General

Morons in the News: All of this has happened before, and it will all happen again.. As usual, an anti-gay-equality petition drive finds itself up to its eyeballs in scandal… they just can’t seem to collect signatures without lies, trickery, and deceit… [Morons Dot Org]

The new WorldBeatPlanet is now open. I’ve converted it from a static site to a Nuke-based site.

Apple Security Update released for Mac OS X [MacNN]

I ran Software Update and it said I’m up to date. Has anyone actually been able to download it?

Here’s the picture from the news story. The white Toyota behind the police car is mine.

SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! There was a murder in my building!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

He was one of the first people I met when I moved here & he offered to help me move stuff. He seemed really nice.

I did some network performance tests on my application using Open Transport & BSD Sockets. I had it do the identical server transactions several times with both APIs and took the average times.

I found that BSD sockets are a lot faster than Open Transport. Average times with OT were about 550 ticks & with sockets it was around 360 ticks (calculated by calling TickCount before & after the server interactions).

Yesterday i received my VisorPhone, which I’m now using with my Visor Prism. The software is great & I love Avantgo, but unfortunately the sound quality is pretty bad. The headphones help a lot, though.

As I was waiting in the motor vehicle office this morning, I synced avantgo and read Scripting News to pass the time.

I just had an “interesting” morning. Yesterday I tried to change my address on my drivers license but was told they couldn’t do it online or over the phone because there was a problem with my license – I needed to take a vision test. It turns out that they had my old address off by one digit, so I never got any notices. As a result, my drivers license was revoked in 1999, but I was unaware of it until yesterday. I’ve presented it for identification many times, including when I applied for my mortgage and I was never told that there was anything wrong with it.

Luckily I was able to get it resolved without any problems and it only cost me $10 at the DMV (plus $45 for an eye exam… at least I didn’t need new glasses).

[http://www.kiosk.kz/random/]

Glen Fisher came up with the best analogy of the SSSCA/CBDTPA I’ve seen, posted on Applelinks

Something occurred to me today that I haven’t seen mention of yet: the US has been through the whole SSSCA/CBDTPA issue before. The first time, however, it was called “Prohibition”. For that’s what the bill is attempting to do: prohibit an act that the great majority of the American public wants to be able to do. The first time, the Great Experiment failed, and, back then, it was at least prompted by noble–if naive–motives. This time around, it’s prompted by nothing more than corporate greed. If it didn’t work when it was grounded in real morality, why expect it to work now when it’s prompted merely by base greed masquerading as morality (and a masquerade that few are fooled by). Yes, it will make the activity illegal, but the historical lesson is that people will simply turn to illegal means to get what they want. And the government will be seen as even more a farce than it is already, deserving of even less respect than it has now. Truly, “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana).