Since upgrading to Windows Vista, I get news headlines on my sidebar.
Today was either a slow news day, or the world is having an off day.
And last but not least…
Moral dilemma? Brain tells right from wrong
From the image caption: “How much does our brain affect our ability to inflict pain?”
I was really looking forward to sitting down and watching a nice High Definition movie on my freshly upgraded PC using the XBOX HD-DVD drive.
But alas, this is impossible using my current hardware.
The movie industry, has forced a set of disturbing requirement to be able to play back HD content. Your recently acquired, perfectly capable widescreen LCD monitor will not work. Neither will your laptop screen.
The movie industry is requiring end-to-end encryption on all digital signals, using something called HDCP. So if you are using an analog VGA connector, theoretically you should be fine. But that DVI connector? Nope! YOU COULD BE A PIRATE TRYING TO STEAL THE DIGITAL BITS!!
So even though you have hardware that is perfectly capable of displaying high definition resolution, you are going to be required to purchase new and painfully expensive hardware – for no reason other than greed and paranoia.
I’ll tell you what is going to happen. Somebody will figure out how to crack the encryption on the disc – just like they always do – and nobody will care to grab the digital stream.
They wonder why people steal movies… People steal movies because the industry has forgotten that not everybody is a millionaire.
It used to be that people stole movies because they couldn’t afford the movie. Now people are going to steal them because they cannot afford to replace an HDTV with another HDTV that the movie industry “trusts”.
In other words, this technology intended to reduce piracy is only going to make it worse, I guarantee.
Dying Woman Loses Appeal on Marijuana as Medication
Woman Denied Right To Use Marijuana As Life-saving Medication
I find it utterly disturbing that America’s decision makers think they know better than the American people. They think they know better than doctors and scientists. They are enforcing laws for no other reason than that they are laws.
This decision is wrong on so many levels. It’s a violation of basic human rights. It’s a blatant disregard for state’s rights.
* There is a substance that makes this woman’s life livable, and the courts would deny her of this.
* There is no other substance that works as effectively – she has no alternative.
In the court’s decision, they acknowledged the scientific evidence, but they ignored it anyway. Cannabis remains a schedule I narcotic – no medical use whatsoever. Would you believe that cocaine and methamphetamines are schedule II – less restrictive because there is an acknowledged medical use.
I can think of no redeeming value in the court’s decision.
Is she harming herself? No – not using the drug will cause additional pain, and shorten her life (research. THC is the most effective anti-emetic known to man.)
Is she harming others? No. She is obtaining the Marijuana from (state) legal sources, with no violence or illicit activity attached.
Is she harming society? No. Once again, the drug is obtained through legitemate channels that can be taxed and accounted for appropriately.
Is she doing something the general population considers wrong? No. Legalization at the State level was directly voted on by real people – not by congressmen with political agendas.
Is she a danger to herself or others? No. I don’t need to explain this one.
Is she sinning? Good question. Only if she is breaking the law.
I believe the federal courts are dead wrong. I also believe that the vast majority of the American population agrees with me.
I have never touched the stuff, and have no desire to. I used to be opposed to the concept of medical Marijuana, and believed that it was evil by nature. Of all things, a couple documentaries on the History channel changed my mind about its black and white nature.
I need a better software package. it’s hard to post. The skins are ugly. Customization required web design skills.
Or how about that once messages expire off the main page, they can only be accessed by month. THAT is stupid.
Every now and again I come across a headline that makes me wonder: what the crap??!??
Here are two choice selections from today.
Headline # 1 – Imagine that… Hormones.
Scientists Find Hormone Activity Explains Adolescent Mood Swings
Hormone turns cute kids into horror teens
The human race has known this for years. Congratulation scientist on just now figuring it out.
Headline # 2 Imagine that… Flash drives.
Intel unveils first solid-state drives
Intel unveils Flash-based hard drives
“…The Z-U130 is currently shipping in 1GB and 2GB models, and the company is scheduled to add 4GB and 8GB versions in the coming months. … The units are attached to computers through USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 connectors which in most cases will be integrated on the motherboard. …”
I removed my bitterness from the site. I see what is important again – what I had lost sight of.
I forgive you. I pray that you would seek God in all things, and seek to put His will before all else in your life. It is the only way to true happiness.
To that end, I hope that your life will be truly happy and blessed.
Something happened today. My father told me he was proud of me. He said that he believed I dealt with the hand I was dealt better than most people would, and that while a divorce is nothing to be proud of, he was proud of the way I handled it.
Wow.
I am going to break down when I share this in group tomorrow. If I share it.
It was one heck of a moment. I know my dad has been proud of me in the past, but this was one of those heart-felt moments. I could swear I heard a very slight, almost inaudible choking back. It was the sort that nobody else in the world could have heard. Not because the message was for me, but because the response was so familiar. I know what happens to my voice when I start choking up, and I got my voice from him. I am my father’s son, and as such there are things about me that he understands better than anyone else, and there are things about him that I understand likewise.
That is one heck of a realization.
I must say this whole ordeal has opened my eyes to many blessings I took for granted.
Let me be the first person on the internet to review this product. Maybe I can hald prevent you from going though the same hassle I did.
This TV Tuner is about on-par with all of Pinnacle previous offerings. The hardware itself is high-quality. Really pretty slick actually.
