scottsimpson.net

“Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, R-Colo., wants the Constitution amended to read: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.” Her proposal was referred on June 25 to the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution.”
[ABCNews.com]
Um, what are people afraid of? How many marriages end in divorce because one spouse figures out they’re gay? Someone needs to explain this to me, and so far the only explanations I’ve heard are based on the Bible. Personally, I’m against the whole idea of marriage, especially if it is so narrowly defined.

“‘People should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into,’ said Cheney [in 2000]. ‘It’s really no one else’s business, in terms of trying to regulate or prohibit behavior in that regard.’

Cheney’s daughter Mary is a lesbian.”
[Ibid.]

We don’t end articles about the NAACP with ‘Tom’s friend Susan is black’, nor do we end articles about Alcoholics Anonymous with ‘Mary knows a depressed alcoholic’… What is this obsession society has with sexual orientation? It’s nothing different than any other aspect of a person, and we need to stop focusing on it so much.

Someone also needs to explain to me why Israel is such a bunch of jerks. My support for them as a nation slips daily. I can absolutely understand the ire of the arab nations, in the light of such brazen violations such as the aforelinked article. Are 22 houses worth peace in the region? Who gave Israel this divine right to the land? Oops, bad choice of words… And why do people have to live in a certain place to worship their deity? Fundamental flaw of monotheistic religions, number 1. Following close behind is number 2, the idea of killing people in the name of a fictional entity. (Before you start hating, realize that my argument flows as follows: There may or may not be a higher power. No one knows this for sure, and to the best of our knowledge, we can never know for sure. This power/force/deity/dude/chick is definately not named ‘God’, ‘Allah’, or any such Earth-language name. We can determine this because if this power created the earth, it must have existed before the earth, and the earth existed before human languages. My bet is on this power having no name of its own. It doesn’t wear a turban, it doesn’t have a beard, and it’s probably not fat. Back to the name thing. If a person ‘died in the name of Allah’ or ‘killed in the name of God’, it’s a scam, pure and simple. Doing such things in the name of a higher power creates an idol, something sacriligious in the monotheistic religions. A thing done in the fictional name of a higher power cannot, by definition, be according to the will of that power.)

The girl at starbucks (whom I have reason to believe is a lesbian… like it matters…) got my name wrong after I’ve been going there for weeks. Evidently my name is Sal. Might keep the name… Sal Simon sounds like a kind of fun alias. But she got my drink right, so all is good in coffeeland.

Scott is caucasian, and of average height.

“‘Baka ginagawa lang na sacrificial lamb si Corpuz sa ngayon, and later he would be rewarded with a higher position in military when the issue against him and Reyes dies down. Kaya sa akin, half baked din itong action ng President sa resignation ni Corpuz,’ he said.” … if we’re going to translate something, lets translate it all the way, people… some of us can’t read Tagalog. (from a Phillipine news source.)

Never buy a sweetened iced coffee from Starbucks. I decided to try an iced coffee instead of my traditional iced Americano this morning. “Sweetened or unsweetened?”, asked the barrista.
“Unsweetened”, I replied.
“How many pumps?”, she inquired.
“What?”
“How many pumps of sweetener?”
“I said unsweetened”
“Oh, sorry”
She proceeds to put my cup on the bar and goes to get my pastry. I see the other barrista putting something in a clear cup, like mine. I figure it must be for one of the other twenty-odd customers. Nope, its mine. Sweetened. Such a terrible taste. Oh well.

I’m off to ’six-sigma’ training here in a minute, where I suppose I get to learn about standard deviations and how they relate to product quality control. Sooooo senior-year-all-over-again. Except the textbook part. And the school part. And I’m older (21 on Friday!!).

Happy Birthday to:
Nick B - a few days back (21)
Ryan T - (21)

I’d sing Happy Birthday, but I’m a terrible singer.

