Definition of a Conservative

CNN for the most part has a hard liberal bias, and therefore, for the most part, they suck. They've been trying to appear less biased by featuring Glenn Beck's op-ed periodically, and certainly it helps. (They have that Reuben Navarrette on there that consistently pisses me off with his moronic, liberal, pro-illegal immigration op-eds.) Beck has a piece on who to vote for in the election this year, stating that he might not vote for McCain because McCain's not a true conservative. Beck goes on to list what he thinks defines a conservative, and it's pretty good.

My comments:

Mr. Beck, excellent op-ed piece. That about sums it up, and I'm facing the same dilemma. Certainly those values are the right ones to have, regardless of what the label is. The problem is splitting the vote, like Perot did. So the issue at hand is, how badly do we not want Obama to get into office?

To mbronx, the point of not letting the government control education is to not allow the curriculum to be polluted by outside parties. Parents should have control of what kind of information makes it into their children's heads, not the government. Supplemental funding should be handled at the local level so that no stipulations can be placed on receiving the federal money.

There were a few scumbag posters:

"Who cares for whom Mr. Beck wants to vote. This is not news." — Apparently dr doesn't notice opinion pieces when they're left-wing (admittedly, I've thought the same thing, though, about Navarrette). Newspapers always have op-ed sections. Why not try to get people to think about the issues of the day? Maybe that's impossible.

"Thank you for laying out all of the reasons I don't consider myself a conservative." — Hey Justin, why say that you're a moron in a public forum? Try growing a brain!

"I'd rather you stay home on election day, anyway." — Don't have kids, Kris, I'd rather you stay out of the gene pool, anyway. Beck didn't say he'd stay home, but rather that he may not vote for either main party candidate. Cretin.

Hehe.

Snopes Education

Recently my mom forwarded me a warning about the "postcard" virus. The note claimed it was checked out on Snopes, but didn't include the link. Well, I found the real link and discovered that as I surmised that the warning was a hoax. (There aren't any viruses that can "burn" one's HDD.)

That got me reading various articles on Snopes. There were a couple of interesting entries, one on the "Triangle of Life" that Harry Lam had forwarded me while on assignment, and one on The Great Stork Derby. Charles Millar sounds like he was a really cool guy.

Region Free

The Firmware Page used to have a good collection of patched/hacked optical drive firmware to bypass region codes. Since >NIL: retired in 2005, however, the firmware scene has somewhat sucked.

The Dangerous Brothers have a lot of new firmwares, but not for the newer Pioneer drives, which kind of sucks. Well, that's the way it goes. Beggars can't be choosers. So beggars will have to buy a supported drive, if available.

Edit: I found out from reading the forum above a bit more that MediaCodeSpeedEdit (MCSE) supports updating a standard Pioneer DVR-215 firmware to RPC1. Sweet!

CNN's Editorial Skillz

CNN has an article on the proposed bill to make concealed carry legal in national parks. This is a doubly good idea, to cement CCW policy into federal law before the anti-gun laws that are sure to be passed in 2009. But true to form, the CNN article has a glaring error, which I sent in to CNN as a correction:

First paragraph: "...in which a black .22-caliber Glock pistol sits snugly."

Glock does not make any .22 handguns, although third-party conversion kits are available. Glock does have a model G22 in .40, which is a favorite caliber of police officers.

http://www.glock.com/english/pistols_models.htm

It wouldn't make sense to carry a .22 for personal defense, since its stopping power is almost non-existent.

The World of Golden Eggs

So a while back, Kevin sent me this link to an anime skit called "すげえデブ", which unfortunately is no longer available due to copyright violation. Apparently the group or whatever is called The World of Golden Eggs. Sachie found out from her bro the name of the group, and had me watch a couple of their other videos. Some are hilarious, like the 91TV one where the Kunoichis help Dubya finish his speech, but some are more incomprehensible to my sense of humor.

The SSD Threat

Samsung didn't have me very worried with their cheap flash, because they were screwing themselves trying to build a market by dropping prices to unsustainable levels. Apple took them for a ride. Intel's effort is more of a concern, because they have the market clout to push flash. That Seagate's going to enter the SSD arena as well is an even bigger concern—perhaps the HDD industry's headed for some more pain in the near future. Remind me why I do this again?