Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Chad's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Saturday, November 2nd, 2002
12:09 am	Geekiness and Writing I may not be writing of words but I am writing alot of code. I am such a geek. I rewrote the SCM system a couple of times. I might migrate to bitkeeper as well. I got the web publishing working ok. I was doing some sick shit. I was loading up files then creating a script to modify the permissions then running the script remotely. Now I just use the correct command-line arguments. Dash p is your friend. I always forget about it. Mainly because I'm use to my umask being the same and use to afs style directory permissions. Thus when I published for the web under afs I just had to get the file in the right directory. Under regular unix filesystem I have to make sure the file permissions are correct. I don't like this. In spite of AFS's problems this is a very cool thing. Anyone who doesn't like AFS for this feature is high. I'm publishing the novel to a separate website. Did I already mention that? I do have to write a tool to upload the word count to the NaNoWriMo site. I'll do that tomorrow or maybe tonight. My word count needs to exclude the LaTeX markup. It is so small it shouldn't matter in the long run but just to be on the safe side. I've written more code words than novel words. I wonder if I can keep that up? I could cheat and write an AI script to generate half the dialogue. =) Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Friday, November 1st, 2002
2:30 am	Like a good geek I started nanowrimo. I was a very productive geek. I have SCM going full steam. I am using cvs and GNU make. I'll be using LaTeX for my fun. I've a script to upload the source files to my novel web page. And due to my paranoid umask I have to generate a shell script to be uploaded as well then run to setup permissions. I wish I had afs. I guess it is a start. The plot is twenty five free kills. I've several ideas. It is late so I'll start tomorrow. =) Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Monday, October 21st, 2002
12:15 am	i wonder Is teaching a child French considered a crime against nature? Eskimos, allegedly, have a thousand words for snow. Do the French have a thousand words for surrender? I think I already did this bit. Oh well! If you don't like the material write me some new jokes. (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 20th, 2002
2:02 am	i hate that Reading Practical Reusable unix software. I hate when I read stuff and go, yeah that's what I was thinking was the solution too. Good thing you got to it first. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Friday, October 4th, 2002
4:22 pm	Connecting the Dots. I connected one of the last big dots in my research. How does Software development methodologies fit in? The results of my thesis feed back in software development. Of course all of this assumes my thesis has any meaning at all. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2002
11:51 pm	Route the outside ( A Car, Toothbrush, Dog and Orange Juice ) Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 29th, 2002
3:30 pm	Technical Rant I should post this to advogato. What have a done lately? I modified xpdf to correct the user interface. There is still a glaring hole and I've been debating whether to change it. The code is not very well suited to changing so it is a crap shoot. The changes I made are as follows. I removed the PDF "security" features. The author has a right to their point of view. I disagree with it. I switched the mouse buttons. The first button now grabs and moves the page and the second does selection and navigation. The navigation is the one I am debating. The code isn't so clear on it. The reason for the change was to have xpdf act like gv. I use both so often I need them to be the same as it becomes annoying as hell. Of course you could argue I could have changed gv and you are right. It is a toss up. I am not sure how many people use this feature but as someone who deals with PDFs on a daily basis I use it alot. The next change was to fix the arrow and page keys. They acted ridiculously. If the whole page wasn't showing and you hit page down it would side the rest of the page into view. As I often keep the margins out of view this is very annoying. So page up and page down now cycle through the pages without disturbing the "viewport" of the page. The arrow keys scroll the view of the page. I've been working on the uudecode utility from the GNU sharutils package. What a cluster fuck. I ripped it from the package with little problem. It was tedious but in the end I had a single source file, header and Makefile. I was surprised. The crap that was going on to build it was uncalled for. Being such an old program I like it because it has been around and well tested. But it does have a number of problems I am trying to correct. I added support for spaces in filenames. I'm working on streaming support. I installed bitkeeper on a couple of my machines and will start moving towards using it full time. The distributed nature is what I like best. Almost everything else I hate. The fact it refuses to work with a relative symbolic link. So it won't function properly in a stow environment. Which also means it is violating the Unix "contract". The documentation says one thing and the program does something different. I am trying to get it to function closer to CVS with regards to my working directory. I want to see the files I have "checked