2 smart 4 knives. (or the padded path to doom)

Just a reminder about banning guns: if we ban guns we will just ban knives next (because criminals will just use them instead). And we aren't just talking about big knives but I also mean steak knives. It sounds stupid but England is showing us our society without guns:

"As knife crime remains a problem in many of our towns and cities, it beggars belief that so many traders are still prepared to sell potentially lethal weapons to children," said Ron Gainsford, chief executive of the Trading Standards Institute (TSI).

...

Knives have become a status symbol among some young people and the increase in searching by police officers means some young people dash into shops to buy knives for "instant arming".

article

Yeah.

How about we just hold our children accountable and make them responsible. It is the child that is babied his whole life that utterly fails when grown up, the same is true for societies.

False Security

I don't know exactly know why, but the only logical reason I can think of as a justification of having to change my password on my company computer every couple of months is so that in the rare case that I leave the company I can't access the computers after a couple of months.

They (the IT guys) tout this measure as added security but I believe that my passwords are now less secure. Why? Well because I was able to remember them, but after so many changes I can't think of anything else that I know I will be able to remember after a weekend. So what do I do? That's right, sticky note next to the computer. Anyone at my desk can now find my password by just looking, not by guessing like that had too before. This is far less secure.

However there is even a more sinister security hole that is made with frequent password changes that require many types of characters -they appear to be strong words when in fact they will be very predictable.

For example, a typical password choice might be: 12#$TY . Seems pretty secure right? I doubt it is, and I bet it is on the short list for password crackers. Why? Because the password is just 1234ty, with shift being held down for the 34ty part. It is easy to type, easy to remember, and satisfies the three types of characters requirement.

So are our computers any safer now that we have to have complicated passwords that rotate every so often. I doubt it; determined hackers will easily be able to find patterns in the passwords or physical evidence of passwords. However, is it a pain in the butt to have to keep coming up with new passwords?

Y0ubEtch@

Jones for the Green

I general I don't care much about cars. Sure some look cool, or would be fun to have, but if I was handed millions of dollars I wouldn't go out and buy some fancy car -cars just don't interest me.

That is except for Green Mustangs. Red Mustangs, eh. Green Chargers, pass. But paint a Mustang Green and I think it is the coolest car ever.
That is all.

1984? More like 2009.

Really, was 1984 not required reading in England? It have been.

First they put up CCTVs everywhere. But it's not just to record public spaces in the case of crime, no, they have people watching them at all times and even scold people who are behaving badly. There should be public outrage, but there is little.

And its not like the English government is trying to cover up what they are doing. Here is an actual poster made to promote the new CCTVs:
How does this poster even get made? It is almost flaunting the fact that England was 15 years late to 1984.

Now, just to make life "better" famous quotes will be broadcast in the subway system. Sure it is a good idea to do, but not through government mandate. That will get all too old all too fast. And when will "anti-terror" quotes start to get slipped in?

It is amazing how someone can so fully understand people and foresee what will happen, and then actually write the prediction down. Bravo Orwell, you win again.

Friday Fun

I have many things I want to write about (such as why people that have no idea what the normal procedure at a restaurant is feel like they should give orders to others who go there all the time) but I found this clip and, well, it is more entertaining than I would be.
Enjoy:

The start of the end

First watch this video (it is from Project Natal, on the XBox 360):



If half of this video is true we are in serious trouble; it will be the start of computers replacing people as companions. Sure there are a couple people right now that attach themselves to the odd story book hero, anime girl, or new hot American Idol, but those characters can't react back to your affection. This program on the other hand, has a personality, idiosyncrasies that take time to learn, interaction in both physical and mental.
It could be argued that the interaction that is taking place (at least from the standpoint of the human) is real. And as long as it feels real for the human it will push all the buttons that a real human interaction will normally push, this means that there won't be a reason to have human relationships. Why try to date somebody that will just break your heart in the end? Why have a baby that will wake you up in the middle of the night? Why put so much effort into a kid that will not appreciate the effort until far too late in life? All of these can be replicated in the program, and you get none of the inconvenience.

