Tag: Ranting

Compromise

I can’t even count the number of times various friends of mine have said what we need more of in politics is compromise. Here’s the thing, compromise is what has gotten us where we are today. The politicians compromise with one another on everything, look at how many “compromises” were made before the passing of that 2,000 page behemoth that is the Health Insurance Company Enrichment Act. Look at the debt ceiling “compromise” where a few trillion will be cut from the budget but over the span of ten fucking years making it meaningless.

I’m sick of compromise, bring on the uncompromising men of principle. Even if the principles of those men don’t correspond with mine I’d be more than glad to give them a vote over someone whose willing to compromise to the point that I’m not sure which way they’ll vote on legislation until the actual vote.

OS X Lion, Full Screen Applications, and Multiple Monitors

Full-screen mode in OS X Lion seems like a gimmick feature to me so I’ve basically ignored it. After a while I thought about the fact that many of the applications I run are opened on their own dedicated virtual desktop which is kind of like full-screen mode so I thought it would be worth experimenting with the gimmick.

My conclusion is that this feature is still a gimmick. Why? There is no support for multiple monitor setups. If you put an application in full-screen mode on a computer with multiple monitors hooked up the application will be displayed on the primary monitor while the second one will be greyed out. This part makes sense but when you put a second application in full-screen mode is basically creates a new virtual desktop with the application on the primary monitor and the second monitor greyed out. It would seem to me having an option to have the second full-screen application open on the second monitor that isn’t being used by the first full-screen application would make a whole lot of sense.

I’m really hoping VMWare Fusion doesn’t being utilizing Lion’s full-screen API because as it currently sits I can have a virtual machine in full-screen mode on one monitor and other applications on a second monitor.

Increasing Taxes and Increasing Revenue are Not Synonymous

The thieves at the Minnesota State Capitol have apparently made an agreement to increase the deficit on the budget meaning the state shutdown is over. Like most agreements this one has left everybody wanting. What really galls me though is the fact that those angry about the lack of tax increases keep referring to it as a revenue increase. Calling taxation revenue is one of the biggest misnomers out there.

Think about it, if a thug on the street puts a gun to your head and takes your money do we say the thug has increased his revenue? No, we say he has stolen money. Revenue implies money that has been obtained through voluntary exchange. Taxation is not voluntary exchange but theft. Mark Dayton wasn’t looking to increase the state’s revenue he was looking to steal more money from Minnesota citizens.

Thus we shouldn’t say that the budget agreement included a lack of increasing the state’s revenue, we should be saying the budget agreement included the state stealing less money from us.

And before anybody bring it up I do realize I spend a lot of time ranting about this subject. It’s not because I think the verbiage is all that important, it’s because I want to point out the double standard most people have. When a private individuals uses violence to take from another we call that individual a thief whereas when a government uses violence to take from many people we call it taxation and legitimize it. Whether you believe the ends of taxation justify the means is debatable but saying taxation isn’t a form of theft is flat out lying.

Thanks Google

It’s time again for Christopher Burg rants about stupid shit that probably only affects him and two other people on this planet.

Let’s take a minute and talk about Google Reader. I use Google Reader is the back end for my RSS readers. I’m not a huge fan of the Google Reader website, or using websites as interfaces for my data in general, but I’m a huge fan of the Reeder Really Simple Syndication (RSS) clients. The Reeder clients are the only reason I’m still using Google Reader after the latest stunt Google pulled.

I haven’t a Google Apps for Businesses account tied to christopherburg.com. Before moving things to my personal server e-mail sent to any address on the christopherburg.com domain actually went to GMail. I also had my Google Reader account tied to my Google Apps account which proved to be a big mistake. I’m not sure when this happened by Google apparently decided it would be a jolly good idea to eliminate Google Reader support for Google Apps accounts. This meant I lost my entire list of RSS feeds which is really swell considering I rely on them to get a large portion of information you read on this very site.

