some form of porn. That works with all of those topics- politics plus porn, cooking plus porn- it just keeps the audience's attention much better. Remember, telling your audience to go read anything is a non-starter. Anyone who still reads physical books is shunned. Just what have you got there, grandpa? So, if you really have something serious to say, and it's longer than a tweet, then you're going to have a tough time getting through. Sure, the text version is available online- it's just too long to ever matter to anyone. Dude, can't you give me the tl;dr version?

Personal privacy is a thing of the past. The TSA has run amok. No one cares because they have put all of their information online anyway. Who care's if someone goes through you're bag if you've already given them access to your 24 hour personal stream? Telephone poles display your credit rating when you walk passed them. People like to reveal information so they can find their social status in any given place. Personal devices, the aparat, include a feature to advertise your relevent scores. The data from Rate Me Plus is out there, free for everyone to see and decide if they should interact with you. This page shows the typical output from the aparat.

The government is broke and can't pay its debts and obligations. The fight for oil has most recently led the US Army to Venezuela. The Army was promised a bonus, and the government won't pay, an echo of WW I Bonus Army.. Government functions have been outsourced to corporations. The infrastructure is falling apart. Property with any value is being retrofitted and marketed to foreigners with money. Current tenants are forced out onto the street. Anything and everything will be done to pay off the debt. I am not sure I am going to like the ending...it really could be super sad.

Update: 2011-05-24
Finished reading it -- no spoilers from me. I can only say it left me reeling, not feeling so well.

Update: 2011-05-25
After finishing the book, I turned on NPR and these news stories popped up. They both show the trends of the power of the digital culture and the power of media figures.

• bitcoin


• the oprah

Now that Oprah is ending her show, everyone will need to follow her on Twitter.

DIY: Rockstar

This was an interesting report today from NPR's Planet Money team. It is more evidence that cutting out the middleman is not only possible, it is profitable as well. It used to be that an appearance on Johnny Carson guaranteed stardom. Has the mantle been passed to Slashdot/Reddit/etc. ?

Story: Audio (mp3) and cached here.

I last wrote about this new marketplace here.

Confirmed: Microsoft buying Skype

Some early reports have Microsoft aquiring Skype for $8.5 billion.
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If true, this continues Microsoft's pattern of buying into market segments where they have no presence. The trend started with their hotmail acquistion. Recently, they paid Nokia over $1 billion dollars to begin scrapping their Symbian cell phone OS in favor of the Windows cell phone OS. Just before that, they pressured Yahoo to "join" Bing, or die.

Skype has enjoyed success because it was a first to market service. They offered value to users for free (skype-to-skype video calling) or for low cost (skype-to-real telephone voice calls). Ebay found this business model difficult to monetize, and ended up selling it to a group of private investors for $2 billion, losing $600 million in the process. Analysts are wondering how Microsoft will recoup this new high purchase price. Comparing this sale to the last sale is a high factor: (2 billion * 4.25 = 8.5 billion). No matter how you slice it, 425% is a high scaling factor. Perhaps, the price climbed that high due to Microsoft winning a bidding war with Facebook. I saw some rumors last week that Facebook was trying to buy Skype for $4 billion. The question remains of whether a change in business model is in the offing to monetize this Skype investment. Will they begin charging for calls? That seems to be a difficult prospect in the crowded VoIP market- consumers have a lot of options, including Google Voice. Skype has had the advantage of better voice quality, and now consumers may be asked to pay for it.

First Update:
Slashdot finally picked up the story. Better late, than never. Their coverage points to some articles which question whether the new owner will have the same commitment to non-MS platforms. This change casts a serious pall over the Linux version of Skype. The pundits are predicting it will be left to wither on the vine, if not killed outright. I hope that isn't true, because I like Skype on Linux. If their strategy was to further entrench their Windows OS, then they should tread lightly. One potential unintended consequence that MS may not have anticipated is that Skype is a market leader, but hardly the only game in town. If users dump Skype, then a significant number would move to arch rival's product, google voice. A mass exodus is certainly a possibility if/when MS tries to change the rules by upping calling rates, and/or dropping support for other platforms. GV alreadly offers some attractive features. The only thing holding it back is its less than stellar call quality. If its implementation was slightly better, then it could compete easily with Skype. GV has one very nice feature: it offers to assign a "real" phone number. That real phone number can act as a gatekeeper for the myriad of numbers that people are likely to have (home phone, cell phone, office phone, etc.) Google's recommendation is to publicize your GV number, and then it will automatically forward incoming calls appropriately. It "finds the person," and just works with whatever device the user is currently using (real telephone, cell phone, computer, etc.).

Update: 2011-05-13
Some people (Brooks, Vaughn-Nichols) think $8.5 billion is a high price, especially since Microsoft is supposed to be able to write their own software. Apple rolled out FaceTime with no trouble. The linked articles question whether Microsoft's primary motivation for buying Skype was simply to stop other people (Facebook, Google) from owning it, and maybe, possibly doing something with it. Like I said, 4.25 times the last sale price is so high, it's beyond the moon.

Update: 2011-05-25
Slashdot reported yesterday that the cuts to other platforms have begun. They cited that Asterisk support for the open source software/hardware platform for building PBX is first on the chopping block.

