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Struggling with the New Computer

In my last post, I described the first issue I had with my new computer, which turned out not to be an issue at all. I had planned to follow that up the next day with a description of how bad of a time I had trying to install and update XP. But a more critical issue cropped up that kept me largely offline for a few days. Now, my shiny new system is sitting off to the side of my desk and I’m back on my old one. I’ll be venting about it over the next couple of days.

In the meantime, in relation to my DRM Hell post, here’s some more DRM nonsense to gawk at. This time it comes from the gaming world and involves Bioware, a company who has made several games I enjoy. Looks like EA, the mega publisher who bought them out, is planning to ruin several future titles with the same system, most notably Spore. I was really eager to buy Spore on its release, but if its burdened with this sort of draconian activation scheme that is required every 10 days — no thanks. Hat tip to Scorpia and Shamus.

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The New Computer Part One: Aldacron Meets SATA

Ugh! The past 15 hours have been trying. I was planning to build a new computer in a couple of weeks, but decided on a whim to go ahead and put one together yesterday evening. I headed out to the local electronics market, picked out my hardware, paid someone to put it together for me (I rather don’t enjoy doing it myself), and brought my new baby home.

The first headache came with the second boot. The first boot was just for me to go into the BIOS to make sure everything looked cool. All of the devices were detected, so I tweaked a few settings and exited. The hard drive is a SATA, something I’ve never had any experience with. My old system was put together nearly 5 years ago and, as most other boxes I’ve owned, had IDE drives. I placed my Windows XP disk in my shiny Samsung DVD multi and rebooted. At the end of the POST, I was staring at a message that no master IDE drive was found and I needed to press F1 to continue. Uh-oh.

Pressing F1 resulted in black screen with a flashing underscore in the top corner. So, I rebooted and jumped back into the BIOS configuration. Just as before, the hard drive was there in the list of SATA drives. Reboot. No master IDE drive detected, press F1 to continue. Much confusion and head scratching ensued.

For the next 45 minutes or so, I fooled around trying to find the problem. First, I looked inside the case to make sure the HDD was connected properly. It was. I dug into the manual. No help there. I booted up a few more times with the same result. Finally, after pressing F1 for the umpteenth time and seeing the same black screen with the flashing underscore, I hung my head in defeat. Tomorrow, I would grab my box and take it back to the place where I bought it for help. As I sat there in misery, my hopes of using my new system dashed, the screen changed. The Windows installation was beginning.

I was elated, but at the same time felt like an idiot. I wasted nearly an hour for no reason at all. If I’d waited a second or two longer each time I’d rebooted… But, it was done. And now everything was working. Or so I thought.

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DRM Hell

It never ceases to amaze me how dense corporate types are when it comes to DRM. They repeatedly venture into the realms of stupidity and self-destruction. Supposedly, DRM exists to prevent people from pirating ‘intellectual property’. But because of the brain-dead decisions corporations make regarding DRM issues, it instead has the same effect on piracy that Bush’s War has on terrorism. The latest case is Microsoft’s decision to stop supporting the DRM licenses from its defunct MSN Music service.

The net effect of Microsoft’s decision amounts to a massive inconvenience: those who purchased music from the service won’t be able to play it on new computers without first burning it to CD, then copying to the new machine. That’s not as bad as not being able to play it at all. But, um, what about the people who bought several CDs worth of music? Of course, one Microsoft executive has this rock solid rationale to justify the move:

Microsoft exec Robert Bennett defended the company’s decision to destroy its MSN servers, arguing the move will affect only a small number of people.

That, of course, makes everything alright. Yeah, right.

While I sympathize with the MSN Music customers who are getting hit by this bit of silliness, the bigger picture is what concerns me most. This sort of boneheadedness does nothing to help the negative perception of DRM by consumers at large, but goes a long way toward making it worse. People who have never bought music from MSN are now going to point at it as an example of why DRM sucks and why they won’t bother buying any DRM protected music, ever. If that were all, there’d be no problem. But the greater issue is that this now becomes one more excuse people will use to rationalize their piracy of music. And more people who have never pirated music, after throwing up their hands in frustration, will realize that pirating is much easier and free of hassles.

Ultimately, the pirates aren’t alone in ruining it for the rest of us. The lion’s share of the blame can be laid at the feet of the corporations with their failure to handle the situation with common sense. Whether it’s music, videos, ebooks, software, or any other copyrighted digital content, all of the lower end, usually independent, producers of such content are ultimately getting screwed because these corporations have their heads up their asses. This crap could have been greatly slowed a decade ago had the corporations had the foresight and the common sense to adjust their business models to address the growing shift in consumer behavior. Not to mention the creativity to work out solutions other than the draconian DRM measures we see today. And still, after all of this time, they haven’t learned their lesson. Either they collectively have the mental capacity of a rock, or they live in a corporate bubble where reality is what they see when they close their eyes.

