Chinese Flip-Flops

This site proves that Wal-Mart is evil and cheap Chinese products are dangerous shit. It's not just lead!

UniATA

Finally, an open-source Windows ATA driver that supports DMA: UniATA. This should be useful.

Multitasking and Productivity

Recently there was a post on /. linking to an article on The Atlantic about the problems with multitasking. Just what I suspected all along. The article appears to be from last November—why'd it take so long to get picked up?!

Then c|net has an article regarding productivity in this brave new age of technology. Referring back to the multitasking article, much of the current technologies actually aren't conducive to productivity at all! The claim: "interruptions from e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging, and blogs eat up nearly 30 percent of each day"—ouch.

Early technologies, like the Deere plow, focused on helping us do one thing well. There's an important distinction between a core technology development and mere infrastructure changes. The Internet as we know it was invented in 1974 years ago. The Web was birthed in 1989. Where's the next leap in IT? Blogs, social networks, and such are just sideshows to the real leaps that change the way we do things. The question is, will we use what we have at our disposal in a productive fashion?

Boosted Air-Source Heat Pumps

c|net has an article on an electric heat pump that's supposed to be more efficient for cold-weather locales. The company, Hallowell International, has some more information on their website, including a white paper.

Thou shalt not murder

Massad Ayoob also writes articles for the magazine Backwoods Home, and I ran into a couple interesting columns recently. One of them is regarding ammunition: storage, safety, and pricing. His point about how ammo prices being artificially depressed in the '80s continuing into the '90s was new to me. Then there was a link about how to respond to anti-gunners. I'd seen some of that before in Boston T. Party's writings, but Ayoob is more mainstream. One of these days I'll have to attend LFI.

Anyway, the point of this post is that Ayoob brings up the Commandment that really says "Thou shalt not murder". Even in the Bible, the Old Testament at least, there is killing sanctioned by God. Wikipedia has a word or two on this as well, for those who don't believe an article in a magazine about living away from the beaten path.

Why not to use Ruby on Rails

Slashdot had a link to an article on what to and not to use Perl for. One thing was for Web applications, which I disagree with. Several other people did too, one of whom posted a link to some issues that Ruby on Rails has by one of the most prominent dev community members. The rant is rather spectacular. F-bombs and colorful metaphors all over the place. I actually sympathize with the guy's troubles. Having done Perl CGI freelance, I know that a lot of the code out there is total crap, and many of the people in the industry couldn't code to save their lives. Still, it sounds like Ruby on Rails really sucks: 400 restarts a day is very unstable. Why bother?

Dave Hall told me how cool Ruby on Rails is, but I'm glad I passed on the latest buzzword language. The Catalyst MVC framework for Perl sounds interesting. Even so, I'll probably roll my own.

37mm

Apparently some people entertain themselves with 37mm flare guns. There's at least one site dedicated to them, and they have a useful FAQ as well. Several places make flare gun attachments. Spike's Tactical makes a rail-mounted one that looks like a grenade launcher. Awww yeah.

C&R Links

Some interesting sites with information pertaining to the Type 03 FFL (C&R):

• Surplus Rifle's page on how to get a C&R
• Cruffler has lots of good info
• A useful C&R clarification via letter from the ATF
• Information from a previous post

Radford Survey

Apparently HGST uses the Radford Survey to compare salaries, benefits, etc. against other companies to determine competitiveness. It'd be interesting to have access to the raw data.

Social Networks & Wall Street

I was googling around to see what exists in terms of stock-related offerings to social networks. One blog post I found listed several minor sites. The main one seems to be SocialPicks. There's also a site called Herd St., and some other obscure ones like BigSmarty and UpDown.

Personally, I'm not interested in yet another SNS. I'm looking for a site that allows stock performance tracking with minimal noise. Some people don't care for sharing exactly what they're trading, but wouldn't mind to export their annualized ROI. A simple, functional site to keep track, and possibly export performance information to other web applications. An issue would be gleaning out the historic numbers from feeds.

Google Gadgets has a JavaScript API for retrieving stock data. Apparently they get their data from a company called CSI. Still, Google Finance exports all exchange data in the JavaScript of the individual stock pages, which could be used to get at least 5 years of data, possibly more.