Short Joseph Stiglitz Interview

Steve Inskeep interviewed economist, Joseph Stiglitz, on Morning Edition. Audio: (mp3) and cached here.

Claim AC Comment

I recently wrote this and posted it anonymously to Slashdot. The links in that comment lead back to this blog, to posts about my startup environment, dm-live.

Interviews today on Weekend Edition

Rob Lowe (mp3) and cached here
Shania Twain (mp3) and cached here

Obama's mother and his childhood

This was an interesting background piece about Barack Obama's mother, and various places that Barack lived while growing up.

The author, Janny Scott, is interviewed on Fresh Air here.

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Digging out of this economic hole

Today, Diane Rehm discussed the new office for consumer protection to be headed up by Elizabeth Warren. There was some good educational background information about economic terms, etc. For sure, it's worth listening to. The audio is cached here:
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Recently watched movies

By pure coincidence, I happened to have these two movies in line for viewing:

• Nathalie, a 2003 French movie directed by Anne Fontaine.


• Chloe, a 2009 Canadian movie directed by Atom Egoyan

I didn't know that the latter was almost a shot-for-shot remake of the former when I queued them. It was certainly a case of serendipity, a random alignment of the stars for maximum effect. With that in mind, the two movies are begging for a comparison with one another. Okay, here goes. In the French version, the Depardieu character could have been cast as a cardboard cutout and nothing would have been lost. At least, Liam Neeson in the same role fleshes out the role a bit more. The main roles are for the pair of female characters. Overall, the two movies are mostly on a par with one another in this casting, except Julianne Moore's performance stands out above all. She shows, once again, that she is absolutely fearless. At this point, the Canadian version looks like a worthy remake, even though some of the dialog in the Canadian version is copied verbatim from the French version and the delivery comes off as by rote and stilted at times. The Canadian version includes Hollywood's fetish for Apple computer hardware- nice product placement, I guess. I need something else to make a final comparison of the two movies. The divergence of the scripts will be the difference. The French version of the film is dark; the Canadian version is darker. That seems to give the edge to the Canadian version. However, just when its direction is clear, the script lets up. For whatever reason, the Canadian version spells everything out for us and concludes with a tidy Hollywood ending. Big mistake. I would have liked a more ambiguous ending with more loose ends and more overtones of Greek tradegy. Overall, that is a big weakness that shifts the scale back to the French version. It is a missed opportunity for the remake to improve on the original. As it stands, the French version wins out. YMMV.

p.s. Could it be that the script was altered at the last minute due to Neeson's personal real life tragedy?

Propublica wins Pulitzer for Magnetar Reporting

Check out today's Fresh Air. A question came up which involved the term, insurable interest. The question wondered whether the entire meltdown could be attributed to a lack of an insurable interest by those using the Magnetar stategy. I think the guests' answer was that they placed more of the blame on those selling insurance (AIG), than those buying it. The insurers had "whiffed" (seriously underestimated risk) at setting the prices for those wanting to buy insurance for CDOs. If a proper price had been set, then Magnetar couldn't have been using that strategy, at least not profitably. Listen for the big finish of the broadcast, broadway style!

The interview audio is cached here:
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Here is my blog entry from last April which has a link back to This American Life.

Update: 2011-05-03
I have been meaning to write something about the documentary Inside Job. It is definitely recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the recent economic meltdown. The facts roll out pretty quickly, and it's a lot to digest in one sitting. It's probably best to take it in in smaller bites. That strategy also helps stop you from getting so mad that you start throwing things and/or breaking up the furniture. Anyway you slice it, the movie doesn't paint a pretty picture of how we got here to this current state of affairs. We were led by the "so called" free marketeers that demanded deregulation. That movement caught its stride in the mid 1990s with deregulation bills signed by Clinton that rolled back some of the major safeguards put in place after the 1930's depression. In this new era, governments all around the world were working hard to outdo one another, by easing banking rules and deregulating complex financial instruments. They were aided by the economists they had in their back pocket (Greenspan, Summers, et. al). At first, Greenspan tried to halt the irrational exuberance in the market. Eventually, he relented and decided to go along with the rising tide. With Greenspan on board, no one else of consequence was willing to call the bubble a bubble. Everyone now had been given rose colored glasses. They were working with one main fundamental assumption: the future trend is always positive- prices only go up. That assumption works; that is, until it doesn't. Oops! When the trend reversed, even in the slightest degree (as documented by the Propublica reporting), insolvency rapidly entered the picture. The banks were effectively wiped out over night. They went to Congress and to the Fed and asked for super massive bailouts. I have a hard time with this because these "free marketeers" had convinced me. I'm okay with having a free market, as long as everyone knows the rules are the same for everyone all of the time. Please, note it was the bankers that have turned against the rules of the free market. They did so after looking at their balance sheets. They changed their mind for simple self-preservation. They'd do anything, including reversing course, if it meant avoiding their demise. They needed the bailouts to survive. It's much like a 6 year old changing the rules in the middle of a boardgame, just because they are losing. We, as the adults in the room, felt bad for them, and were coerced into changing the rules for them. Little did we know that the frequent rule changes are a violation of the fudamental rules of the game, a perversion of how capitalism is supposed to work. The changes allowed the banks to socialize their losses. They just hope we will forget that they were all too happy to ride the wave at the other end of the spectrum; that is, they were definitely in favor of privatizing their profits when times were good. Now, it's just too bad, since we didn't hold their feet to the fire when we had the chance. I have to wonder, where was the public outcry that should've demanded that deregulation (as adopted) be enforced. Those rules demanded that everyone else must "stay out" and the game be played to its conclusion. Fairness demands that the rules be the same in both good times and in bad times. The system as it is now is a far cry from Adam Smith's invisible hand. It's more like a giant visible hand that jumps in at the last minute to prop up losers that should've been written off much earlier. Again, too bad for us. Good luck paying off the multi-trillion dollar debts!