Song of the day - Happy Birthday (public copyright)

Such a strange world we live in. Now, in great American fashion, you can bet on terrorist events and middle-eastern assassinations. No wonder people around the world hate us. How would we react if there were one of these systems against America? Would people stand by as odds were put on the destruction of San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York? How would we feel if there were a webpage posting bids for the assassination of the Justices, or the Secretary of Defense, etc.?

I’m all for gay rights (which sounds dumb, because no one should have to be ‘for’ any rights…), but I think it’s a little bit over the line to establish a gay high school. With everyone talking about diversity and inclusion, how could there possibly be an advantage to taking one demographic out of the mainstream and isolating them? Next, we’ll be having black shools, hispanic schools, tall schools, fat schools, etc. No purpose. Dangerous.

In the grand style of Reality Television, now you can watch, in the convenience of your own living room or trailer, the removal of impaled objects from the human body. The show, to be aired on FOX, is the latest in a string of garish assaults on sensibility. I used to laugh when I read about such things in futurist novels, but now it’s just plain disturbing to see how close we are to the all-seeing media dystopia forecast in these books.

On the upside, it will take the RIAA over 2,000 years to sue all of the American music pirates. Chances are, you won’t be around by the time they get to you. They probably won’t be around then either. Rome barely lasted that long. Another authoritarian state that regulated and persecuted itself into oblivion. Go figure.

Speaking of things persecuting themselves into oblivion, it looks like SCO is set for a monumental collapse. Licensing? For Linux? Whatever happened to open-source? I wonder if the thousands of developers are all going to get a share of the profits. Somehow I doubt it.

Song of the day: A*Teens - Upside Down

Naj implores me to update my blog. Perhaps he doesn’t realize that I’ve been in the mountains for the past few days, cut off from the world of digital madness and electronic immediacy. (is something that is immediate lacking in media, just as someone illiterate is lacking in literature?) Anyway, I love going to the mountains… I wish I could spend a lot more time there. Such a simpler life. A life without pop-up ads.

Pop-up ads should be either illegal or heavily regulated. The same applies to unwanted flash ads. If I’m using a corporate T1 with a 2GHz computer, and there’s a lag time loading a page due to an insipid flash ad that I can’t close, something needs to be done. Why do we let advertisers hijack our clock cycles? Why are we complacent with this rape of technology? How arrogant is it to inject hundreds of kilobytes of useless nonsense into webpages simply to advertise a product that couldn’t possibly be useful. Ever notice how the advertising increases as the usefulness of something decreases? I can assure the advertising world that I do not need cheap airline tickets nor postage stamp size pervert cameras nor herbal viagra, and I’m definately not going to punch the monkey for $10. How can you avoid some of these ads? Download Mozilla, a browser that is currently gaining popularity in part because of its ability to block pop-up ads. In my experience, it also uses many less resources than Internet Explorer.

Long ago, in the dim ages, there were no advertisements on the internet. Slowly, they began to appear as webmasters discovered that they could be paid for placing an ad on their sites. There’s not too much wrong with this… it’s true to the great capitalist ideal, and it’s fairly unobtrusive. I was fine looking at the ads on HotMail (pre-M$) because I knew that the free, useful site was kept alive by click-through advertising revenues. But does Microsoft really need to advertise on Hotmail? It’s a sad day when one cannot navigate the web easily without having to close scores of pop-up ads, many poorly made or simply wrong. There’s an ad for some snakeoil network security product that shows an IP address of ‘64.652.452.31′, which anyone who has worked with networks for a decent period of time will recognize as blatantly false. (the highest number allowed in an IP address is 255) My conclusion: if anything is advertised via a pop-up ad, it is a scam. The only exception is for companies advertising their own products on their own sites (i.e. Dell’s discount popup — the digital equivalent of a coupon falling out of an ad when you open it)

Hmm.

Song of the day: NSync - Pop
(Get it?)

In other news, have you seen the arguments that the music industry is using against piracy? The two biggest ones (aside from the ‘its illegal’ fallacy) are:
1. Real fans don’t download music
2. Downloading bypasses Parental Advisories.
Let’s attack the first one first. Who is more of a fan, the person who picks up a Dave Matthews CD at the store because a co-worker mentioned it was popular, or the kid who records the concert on a cassette tape and listens to it over and over, and posts it on the internet so other people can experience the live show? Unless you’re an IP lawyer, you’ll notice that the bootlegger is much more of a real fan of the band. Not only does he actually enjoy the content of the music, he shares it with other people, increasing exposure of the group.
Secondly… God forbid a kid should be able to choose what he listens to. The 13-18 set are much more savvy and worldly than most parents give them credit for. (see your own life for examples). And who, aside from persons living in sterile bubbles, never heard words or ideas that are commonly censored today until their 18th birthday? [taps chin thoughtfully] (doesn’t a Parental Advisory sticker just add to the tantalizing factor of a disc? Doesn’t it just cement that ‘forbidden fruit’ idea? see: underage drinking)
The music industry claims that users do not have the right to do with music as they please. Perhaps not, but upon purchasing a disc, a user has absolute rights to what he does with _that copy_. Granted, he does not own the work, merely his copy of it. And if he desires to make ten thousand copies, that is within his right. It is also within his right to distribute it as he sees fit. Here the music industry blurs its definition. The user has the right, though the right is not legal. If the music industry seeks credibility, it should use the proper terminology. ‘Legal right’ would be the term of choice, unless the music industry wants to get into a philosophical discussion.

Many artists are vague on their support of P2P networking. Many say that they support the idea of ‘previewing’ music. This is good, and a wise choice. They are against the wholesale copying of entire works. This also is wise. Thus far, Apple seems to have it ‘most right’ with iTunes. Gone are the days of buying terrible albums and not being able to return them. Gone are the days of suffering through horrible filler tracks just to listen to the few songs you like.

To the music industry: stop persecuting casual sharers. You’ve said yourselves that 10% of the pirates constitute 90% of the violations. Go after them, not Granny Smith. What good does it do to persecute college students, charging them hundreds of thousands of dollars for what is, in all reality, an entirely intangible and harmless crime? Weigh the options: if you take the money from students, they likely will have to forego their education to pay your ridiculous fines (or do you have a fetish for destroying educations?) Think about it. I’d be willing to bet that at least 80% of all college students engage in piracy, and do you want to be responsible for ending their education?

To the pirates: buy music. Listen to it to see if you like it, then buy the CD if you support it. If you don’t pay the artists, the artists can’t make money.

Bottom line: there will always be theft, but with the right agreements and circumstances, services like buymusic.com and iTunes can strengthen the music community as a whole. Revolution is on the horizon, and in a few years, albums may well be a thing of the past. Per-track sales can help the artists and the industry more accurately gauge what the consumer demand is and as such, the consumers will be more of a part of the system. Music fans are increasingly disillusioned with the push-only model of marketing. Copy-protected CD’s are ridiculously limiting (can’t even listen on a computer… crashes a Mac!!!) As consumer technology improves, so culture must adapt. We’re entering an era of customization, of playlists and custom mixes. The monolithic push-model must give way to a more interactive system.

- - -
First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII ? and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.
? Douglas Adams
- - -

“[a consumer] … recently purchased SimCity 4 thinking that his Athlon 1900 with 1.5 GB of memory and an Nvidia GeForce 4 Ti4600 graphics card would be more than adequate. Instead, he found that after playing for a while, the game ran so sluggishly he could no longer enjoy it.” -wired.com

…anyone care to explain to me why software has such ridiculous requirements these days? Whatever happened to the KISS mantra? (Keep It Simple, Stupid… not something chanted by painted-faced lunatics)

Alright, I’ll give you the latest three-dimensional ray-traced 1280×1024 first-person shooters. But Sim-City? The first SimCity fit on a floppy disc and, aside from a tacky-looking newspaper, was just fine for me. Who has a use for gigatexel buildings? Alpha-transparency strip malls? If the people who sit for hours in front of a screen looking at a city want so much to have the ‘real-world’ experience, perhaps they should consider the notion of visiting a real city. Computers weren’t meant to play games on. They were intended as business machines, machines to automate the redundant parts of life, machines that facilitate communication over a vast global internetwork. It never ceases to annoy me that some of the most powerful computers on the consumer market sit idle or barely scratch the surface of their power as their users play inane games on them. This danger is twofold: First, it promotes an antisocial element (why experience the real world, when I can play God in an irrelevant fake world?) and Secondly, any hacker worth his salt, upon accessing the untold thousands of idle 2GHz+ CPU’s (many on broadband-plus connections) would have, at his command, a formidable army with which he could attack networks, computers, or individuals. Not so long ago, in the days of the nascent 300MHz processor, a security consultant noted that it would take millions of years of computing time to crack the basic 128-bit encryption protecting the vast majority of online transactions. Since computer power is exponential, it’s only a matter of time before computers (en masse… we still have a ways to go before one computer is powerful enough) become powerful enough to lay open the encrypted arteries of the internet. 128-bit security is already shady, and so far there have been no major attempts to up the ante. And the millions-of-years figure is only valid if the passcode to the encrypted target is the absolute last combination that an attacking computer tries. Statistically, this would not be the case. How many important files are protected by inane passwords like ‘password’ or ‘iamcool’?

When selecting a password, it is important to keep security, not convenience, at the forefront. Some tips:

As life goes on, I find myself looking at the world with an increasingly skeptical bent. One of the most notable aspects of this skepticism is the troubling reality that we, as a species, really haven’t figured things out. Almost daily, I hear of some discovery or revelation that sort of makes me think, “why hasn’t someone thought of that before?”. Not in a “wow, that’s neat” kind of way, but in a deeper, more troubling way. Chief among these is the fact that apparently no one had ever thought to compare certain modern ethical theories with the beliefs of Socrates. SOCRATES! Argh. In a lighter facet of the same:

IKEA fails to check the meaning of a product name… or maybe they figured the name would sell more products. It kinda fits.
Whoever designed the webpage for the Italian subsidary of PowerGen should have checked around a little bit… [www.powergenitalia.com]

Iiiiiiin other news…
The US released photos of the Brothers Grim (Uday and Qusay, for those of you that haven’t had your coffee). While this action may do wonders for convincind the people of Iraq that their tormentors are indeed dead, I have a feeling there will be some sort of backlash from the hardcore Muslim (and possibly other religious) communities (for showing the dead on .. um .. NATIONAL TELEVISION), as well as from the various respectable news media (not actually an oxymoron, though the NY Times is getting close to falling off the list…’All the news that fits in print’). However you look at it, it’s rather unethical to broadcast macabre photos of the dead on any medium, though I suppose in some sort of extended utilitarian sense, the good of convincing people that the Brothers Grim are dead outweighs silly notions like privacy, respect, and integrity. Just look at ‘reality television’. But I digress.

It seems rather shady to me that the photos (at least the ones on CNN.com) are very dark and grainy. Can the military not afford a decent digital camera? I’m not familiar with the faces of the Brothers, so it was sort of a stretch to me comparing the photos. I suppose the citizens of Iraq do know better than I what they look like in real life, etc. I sincerely hope the armed forces aren’t trying to dupe anyone; the US can’t afford any more gaffes.

Song of the day: Dave Matthews Band - The Dreaming Tree

So I can’t keep a deal with myself, as proven by my morning jaunt to Starbucks. Eh, there’s worse things to be hooked on, right?

Score one for the universities, whom are standing up to the RIAA in court. Perhaps a new age of common sense will prevail, forcing the RIAA to look up ‘privacy’ in the dictionary. Aren’t there more important things for law enforcement people to focus on than kids downloading music? Things like, oh, I don’t know, murder, rape, corporate corruption, and assorted torts? (mmm, pastries…) OK, piracy is illegal. Piracy is also defined as “Robbery committed at sea. / A similar act of robbery, as the hijacking of an airplane.” Only recently was the definition for ’software piracy’ added, a term having nothing to do at all with the real definition of piracy: “The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material”. Perhaps the term was chosen as a psychological impactor? What about the real term, Intellectual Property Infringement? I guess it sounds cooler to be a pirate than an IPI’er. Even the widespread music ‘piracy’ (which, by definition, should only be able to occur on the high seas or in international airspace) cannot possibly account for the ‘lackluster’ music sales. Did the advent of the VCR detract from movie sales? Does the recording of audio from a radio broadcast cut into CD sales? Perhaps ‘pirates’ would be more likely to purchase music if their dollar actually went to the artist. I’d sure as hell rather send my $15.99 to Sting than to a music label. Sure, the label made it happen, but without the artist, the label couldn’t exist (except in a few rare cases, such as NSync and their ilk). I maintain that music sales have dropped because the number of quality albums on the market has dropped. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Song of the day: John Mayer - Neon

Over lunch, I couldn’t help but overhear the oddly-dressed man adjacent to me ranting to his companion about the rampant commercialism of America. His blue shoes and vest spoke volumes of his staunch position against the mainstream. “All I’m a-sayin’ is that we’s got brotha’s dyin’ over in I-raq, and you see that woman? She throw away enough food to feed two people!” [he spoke suchly; I am not exaggerating] “…what we need is to get back to the nat’ral world, back to mother nature… get rid of all these companies with unequal labor practices that is starvin’ people overseas.” This from a man in blue shoes. And what’s even more ironic? He’s sitting in Jack-in-the-Box.

In a similar vein, it seems that Michael Jackson is weighing in on the piracy issue. While I tend to dislike agreeing with him, I’m forced to admit that he has a point. Jailing music pirates (Arrrrr!) seems a tad heavy-handed. It is commonly known that the music industry (since it’s one thing that walks around and does stuff) blames piracy and cd-burning for ‘lackluster’ sales. Isn’t lackluster such a wonderful euphemism for ‘crappy’? I offer another alternative: perhaps the music industry has been producing, uh, ‘lackluster’ music. You see, I draw a line through the music world. On one side is the pop music and commercial froth that I consider to be akin to pop-up ads on websites (Backstreet Boys, *NSync, Aaron Carter, BBMak, Jewel (v2.0… yea, she sold out), Britney, Christina, etc.) … entertaining, but not something I’d ever think about paying for. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a pop fiend… pop culture has its own wonderful things, mostly plastic and disposable. On the other side of my Music World Line are such artists as deserve payment (John Mayer, Jack Johnson, Sting, anything classic, anything with true artistic merit). These I pay for, and I believe others should pay for them as well. My solution: let the froth fly free and let the substantive stuff be the only music that it is criminal to pirate. True, this becomes rather subjective, but everybody knows I live in an idealist world anyway. So it works in my world, and I like my world because everybody knows me there. Alternatively, perhaps the RIAA could step out a little bit and propose the following: a distributed for-profit music sharing network. Call it MyTunes or something snappy. The idea: users buy music, but then can resell it (bulk of profit going to the industry, but users get to keep a few cents) Instead of a centralized server, lay this over KaZaA or whavever the kids are using these days to keep the user base (6 million users automatically!) Current pirates just have to pay for a license, and the industry still gets their money.

But ever am I reminded of the mantra of the hackers of the early 80’s… Information wants to be free.

Um, what was I talking about… I forgot. Oh well.

Elsewhere on the globe, it has been proposed to make Jerusalem the capital of the world.

A band calling themselves ‘Burka Blue’ signed with a Dusseldorf label. Three afghan women in blue… maybe Blue Man Group is looking for wives?