out". I realize the stupidity of this but it says it can do it so I expect it to behave. It requires RCS to be installed to import cvs. This is ok with an older cvs but newer cvs versions have their own RCS commands built in. So you know have to install RCS separately on most modern linux distros even if you have cvs installed. Minor annoyance. The reason I switched was because there are times when I need to update the programs I write but I am not at home. Every computer I use on a daily basis has my tools installed. So I expect to be able to modify the source code at any time on any of these as necessary. Maybe a new situation arises or a bug is found, I want to jump on it. Fix it. Commit the changes. Currently it just isn't possible. I am hoping I can do this now with bitkeeper. Network protocol reworking. I finally remember what got me thinking about BEEP and reworking the world of TCP/IP network protocols. I didn't say so in the recent project list but the idea didn't seem like mine. I thought I had put it on there just to seem cool. I worry about these things. I don't ever want to do that. At least as far as technical things go. I smoke to look cool but hey who doesn't? But I kept it on there because I couldn't remember the whole story yet something told me I had considered it. The BEEP part was later after the orignal idea. The orignal idea was to integrate most of the IP application protocols into a single backend. I noticed most of the protocols with very few expectations are queries into a database. DNS, finger, ntp, time, quote, chargen, echo, discard, http, arp, dhcp, ftp, rip, bgp, smtp, pop3, imap, bootp, ldap, nfs. Other which are not are the telnet and it's ilk of ssh and rsh and snmp,ppp,etc. Of course some of these protocols are more than just queries. Some of them include updating and inserting. This isn't important. What is important is the observation of the queries. Why? Because it means that an implementation of one of these is nothing more than a translator. It translate the protocol into a standard system query. Then hands the query off to system to resolve. The system hands the "answer" back and the implementation encodes it into the protocol. Most implementations of protocols do utilize some of the system. Unfortunately unix doesn't have a real query or database system outside of the filesystem. While technically it does these tasks we can see the success by all the redundancy. The idea is to eliminate redundancy. In fact this is what BEEP wants to do as well. It wants to be modular. All protocols have basic issues and BEEP tries to say why solve these in every way possible. Why not focus on do the best two or three ways for encoding then let the applications choose which it likes best. Instead of each application(level protocol) re inventing the wheel because it needs it but no doing a good job. Inconsistency. There may also be potential to add to the TCP/IP stack to hide and protect application and handle the common dirty work. This also makes it easy to implement policy across all network applications without changing every network. I mean tcpwrappers. What a great applications. But why is it needed? Failure of the stack to log any connections. So I have to make the change at the application level. Well for all my daemons I want logging of connections. Yet instead of making a single policy change or bit flip in the system I have to change all my apps? This is stupid. Of course some might argue you may of may not want loggin for a given app. Ok fine. This only means the stack should be able to turn loggin on and off for each network interface and for each port on them. Problem solved. You have a high traffic port you don't want to log? Ok turn it off. Why deal with the app? It is a system level not an application level consideration. Whether an application or an application user wants logging the system owner may. Why should the system owner depend on the application or user to give them the information? I am sure someone will argue performance. Well if you think it would be a problem, then implement it and show me the numbers. Otherwise you are wasting your breath. It is amazing how the one area of computing everyone argues about the most but which can be so easily resolved with numbers is not. Performance is numbers not guess or hypothesis. Especially for a system. Now when I have an algorithm you can analyze that to your hearts content without numbers but I don't so you can't so there. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 25th, 2002
6:08 pm	openssl, openbsd and shake Two messages from the openbsd-misc list. I think they are the best at explaining the whole situation. Should have been the first ones. Both are from theo. One, Two Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
3:34 pm	quote from mccusker this is all taken from today's treedragon post. Kurt Vonnegut in Timequake: I say in lectures in 1996 that fifty percent or more of American marriages go bust because most of us no longer have extended families. When you marry somebody now, all you get is one person. I say that when couples fight, it isn't about money or sex or power. What they're really saying is, "You're not enough people!" Sigmund Freud said he didn't know what women wanted. I know what women want. They want a whole lot of people to talk to. Earlier we had discussed how we didn't want our own children to grow up and go into the software building business, because it's basically a wasteland that saps your life with long hours that don't clearly result in something that's really needed in the world. To become worthwhile, the software industry needs to start over, after the horrible mess it has become runs its course. I said I wanted to help restart things. Certainly I'm trying to develop projects that aren't hopelessly mired in the spaghetti of technology that's currently out there. He saw open source as central to the restart of technology. Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Friday, September 20th, 2002