An interesting part of the movie is the interviews with economists who led the charge for deregulation. Most have now retreated back to academia, and without exception, they have all landed on their feet. Still, these "great minds" don't come across as particularly intelligent. Two extremely dopey examples still stand out in mind, and even after several months have gone by since seeing the movie: Martin Feldstein (Harvard) and Glenn Hubbard (Columbia). As dumb as they come across, it's amazing that they can be hired anywhere, let alone those prestigious universities. To add insult to injury, wikipedia claims Feldstein is still a perennial candidate for the Nobel prize. Simply amazing! Another irony is that of those interviewed, Elliot Spitzer comes across as one of the most sane voices in the room.

This movie won the Oscar for best documentary of the year. In my opinion, it could have been the best movie of last year. It is the best of those that I have managed to see so far.

Note: There were a few textual changes in today's post. It took a few tries to get what I wanted to say in the proper syntax.

Video blogging is taking off

You don't need a film contract or have your band signed to a record label to be famous anymore. You can DIY (do it for yourself) and upload your video/audio to the internet. Right now, the barriers to entry for producing your own content are so low that all that is necessary is having a digital camera with video capability. Oh, and having some ideas to put out there helps a lot, too. The problem of how to stand out from the crowd remains tricky, though. Here are some I've stumbled upon, and they seem to have growing fan bases to support them:

• Daily Grace
  Judas is just a girl-to-girl talk about boyfriends. And other things, ew.
  Grace's toast to Bridesmaids
  Another video parody, Rhianna's S&M


• Meekakitty
  Here is her music video with more than 1M views. It would've been much better if they'd looked for a better venue; it looks like an exit hallway or stairwell for the convention center. There's only so much you can do when you're confined to a four foot width restriction.
  She could also do standup.
  Her "Bacon Song" was used as the rolloff segue for Kevin Bacon's appearance on Wait, Wait


• Amy Walker, 5.9M views

Update: 2011-05-01
All Things Considered recently reported that in some cases Youtube shares the wealth with real cash to popular channels. Here is a link to the story, (mp3).

Update: 2011-05-16
Added Daily Grace's conversation with Lady Gaga.

Update: 2011-05-20
Link another DG video.

Update: 2011-05-23
Add Amy Walker accent video.

Update: 2011-06-05
Add note about meekakitty on Wait, Wait.

Update: 2011-06-10
Link another DG video.

Recently watched movies

Aguirre: The Wrath of God.

This is a film from Herzog's early career. Here is the setting. The time is the 1500's; the place is the east slope of the Andes falling into the Amazon basin; the characters are the Spanish conquistadors; and the story is a fictionalized account of a trek into the wild Amazon jungle seeking to find riches at the lost city of gold, El Dorado. The story is modeled after Heart of Darkness. Coppola did his own version of Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now about seven years later. He included several homage scenes to Aguirre. There is one area of sharp contrast between the two movies, and that is their budgets. Apocalyse cost 100 times more to make than Aguirre. Both are definitely recommended!

Several of the filmed sequences in the movie seem very dangerous. Here are two examples. First, the opening sequence where they're hiking down a steep trail, and the vantage point of the camera is somehow backed off enough to show the 60 degree (or steeper?) slope. That is compounded by carrying cannons and carrying sedan chairs- just fraught with danger. Jessica and Jon recently hiked the Incan trail- maybe they can add their perspective. That first scene is immediately followed by the rafting scenes through raging rapids with rafts made from 5" trees lashed together. That looked like the actors were in real, not potential, danger. I have to say, that the costumes stayed remarkably clean throughout the filming. I wonder how that was accomplished. Staying so clean appeared a bit incongruous with how "out of their element" the invaders were, as if they were untouched by the wilderness.

Here are few screenshots:
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The finale shows Aguirre (Kinski) standing alone. In my mind, this was an echo of the last man standing, like Hitler continuing to plan the continuing glories of the Third Reich even though Berlin has been destroyed around him. There is also an appropriate quote from Hugo's Les Miserables about following Ceasar, Charlamagne, and Napoleon for glory, but end up losing everything instead. I think it applies here as well- I may look for it later.

Here is Roger Ebert's review.

Trailer

Critical thinking is still alive!

This video was posted to reddit recently. It should be required viewing for anyone involved in education.

p.s. I am sticking with this blog title, even though the speaker questions if "uncritical" thinking is a non-sequitur.

Update: 2011-05-01
Terry Gross interviewed Diane Ravitch this week on Fresh Air (mp3). She spoke against rating teachers' performance using their students' test scores.

She also interviewed Andrew Rotherman (mp3), who defended the charter school model.