Needless to say this really put a monkey wrench in my writing process. For the last couple of days I’ve been getting all of my material by manually visiting news websites like a savage beast of days gone by (you know, before RSS). This has proven itself time consuming as all Hell. Manually rebuilding my RSS list was going to prove difficult because I have so many that I can’t remember every feed I had on my account.

Let me just say right now that being a data pack rat isn’t a bad idea. I never delete any data unless it’s completely irrelevant (torrent files for instance). Fortunately in this case I remembered the NetNewsWire software I used to use as my RSS client and it still maintained a local copy of my RSS feed list. All I had to do was switch the Google account it was linked to from my @christopherburg.com to my @gmail.com account and tell the client to merge my feeds with the new Google Reader account. Thankfully I haven’t really added any new feeds since I abandoned NetNewsWire for Reeder so I basically have a complete list of feeds again.

Why do you care about this? No reason really as you’re probably not concerned with the process I used to find stories to write about. But this scenario does have a couple of lessons that may be applicable to others. First, have local copies of all your data because you never know when some online service is just going to vanish. Google may not go away for a long time but their services have been known to appear and disappear unannounced. If you don’t have local copies of data on a online service and that service goes away your data goes away with it. The second lesson is being a data pack rat isn’t a bad thing; disk is cheap so why get rid of data that may be useful someday down the road?

My little crisis has been averted and now I can continue punching out stories for this site without having to manually visit a bunch of sites. I still want to give a middle finger to Google for making my RSS fees vanish like a fucking specter though. So here it is (for those who can’t actually see me right now I’m giving Google the finger)! I now return you to your regularly scheduled news.

I Bet He Cures Blindness By Throwing Mud in Your Eyes Too

When I saw this article on the BBC asking why the crime rate in the United States have been dropping I expected no mention would be made of the increase in issuance of carry permits. I’ve come to expect that from the media, especially Britain where guns are almost completely illegal. What I didn’t expect was the theory that our lower crime rate is due to the election of the Obamessiah:

1. The Obama effect could explain the increased pace of the reduction of the last few years, says one of the country’s top criminologists, Alfred Blumstein. “The prior expectation was that the recession would have the opposite effect. The question then is what distinctive event occurred in ’09?” The election of a black president could have inspired some young black men, who are disproportionately involved in arrests for robbery and homicide, says the professor. It’s very speculative, he adds, and probably only one factor of many, as one of the cities with a huge drop in crime is Phoenix, in Arizona, which does not have a large black population. “In the field of criminology, you don’t get consistent indicators as you would in physics. There are so many factors that could have contributed.” A separate study on school test scores supports the view that some black teenagers were motivated to try harder by the new presidency.

Hallelujah brother, it’s a miracle! Our president can cure the blind by throwing mud in their eyes, he can walk on water, he can turn water into wine, and he can lower the crime rate! Seriously could the media suck his… I’ll let you fill in the blank here, any harder? Did Barack personally send the BBC a shipment of hookers and blow?

Before some Obamabot comes on here and claims my heated reaction is just due to the fact that I’m a Republican/Glenn Beck supporter/dirty Satanist/whatever I should state that I’d have the same reaction regardless of what president it was about (also I’m not a Republican or Glenn Beck supporter or dirty Satanist).

Beyond that stupidity the article was written as I expected it. Almost all of the theories stated are attributed to the state and not a single mention was made about liberalized (in the classical definition of the word) carry laws raising the stacks for committing crimes. Regardless of the reason the decline in crime does demonstrate that liberalized (again the classic definition) carry laws don’t lead to higher crime rates and thus enacting stricter gun control laws to curb crime is an exercise in stupidity. This is even more important to note when you consider the fact that liberalized (classical definition) carry laws may be part of the reason crime rates are declining.

My Government Curfew Rant

I mentioned that parts of Northern Minneapolis were under government enforced curfew but honestly I didn’t realize how pissed off the whole idea made me so here is my little rant on the subject. The United States was supposedly founded on the ideals of individual liberty. You were supposed to be free of government interference unless you were actively harming another individual or their property. There was supposed to be little government interference in your life. Well through the centuries our government, like all governments throughout history, has decided to give us all the middle finger.

Now there are few aspects of our lives where government interference can’t be found. Everything we do must be approved, stamped, and sealed. But the idea that a government goon can tell you when you must be in your home and when you can leave is disgusting. They have literally placed you into a prison during the hours of a curfew. The fact that our society has come to a point where it’s felt acceptable for the government to restrict your movements because they declared an emergency is sickening. As a free individuals nobody has the right to tell me when and where I can go unless my travels violate the property rights of another individual.

The only reason the police declare curfews is because they’re lazy and it makes their job easier. Instead of having to deal with those pesky problems like due process a state of emergency gives the police complete power to assume everybody that isn’t in a government approved uniform is doing something wrong. Evidence? Due process? Probable cause? Fuck all that noise, if you’re walking from your neighbor’s home back to your place after a specified hour you must be up to something wrong! After all anybody who disobeys the orders of our glorious leaders is probably a subversive person and should be dealt with anyways.

I haven’t granted the government any authority over my person, especially when it comes to my free movements. The people in Northern Minneapolis are being punished by the state because their homes happened to be conveniently located right in the path of Mother Nature’s range induced path of destruction. Those denizens are being imprisoned in their own homes by the government because of events nobody could control. I’m sure it goes without further saying but the entire concept of a government mandated curfew pisses me right the fuck off.

If You Don’t Like the Law Just Reinterpret It

Oh look yet another instance of a government department not liking the power granted to it and thus have reinterpreted a law to give themselves more power:

The letter says federal officials have reinterpreted the civil-rights laws that require school principals to curb physical bullying, as well as racist and sexist speech, that take place within school boundaries. Under the new interpretation, principals and their schools are legally liable if they fail to curb “harassment” of students, even if it takes place outside the school, on Facebook or in private conversation among a few youths.

Now civil action can be taken against school principals if they fail to stop physical attacks and monitor the actions of every student even when they’re not at school:

Education Department officials are threatening school principals with lawsuits if they fail to monitor and curb students’ lunchtime chat and evening Facebook time for expressing ideas and words that are deemed by Washington special-interest groups to be harassment of some students.

Freedom of speech has been dead in public schools since… well since I was going to one. Will the Education Department soon require two way viewers in every home to monitor students just in case they’re “bullying” somebody online?

Not only do rulings like this destroy the concept of free speech but they also cause students to depend on outside help for everything. If somebody is bullying a student that student should have the right to fight back. Instead they are told to basically shut up and take it and after they’ve gotten their ass kicked they’re suppose to go talk to somebody in “authority.” Strangely enough the school is a government entity and acts as such because when a student reports a bully nothing is likely to happen. OK maybe the bully will get detention for a couple of days but they certainly aren’t going to learn a lesson.

Now that I’m thinking about it public schools works very much like the rest of our society. We’re told to depend on the state for protection and the state fails to offer protection. If somebody does something wrong they’re isolated for others for a short period of time with no other form of punishment. Should one of us defend ourselves we potentially get into trouble. Fuck, now I see where the victim mentality comes from in our society.

Here’s the thing if you’re a student at a school and somebody wants to beat the shit out of you fight back. Self-defense is a natural right afforded all human beings. If the bully is larger balance out the disparity of force with a good old threat-based weapon (for instance smashing somebody in the fact with a text book does some good damage). Nobody needs to submit to the violence of another regardless of what is taught in schools.

I’ll also say if you are cause true psychological trauma by things posted about you online man the fuck up. Words are words and can only cause the amount of harm you allow them. When somebody says something hurtful to you then it’s time for a witty comeback. I usually challenge a person’s cognitive capabilities myself and try to do so using old English but there are many means of doing this. Either way words can’t hurt you. If somebody is spreading lies or slander about you then it’s time to look into civil action. But asking the school officials for help isn’t going to accomplish anything because they’re in the interesting position of being unable to discipline unruly children while being tasked with disciplining unruly children.