2:37 am	I knew it would be useful Last post was long. I died out at the end. Going to sleep got me thinking. Why all of these things. And how are they connected. I didn't have time for a conclusion. But I think its the framework-language and language-user interface connection. UI-framework-language. Maybe we can connect them that way. I was trying to develop a UI language from a UI but maybe I need to study existing UI frameworks and take them to languages. That path is tricky as it is not well paved. But i think that is the connection. The software development tools seem to blow in the wind. They may be an example or they may have a deeper connection. I'll process that some more. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 19th, 2002
3:44 pm	So many projects. So little time. I always feel I should apologize for forcing people to download my lengthy posts. If I think about it I add an lj-cut but the post usually turns out longer than I planned. This is a continuation and expansion of the last entry. I discuss the various projects I'm working on and their importance. I'm trying to decide which projects should be dumped and which completed. I also hope this will better explain my views and behaviors. ( Projects and Research ) Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
12:27 am	Projects and Technology I need to finish my good to great rant. It is really nice. Connecting everything I've learned of late: Zen, Career planning and Organizational structure. But the connection is obvious, I am sure. =) A stop doing list. One idea from "Good to Great" is a stop doing list. Great companies just didn't add to there to-do list they made a list of things they were going to stop doing. This helps with the Hedgehog concept. So what projects are important and what do I want to keep doing and what do I want to stop doing. What is a partial current list. NetRexx Incremental Compiler Visual Make BFS for OS/2 Spam filter and User Interface. integration with mutt Unix userland UI refurb. Galeon rework. URI/URL Bookmark organizer Many faces of cal. One program, multiple implementations newtar: untar,vtar,ctar: Archie/Compression UI with mutliformat LiveJournal/Advogato clients Chad's OS Writer's desk Ecology Language Literate Programming Tool Language of User Interfaces Ancient protocols reworked to the Beep framework They do have a constant theme. But they are all related. The point is better working through Computer-Human Interaction. (thank you fatboy slim) Even the OS is really just my way of saying the current system is unworkable so build something new. All of this hinges on an observation in The Humane Interface. If you build a great user interface people will want it like an addict wants a drug. It is hard to see. But the drug industry has a wonderful economic model. First one's free. Then its profit city. Reliable computers. No more data loss. No more stupid computers. No more computers pretending to be smart and pissing off the user. Just intelligent, thoughtful, reliable, error-correcting, fault-tolerate humane computers. I was thinking of using a white/black motif. Similar to the generic foods from the early eighties. What ever happened to real generic food? When did it become necessary to put brands on generic food? I remember as a child the generic foods were all on one alies. It was white! It was so psychotic. "Beans", "Peas", "Fruit". Ever seen the white "Beer" cans in movies? Had those too. So I am thinking "Computer"! Of course generic meant low cost, cheap food. But I want to make a high quality, moderately expensive product. Hardware and software has reached the point of functionality over specs. Until very recently buying new hardware such as more memory or a faster CPU resulted in a better computing experience. But over the last 3-5 years CPU speeds and memory have reached a crest. For the average Internet, word processing, spreadsheet user computers are fast enough. It is even starting to effect hardware manufactures now. There was an article on CNN about how people aren't buying the fastest computer any more but the cheapest. Why? Because you don't need the fastest. Actually I am sitting gat a Pentium 133 Mhz computer with 64 megabytes of RAM and a 4MB video card running X windows with no problem. There is a slowness dealing with compressed data, mpg,mp3,jpg,gz, bz2 but otherwise it works just fine. The only reason people need faster hardware is the bloatware from software companies. The functionality doesn't need the hardware. So the idea is to sell a computing device based on functionality and quality of service and not specifications. Of course there are still areas of computing which demand big and better but it is a smaller market. But I think we can address their concerns as well so not a problem. There is a couple of approaches. I'd like to do a whole new hardware design. I want to rework the motherboard concept. I want legos. But don't we all? iSCSI and IPP both make me want to build a computer around a network hub/router. A