New Slackware Version Released

I've been running Slackware -current for the last few months, with mixed success due to issues with the kernel on my hardware. I hope those have been resolved because -current has just been marked as the next stable version, 13.37. This new version updates version 13.1, but is more elite.

• Choice of kernel version
  2.6.37.6 in the "a" series, or
  2.6.38.4 in testing


• gcc 4.5.2 compiler toolset


• glibc-2.13


• XFCE 4.6.2


• Firefox 4.0

I will probably go with a 2.6.38.x kernel. Also, I am sticking with Firefox 3.6.x for now. The new Firefox version "moves the furniture around" quite a bit, and will take some getting used to.

More bad karma for Sony

.

Perhaps, Sony could've spent a little more time on their own security, instead of wasting time locking out Linux users.

Update: 2011-05-01
A lot of news outlets covered this story, and named it the worst data breach in history. It was a featured story this week On the Media. Here is a link to the (mp3).

Definitive Seymour Cray quote

My last post (about Artificial Intelligence) reminded me of this quote from Watson's namesake:

Last week Control Data announced the 6600 system. I understand that in the laboratory developing the system there are only 34 people including the janitor. Of these, 14 are engineers and 4 are programmers. Contrasting this modest effort with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer.

--Thomas Watson, Jr., IBM CEO, August 28, 1963

Cray's response:

It seems Mr. Watson has answered his own question.

--Seymour Cray

This retort is right up there with the best from Franklin, Twain, or Churchill.

Update: 2011-04-25
I like the above quote best because it shows that small teams can have major successes, and that bloat/creep/unrealistic design parameters set by management sink projects. A good example is MS Vista. That project finally did see the light of day as a shipping product, but not without much consumer consternation.

Another good example of how small teams can do more with less is aircraft designer, Kelly Johnson's skunkworks operation. Whenever corporations get involved, costs go up and likely success rate goes down. A project can fall into the abyss at the heart of the military industrial complex. At least, Lockheed saw the wisdom in keeping some "back of the envelope" design guys on staff.

I'll end with one more Cray quote:

Parity is for farmers.

This was in response to a question why the CDC 6600 computer's memory systems didn't originally include memory parity (verification). Later, when the feature was added back in on later designs, he said the following:

Farmers buy a lot of computers.

AI

This winter's Jeopardy match between Rutter, Jennings, and Watson is more evidence we are at the threshold of a new world where computers will take an even larger role. We've come a long way from the Eliza bot. I suspect this trend will continue, with the Jeopardy victory spurring along the next phase of development. I see the next phase moving AI entities, like Watson, onto the internet. The entities will be "powered" using spare compute cycles that are provided by overcapacity at data centers. These spare cycles will become cheaper and cheaper as more massive data centers come online and as Moore's Law continues to deliver more and more performance per watt. This overcapacity will allow the "bots" to "live off the fat-of-the-land."

I think the next phase of development will exist as internal computer structures first. This avoids solving problems in a different solution space (i.e. navigating physical reality.) For sure, there is demand for marrying the two (AI + robotics). Our collective imagination has already been primed by characters like Frankenstein (in literature), and from the first scifi film from 1927. "False Maria" from the film (Metropolis)
.
set the stage for derivative characters like Jude Law's Gigilo Joe in AI. The Jeopardy match would have been more satisfying if Watson could've appeared on the set as a self-contained entity, instead of as a screen connected to a room full of computers. The requirement to read and interpret the physical world means that type of character is a bit farther off, but the pure artificially intelligent character, such as the HAL 9000 is on the doorstep now. We'll have to wait just a bit longer for Moore's Law to catch up with our expectations for the full simulation.

I was thinking about this because I rewatched Catfish this week. That movie makes you start to question what is real and what really constitutes a relationship. It's only one step further along if the human element is removed entirely. In the future you may not know if your "friends" on Facebook are just super-enhanced "Eliza" bots. Be on your toes out there!
.


Here are some more notable AI characters off the top of my head:

• CDS-101 in The Terminator


• Anna Kalmann in Johnny Mnemonic


• Minuet in Star Trek, TNG. Obviously, Data, too.

p.s. I just remembered that this week is a red-letter date in scifi history. Skynet became self aware on April 21, 2011. Something happened a "microsecond" later.

Recently watched movies

First viewing:
The Kids are All Right
Black Swan
The Station Agent

I would've favored Bening over Portman for the Oscar. I haven't seen Kidman in Rabbit Hole. The academy favors roles which require a lot of body modification (al-a Brody in The Pianist) and Portman certainly did that. Bening's performance rivaled what she did in American Beauty, and probably Julianne Moore should've been nominated, too.

Thomas McCarthy's Station Agent is an understated character study. Each character has their own vulnerabilities; some are just closer to the surface or more visible than others. The movie seems to fit along side Garden State, maybe partly because of the similar New Jersey settings. I want to watch more of the director's work. The Visitor is next on my list, along with more of The Wire.

p.s. If you want to see Herzog's documentary, God's Angry Man, then do it soon. Google says that the video is going to be taken offline.

Update: 2011-04-25
First viewing:
The Visitor
For Your Consideration
The Cook The Thief His Wife & Her Lover This was a bit one-dimensional (at least on its surface) for a critically acclaimed movie. The vivid separate colors of each room and the street outside hint of some symbolism just beyond my comprehension. The outside street is black or dark blue; it is home to the most vile acts, is home to the constantly circling dogs, and is populated by a fleet of trucks containing rotting meat. Probably, I don't know enough Dante for the allusion to resonate fully; still, a pretty hellish depiction. The Nyman score was terrific and gives the movie an operatic quality; the music was the best part for me. Great camera work and set designs. The "cutaway" technique that allows the camera to transcend walls has been widely copied (probably, done best most recently by Spielberg in Minority Report.) For me, the story is the weak point. We get it...the thief is not a good guy. We are just waiting for how he will get it in the end. Here is Ebert's review for more.

New Arch for Chernobyl

This video was posted to reddit recently. A new structure is being planned to totally encompass the existing Chernobyl power plant site. The new arch will allow dismantling the existing sarcophagus containment building. The sarcophagus was built as quickly as possible, and was expected to last for a 20 year lifetime. The 25th anniversary of the accident is next Tuesday.

The Chernobyl and Fukishima nuclear accidents show that all of the costs must be included when deciding if nuclear power is worth the risk. The analysis must account for possible long term losses created by new "exclusion zones" necessitated by future nuclear accidents. Somehow, I don't think that has been properly factored into the current cost/benefit analysis. We only have one earth.

p.s. This Chernobyl documentary is worth watching.

Robert Redford on NPR

This morning, Robert Redford was interviewed on Morning Edition about his new movie, The Conspirator. This is a movie about whether Mary Surratt was involved in the Lincoln assassination. Listen to the interview
here.


p.s. PBS' History Detectives explored a similar story in 2003.

MIA: Obama

Check out Krugman's recent article in the NY Times on Obama. He'd better outline some real strategy soon, because this "no vision" thing is setting himself up to be voted out. The spark of his election is rapidly dying out. There's no use saving it up- now is the time!

Also, check out this recent radio program, On Point. Several callers nailed down the problems with our current government.

We need direction and leadership. How about proposing a national energy policy based on renewables, with a real commitment to get off fossil fuels. Renewable energy is looking cheaper all of the time, considering the unknown long term losses that the Chernobyl and Fukishima nuclear accidents will impose. Consider that the human element is enough of a problem, let alone the unpredictability of nature, and the 20,000+ year dangerous halflife of waste products. As currently built, nuclear is expensive. But I wonder, have our own major faults been adequately considered in our nuclear plant designs? The New Madrid fault is the elephant in the room. I hope it's not another case of an initial lowball estimate- the same kind of thing that allowed a 5.2m seawall, when a characteristic tsunami required a 10m. But, a 10m wall would have been cost prohibitive, and probably have put brakes on the entire project. Try out these slightly different lyrics played to the same tune,

That fault hasn't produced any major activity since 1812. And that was a fluke.

Crosses fingers...

Update: 2011-04-14
Obama gave an important speech on the topic yesterday at George Washington University.
Listen to it here:
1. Joe Biden is here. Tim Geithner is in the house...
2.
3.
4. "vision" is the keyword...

This speech is just too little, too late. 20/20 hindsight looks like he should have made redefining the tax code/rates his highest priority as president, certainly higher than health care reform. Now, he's a lot weaker because he seems to have already bought into the Republican agenda by agreeing to extend Bush-era tax cuts, even if only temporarily. The loss of the House enforces a stalemate. Now, nothing is going to change. The Republicans are going to circle wagons, and wait until 2012 and see if they can win the presidency. Obama's tone hinted that he knew it, too. That said, Obama's speech had a lot of good ideas, and I agree with all of his tax reform points. It's too bad that he glossed over energy. He really should have used this speech as an opportunity to state a Kennedy-like goal for national energy independence through renewables. He made no mention of the Japanese disaster, and the pall it casts over nuclear power.

If the speech was a cornerstone on taxes, then it was short on numbers, because even stating a tax rate for the rich is too controversial. To sell tax reform, hard numbers will be required. A proposal needs to offer simplification in exchange for an overall lower tax rate. The lower tax rate is possible because everyone has to pay! No loopholes, like I said, in an earlier post! I would like a flat tax with very limited deductions. The only deductions that I think should be allowed is a deduction for state taxes paid, and pretty much nothing else.

Who owns Facebook?

Maybe a better question is, who cares? This Slashdot headline says a new lawsuit will ask to assign 50% ownership to Paul Ceglia
.

Ok, that story is not very interesting. The interesting story is that neither Zuckerberg nor Ceglia invented the concepts at the heart of Facebook. Check this story (mp3) about a group of Stanford computer science students who designed and implemented a Facebook prototype, prior art in 1999. The irony is that the Stanford faculty thought it was an invasion of privacy and forced the site off of the web.

This blog post is a good cross reference to this post because it also discusses the marketing strategies at the heart of social networks, such as Facebook.

Julia Sweeney on SexEd

This video was posted to reddit recently.

"I know! It's weird."

Update: 2011-04-13
Of course, you probably remember that Sweeney bared her private life wide open during appearances at the LA improv un-Caberet in the early 1990's. Ira Glass compiled the on-stage monologues and presented them on This American Life. Totally compelling!

Update: 2011-04-29
I think you may be focusing a little too much on the legs. They figure out the legs, okay?