Have a look:
Product description
Pinnacle has excellent advertising, package design, and hardware design. It would appear, however, that they have about 2 programmers, and one of them is a monkey. (The monkey does the better work, of course)
The drivers are bad. Real bad. They are slow, the picture quality is crap, the channel changing speed is crap. The advertised support for Windows Media Center Edition is questionable: to support MCE a capture device must have hardware MPEG encoding. The HD Pro Stick has mpeg encoding when viewing HD – because the signal is an mpeg stream. When watching analog TV it appears to be using a software codec pretending to be hardware.
You cannot install the drivers without installing Pinnacle’s Media Center. A testiment to poor planning and limited resources, this hog has plenty of options that are totally meaningless. The Electronic Program Guide (EPG) is slow, ugly, poorly rendered and blatantly thrown together.
First of all, it is not free. They are generous and throw in 1 year of updates for free, but then you have to pay.
Ok…
So after you wait 20 minutes for it to download the EPG data, and “import” it, you can go ahead and use it. Hooray! I should be able to see what channel I’m watching, and what show is on!
WRONG!
If you want it to show the channel name, you have to type it in by hand when you add it to your favorites list. And the real kicker: it only shows about8 characters from teh title of the show, and 8 characters from the description.
So When I’m hoping to see something like:
———–
28 – FX
The Moose River Haunting
Two second grade kids are lost in the woods, and come bact to haunt the village of Moose River.
——————-
Instead you see:
————
28
Moose Ri….
Two Secon….
——-
Elipses and all.
Garbage. This is with “high resolution” epg enabled.
Ok, what about viewing the full EPG – what shows are on. It does not display in the window. Oh no, it pops up another window that must be navigated with a mouse. And it looks like a series of listboxes.
The analog picture looks washed out, there is a high-pitched sound in the background, and the sound is occasionally muffled.
The timeshifting works, but the graphics it displays (which make no sense) when you first pause TV chew up too much CPU.
At all times, and in all modes, the mouths do not line up correctly with the sound.
Why do I complain? Why not just use different software?
Nothing supports it yet, and when they do the performance will be crap.
The final straw was a trip to the support page. Pinnacle does not allow you to download drivers for their products. You must have a licence key to prove you purchased product, then you can pay them to send you a CD. They rarely ever update their drivers, and they do not act on customer concerns. The customer care ends the moment you give them your money.
They will probably support the product for a few months, until there is something newer for the monkey to work on. They have not yet even begun Vista drivers. Their official statement is “we will make vista drivers after vista comes out, and only for supported products”
They support very few product.
I will be returning this lovely piece of trash, and trading it in for a Hauppauge PVR. It’s not as new or shnazzy, but it is support by a company that actually cares about their customers, and is still updating the drivers for their circa-1999 capture boards. Thank goodness I got it at best buy.
Summary:
Pinnacle hardware is sold to convince you to purchase their flagship Studio product. They are not interested in quality or support. The Pinnacle PCTV HD Pro Stick is not worth your money if you are looking for a PVR solution, and you will rue the day you purchased it.
Just ask the folks at the Pinnacle forum:
No drivers without key
Seeking better PVR software
Typical diagnosis: YOU need to remove things from your PC
I should be asleep, but I realized something I need to remember.
Right now my parents opinion means a lot. I trust them. I always have, but there was a significant period of time where I thought I knew better about many things. But I found out I was wrong.
Now if I need advice, I turn to them. If I need support (which I have needed a lot of lately…) I turn to them. If I need to talk, I turn to them. And you know what? They advise. They support. They listen and gab it up. 2000 minutes a month I chew up talking to my Mom. Just about things. Life. What happened at work. Problems, solutions. She puts her life on hold to talk to me.
And that is truly amazing. She never has to go because she is busy, or is watching a movie. She has a patience which I cannot even fathom – I don’t know how she does it.
Truth is, my parents are the best people I know. They are the most important people to me. I owe everything I am to their guidance and, well, genes :-).
When it comes to matters of import I know my Mother’s advice will not let me down. We may dissagree on the cause / effect / existance of global warming, but if she approves of something, I feel comfortable approving of it. If she does not approve, it’s probably a bad idea.
I guess the real point is that you should trust your parents, and step back to appreciate how wonderful all those little things they didn’t let you do have helped make you a better person today ;-).
I suppose it is just a part of growing up that we rebel. I regret it.
If you must know, I have decided that this time around, if / when I find somebody new, I will make sure I get MY parents explicit approval (or persuade it out of them :D) first. They know so much more about life than I. I wish I could have realized that sooner.
Goodnight world.
Look what they figured out.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/5120662.stm
Summary: putting up pictures of eyes makes people more honest.
The world in 1984 was not a good thing. Big Brother was once a symbol of oppression. Then they made a TV show. Now it’s lost its stigma, so you put it in a headline, and people think of reality TV, not a poorly written book with terrifyingly familiar themes.
Just wait. The freedoms that have been destroyed in the name of “fighting terror” are a terror in and of themselves.
You see, the goal of terrorist activity is to cause fear, and to get a fearful reaction. The Muslim terrorists cannot be appeased – our very way of life offends them. We are infidels. Our country is morally diseased.
So they attack – try to destroy our freedoms. Our president believes that fighting back is the answer – a holy war. And what happens in time of war?
An unregulated, secret branch of the federal government is permitted to search without a warrant, arrest without charges or probable cause, try and convict without a jury (much less due process), eavesdrop on all DOMESTIC communication, And now, track all your bank transactions.
And Bush has the audacity to become upset when the news leaked out. He claims the newspapers are undermining the war on terror.
No, they are helping. He is playing right into their hand…