The Difference Between The State and The Mob

What’s the difference between the state and the mob? The mob is honest about their intent while the state tries to hide behind the term “justice.” Although I’ll save you the specifics I will mention that I received a parking ticket on Sunday. First of all St. Paul needs to get their shit together because nowhere on the ticket does it state how much money they are trying to extort from me. How am I to pay them without knowing how much money they are demanding?

But this isn’t about the fine, it’s about the system. You ultimately have two options; pay the fine or fight it. If you pay the fine you are admitting guilt as stated on the ticket. If you try to fight the ticket you must use the same system that issued you the ticket to fight it. Basically you either are admitting that you’re a criminal or you have to deal with a massive conflict of interest.

In this situation I am against admitting guilt as there is no victim and thus I see no crime to admit guilt to. On the other hand if I try to fight the ticket I will have to take time off of work and possible pay a court fee (thus I will likely pay them either way which is why I use the term extortion). Either way I’m going to be out money and this is exactly how the police department wants it. The only reason all of these parking ordinances exist is to fill the coffers of the local police departments. There is no legitimate reason why my parking on a publicly owned and tax payer funded street should garner a fine of unknown amount.

Likewise there is a giant conflict of interest in having to ask an officer of the same precinct to determine a ticket as invalid. If I write you a ticket you should not have to beg me to rule it illegitimate. This is a problem right up to the Supreme Court where the legitimacy of federal laws are determined by the federal government.

Either way the system is stacked against the accused. Even if the ticket is ruled to be illegitimate I am still punished. My guilt matters not as I will receive the same punishment regardless of the outcome (an unknown monetary loss). The police have found a means of practically guaranteeing income by writing fines that are expensive to fight. I’m sure they are aware that a majority of people will pay the fine and accept the accusation made against them not because they feel themselves guilty but because it will cost them more to fight it.

Of course I have to wait at least three business days in order to fight it. I was under the belief that all these computerized systems would allow a ticket to be instantly filed with the court but alas I was incorrect. Apparently it can take up to 10 days to file a ticket with the court and you can’t fight it until it’s been filed. It’s nice to see they are held to no real schedule yet I am as if I don’t pay the fine within 21 days they assess a late fee.

Double Standards

Slow news days get you pointless speculations and inane rambles of a libertarian. This posts is the latter. One thing that has always pissed me off is hypocrisy. Nothing is quite as awesome as somebody who claims to believe one thing and then does the exact opposite but tells everybody else they shouldn’t be allowed to do it. There are more subtle forms of hypocrisy such as that perpetrated by the likes of former Mayor Daley, Mayor Bloomberg, and President Obama.

Let’s take a look at a specific example for which I’ll put the laser on Mayor Bloomberg. Bloomberg is the chief of the purposely deceptively named organizations Mayors Against Illegal Guns. The name is truthful though as the organizations wants nothing more than to make all guns illegal and thus eliminate gun ownership in the United States. Thankfully their success rate has been less than optimal and thus haven’t managed to establish any gun bans.

Bloomberg wants you and me disarmed. He has no exceptions carved out for those who wish to have firearms available for self-defense because we’re just little peasants that don’t deserve to have a fighting chance should somebody with evil intent decide to enter our lives. While he’s spouting how evil guns are and how we need to disarm lawful citizens he stands surrounded by armed body guards. This is certainly a form of hypocrisy, decrying the use of something while in turn using it. Some people fail to see this because they’ve been taught that government officials are better than any of us little people and thus are deserving of special treatment.

This attitude has to end. I strongly believe government shouldn’t be allowed to do anything we the people aren’t allowed to do. If I can’t walk around with hired body guards then my government officials shouldn’t be able to either (depending on the state you’re in you may be able to hire private body guards). If I’m not allowed to own a Glock 17 with 33 round magazines then nobody employed by the government should be allowed to either. The second a law is passed that bars private citizens from something but carves out an exception of military or law enforcement there exists hypocrisy. This is even more apparent when you realize the police force is made up of regular civilians like you and me, they are not somehow elevated above that position because of their uniform.