Werner Herzog and Cormac McCarthy on NPR

This week's Science Friday included the segment, Connecting Science and Art. The guests (Werner Herzog, Cormac McCarthy) showed more than casual knowledge in subjects one might consider outside of their normal domains. It was an interesting show, and worth a listen, but Herzog is definitely a fatalist.

p.s. I haven't read or seen McCarthy's work, but Herzog's film work is among the best. He was there on Science Friday to talk mostly about his new documentary:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams.
His other films that should be checked out include:

• Fitzcarraldo, don't miss it!


• Rescue Dawn

Documentaries:

• Encounters at the End of the World, Herzog is not very nice/polite when interviewing scientists. Still, the subject matter is interesting and overcomes Herzog's overtly injected point of view. The film would have won best documentary if he had let the material speak for itself a bit more.


• God's Angry Man, about Gene Scott. The video is online.
  
• Grizzly Man, about Timothy Treadwell.

Update: 2011-04-20
Terry Gross interviewed Werner Herzog today about the movie, Cave of Forgotten Dreams. The audio is cached here:
1.
2.
3.

Update: 2011-05-01
In the above interview, Terry Gross kept mentioning Aguirre: The Wrath of God. I didn't read anything more about it before getting a copy on Netflix. In the back of my mind, I was supposing it to be another "God's Angry Man." Needless to say, it is Herzog's Heart of Darkness. I have a new blog entry about it here.

Update: 2011-05-09
Film critic Kenneth Turan reviewed Cave of Forgotten Dreams here. (mp3)

A new Rick Roll?

If they say, there's no more room at the bottom, then tell them to look again. When plumbing the depths, Rick Astley is still miles above Rebecca Black.

The parodies were amusing...

• Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert


• Daily Grace

This video shut up a lot of the critics, though...

p.s. I'm still stuck on OT7.

Linux at 20

Twenty years ago (April 1991) Linus Torvalds announced that he had begun development of a simple kernel based on the Intel i386 task switcher. Five months later, he had a usable kernel ready for download. This kernel added the final missing piece to the GNU project. Here is Slashdot's
headline.

The contribution of the GNU toolset should not be minimized, especially its C compiler, because without a compiler, source code projects are mostly academic exercises. The overall synergy of the two projects was magnified further because both employed the same free software license, the GPL. That license enables others to build upon existing work. That broke the cycle of having to reinvent the wheel over and over again, or else pay someone for every single installation. With this solid foundation in place, the stage was set for the rise of the free software movement. This was good timing- it was just in time for GNU/Linux to play a major role in the rise of the nascent internet. Free software, open source software, and other permissive licenses fueled the movement that allowed servers to be setup with software that would otherwise have cost thousands of dollars. Free software forms the basis for very usable software platforms, as typified by LAMP. GNU/Linux lies at the heart of Web 1.0,Web 2.0, and beyond.

GNU/Linux has proven itself on the server side, and is widely deployed (examples: Google, the New York Stock Exchange, and high performance computing installations.) I hadn't realized the extent to which Linux dominates high performance computing. Check this recent tabulation.

Unfortunately, GNU/Linux has not fared as well on users' desktops. The overall usage percentage of GNU/Linux remains small even though a rich set of software has been developed for it, and for use at no charge. As tight as budgets are right now, it seems that it should be getting more attention. It looks like people would rather continue to pay more than have to learn something new. Schools and governments should consider their long term savings by getting off the never ending upgrade train of commercial software, and own their own home, instead of continuing to rent.

Cut costs with online education?

The New York Times has an interesting article about moving K-12 education online to save money. The article discusses both the pros and cons, an interesting read.

The current economy has given local school districts a big incentive to cut costs. Giving kids computers to attend online classes is a lot cheaper than local flesh and blood teachers, but the article cites cases where it's not just a win-win for everyone. Specifically, the students can short circuit learning by cutting and pasting answers from wikipedia, and teachers can be overwhelmed with very large virtual class sizes. The net effect is an online school can become a diploma mill, a for-profit diploma mill. In my opinion, the basics of learning still need personal attention, especially in the primary grades. It's not clear that online education is suitable to do that job. That's the downside. On the positive side, students can enroll in courses where there would be too little interest. The online environment seems ideal for that- i.e. allows students to choose advanced or special interest courses. Another good use is when students are living widely dispersed from the school. Online courses would allow studends to "phone" into their classes via broadband links. That would save both the time and the energy costs of busing students. It's a balancing act, for sure.

I last mentioned online education on my blog last October. I had just seen a video presentation about the Open High School of Utah

dm-live rescue/boot environment

A few packages from a Slackware base repository can be used to setup a nice rescue or generic boot environment. Simply, build the environment and save in the proper initial ramdisk format using the standard cpio sequence. Next, build a boot disk by combining the bootloader, kernel, the initrd image that is described here. By the way, I use the grub bootloader. I call the resulting environment "dm-live" (device mapper -live) because it relies heavily on device mapper for various modes of operation (booting live-usb's or live-cd's, booting encrypted filesystems, etc.) Note: I have also replaced the standard "init" program, with my own variant.

I will probably move this to its own web page in the future as it "fleshes out." I want to use it to record the packages I used in the environment for each matching Slackware release. For now, here's a graphic showing the relative space used by the environment
.


