Category Archives: /dev/random

04/13/06

Comedy Central censors pictures of Mohammed

So I’ll be honest, when I watched part two of “Cartoon Wars” and saw that Mohammed had been “censored” I figured it was just Matt & Trey (the creators of South Park) pulling a gag to make a point. After all, South Park had shown Mohammed multiple times in past episodes (“Super Best Friends” for example) and there was no censoring then.

But, it was actually Comedy Central which censored the episode. Apparently, CC thought that in the current climate it was “unsafe” to air pictures of Mohammed.

Anyways, even if you hate South Park, I would strongly encourage you to see Cartoon Wars episodes I & II. Matt and Trey do what they do best- making viewers re-examine current events from a viewpoint which encourages people to stand up for what’s right, even when it’s not the easy thing to do.

03/20/06

Working hard for your dollar

According to this report on USA Today, members of the House of Representitives worked for a total of 47 hours in Janurary and February of this year. As of March 17, the House was in session for just 19 days. At this rate and with plenty of more vacations planned, they’ll only have worked 97 days this year- far fewer then the 141 worked last year.

Lawmakers will make $165,200 this year. Leaders earn more.

Would your boss put up with that?

03/19/06

Patently Mad

Michael Crichton wrote a great opt-ed piece for the New York Times called, This Essay Breaks the Law. It’s a great two pager on how the patent system in the US has gone to hell and how it will effect not just large corporations, but you and your family.

Btw, don’t read this next sentance, because just merely thinking it is illegal:

Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.

03/18/06

Dad! Tom Cruise won’t come out of the closet!

So let me get this straight… it’s ok for South Park (one of my favorite shows on TV) to make fun of Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons, but when they make fun of Scientology (which is more cult then religion) all of a sudden Comedy Central pulls re-airing the episode because of religious insensitivity and the voice of Chef, Issac Hayes, (who is a Scientologist) quits (oddly though, not in protest of the original airing months ago, but in the re-airing).

I thought Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s response was well thought out and to the point:

“So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!! [Signed,] Trey Parker and Matt Stone, servants of the dark lord Xenu.”

To find out more about Scientology you should read this interview and check out Operation Clambake.

Or grab the torrent and download the South Park episode and watch it anyways.

02/19/06

Shame

Shame on Yahoo, Microsoft and Google. But part of me understands. For better or worse, companies are ultimately responsible to their shareholders, not morals or concepts of right and wrong. Even Google’s motto of “Do no evil” is convienently pushed aside when it becomes monetarilay inconvient.

Given the choice of helping the Chinese government put a dissident behind bars or pissing off the Chinese government which allows them access to the largest potential customer base, Yahoo decided to assist the communist dictatorship which resulted in Shi Tao getting 10 years in jail.

But perhaps the most scary thing is that Microsoft couldn’t say under oath wether or not IBM should be ashamed for helping the Nazi’s. I guess if even in hindsight you can’t figure out what is wrong, how can you be expected to know right here and now?

02/12/06

Where does one begin?

Your random quiz for the day:
Basically, a 12yr old boy has been charged with a felony for:

a) Bringing a gun to school

b) Selling drugs to his classmates

c) Joking that the powered sugar for his science experiment was cocaine

Meanwhile… Vice President Dick Cheney made a far more serious judgement error and shot someone in the head but apparently that’s ok.  (Yes, they’re calling it an “accident,” but any experianced hunter knows that they need to keep tabs on all members of their hunting party at all times and be aware of what they are shooting at, both of which Cheney failed to do in this case.)

02/5/06

VP of Eng.

At Mu we’re looking to hire a VP of Engineering. Anyways, I figured I’d list some of my interview questions I plan to ask.

  1. As a manger, what kind of environment makes you the most effective? The least?
  2. Every manager seems to claim they have an “open door policy”. How do you get people to walk through the door?
  3. What do you bring to the table that can help a fast growing startup continue to execute quickly and maintain quality?
  4. What role do you intend to play with regards to our CTO and VP of Product Management?
  5. What qualities do you look for in an engineer when interviewing? What are some red flags?
  6. What do you expect from your engineering teams? What should they expect from you?
  7. What are some pet peves?
  8. Complete the sentance: “I manage by…”
  9. How do you hope to improve by working at Mu?
  10. What do you read for fun and profit?
  11. Any questions for me?
01/23/06

First rule of Congress: you must not talk about VEIL

I’m trying to understand what is so important to secure that the US Congress is not only considering mandating certain security methods, but that those methods be a secret from the general public. Nuclear weapon control systems? New kind of stealth aircraft? Some kind of spy satellite? Maybe some new way of tracking down terrorists?

Turns out it’s none of those things. Instead, this bill has to do with limiting what Americans can do with TV shows. You know, like taping them on a VCR/TiVo or perhaps fast-forwarding thru commercials.

Basically, Congress is looking to force companies which decode digital TV signals to impliment DRM technology called VEIL. But you and I can’t read the specification about VEIL or know what it does… well not without signing a legal agreement promising not to discuss or disclose anything about the technology and forking over $10,000 in cash. Even then, you only get the information on how to decode VEIL data, not the other way around.

The end result is we have no idea what this technology actually does, how reliable it is, how much it will increase the cost of TV’s that consumers buy or even if this technology is extensible enough to adapt to new media or requirements. Basically, it’s a government mandated way of one company of generating millions if not billions of revenue since every TV manufacturer who would like to sell to Americans would have to license this technology from them.

I’d ask what ever happened to Congress looking out for consumers instead of business interests, but frankly, that hasn’t been true for years. Anways, to read more, check out Ed Felten’s blog.

01/14/06

RAID & Backups

So every IT person worth a penny knows that RAID isn’t a replacement for backups and that backups are worthless if you don’t test them.

So why do so many of us find ourselves “too busy” to bother testing backups? So today I almost found myself burned. After noticing that a drive failure in a RAID10 array had taken out my server, I started thinking about that that nightly backup. Luckily for me, only one drive was down and the array was able to come backup (albiet in a downgraded state). So I immediately kicked off a manual backup.

Now, the output of the backups are always emailed to me and I had noticed for quite some time, that it oddly reported skipping files in /var twice. I would occasionally try to figure out why star was skipping files in /var when it was supposed to be backing up /home, but I never tried too hard to figure it out.

So as my manual backup was running, I figured I’d once and for all figure out this oddity. Imagine my shock when I realized the obvious… I wasn’t backing up /home, but rather /var twice.  “Oops.” Oh well… better to have figured it out now then when I was trying to restore some critical file in /home.

01/6/06

Don’t hit F5

Because apparently this prosecutor in Canton, OH thinks hitting F5 on your keyboard to reload a web page repeatedly is a *felony*. You know, the same sorta thing like rape and murder.

Ok, so maybe conspiring with your friends on the internet to “crash the webserver” of your high school by overloading it with requests is something we shouldn’t encourage in our youth. But come on, you can’t tell me we all haven’t done worse things in high school. You’d think that in a world where kids are bringing guns to schools, gangs are rampant and children are experimenting with alcolhol, drugs and sex at younger and younger ages school administrators and law enforcement would have better things to do then making an example of an 18yr old with a bad sense of humor. But I guess Canton, OH is such a utopia that even the slightest mistake requires a heavy hand.

*Sigh*