private internal network for disk, printer, video and CPU. This enables things like slimed down corporate desktops or smaller/cheaper second/third computers which can use the components of the first computer. With mass storage and printing and video all on the network then the computer can be plugged into the network and instantly access all the appropriate files. SO all one needs is a new interface(monitor/keyboard/mouse/etc) and away you go. Then as you buy new items you just plug them into the network and they are available. The NOW project from Berkeley with serverless filesystem and network RAM in a household form. What I imagine is little firewire hubs which the monitor and keyboard and mouse plug into. This connects to a CPU server and away you go. Then if you need more power you can plug a second or third CPU into the computer and everyone can use it. It is basically mainframes for homes. So don't get me wrong. The technology and architecture aren't new just a new forum. functionality vs spec. The idea is to sell a computer to handle internet or high school student work or college mathematics or software development or home economics or whatever instead of selling a 500 Gigahertz Septium VII with a Terabyte of mass storage and DVD with a Nvidia 5 Gigabyte Video card and the surround sound. Why would people like this? Now ordinary people can shop for a product and buy it and not feel cheated. Most consumers feel cheated with a computer purchase because they buy something then the next month the ads have something new and allegedly better for the same price. So what we do is sell the same functionality for the same price, always. What is underneath may change over time as we get different volume deals or what have you but the price remains the same. Or at least for a year it remains the same. Look at cars. Basic transportation. The price is the same for about a year. Over time functionality is slowly dropped down into the lower levels. But at the lowest level there are no frills. Just basic transport. Why is there such a wide range of automobiles? Because people have different needs. So why not a different computer for everyone? More functionality and frills for the $5000 model sold to the rich and upwardly mobile. The case fits with the latest home fashions or it can be custom built. The low end is a basic computing device. It is for the low income families and they pay $250. And they get the no frills basic transportation of computing. But to start out with we offer a middle of the road computer. Price point around $1500-$2000 for a complete system. Screen, Box, Printer and maybe scanner. Free trials. Software to make you drool. Educate people on the waste of time and frustration of reboots and data loss. Maybe make a $500 gerrentee against data loss. You follow the rules and no data loss. The rules would be stuff like don't drop out of an airplane. Yet we will have a optional module to handle this situation. Probably use airbags like the Mars Landers did. A meter to measure acceleration then inflate the airbags and bounce! But even if the computer is dropped it needs to keep the data. We may offer a portable model as well. So it has to handle a crash. This will be the big point. No more lost data. No more annoying reboots. Of course it is so ingrained in people they may not get it but it will be important. Also the software will have a great UI. Simple, Easy to understand, Usable and Working. Start out with a few simple features. They will work 100% before any more features are added. The pricing is per feature. So if people want more features they pay more. Image manipulation. Most people just need a few features. So they are included in the base package. But if they need more or finer controls then they upgrade. I've totally lost my train of thought. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 17th, 2002
3:35 pm	The end of innovation I need to rewrite. Maybe in english next time. I read The Lost World again. The movie and book name share only a substring. Both have dinosaurs. The similarities end there. The book is worthwhile to anyone who liked the first. I forgot why I liked it. Two big reasons. Complexity in print. What can I say. I liked it before NKS so there. Second was the idea that cyberspace would be the end of innovation. The idea was that as more and more people get connected the less innovation. When everyone gets connected we become one homogeneous mass of no innovation. No new ideas. We all think the same. This bodes poorly for our survival as a species. The book links behavior and social structure of complex creatures to their survival. For complex, higher order creatures, it is behavior and not genetics which must evolve. The meat sandwich is just a carry all for your behavior. Nature vs. nurture. Nurture wins. Well Nurture is more important than nature in complex organisms. I've a whole problem with that terminology and debate. It strikes right out the heart of the problem. Humans always looking for simplistic solutions. Simple answers. Why? Its easier. It takes less work to just accept what you are fed. But humans can understand these concepts. If given a chance. Social programs like welfare and a living wage are all about one thing and one thing only. They are about given people a chance to think for themselves. Give them time to think. Else what are they going to do? Except what is given to them at face value. What else can they do? I don't know if I believe the species is on the line. But democracy is on