Update: 2011-04-08
I have updated the packages in this environment to match Slackware -current to this timestamp in the official Slackware change log: Fri Apr 8 06:58:48 UTC 2011
Here is the updated package list.

Update: 2011-04-25
I have updated the packages in this environment to match Slackware -current to this timestamp in the official Slackware change log: Sun Apr 24 03:20:33 UTC 2011
Here is the updated package list. I am also testing with both Slackware compiled kernels: 2.6.37.6 and 2.6.38.4 (with the latter working a bit better. YMMV.)


By the way, this project is an unofficial derivative work based on Slackware Linux.

Trademarks and Copyrights

Slackware is a registered trademark of Patrick Volkerding and Slackware Linux, Inc.

Linux is registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

Epsilon data breach

Over the weekend, Slashdot reported that a company, epsilon, notified users it had been attacked and suffered a web intrusion into their databases. The intrusion resulted in a data breach. The data that was stolen constituted several million valid email addresses tied to the users' known vendors. This could lead to immediate "phishing" attempts- i.e. the bad guys impersonating the known vendor to trick the user into revealing more account details, etc. Here is Slashdot's
headline.

I received a notice from Abe Books informing me that their customer list was stolen. It's still to be determined how many different vendors accounts are affected.

...24 little hours

It's that time of year, just like Dinah Washington sang, only in reverse. Yesterday, we were outside enjoying ourselves, and within 24 hours the plants in the yard got yet another winter hammering. The desert willow doesn't look like its going to make it.
cell phone pic

Update: 2011-04-30
This is becoming a real weather pattern this year. This has to be adding a lot to the mountain snowpack if we get 6" (15 cm) in the valley:
cell phone pic

Hits the proverbial nail...

Yesterday, Diane Rehm interviewed Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont. They discuss the shift of the center of the political spectrum toward the right. Sanders hits a lot of right notes in this interview- I'd vote for him. He voiced the opposition to extending the Bush era tax cuts; explains the extent to which wealth is being concentrated by the few; the destruction of the middle class; the decimation of the manufacturing labor base; the bailouts for the rich at the expense of the poor; and he doesn't spare our president. Sanders notes how much of missed opportunity we've had with him not living up to the promise for "change." Instead we've gotten a lot more of the same. By postponing taking a stand, we're just catering to the interests of the rich. If you weren't cynical about this country before, then you should be! We were wrong thinking that business doesn't control this country- the Supreme Court drove the point home, just in case we missed it.

Definitely worth listening to.

p.s.

Socialism never took root in America
because the poor see themselves
not as an exploited proletariat,
but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

--John Steinbeck

Update: 2011-05-01
Sanders appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

TAL: Crime and (excessive) punishment

This week's epsisode of This American Life, Very Tough Love, (430.mp3) is worth listening to. Ira Glass investigates a drug court in Glynn county Georgia where you definitely don't want to piss off the judge, lest you get an "indefinite" sentence to "think things over" in solitary. Drug courts exist in various forms across the United States, and are usually setup with procedures for beating the root causes of addiction. Glass shows several examples of excessive sentences in the Glynn county court which are out of the "norm" for other drug courts across the country. He paints the picture that this is a court with a "hanging judge" setup mostly to meet her sadistic needs. The irony presented here is that defendants voluntarily enter the court because they think they'll get out of jail sooner. They think the system will treat them fairly for minor possession cases. Careful there, in this age of privatized prisons and kickback schemes, this is just another example of when the system gets their hooks into you, they're likely to keep you, maybe for a long time.

Glass's story is from Georgia- that's all the way across the country. However, a story in yesterday's Salt Lake Tribune shows the same excessive punishment goes on here, too. And the whole thing is reminiscent of the John Sinclair imprisonment for 2 joints.

Recently watched movies

First viewing:
Easy A, clip
Catfish
Lenny, lost out to Godfather II for best picture 1975.
Song of Bernadette, best actress 1944
Get Low
The Kid Stays in the Picture
Ed Wood, Tim Burton directs.
Mademoiselle Chambon
Eyes Wide Shut
A History of Violence, origin from a graphic novel evident.
The Fighter

Rewatched:
The China Syndrome, topical...a definitive role for Lemmon.
Paper Moon...I want my two hundred dollars!

I will probably update this page with more comments...

Update: 2011-04-03
Rewatched:
A Time for Burning The opening scene where Chambers is cutting hair sets the stage. In his opening speech with the preacher, he presents an indictment and vents a lot of pent up frustration. His speech is like a march- every sentence moves forward advancing ideas, point after point. In the end, Chambers has taken so much ground that the preacher has no choice but to retreat, literally out of the door. The movie is about how the preacher regroups and decides to continue to follow his conscience, even though Chambers predictions end up being prophetic. Still relevant for our time.

FF4: about 8 million downloads in 36 hours

As reported on Slashdot, Firefox 4 is out! Mozilla also has an interesting statistical aggregation application that displays a spoke-wheel chart of who is downloading it.
.

Time for a national sales tax?