Hi5

Yet another SNS—Hi5. I'm not sure what differentiating characteristics it has relative to Facebook, MySpace, etc., but apparently some people use it. Not everyone uses the big services, perhaps?

Representational State Transfer

REST is another Web buzzword. Actually, I'm not clear on what the breakthrough was. Further, it mandates stateless behavior, which most Web applications rely on for login: either cookies, or a hidden input variable tucked away on a page, correlated to state information on the server. Still, I suppose it warrants more study.

Tech News

Wireless Charging at CES.
Google and Facebook join DataPortability.org.
Microsoft offers to buy FAST for $1.2B.
Data centers on cargo ships? Sounds like the beginnings of an "off-shore data haven".
Network Solutions has been front-running queries—boo!
Mobile phone projectors to debut this year?!
Linux-based PMP features head-mounted display.
Alienware to release a gigantic curved monitor?! I want one!!
Shimmer to secure port access.
Apparently, it's legal for customs to rummage around on your laptop.
Building Beer-Brewing Bender!
NYT has the story behind the breakup of Intel and OLPC.

日本のマナー

見舞いのカードに何を書けばいいかを調べたら、このサイトが検索結果に入っていた。結構使えそうだ。

Gold & The Privateer

While looking for information on the gold confiscation of 1933, I ran across a site called The Privateer, a newsletter for liberty-minded individuals. I haven't had a chance to check it out yet, but it looks intriguing.

Presidential Executive Order 6102 is some evil stuff. Basically, it forced people to sell their gold to the government at a fixed price. Nine months later, the Gold Reserve Act transfered ownership of Fed gold to the U.S. Treasury, and the value of the dollar was devalued 41% relative to gold. Basically, FDR screwed the American people. What a fascist piece of shit! Why anyone would respect the guy is beyond me. It took WWII to pull the country together economically, and war brought other problems with it.

The Privateer has a timeline detailing the gold-related events in the 20th century that's quite illuminating.

Gear

Some places for gear:

Bradley's Military
Maxpedition

Technology Voter's Guide: Ron Paul

C|net has Ron Paul's take on several technology issues. Their election guide has some interesting coverage as well.

Turns out Dr. Paul has the same view on Net neutrality as I do. He kicks ass!

Maybe Warren Buffett Sucks After All

Perhaps he's getting senile in his old age, but the Oracle supports the Democrats. How disappointing. I suspected something was amiss when he donated billions to the Gates Foundation. How it's readily apparent that Buffett's got some issues. No serious capitalist would vote for a gun-grabbing socialist for president. Well, I'm totally disillusioned now.

Misquotes

Apparently several quotes often attributed to Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson are incorrect.

First of all, the Benjamin Franklin one. As referenced by Wikiquote and backed up by some scholarly research, this is the correct quote: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." Certainly that's different than the one generally seen floating about on the Net.

Jefferson is the subject of many mis-attributed quotes. One often attributed to him is: "When the government fears the people, there is liberty; When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." I rather liked that one, too, but apparently he didn't say it (also, Wikiquote).

Oh yeah, Nietzsche is also frequently misquoted. The proper quote is: "Was ihn nicht umbringt, macht ihn stärker" (What does not kill him, makes him stronger.)

Akihabara News

Apparently some publisher has this blog team in Tokyo doing coverage of Japanese gadget items, etc. Interesting, though everyone has their own take on Akihabara.

OS X Hacks

Since the wife wants an Eee PC, the possibility of hacking OS X to install on it is attractive. (Although the hack is technically a license violation since it's "modification", I do have a spare, legal copy of Tiger.) Hence I went searching to see what kind of success people were having with it.

The Eee PC Wikipedia entry has a link to a site dedicated to getting OS X up and running on the Eee PC. Apparently it works to some extent, but there are a few issues. The tutorial there points to an article that first documented an install, which was in turn based on a generic "Hackintosh" howto. Apparently there are lots of peeps out there with prodigious amounts of spare time.

C|net Comments

A couple remarks posted on c|net regarding an article on the sad state of privacy in the U.S.:

Dalkorian: The Declaration of Independence says that it's the people's duty to overthrow corrupt government. As far as I can recall from my reading of the Constitution, it doesn't say anything about revolution. As a matter of fact, U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 115 spells out that it's a serious crime to plot sedition or advocate overthrow of government.