The human race might have just met its hardest foe yet -can we survive when the other option is bliss?

Cure Terrorism or the Flu -I'll choose the latter.

After getting a warning email about how we all need to get more proactive to prevent terrorism, such as notifying authorities immediately upon finding an unattended bag, and being aware of people that frequently visit the Middle East I started to do some reading up on death tools.

"Using State Department figures, he [Alan Harris] assumes a worldwide death rate from international terrorism of 1000 per year--that is, he assumes in his estimate that there would be another 9/11 somewhere in the world every several years."

full article

So say that even including regular 9/11 terrorism this number is a bit low and terrorism is on the rise, so 2000 people a year world wide will die from terrorism each year (twice the projected rate).

Also:

"According to the CIA World Factbook, as of July, 2005, there were approximately 6,446,131,400 people on the planet, and the death rate was approximately 8.78 deaths per 1,000 people a year. According to our nifty desktop calculator, that works out to roughly 56,597,034 people leaving us every year. That's about a 155,000 a day."

full article

So 155k people die each day (56597k a year!), compared to 2k a year from terrorism worldwide.

Even if all 2k people died in one day the death toll for the day would probably not be significantly higher since so many other people die every day.

The flu kills 56k a year in just America according to the CDC. If all terrorist deaths in a year were to occur in America you still would have 28 times the chance of dying from the flu. If we get the flu do we start writing our will?

In the US 43k people die each year in car wrecks. Do we still drive to work every day?

27k people in the US die from poisoning each year. Do you take a food tester with you and use it every time you are about to eat something?

We don't need to shriek in terror from unattended bags, we don't need to "keep an eye on" the tourist from Egypt, and we don't need big brother to "keep us safe".

The fact is that you will not die in a terrorist attack. But you will be affected by the laws that are placed to stop an event that has such a small chance from happening. Our fear is causing us to sacrifice our precious few freedoms, and fear mongering will not help us survive any longer.

To make a real impact on our chances of surviving we should just wash our hands more.

Things I can't do

I think that I can handle almost any task that I am assigned. If I don't already know how to do it, I think that I would have no problem learning how to do it. I figure if somebody else can do something then I should be able to figure it out as well.

However there is something that I am finding out I am terrible at: wiring down letter or numbers while someone tells me them to me. It often happens at work that I get a customer on the phone that I will need to contact later after I have some time to work on the problem, so I must either get their phone number or email address. Oh how I fail at this simple task. Phone numbers I can somewhat handle because they are a set length and there are only ten options for each space and each number sounds different.

Email addresses on the other hand shut my brain off. As soon as letters start getting rattled off I lose all function to write and remember and after I get the first two letters down I am lost until the domain.com part. Then I have them say it again and I get another couple of letters but that is it. I just can't do it. To save the customer from repeating it a third time I just guess at what the other letters should be (usually it is their last name, or can be found in our companies database) and get to work on their problem.

Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest.

Weight Watchers Points Diet

Callie has decided to go on a diet, and after a bit of complaining about the normal boiled chicken diet routine she said that she was going to try to points diet. If she hadn't said anything I would have suggested it because that diet is the only one that I have seen that actually works. (I stole the rest of this from the comment I left after her blog post.)

I never have needed to diet, but people in my wife's family have had to and the points diet is very good, and it will work as long as you follow the rules.

The reason it is so good is the reason why other diets are so bad. Other diets deny food and force a life of crazy weird tasteless food. Who wants to live the rest of their life eating boiled chicken and not sweets, even if they are thin?

The points diet is so good because it teaches people how to eat healthy. And yes even cheese burgers are healthy if eaten in the proper portion, with other food to go with it. The points diet does not deny food, but just makes you justify eating chocolate by showing how many points could be used instead to have a huge dinner.

The best thing is that even after you get tired of counting points you will have a good idea about what you should eat, and how much to eat of it. So a person on the points diet becomes a better person after the diet is over, whereas a person on the other kinds of diets have no better chance as staying fit than before when the diet started.