In the fast moving world of the internet and other technologies, it really helps if the people making decisions at a corporation really understand what’s going on. The days when you could live for a decade in ignorant bliss are long gone. The world is changing rapidly and companies who are affected by current and emerging tech need to be led by people who aren’t tied down by the bottom line, who can quickly make decisions based on unknown trends, who can recognize a shift in the market before it happens, and who can meet these challenges head on with solutions that make customers happy instead of treating them like criminals. Those who can’t keep up are going to lose money, alienate their customers, and, in some cases, cause irreparable damage to entire markets.

It’s sink or swim. And I’m tired of all those who are drowning bringing the rest of us down with them.

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The Cult of Christianity

Mainstream media outlets in the West love to point out when Muslims go batshit. Over the past few years, we have been exposed to a steady stream of outrageous Muslim behavior. Take, for example, this article from CNN that reports on one group of Muslims burning down a Mosque belonging to a sect they consider blasphemous, while chanting “burn, burn” and “kill, kill”. Intentionally or not, that helps reinforce the idea that Muslims are bloodthirsty lunatics who thrive on death and destruction.

No one actually died in the Mosque torching. But, as the UK’s The Independent reports, an Iraqi Muslim girl wasn’t so lucky after her father and brothers brutally beat her to death in front of her mother for being friendly with a British soldier. Muslim ‘honor killings’ have frequently been reported in the Western media, most likely because they are so barbaric and abhorrent to Western sensibilities.

What we don’t see enough of in the West from the mainstream media is a focus on the evils of Christianity. One reason is that a large portion of the audience is Christian, particularly so in the USA. Another reason is likely that Christians don’t often go around chopping off heads, blowing people up, or beating their daughters and sisters to death. Still, we do see a great many news reports about Imams in England and other countries preaching hate, encouraging their Muslim flock to blow up the infidel. So it’s not always about actual violence when it comes to reporting on Muslims. There are even reports about trivial bits of Islam that the rest of us can complain about and mock, such as when Muslim patients in a UK hospital demanded that their beds be turned toward Mecca so they could pray. When it comes to similar sorts of Christian absurdity, it’s the fringe media that we have to turn to.

The most recent report of batshit Christian behavior that I have seen comes from Rolling Stone journalist Matt Taibbi. For an upcoming book, he went undercover to experience firsthand just what goes on in an evangelical megachurch. Rolling Stone published an adaptation from that book called Jesus Made Me Puke. What he describes is pure lunacy. I have no better words to describe it. Read the article. Please.

The problem is, it’s not just some fringe cult of outsider Christians who practice what Taibbi describes. He joined up with the Cornerstone Church in Texas, where John Hagee is pastor and which has over 19,000 active members. As part of his experience, Taibbi went on a three day retreat designed to bring people closer to their god. What he describes is like Jesus Camp for adults. It’s a program designed to break people down until they are emotionally vulnerable, then indoctrinate them with nonsense. This is the sort of psychology that has been employed by countless cult leaders, such as Jim Jones, in the past. Only, this is on a much larger scale. I infer from the article that people visited there from all over the country, not just from Cornerstone. And it’s a regular program, not a one-off thing.

Muslims are perceived as a threat because Islamic violence is here and now. It’s immediate. What people aren’t paying attention to in their own back yards though is the potential for future atrocities committed at home in the name of Christianity. Programs like the one Matt Taibbi participated in, which even led him to have feelings of belonging as it progressed, are creating hundreds of zealots (brainwashed drones) each year.

American Christianity is becoming more like Scientology or the People’s Temple. It’s no longer just about going to church, praying, and leading a ‘Christian lifestyle’. The very definition of ‘Christian lifestyle’ is changing. Once, it was enough to listen to preachers and Sunday school teachers expounding the more palatable parts of the bible. Now, it’s about instilling an unwavering faith in people, building up a belief system that will accept anything Christian leaders say without question. People who will do what they perceive as ‘God’s will’ no matter how horrible or how high the price.

Many in the West believe Islamic extremism is the greatest threat to Western civilization. That may be true in Europe. In America at least, it’s time to rethink that position. The biggest threat to our future may very well come bearing a cross.

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Moron of the Week #9

It’s been nearly a year since I’ve handed out a Moron of the Week award. Part of the reason is that I don’t keep up with as broad a variety of news as I used to. But I just read about a moron in Alabama who is so deserving of this title that I had to bring it out and dust it off.

Moron of the Week #9 is a man so moronic, he brings down the intelligence of everyone around him. He demonstrates a brand of logic that is indisputably illogical. His understanding of the United States Constitution, something he should be expected to know a bit about given that he’s a public official, might be called ‘willful misinterpretation’. He’s a firm believer that America is a Christian nation. So as mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, Larry Langford’s solution to the city’s crime problem is to have the people don sackcloths and pray.

Yes, sackcloths. And ashes. To pray. Exactly what you would expect a city mayor to do in the year 2008 to keep his citizens safe from rising crime. I guess he had to one up Governor Sonny Perdue of Georgia, who didn’t put on a sackcloth when he led a prayer for rain. Yes, Mayor Langford, you win.

I humbly bestow upon Mayor Larry Langford, of Birmingham, Alabama, the honorable title of Moron of the Week #9. Congratulations, Mayor! May you wear it proudly. You surely deserve it.

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