Tag: You’re Doing it Wrong

Everybody Has an Asshole

There was a recent incident at a Rand Paul rally where somebody stomped the head/shoulder (depends on who you ask) of a MoveOn individual. Of course bleeding-heart liberals are using this as an example of how violent the liberty minded side is. Snowflakes in Hell has a good write up on the situation.

Personally I’m not going to say both side were equally at fault here. Yes the MoveOn employee was being annoying but that isn’t illegal nor dangerous. People claiming themselves to be liberty minded (at least I assume that’s what the face stomper would claim judging by the pin he was waring) should know that everybody has the freedom of speech, even if you don’t like that speech. The MoveOn employee was being annoying but nothing else that deserved violence brought against her.

This brings me to a universal fact, everybody has an asshole. It doesn’t matter what your group stands for or what they’re trying to accomplish, somebody in that group will inevitably be an asshole at some point. In the libertarian movement we have the assholes who scream at anybody who doesn’t perfectly subscribe to their view of “correct libertarianism.” They’re annoying but certainly shouldn’t be used as examples of how the majority of the movement acts.

Of course we also have the people claiming the stomper is likely a MoveOn plant meant to stir up trouble. Personally I refuse to subscribe to such accusations without a lot of supporting evidence. I’ve not seen any such evidence and hence I believe the guy is just our asshole.

Sony Going After Hackers

Although I do not speak German and thus am reliant on another person’s translation it appears as though Sony is going after hackers. I’m not talking about malicious hackers who break into computer system, I’m talking about hackers whom are hacking their own PlayStation 3 (PS3).

A bit back a USB dongle was released that jailbroke the PS3. Sony apparently wasn’t happy just going after the manufacturer of the USB dongle (which is irrelevant as there is now an open-source implementation of the crack) and have decided to take legal action against people who purchased it. I’m not sure about German law but in the United States if you purchase a piece of hardware it’s legally yours to do with as you please. For instance if you purchase an iPhone and hack it you’re completely legal regardless of what Apple says.

I’ve been done with Sony products since they stole the built-in Linux capabilities of the PS3 (I paid for it, they removed it from their system, I can’t use the system to go online without removing the Linux capabilities meaning I lose a feature no matter what, and in my book that’s theft). If I hadn’t already given up on the PS3 this would have certainly made me do it.

Reading Comprehension and Me

I pride myself on my ability to comprehend what I read and filter out bull shit. Sadly my filter seemed to have lapsed a bit today and I made a pretty glaring mistake. I read the following article about Gun Owners of America (GOA). The mistake came from the following piece:

Stallard told me that the “Pink Pistols has good relations with national gun rights groups.” Larry Pratt did not think so. His views can be summarized thusly: they should not have any rights; but, they do not deserve to be stoned to death.

I mistook the section emphasized as a direct quote from Mr. Pratt. In fact it’s a very poorly paraphrasing of some comments Mr. Pratt made about homosexuality. Personally I don’t agree with what Mr. Pratt said and I find it curious that somebody would says they have more “libertarian” views but be OK with barring homosexuals from marriage (it would seem the best libertarian answer to the question of gay marriage would be to abolish government involvement in marriage all together).

Anyways I made this mistake and posted it on Facebook. That was a mistake and a good thing. It was a mistake in that I made my remark about GOA based on what I thought was a direct quote. It was a good thing because two of my friends, Jeff and Sam, pointed out that the article never said what I said it said (how’s that for a confusing sentence).

Needless to say I want to use this mistake an an opportunity to remind everybody to read every article very carefully. Words matter as does punctuation. A lack of quotation marks is always something to watch out for.

CNBC Does a Hit Piece of Remington

Yet another piece of news I missed during my time in Texas has bubbled up to my attention. The Firearm Blog reports that CNBC did a hit piece of the Remington Model 700 series.

CNBC’s report claims the Remington Model 700 can fire without the trigger being pulled and that flaw has resulted in injuries and deaths. Of course as The Firearm Blog points out pre-1982 Model 700s were known to have that particular flaw (although if there were injuries and deaths involved I don’t know, just make it a point to not walk in front of any firearm and you can avoid that potential cause of injury/death). As the CNBC report mentions this flaw going back 60 years I believe they are digging up an old story, claiming it’s new, and ignoring the fact that the problem was fixed in 1982.

I also have to agree with a point made on The Firearm Blog. In this day and age there isn’t a single issue a firearm can have that won’t go across the entire Internet. Just look at the Ruger LCP when it came out, every issue on the planet was brought up on almost every firearm message board on the planet. The Remington Model 700 is incredibly popular with hunters, military, and police. If there was a major flaw in the gun it would be well known.

Of course CNBC isn’t exactly known for using facts and they’ve always had a major anti-gun slant as far back as I can remember. Hopefully this hit piece doesn’t cause too much trouble for Remington.