Cargo Bridge

There is something about the "build something and then see how well it does" genre of games that I really like. Cargo Bridge falls right into this category (Fantastic Contraption is another game of this type that I like). The point of Cargo Bridge is to make a bridge that spans a gap or two that is constructed well enough to hold the workers and the cargo. The trick comes in that you only have a limited about of money to buy supplies with so some planning has to be used. The game starts with just wooden pieces that are light and cheap. After a couple of levels there is also an option to use metal pieces which are more rigid, and can have longer spans, but are heavier and cost more. The challenges given always seem fairly easy but they have twists thrown in, so different building style has to be used. This game is getting heavy playing time on my computer, you might want to give it a shot as well.

Oh, also the workers give off a satisfying yell as they fall to their death, so even when I don't make a good bridge I still get some entertainment from it.

Mom knows best. (p.s. Mom = Government)

Well... it's not like this is a surprise.

The Senate Finance Committee today is hearing proposals on how to pay for President Obama's proposed universal health care plan, which is expected to cost more than $1 trillion. Among the proposals, as Consumer Affairs reports: A three-cent tax on sodas as well as other sugary drinks, including energy and sports drinks like Gatorade. Diet sodas would be exempt.

"While many factors promote weight gain, soft drinks are the only food or beverage that has been shown to increase the risk of overweight and obesity, which, in turn, increase the risk of diabetes, stroke, and many other health problems," Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, which is pushing the idea, said in his testimony. "Soft drinks are nutritionally worthless…[and] are directly related to weight gain, partly because beverages are more conducive to weight gain than solid foods."

Previously on "As the Government Bans":

You came for the drugs, and I said nothing, because I had no drugs.
You came for the cigarettes, and I said something, because I saw where this was going.
You came for my food, and I am getting really pissed off.
(full post)

Due up in 2012: Ban on trans fat
In the batting circle in 2016: Ban on large portions of food
Clean up in 2024: Ban on "unhealthy" food
(full post)

The "in" thing right now is for cities to ban smoking in public places. This is because "innocent" people (who choose to go to the restaurant or work at the restaurant) have to breathe the second hand smoke.
(full post)

A sin tax is the first step to bannage.

State symbols

Sometimes when I need a good laugh I'll take a look at the lists of state symbols from Wikipedia. Here are some good ones:

Missouri state desert: Ice cream cone. I guess the state senate must have had a majority of people that was lactose intolerant at the time of the vote.

North Carolina state blue berry: With a surprising result, it is the blueberry. Really what else could it have been? Guess what their state straw berry is.

Arkansas state fruit/vegetable: Tomato. They didn't even have the guts to call it one or the other, they just know they like it.

Oklahoma state menu item: Barbecued pork. Chicken fried steak. Sausage. Biscuits and gravy. Fried okra. Squash. Grits. Corn. Black-eyed peas. Cornbread. Pecan Pie. No wonder Oklahoma is one of the fattest states in the Union. It also goes to show why you should wait for voting on state foods until after lunch.

Indiana state beverage: Water. Why did that even come up as a topic to make official?

Delaware state colors: Colonial Blue and Buff.

Georgia state colors: Colonial Blue and Buff. I bet it is going to be awkward when Delaware and Georgia see each other at the dance wearing the same thing.

Maryland state individual sport: Jousting. Jousting? Really? Didn't that happen 500 years ago?

That's all I got for now, but seriously? Ice cream cone?

Words that I read wrong.

For whatever reason there as some words that when I read them I pronounce them in my head incorrectly. They are:

Smoking: On signs I always read this as smorking. I know why too -Engrish.com. Sometimes I have to make a conscious effort to not say smorking instead of smoking when I talk. The strange thing is that I only pronounce this word wrong when it is associated with cigarette smorking.

Parking: Along with smoking parking gets transofrmed in my head to porking (thanks engrish). I don't have as much problems with this word, however I do say this one outloud sometimes, just for personal irony.