That doesn't mean the law is right -- laws are made by people, and people are often wrong. (This is why jury nullification is a necessary thing, though under-utilized.) Still, the federal government has become a huge piece of machinery, so unless you want to bring that down on your head alone, hold off until the right time, hopefully with the coordination of like-minded Patriots.

Note that a Patriot defends the Constitution, not the twisted mess that has grown up around it.

and

Absolutely. The 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms is the means by which people can hold onto their freedoms when things go to far. It really has nothing to do with hunting, but this is how the bad guys pushed the 1968 Gun Control Act through in requiring sporting purpose for importation. The NFA and GCA were pushed through Democrat-controlled Congress with a Democrat president (FDR and LBJ) to ensure that no one interferes with their big-budget government morass.

Citizens should be able to own military weapons, period. They could pre-1934. All that's happened since then is that the average citizen's minds have gotten soft, since all they care about is the latest entertainment. Gun control is unconstitutional and is thus illegal. However, it's the citizens versus the people with a monopoly of force, so guess who loses?

When a citizen criticizing the government can be labeled a terrorist, and people become held for undeclared reasons, we're only a few steps away from total oppression. In that regard, Al Qaeda won, although America has been screwing itself for the past 80 years.

To Power-Down or Not To Power-Down

A c|net blog post led me to an article on Ask Leo that compelled me to post a reply. Here it is:

To Roger: Not all drives use the CSS (contact start/stop) mechanism you described. All Hitachi hard drives use a load/unload ramp, which causes no friction wear to the head. (Ramps can have other issues, however.) Seagate's 3.5" drives still use CSS, last I heard, so people who use that vendor may wish to avoid excessive power cycling.

Also, most spindle bearings are FDB (fluid dynamic bearings) so bearing wear isn't nearly as much of an issue as it used to be. Modern flex tapes generally don't have fatigue issues, either, at least from what I hear being in development. (I work in the industry.)

Other remarks: What does concern me is electronics wear with power cycling, since electromigration effects are greater as transistor size shrinks (current generation SOCs are 90nm). However, risk of head-disk interaction as a result of internal contamination, application of external force, or other issues (firmware problems, failure to park on an emergency power-off, etc.) counterbalances the argument to leaving a drive on all the time, since usage of the drive raises risk of HDI. Excessive heat due to the drive running can exacerbate thermal decay of written data, as well.

All drives will experience degradation of the magnetics because of superparamagnetism, whether they are on or off. This is a practical limit on the lifespan of a drive due to degradation of the once-written servo pattern. Copying data to an HDD and leaving it in the closet for 5 years is NOT safe -- I'd prefer optical media (just make sure to use a high-quality brand like Taiyo Yuden, not the cheap stuff).

In the end, because of the complexity of HDDs, the differences in models, and the difficulty of extracting probabilities of failure, whether to power down or not is still a matter of preference. I shut off most all of my HDDs when not in use, since I view the mechanical and magnetic risks to be greater than the electronics ones. Thus far, I've had good luck. If one chooses to leave a drive on all the time, definitely make sure it's well cooled. Multiple backups over multiple drives is the safe thing to do. Also, don't trust what the manufacturer says about drive life -- the one oddball failure on the Weibull projection could be the one with your data on it.

Baby Names

CNN had an article on "baby name remorse" that I felt I had to comment on. I'm unsure if they'll post my remarks, so here they are:

A baby's name isn't a reflection of a child—it's a reflection of the child's parents' inclinations. However, that's as important as any of the teachings and traditions that the parents choose to pass down to the child. In a way, it establishes some of the character of the child, since a name does alter perceptions by one's peers.

My father claims he made up my name as a derivative of his name. For the longest time I hated it because no one could spell or pronounce it. As I grew up, I got used to it, but could never quite reason whether I was different because I grew up with the name, or whether the name simply suited the character of my parental influence. Later, I discovered that the name wasn't unique (also a shock to my dad) and honestly was disappointed!

Certainly some parents want to set their kids apart; the wisdom of this depends on the character of the parents. I wouldn't overdo it: certainly the name should sound natural to the parents. ("Normal" people will pick a "normal" name, "strange" people will pick a "strange" name—that's the way it works!) The kid will grow into it. Thus it's natural that some parents second-guess themselves, but they should figure it out before the child latches on to the name.