Applied Indifference

I don’t get it. Why is the punditocracy all over these NASA photos? Other than the bad reaction of the Kerry folks (calling it a dirty trick), I just don’t see what’s so embarrassing about them. This isn’t the Michael Dukakis Manufactured Tank Photo-Op. This is a Senator getting a tour of a research facility that has cleanliness specifications. This is George Bush in a flight suit. When you go into a facility like this, you are expected to wear the proper protective materials.

What’s next? John Kerry goes to an auto factory and the press give him shit for wearing safety goggles and steel-toed boots?

It’s a freaking BUNNY SUIT. What’s so damn stupid about a bunny suit? Or is it only geeks that would give their right arm for a chance to get the tour that Kerry did? “What, all I have to do is have my picture taken in a bunny suit for the papers, and I get to tour NASA? Where do I sign???”

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Symantec, as you may know, has a line of centrally managed enterprise anti-virus packages. Their software requires you to purchase annual licenses so that it will continue getting updates. I do not have a problem with this, as the money to pay for continuing Anti-virus research has to come from somewhere. But you’d figure that they would make it easy to do, right? No.

So, customer gets message that his subscription is expiring, and needs to go to X web site to purchase a renewal. After purchasing what he guesses is the right package (not like it gives you a PART NUMBER or anything), he buys it, and is told to click the “download” button to download the license. Except that there’s no download button.

After a very confusing e-mail exchange with Symantec, in which they assured him that he should have a download button, there was no resolution.

Three days later, a license file shows up in an e-mail to be installed with an undocumented license tool that took three hours to find!

Tell me again why I want to buy your product, if you are going to make it this difficult to continue using it?

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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At least, not the way I had hoped they would…

Anyway, the Republicans keep sending me stuff asking for my support (read: money). They seem to think I support them or something. I have no idea where they got that idea, but they have it. So, they send me pictures of the President, and surveys, etc. They go so far on the surveys as to have a box under all the too-high contribution amounts that says “I am unable to contribute at this time, but am enclosing $XXX to offset the cost of tabulating my survey”.

I have been taking these surveys, etc. and stuffing them (including all the ancillary stuff and the original envelope) into their pre-paid return envelopes and sending them back, without checking anything, or taking the survey, or giving them money. I was hoping that they would get the idea that it was costing them money to send me stuff I wasn’t going to respond favorably to, and they’d stop sending it. Fat chance.

They’ve gotten more clever, however. The return envelope is quite small now. Perhaps if I were to tape the stuff to a brick they’d get the hint?

Oh, and I don’t support Kerry either. I don’t believe in giving money to politicians. It’s a little like giving free needles to addicts. It only encourages bad behavior.

UPDATE: I managed to stuff it all into their envelope. An amazing waste of otherwise valuable time, but it still cost me less than the $120 they wanted me to commit this time around. Do they think that if they increase the amount that they are asking for I’m going to give them the money at some point? Am I supposed to say “Well, I wasn’t willing to give $25, but $250? How can I pass up that opportunity?” Not gonna happen.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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LawMeme has attorney Ernie Miller’s guide to the INDUCE Act and the impact it could have on society. Needless to say, it isn’t good. Not only would INDUCE overturn the “Betamax” decision that allowed for time-shifting of television programs, it would apply a new and incredibly subjective standard to a new class of crimes.

The purpose of the act is to criminalize the creation of tools that can be used to infringe on copyrights. This is analogous to (and passage will no doubt lead to) holding gun manufacturers responsible for deaths caused by criminals using their products. Although it wouldn’t make any devices illegal, it will have a chilling effect on innovation, and I expect a major price increase for the devices that remain on the market to cover losses that this act would cause.

Basically, any device that is capable of creating a copy of anything would be potentially infringing. That new camera-phone? You could take pictures of the pages of a magazine at the news stand and read them at home without paying for the magazine! That digital recorder? You might record a copyrighted lecture or a performance. Your TiVo? The fact that you aren’t watching the TV show when the network tells you to is evidence of your criminal nature.

But the argument that this law makes isn’t that someone should be prosecuted for illegal acts, but that anyone who makes a device that can be used illegally should be punished for daring to do such a thing. Sure, it starts as an RIAA and MPAA purchased piece of legislation from their favorite Senator (Hatch), but you and I both know that the mere existence of this law will be used to go after pretty much everything else. You want examples, you say? Click “more”…
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Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Media Bias. Ask a journalist about it, and they’ll claim it only exists in the minds of partisan critics who disagree with their editorial positions. Read what they write, and you get a different story.

Which brings me to tonight’s topic - not bias itself, but the appearance of bias. After 9/11, when some journalists started wearing flag pins on their lapels, we heard cries from the heavy hitters (Dan Rather et. al.) about how they won’t wear a flag pin because “it would compromise our neutrality, as we will appear to have taken sides”.

Why then are reporters allowed to give money to political candidates (regardless of party)? Does that not compromise their neutrality?

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Take THAT DMCA!

If you buy yourself the new Velvet Revolver CD and decide to play it on your Windows-based computer, do yourself a favor, and hold down Mr. Shift Key so it doesn’t autorun. Just before you see the “License Agreement” that tells you that they won’t let you listen to the CD in it’s unadulterated glory on your PC it installs a little driver on your system, without warning you, that makes the CD skip when you try to play it with any application that pulls the CD-DA data off the disc directly (pretty much everything once you get into XP-land).

Guess what, boys? That qualifies as a Trojan Horse! You broke federal law by installing this driver on my system without my explicit knowledge or permission. Very bad.

Anyhow, if you are unlucky enough to have been “infected” by this malware, it’s easy to kill off, and you don’t even need a reboot to do it on XP.
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Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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