Elevator: My strangest mental mispronouciation is elevator which I read as elevatop. I know why I do this; because the Games Workshop store in Manhattan has a sign up that says ELEVATOR but someone took off one of R's legs to change it into a P. Then whenever I would go to the store I would read it and laugh about it (it almost describes what an elevator does better than the actual word). But something happened, and now every time I see a sign for an elevator I read it as elevatop.

I am sure that there are other words that I read incorrectly, but those are the main three.

News is dead. Long live news!

I have been opposed to the idea that bloggers can't cover news as well as "News" organizations, but I can see that the average folk won't put together an investigation piece. However I just stumbled upon a Twitter feed of a "doctor" who pitches "news" ideas to media. Getting an inside view on how "News" actually happens is quite enlightening:

Only one goal in local newsrooms: FIND FIRST SUSPECTED IL SWINE FLU CASE!

Swine Flu Angles: shortage of Tamiflu at your hospital? Increased anxious ER patients? Any use of masks? (TV would love the visual).

Watch Jay Leno story closely. Very high interest. Have expert ASAP if his illness is interesting.

We're told health trumps money. Not in this economy. Media obsession with money stories makes placing health challenging.

Credit Card debt a big story. Nice angle is always "compulsive shopping" treatments. Have an expert? Pitch it!

Once again recession stories dominate. Try to tie any medical advance to cost savings (e.g. new procedure decreases time off work)

Avoid "morning after" pill stories. Too controversial. You can't win.

Another Chicago boy killed by baseball pitch to chest . Offer cardiologist for seasonal "commotio cordis" story.

Large practice needs help getting docs to "buy in" to marketing campaign. Wants me to convince them as fellow doc.

Cute potential story: hospital gowns redesigned to be more modest. New ones at your practice or hospital? Pitch it!

All the stupid jokes on cable news about "tea-bagging?" Just what is journalism turning into?

Typical. MSM first exaggerates risk of NMH TB. Now, having got your attention, slant is to reassure public the risk is minimal.

Just buy good PR? First Chicago Tribune considers "Pay to Play" news stories. Now LA Times front pages "advertorial." NyTimes today.

I kind of had an idea this stuff was going on, but not so blatantly. Pitching pointless stories, working on fear mongering and headline grabbing, even bringing up the idea of pay to get something published. He even has the ironic "why is media covering stupid money stories and not stupid medical stories".

Here is the problem for conventional news organizations. When blogging was just people covering their lives and events that they were immediately effected by the Media could snub their nose at it. However now bloggers include experts in every field, Media just can't keep up with it. If I want to know about new happenings in web start up companies I check TechCrunch, if I want to hear about consumer issues I go to the Consumerist. Media can't compete with this, especially when they think that their angle is to grab headlines and then fill their space with crap and fluff. The end is neigh for the old way to get news, soon the experts will be the ones that we go to for news, and the people that generate the "News" will be out of a job.

Can't come soon enough.

Ah, non-memories

I am closing in on 2,500 posts on my blog soon, so it doesn't surprise me that I don't remember everything I have posted. However I don't remember this at all (original post):

"One of the joys of working for a master's degree is getting to know a good amount of people that are not from America. Sometimes they shed light on subjects that I have not ever thought about.

At today's data mining class I brought the rest of my twizzlers that I had started to devour yesterday (I would have ate them all, but I only took half of them with me to class last time.) I offered some of them to my professor (from China) and a classmate (from ?). My prof. tried it and said that they were ok, and tried to get my classmate to try them as well, which she refused. Then my prof. said that: "it was good, kind of like fruit jerky, and smells like toothpaste." Well if I had never tried them before I wouldn't have after that description.

But was it true? Are twizzlers fruit jerky toothpaste mix? I smelt them, and sadly I have to admit they do kind of smell like toothpaste.

Needless to say my classmate never did try them."

I am glad I wrote stuff like that down, cause it is too funny to forget.