The sales tax is often called a regressive tax because it hits people living paycheck to paycheck hardest. However, the current tax situation is far from ideal. There are entire financial industries set up to help people with high incomes find loopholes and tax shelters. Not to mention that the complexity of the current system has a significant slice of world labor preparing tax forms. That's a lot of wheels spinning, but all for nothing. I would favor replacing our current byzantine national income tax system with a national sales tax, a VAT, or flat income tax. We need simplification where everyone just has to pay. No loopholes.

Here's another case on point. Did you know that Google is an Irish company? I thought they were from silicon valley, California. Nope. Maybe, they're a Bermuda corp. Who knows? All the world corporations are playing games with their money to minimize their tax bill. They're pushing their money around just like poker chips or Monopoly money. Check this recent discussion on Fresh Air.

Windows and IE upgrades...

Here are some interesting videos, as mentioned on Reddit and Slashdot.

• almost every version of Windows


• every version of Internet Explorer

Catcha 22

I saw this on reddit.

More rain for eastern Australia

This can't be good news for the rain-soaked Aussies.
.

Arms Race

Bigger is better, right? I recently wrote this about Utah's impending legislation to adopt a state firearm. Everybody warned me that irony may not go over that well in the current environment, and it didn't help that my final comment went right over the head of the editorial board and was omitted at "their editorial discretion." I wanted the last paragraph to read,

Some may say that a machine gun is too crude of a choice for an emblem that will appear alongside the beehive, sego lily and seagull. Perhaps we could reach a compromise by choosing a more sporting weapon. Luckily, Browning is also known for his excellent shotguns. Just remember to remove the official "Juan Antonio Samaranch*" presentation plaque, lest the state embarrass itself.

Without that comment, a lot of the irony and my intended message is lost.

CD Bales: Oh, ho, ho, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a, a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at.

*I know that the public has a short memory, but I expected more from the local "paper of record." I know that Pat Bagley could've refreshed their memory about Samaranch, if they'd asked him. As the story goes from the 1990's, Salt Lake City was afraid of losing out again in their attempts to get the Winter Olympic Games. They were afraid that the Swiss or French Canadians would get the games, like what happened before with Nagano, if they didn't "grease the wheels" to win some favor. The bid committee agreed and started a systematic effort to give visiting Olympic dignitaries the VIP treatment. The rank and file got $1k/night prostitutes. Samaranch, the chair of the Olympic committee, got extra attention. They started by investigating his sporting interests. They found he liked skeet shooting- a perfect match for a gift of a pair of Browning made, exceptionally fine skeet guns. I think they threw in an antique 1894 rifle, too, just for good measure. Needless to say, when all of the facts came out, especially about the hookers used as bribes, it was a big embarrassment; not at all the "wholesome" image that the state was trying to project. The bid committee was sacked, and they brought in Mitt to mend fences.

The comments posted on the Tribune site show that maybe not everyone missed the irony. I really liked the comment that suggested using the beehive as a machine gun emplacement.

the ma deuce is a bad motha. we could mount the ma on top of the beehive and have a nice field of fire.

I guess that the "field of fire" would be pointed at the other state emblems. The dutch oven is already shot to hell. One more move and that bird gets it! It's coming right for us!

p.s. I'm sticking with my choice for the state firearm. By choosing the "fifty" for the state gun would open up a lot of super fun possibilities. We could set up a ball turret ride at the state fair. Kids would be right at home spinning around and blasting away at the Nazi menace with with their twin 50s. I'm getting a little seasick just thinking about it.

p.p.s. Here are a couple of Mauldin cartoons, for old time sake.
.
.

p.p.p.s. It's official. Gov. Herbert signed the bill. I did make one last ditch effort in a vain attempt to get the bill vetoed. I wrote this and emailed it to the governor:

Dear Governor Herbert:

Please, veto the bill designating the M1911 as the state gun. I think it is much more appropriate to honor the man himself, John M. Browning, rather than a military weapon. You did the right thing by designating a "John M. Browning" day, to honor an important Utah inventor.

Of all the arguments that I heard against the bill, for me the most convincing was that school children in the primary grades do "coloring" exercises to learn about the state symbols. If you sign this bill, then kids will be coloring in the M1911 .45 caliber automatic handgun, right along with the sego lily, seagull, and blue spruce. I think a handgun is totally out of place in that context- it just doesn't fit in that set of items. I wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to the Salt Lake Tribune which attempted to point out that absurdity. In that letter, I wrote that if Utah were to choose any gun to honor Browning, that we choose his M2HB, the famous .50 caliber heavy machine gun, instead. I know when I was in the third grade, I was constantly drawing planes, tanks, and trucks, always equipped with machine guns! I see one important difference: people don't actually possess machine guns, while it is quite likely that they do have handguns. That means if kids look through their parent's drawers, they just might find a dangerous firearm, and they might think it's just as harmless as a seagull!

There's just no need to allow this become law and make Utah the first state with an "officially designated firearm." The intent to honor Browning will be lost in the controversy, and it will end up being just as much of an embarrassment to Utah. The bill's author's intent was to honor Browning. I urge you to send this back to the legislature by asking them to honor the man himself, not one of his many inventions. I agree that Browning should be elevated along with other great and innovative Utahns, which include Farnsworth, Sorensen, and Huntsman. We don't honor Farnsworth for one of his patents; we honor the sum of his achievements which resulted in television.

Signed,
Douglas D. Mayne