A Year Late and a Dollar Short

It seems while I was busy on my trip leaked information started becoming available on the next Palm (now HP) phone. Behold, leaked photographs of the Palm Pre 2. If ever there was an uninspired design this thing is it. Although I do appreciate backwards comparability with accessories the Palm Pre’s accessories need an upgrade. For instance it is known through FCC documents that the Palm Pre 2 uses the same underpowered battery as the first one. One of the things the Pre needed most was a larger battery.

On top of that the new Pre is the same sized screen as the old one. Even with the inclusion of a gesture area it would have been nice to see the screen size increased a bit. One of the things I love about my Evo is the huge screen. I do like the fact that the list microUSB port cover has been removed on the Pre 2 which leaves one less thing to break.

Ultimately the Pre failed to get market share and attention. I don’t see how adding much better hardware to the same form factor is going to help improve Palm’s image. What Palm really need is a super phone that is distinct from other phones on the market while distancing themselves from their previous phones. I’m hoping something more exciting is in the pipeline but frankly with all the competition from Android and iOS this new Pre 2 just isn’t going to cut it.

This is My Shocked Face

Can’t say that I saw this coming… who am I kidding? I saw this from a mile away:

An estranged former member of direct action anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd alleges it ordered its own boat to be scuttled to win public sympathy.

So why do I believe Mr. Bethune over the current members of Sea Sheppard? For starters Sea Sheppard are backstabbing assholes:

Sea Shepherd distanced itself from Mr Bethune during his detention – though it later claimed this was a ploy to gain a lenient sentence.

Yes while Mr. Bethune was in jail for doing exactly what Sea Sheppard advocates they distance themselves from him. Later of course they claim it was to get him a more lenient sentence. Maybe they should have used some of that money they’ve made for their shitty T.V. show to hire Mr. Bethune a top notch lawyer instead. At least that would have shown their fellow comrade support.

If you want to fight whaling that’s fine, so long as you do it peaceably. Harassing whalers and then boarding their ship isn’t going to go over well with anybody. Hell in most of the world boarding a vessel without permission is usually treated as attempted piracy. Try doing that on a Japanese navel vessel and see how well it goes over. Of course abandoning one of your fellows after he did exactly what he was told to do is just scumbag behavior. Who would join an organization that abandons their people when it’s politically convenient?

Finally I want to close with the following because I’m an asshole:

Sea Shepherd shot to prominence as the futuristic trimaran Ady Gil pursued the Japanese whaler Shonan Maru 2 through Antarctic waters in January.

Pursued it to the bottom of the ocean. Burn!

A Great Idea Ruined by Execution

One of the things I have despised about the iPhone from day one has been the locked down nature of the device. Google promised to provide an alternative solution that would be more open in the form of Android. Sadly ever since Androids initial release on the G1 handset manufacturers and carriers have been locking Android down more and more. It seems this locking down has gone to the next level on the new HTC G2.

When you reboot the G2 all the contents of /system are rewritten to factory defaults. This means any root acquisition is temporary until the phone is rebooted. The good folks over at XDA Developers have a thread talking about rooting the G2 and currently the issue mentioned in this post.

I must say this is a little ridiculous. It’s understandable that manufacturers don’t want to support Android devices that have been rooted. A lot can go wrong with you root a device including turning a fancy phone into an expensive paper weight. Reasons like that make a policy of voiding warranties on rooted phones likely and understandable. With that said if somebody is willing to void their warranty to root a phone they should be left to doing it.

This behavior seems to countermand one of the bigger selling points of Android which is the fact it’s not as locked down as the iPhone. Frankly as Android becomes more and more locked down I’m failing to see much reason why people should chose it over the iPhone. Currently it seems the most open phone on the market is the Palm Pre which could completely change if HP decide to remove the ability to easily activate developer mode on future devices.

More Android 2.2 Fun

I mentioned that the recent Evo 4G update fixed quite a few annoying bugs that were driving me up a wall. Well I’ve come across a new bug and once again it’s with the media layer (this could be a pre-patch bug and I just never encountered it before). If you’re playing an audio file, pause it, leave the application, and come back after an indeterminate amount of time (the amount of time seems random) the audio file will not pick up where you paused it. Instead it resets to the beginning of the file.

This is extremely annoying when the primary audio you listen to are long podcasts and lectures. I’m getting into the habit of looking at the time the audio file is at before leaving an application expecting to have to fast forward to it when I come back to the application. I think Google really screwed the pooch with their sudden switch to the new media layer known as StageFright.

What’s sad is that Android 2.1 worked damn well but most new software being released (at least by Google) requires Android 2.2 to work. I know Google loves to play it fast and loose but when we’re talking about a phone operating system I think they need to spend a little more time testing before release.