the line. Humanity is on the line. Western civilization: what a good idea. The last dark age lasted for a thousand years. It was after the fall of Rome. Civilization is on the line. need to tie in Computer Science and User Interfaces. What would a Chad rant be with out a tie into to CS and HCI? The fall of Rome needs more tie in. But its hard to know if it is related directly or just by chance? So the tie in to CS is the "fast pace" of computers. They are getting big, better, faster all the time. You have to move move move!! This is an illusion. It is Mtv/ADHD. The concept that the world has a low attention span is a myth; it is a self-fulfilling prophecy of the twenty-four hour networks. How do you get people to watch something which is nothing more than static? Sure people use to watch it TV test patterns in the first days. It was all there was. It was novel. TV isn't novel. So in the beginning people did watch the twenty-four hour networks. But the novelty wore off. So then what? How do you get people to watch static? Watch the test pattern? You make it moving. You give it bells and whistles. You tell them if they don't watch they might miss something! It is all PR. It is all an illusion. How could they possible miss something? The rate of new information is not that great. The information creation rate is really quite small. Compared to the bandwidth. This is information with a big I. The link to physics sense of information. The speed of light is not a limit on velocity or magnitude it is a limit of information propagation. There was apiece in New Scientist. About breaking the speed of light. Who cares? But Einstein said... Who cares what Einstein said? He's dead. He's ideas are dead. Let us move on. But the article was a good article because it did point out the information propagation didn't exceed the speed of light. Which is the key. I mean we already have quantum entanglement and teleportation. Both occur faster than the speed of light except information can't be propagated faster than the speed of light thus they are constrained. The interesting thing is it seems this is an important component for the nature of universe and entropy. In Nature or Science...hmmm...maybe about a month ago. I'll have to look up the issue. It was a good article. The limits of knowledge. So there is a limit on the rate of information propagation. Is there a limit on the creation? hmm..maybe in terms of how much information can be represented in the universe and how much time it takes to twiddle the bits as it were. Of course NKS covers some of this. Information Theory. Fun in the Sun. Anyways, so how much new information is out there? Sure there are lots of things going on. But once again we are talking about real information. So we have to remove the error correcting codes. The redundancy. We have to compress everything. Compression is a wonderful topic. Information theory. How much information is in that data? Compression is about answer that question. Of course we don't really want to just get the raw information. It is very fragile. The world is not nice to raw information. Thus all the error-correcting and redundancy. I like the "perfect" compression algorithms which pop up every couple of years. I enjoy them as I enjoy all snake oil. But also for the underlying idea of social commentary. "We can compress your television broadcast from 100 megabytes per second to 1 kilobyte per hour." Yes I think that is possible. As there is not much raw information. But that isn't exactly what they had in mind. But I am amused. And that is what matters. =) Ok I am out in the middle of nowhere. Lets try and get back. Oh wait I did get back. Damn I made it and didn't even realize it. Am I good or what? Don't answer that. So PR and advertising are used to convince people they must watch else they might miss something. Of course if anything really happened it would be played for hours and hours. So in order to keep people watching the static and not getting bored, to give th illusion of something is happening they keep the picture moving. They keep it changing all the time. They use cuts and pans and fades. But camera movement alone doesn't give you the sense of hurry up and keep watching. The movie "Gosford Park" by Robert Altman is a good counter example. The movie has a nice slow pace compared to Mtv or CNN. Yet the camera is always moving. Whether you can tell or not it is always moving. Camera movement is used to give you a sense of eves-dropping on people. So it not just camera movement. Quick cuts can give you a sense of urgency. They can also give you a sense of something not there. "My own private Idaho" is a good example. They show still shots of the sex scenes. Usually about 10 or so. The people in various stages of dress. They show various angles. They are flashed rather quickly. Yet they don't give a sense of urgency they let your imagination fill in the gaps. So its not just the camera techniques. It is the whole package of camera, content and PR. Once again getting away from the idea of a single cause. The content is clipped. This happened here. Then thousands of miles away this other thing happened. Show pictures. Show audio. Look at CNN headline news sometime. They have hundreds of blinking and flashing lights to give you the sense alot is going on. Of course its just cycling. It also moves too fast to be absorbed. So you have to watch it for a while til it cycles again. I've not done measurements but I am sure there is a connection between cycle rate and