‘lackluster’ pop song of the day: Aaron Carter - Clapping Song
(yea, guess what it’s about…)

So I have these songs from Mel Brooks’ “History of the World Part I” stuck in my head (”Auto da fay? What’s an auto da fay?”), which I guess is better than having something else stuck in my head, say, like someone else’s tongue. The previous link comes courtesy of Google News, which, in the great Google tradition, uses a sexy algorithm to scour the web for new things. It seems like a good idea, but beware the disclaimer: “The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.” Vox populii, vox Google. I wonder if they’ll start up a porn site… GoOgle.com

In other news, someone needs to explain to me why anyone would pay to shoot at naked women. I have enough trouble getting women to talk to me, what could possibly influence me to shoot at them? Perhaps this is some sort of NRA dating procedure. Speaking of women and senseless violence, Jessica Lynch is evidently returning home today. While it’s a tragedy that she or anyone was injured in Bush’s Iraqi Foray, it seems the media has overhyped her return just a tad. What of the other injured US servicefolk in Iraq, Liberia, Afghanistan, etc.? Sources on both sides of the fence tell global news services that the Lynch rescue was staged; ‘rescuers’ were seen with video cameras, shouted ‘go! go! go!’, and were firing blank rounds. The ‘rescue’ came days before Lynch was scheduled to be picked up by an ambulance anyway, by agreement of the Iraqi doctors and US forces.

In happier news, the dam that is the USAPATRIOT Act seems to be cracking. It’s a happy day when Republicans come out against an Ashcroftian mandate. Ha, look at the punnery in that sentence. Mr. Ashcroft would turn such a nice shade of red. Anyway… the siege continues, though not successfully in all places. But it’s a start. A review of injustices has begun. It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant people can be. In one instance, an official “…was said to have “rudely” asked a person being detained if he ‘wanted to kill Christians and Jews.’ “. It is my opinion that everyone should take some sort of educational course in world religions, maybe followed up with a refresher on Common Sense. The world isn’t American, people, and increasingly they dislike us because we seem to think it is. It’s amazingly arrogant to assume that people want to kill us because we enjoy certain freedoms, and it’s even worse to assume that they want to attack us simply because we’re American. Take a look at the history behind it all and you’ll see that for the most part, much of the global ire is perfectly justified. Some isn’t (crusading in the name of any deity, crusading based on ancient racial distincions, etc.), but the vast majority of anti-Americanism is easily justified with just a simple history lesson. Maybe if Americans quit waving their mass-produced flags all over the place and listen to the world community instead of assuming America Knows Best, we could get through some of this nonsense and start rebuilding the world the way it should be.

Song of the day: Sugarcult - You’re The One

R.I.P. St. Jude, patron saint of hackers. (????-2003)

Well, I suppose it’s good to know that the courts recognize that guns are not racist. Perhaps later on, we’ll get into other important race issues, like why paper is white and roads are black.

Anyway, it’s also good to know that soon I’ll be able to have a visa card that earns me free starbucks coffee, just like the airline miles programs they’ve got going now. The program uses the same card for all transactions, and it looks nice too. Yay.. I’ll never have to pay for coffee again.

Got the front two tires on my car fixed; they were both leaking. I’m seriously willing to bet it has something to do with the industrial waste management facility near my place of work. (what tipped me off? maybe it was the sheet metal or 2×4’s or random scraps of things in the road…) I’d sue, but I think it’s considered a standard road hazard, plus I’m just kinda lazy. And it only cost like $35, so it’s not really a big deal.

Oh yea. Almost forgot. I’m giving up starbucks before work this week to see how I function without it. Also, it was part of a deal I made with myself as a condition of spending wads of money at Fry’s last weekend. Let me further clarify the details of my deal with myself: I am not to purchase, with my own funds, any starbucks product, nor enter a starbucks establishment. Consumption of said product having already been purchased is not subject to the terms of this agreement. Product funded by external sources is also not subject to the terms of this agreement. Entry into a Starbucks establishment shall not be permitted except where Agreeor is engaging in a social interaction with two (2) or more person(s).

How depressing. Ah well, the deal with myself ends at noon on friday… keep your fingers crossed =)

Song of the day: Bon Jovi - This Ain’t A Love Song