Another example of government hypocrisy is the debt faced by both our federal government and most (all?) state governments. We’re told time and time again that we need to start living within our means while our governments spend far more money than they have available to them. Why is it OK for them to spend billions of dollars they don’t have without punishment but when we do it there are ramifications?

It would please me greatly if people would open their eyes and demand an end of such hypocrite behavior by government officials.

Don’t Get a Drobo

Since I have a massive amount of data on hand I’ve been spending a lot of time looking for an external multi-drive enclosure that either had RAID capabilities or something similar. Due to reading enough positive recommendations that had the Drobo been a person it would be nominated for sainthood I decided to go with one. A bit before Christmast I ordered a standard FireWire 800 four-bay Drobo using a $100.00 discount. I was going to run it for six months and determine whether or not I could recommend the Drobo has a solid backup device. The damned thing didn’t even make it two entire months and I’m going to advice anybody looking for a solid backup device look elsewhere.

For those of you who don’t know a Drobo is nothing more than a fancy four-drive enclosure that loads all of the contained drives into a common pool with redundancy. This means all of the drives are seen as one to any computer you attach the Drobo to. Having redundancy means you can lose any single drive without losing the data on the Drobo, at least in theory. This is similar to RAID although unlike RAID the Drobo doens’t require each drive to be the same capacity in order to work. This sounded ideal to me since I could simply drop in larger drives as they were needed instead of dropping in four new drives every time I wanted to add space.

I had problems right from the start, namely with the included software called Drobo Dashboard. What’s the problem? The software won’t install on my Mac Pro. Why? I haven’t a clue. When I try to install the software I’m informed at the end that the software couldn’t be installed but am given no error message and no entries are made in the system logs that could inform me of what’s going on. Basically I haven’t a Thor damned clue what’s going on and no message is ever displayed that could clarify the problem. This means I had to setup my Drobo on my laptop where the software installed without any trouble.

Setup is easy enough and once the Drobo was initialized it was detected by my Mac Pro without any trouble. From there I started using the Drobo as a Time Machine backup destination and it worked OK until an undetermined time when it failed. Why do I said an undetermined time? Because it was completely undetermined.

The problem with my Drobo is the fact it’s been stuck in a state where it claims everything is running correctly but my computers can’t mount the Drobo. The drive lights on the Drobo are all green indicating everything is working as expected. According to the Drobo Dashboard software my Drobo’s data is great and everything is running in tip-top shape. The problem is when I plug it into any computer it will not mount. Yes Disk Utility can see it will not mount the infernal device.

I’ve tried everything recommended by Data Robotics Inc. (the makers of this piece of shit) including unplugging the Drobo, shutting down the computer, letting them sit for a while (overnight in my case), replugging in the Drobo to the computer, and starting the computer back up. Nothing works. Basically I’ve got a several hundred dollar paperweight that serves no purpose other than to piss me off by it’s existence.

When looking for a backup device the first and foremost thing the device must be is reliable. The Drobo is not reliable and from doing searches online I’ve found I’m not the only person who’s ran into this exact problem. I share with each person who has written about this problem something else, nobody has managed to get the damned thing working again without doing a full reset which includes erasing all the data on the Drobo. My advice is to stay clear of Drobo and any Data Robotics Inc. products. Their software is shit and doesn’t even tell you why it can’t install, their device is shit and reports itself as working perfectly even though it’s in paperweight mode, and the only way to get the device out of paperweight mode is apparently resetting the device which destroys the data and defeats the purpose of a backup device.

If anybody has any recommendations for a good multi-drive (four or more) enclosure that does redundancy (RAID is find by me) I’d love to hear them. At this point I’m looking around again for a proper solution but just wanted to inform everybody to steer clear of Drobo devices. They’re headaches and not at all reliable.