PR/ad pieces. Of course CNN is one big PR show. But that's another matter. So what is the consequences of trying to make a little information seem like a lot? ADHD. Low attentions spans. Its a self-fulfilling prophecy. We think the blinking and moving light is information. We think it is new information. Similarly, there is alot of movement online. Alot of information flying around. But its not much raw information. Lots of redundancy and error-correction. So it looks like a lot of information is always blowing around. So we try to jump on it. Grab it. Say yes this is something new. Its worth my time. Oh look over there. Something else! You jump and jump and yet all that remains is a bit of information. Small, tiny. Not worth the time. Yes there is new information all the time. But its a small amount. It is not worth our time to speed hours for a few bits of information. Yet this is what I do everyday. Sift through the heap. Where is the new stuff? Anything new? Where oh where! Yet there is none. Yet I wait. I grasp out. Then find nothing but a tiny byte of information. Was it worth it? Lets not get side tracked on me. We see information in a new suit and we think it is new and innovative. Innovation is creating information. It is creation. Something new from the world. Not a rewrapped old bit but new bit based on all the old ones. Comformaity. Humans strive for it. Innovation is non-conforming. It fights the system. It is change. So it is seen as bad. Yet without it we die. Oxygen. It corrodes the body yet without it we die. Balance. A slippery slope on a fitness landscape. You have to run as fast as you can to stay where you are. Of course who cares? Why is diversity important? Why do distributed systems beat centralized? Adaptive. Diversity as in accepting others. Usually used as a counter to racism, bigotry, sexism and the whole list of ism. It is important to us all just not for the reasons they give. It is important for our survival. Remember the gene pool? Remember all the jokes about a stagnant gene pool? Too much inbreeding? We find inbreeding disgusting and we see the effects of genetic inbreeding. Yet we continue to support and defend intellectual inbreeding. Inbreeding of ideas and thoughts and behavior. That's ok. Yet its not ok for our genes to act that way? Because nature has put in big speed bumps to clue us in on inbreed genes. It also put in a speed bump for inbreed behavior. Its called extinction. People talk about moderation as the key to a good life. Moderation is about balance. It is about a mix. A variety. Many different foods to survive. Man can not survive on bread alone. He would probably die of scurvy. Why do kids mature so much faster now? Better foods. Healthier. In terms of giving their body what it needs to develop. Unfortunately, it is there minds and emotions which must be developed. Complex organism have wonderful meat sacks. Yet they are usual and harmful with out minds, social order and behavior. Repeative stree injuries. Why do they occur? No moderation. No mix Different ideas allow you to survive and adapt. There is an interesting word game. Homo and Hetero. Same and Different. Homogeneous and Heterogeneous. Different leads to survival. Heterosexuals propagate the species. Yet Homosexuals are necessary to prevent Homogeneity. Current Mood: tired (Comment on this)
2:46 am	25 free kills Have I wrote about 25 free kills in this venue? I don't remember. I am too lazy to go look. I was given a web comic which is similar to 25 free kills. It amused me of course. I am easily amused. I was thinking back to how it all got started. I don't remember. I do know I've been meaning to write up the philosophy behind it. Why 25 free kills? What a complex and interesting question. Let's start with what is 25 free kills. Its a new rule of law. The idea is change the law. There are three rules. One, everyone gets 25 free kills with no criminal or civil consequences. Two, you must admit to all kills. Three, If you break the rules then everyone in the world gets one extra kill, its called you. There are no trading, swapping or selling kills. You can't contract out one of your kills. There are no exceptions. Police, Military and State executioner only get 25 free kills. When someone breaks the rules a general warrant is issued to anyone claiming the offender as a kill. This warrant need not be executed. People can use as many or none of their kills as they see fit. The laws against torture and assault are still in place. So you can kill them you just can't assault them. The torture angle is a possible loop hole for criminal and civil punishment. There is only a few "painless" methods of death. So is any pain torture? Maybe. Beheadings will be all the rage. A historical note. I was going to have unlimited kills with the rule you had to kill them with a screwdriver. Why only 25? Do you think you'll live long enough to even use that many? Who are you trying to kid? The claimed reason for this is to simplify the laws. Finally put killing in its proper place and be consistent about it. Do you know the difference between self-defence and premeditated murder? The blink of an eye and a thought. Someone is coming at you with a knife. You attempt to defend yourself. In the moment before it happens you decide to kill them. Premeditated murder. Of course no jury would convict. But what is the point of a law which makes this distinction? What is the point of a system where the state can kill freely with no consequences yet the people can't? Are not the people the state? Why is there a difference? In a democracy there is no difference. The people are the state. 25 free kills is about democracy. It is about man's inhumanity to man. It is about stopping murder. It is about putting into words what is already common practice. Don't kid yourself. Look around. It happens everyday. We don't even blink. Do I judge you? No. I simply want it acknowledged. Why hide? Why be hypocritical on paper or in action? Just put it down. This is what we are about. Our actions speak louder than words. Who are we trying to fool? Each other? Why? God? You can't fool God. God knows your dirty little secret. God knows your dirty little lies. For you Christians and Jews it says "Thou shall not kill". Not thou shall not kill not people. God makes no distinction so why do you? Why do you send your souls to hell? Why not be up front about it? 25 free kills is about putting a mirror in front of society. Showing society what it is. It puts a name on it. It says this is who we are. It doesn't judge. But you can't change unless you know what are you. You can't leave until you know where are you. It is about learning where we are and what we are. It is the annoying introspection into the soul of man. You don't like what you see? Do something about it. But people like it. Yes they do. What's wrong with that? Maybe I started it to stop killing. But I started it because I found it acceptable. More acceptable than the current situation. Would I kill? Never say never. Its late. I am drunk. This is my way out. Yes I am going to hell. For those coming later, I'll be the one holding the whip. Current Mood: zen (Comment on this)
2:25 am	What do you have to lose? My soul. 15 million dollars isn't money. Money is what you take to the grocery store. Money is what you get from an ATM. 15 million dollars is a motive with a universal adaptor. My soul. But isn't that always on the line? The people I play games with don't take checks or credit cards. Cake donuts are at the door. No chocolate. No milk. No fucking sprinkles. They are moist and delicious. Isn't it worth it? Worth the gamble? The opportunity to roll the dice. Just my soul on the line. You are lucky every day of your life until you die. Billions of souls. Billions of donuts. Think yours is worth something more? Think just because you didn't swallow its worth it? Because you didn't kill its worth it? Because you said your prayers its worth it? Because you gave at the office its worth it? Because you used a condom its worth it? Because you only maimed them its worth it? Because you told Edi Amin it was a bad idea its worth it? Billions and Billions of people. Everyone unique. Everyone special. You are special. Special to me. Special for the five minutes it takes me to watch you eat the donut. Special for the five minutes it takes me to fuck your soul out. Special for eternity. Special to me. You are special. You think they are monsters. You think they aren't human. You think they aren't you. You think it couldn't happen here. You hope it couldn't happen here. You pray they aren't human. You beg your god they are monsters. They aren't like you you say. They aren't normal you pray. They are crazy you scream. They aren't satan. They aren't monsters. They are human. They are just like you. They slipped. So can you. Push them away; they only get closer. At night, when you are alone and the demons come, what do they look like? What do they say? Is it your mommy and daddy? Is it you? Is it they? The monster is us. We know this. The fear and terror isn't for the monster. Its for the reflection. The reflection in their eyes. The reflection of ourselves. It is us we see. It is you and me. The pain is knowing. Knowing we are one. We are the same. The monster is just a man. A human. Us. Current Mood: awake (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 15th, 2002
5:10 pm	Movies, Books and Cartoons This is from friday but lj was acting up. Should I backdate? Do you have anything to say before I win? Yeah, two words. Kiss Kiss. I am so amused. I am not a follower!!! Damn it! I re-read the firm recently. It was on the table before laura said anything so there. =P She commented on the fact the movie was so different and in the book Mitch was an asshole. The reason the movie is so different is because of the lead. Tom Cruise doesn't play a bad guy. He may play a flawed character but not a bad guy. Same with Mel Gibson. Even in "Payback" where is looks like his character is a bad guy he is really a good guy no different from his Lethal Weapon character. It just happens the setting is different. So in "The Firm", Tom's character had to tell his wife. So he looks like a good guy. Good guys confess. It is what makes them good. Annoying? Yes. Did I talk about the dog? There is a pit bull who lives just around the corner. He's a sweet dog. As I've always said dogs are trained to be mean. They aren't born into it. The pit bull is intact. The other day the owner was trying to breed him with a female pit bull. I think the female is from one of the neighbors. So they are trying to breed them for some reason. Probably think they can get money or something. The sad part is I am sure people will pay them and the dogs will end up in the wrong homes being trained to be mean. Anyways me and Maverick were walking by. The male dog knows us and always wants to play. The female came over to meet us. Apparently she was quite enamored with maverick. Kept trying to get close to him and get him to mount her. It was amusing. During this the male pit bull kept trying to mount her but she'd turn around a bite at him to get him away. I was so amused. While I like pure breed dogs. They can put out some good looking animals like Maverick. But other pure breeds just look ugly and need some spice in the gene pool. You don't see sickly mixed breeds. They are strong and good looking. Anyways, if I knew the neighbors well enough I'd throw Maverick into the yard and let him get some. He needs to get laid. (Comment on this)
3:09 pm	mice, meese, mooses I bought a mouse yesterday. My trackball with the four buttons died about a year ago. Under OS/2 a two button mouse i s all you need. I'd been using my Microsoft mouse 2.0. Its the one product of theirs I use. It is only two button so it sucks for X windows. I got a logitech cordless optical trackman. The cordless I can do without but it was the only optical trackball with more than two buttons. It has like seven buttons and a wheel. Maybe eight. But I've only been able to map 5. I had forgotten how nice the scroll wheel is for reading documents. I used a scroll wheel during the training class a couple weeks ago. So I'll have to turn it on at work. Luckily I've justin to give me the magic X config voodoo to enable it. Current Mood: here (Comment on this)
Friday, September 13th, 2002
2:54 pm	Writing: Poems and Prose I don't get poetry. Never have. Never will? I am reading a newsgroup on writing. They are talking about this very issue. Apparently there is layers of meaning and depth to poems. Who knew? The people on this newsgroup. But I didn't. I am not very good with extracting subtle meaning from others words. It requires too much work. Never ask a question you don't know the answer too. Good advice for any lawyer in a court room. Most lawyers follow this advice. I was talking to Gerardo yesterday. Why? He was bored. He has a problem with boredom. He hates being bored. Apparently he dated me to not be bored. How sweet of him to say. He dumped me because I was boring. Yet he keeps talking to me. Especially when he's bored. Its amusing. He just likes the stories I tell. Why do people encourage me? Stories and Events. Last week a guy on the block behind me was pissing in his yard. At 7 o'clock in the morning! I thought he was watering his lawn. Well he was. Then I watched him closer and thought wow a college student caring about the lawn especially this early. Then I saw the flow stop. Then he walked back inside. Realized what he was doing. I thought about calling the cops. The disturbing part was the kids playing on the same street. I don't get up that early so I don't know if its a regular deal. Last week I was in training. Learning "Programming in M--". From one of the founders of the company. Very nice. He was pretty good teacher except he had a tendency to read the slides. It was nice because the whole course was written up in hand outs but annoying to have him read it. He did expand more and when you asked questions he became very engaging. It was a good class. I learned a few things. I had to put up with a Sony Viao running Win98. I was able to get a real mouse so I didn't have to put up with touch pad. The touch pad did get in the way with typing. I've been working on business ideas. Most of my family are good at selling. I am not. I am good at the technical side. I talked with my brother about his business and some ideas of how to start my own. If I had a good product I think I could talk him into help me sell it. Current Mood: zen (Comment on this)
Tuesday, August 27th, 2002
12:06 pm	Four Hundred Forty-One From a story about drugs in Canada. The boy was nabbed with an "eight-ball" of rock cocaine [...] "He was evasive with the officers who attempted to question him," Chaffin said. And police don't believe the boy -- who is too young to face charges -- learned that lesson on his own. Other than sucking, exactly what could the boy,any child, learn on their own? Think McFly! Think! Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 22nd, 2002
2:19 pm	Four Hundred Forty I should finish my thoughts from time to time. Gentoo is a build from source distribution of linux. I build from source for one reason. More control over configuration of the product. When its built from binary I have to put with all there assumptions about what I want and what I have. Gentoo is just interested in a built from source using -O6 optimization on the compiler. Other than the fact gcc does have shitty code generation so -O and maybe -O2 is required to get code running at a "normal" level the other levels don't matter. You aren't going to notice!! The only places it matters is high performance apps. And only 1% of your apps are high performance. Any thing which interacts with you is not high performance. You want faster? Buy a new CPU. -O6 on a shitty compiler isn't going to cut it. Now if you use a different compiler then maybe! But the thing is I compile from source not so I can tweak the compiler options but so I can tweak the application options!!! Hello!!! If I can't do this in a sane and straight forward manner then what is the point? While I hate configure. It does allow me to ./configure --help and select which options I want. The other info should be cached. But does gentoo do that? nope. So why then? Who knows. To piss me off. So what's next? I don't know. I think I'll just go back to OS/2 and sulk. I am not sure which is more aggravating: gentoo's failure or my failure to not have expectations? Current Mood: zen (Comment on this)