I see that Saddam Hussein was finally executed. I feel that is good thing and needed to be done. As long as he was alive, then there was the possibility that he might be restored to power. Too many people have died and too much as been sacrificed to date. His execution closes that option. It will force those who want to return to the days of his dictatorship to instead look ahead towards other options.
There are many who feel that his execution was wrong. I don't. I feel it came 15 years, and thousands of deaths too late. Many claim that removing Saddam created more problems that it solved. The claim that because more people have died since he was toppled that when he was the one doing the killing, keeping him in power would have been better.
That opinion is wrong on so many levels. It assumes that things in Iraq and M.E. would have remained static. Who is to say that is true? Why are body counts the only metric? With that logic, then all people should live under oppressive dictatorships in the name of public safety.
Most of the people killed in Iraq since Saddam fell have been murdered at the hands of fellow Iraqis. Not American troops. Not British troops. The government of Iraq, that was elected by the Iraqis themselves has failed to provide any security. That is their fault, not Bush's.
Now that Saddam is gone, there is one more Iraqi that must be brought to justice and executed. That is Sadar, the "cleric" in charge of the Shi'ites of Baghdad. He is a Saddam in the making. He has blood on his hands. He runs his own militia. The Iraqi government needs to take him on and remove him, now. And he needs to be executed. He has no sons to continue his sick monarchy.
But, I don't think they have the guts to do what needs to be done. So the killing will continue until they get tired of it. Pathetic.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
The Mac OSX Experience - Day 3
Well. I've run into what I consider some serious problems. I don't feel confident enough to migrate any data over to the new laptop until these are resolved. I've found that files are disappearing and being corrupted.
I copied over a folder containing about 600 pieces of artwork that I wanted to use as my wallpaper. When I checked them today, about 50 of them, all GIF's, were corrupted and could no longer be opened. I have not figured out what happened. I suspect that it might have to do with some subtle differences between how a Mac and a PC process GIF files. I'm not sure, so I will have to do some research into this later, when I get some more time.
Another odd thing is dissapearing files. Some have vanished, and I have no idea where or why. For example, my system Janice had left a video she made on the desktop before she mailed me my machine. That video is gone. I didn't delete it, move it, or anything. I can't find it anywhere. Thankfully, I had backup it up to an external HDD, so I still have a copy.
Usually in Windows, and in MacOSX, you can drag a file into an application to have that application open that file. I found that when I drag an image file into Apple's preview, it (1) corrupts the image that is currently previewed, and (2) deletes the original file. And to make matters worse, there is no "undo" command. I can't reverse the process. So the file I dragged is gone and no where to be found. It is not in the application to be saved. Instead it is imbedded somewhere in the original file, and seems to not be able to undo. What a pain in the neck.
I've decided to not spend any more time on the MacOSX side for now. In order to migrate to this new laptop, I need to establish a replica of the environment I have on my old laptop. So in that regard, I have spent the last day installing applications under WindowsXP on the Mac. So far, not too bad. Since I do a lot of development work, I have some pretty massive applications to install. These massive apps also have massive amounts of patches and updates that I need to download too.
I've installed OfficeXP Pro, my Macromedia/Adobe Studio 8, Cold Fusion Server, SQL Server 2000, Java Netbeans IDE, IIS, and a million smaller apps that I use. Since I'm running servers for development, there is a lot of configuring and security issues to iron out. It just very tedious.
For fun, I also installed a couple of demanding PC games that I own.. Doom3 and Counter Strike Condition Zero. These are both very demanding FPS (First Person Shooter) games that my old laptop could not handle. The video demands were simply too much and I would constantly end up dead simply because I could not react to threats quick enough. By the time the graphics engine would catch up with the action, I would have been shot or ripped to shreds by a monster. So I had ended up removing these games and setting them aside.
I tried them out last night. I cranked the video setting to max, the most punishing on the graphics card. The results were impressive. The game play was smooth, even will full texture rendering, shadows, high FPS rate, and large resolution. I could tell the Macbook was working hard because I heard and felt a fan kick in that I have no heard before.
I discovered something else that irritates me, but it is not deadly critical. I found that MaxOSX can't seem to figure out what time it is. Even though I have it configured to get the time against a time server, AND it knows what time zone I am in, it seems to always be off by 5 to 6 hours. I can only correct it by switching to a manual time setting. Windows doesn't seem to have a problem. It always comes up with the correct time. Logically, this means that Apple's time server is off. That would make every Mac on the planet off too. So it must be something is wrong with the time zone database on my machine. Weird.
Another thing that bugs me. I found that if I hibernate WinXP, when I wake it, the touchpad no longer works. So that means I have to reboot WinXP, or plug in a mouse. Like the time issue, what a pain. I prefer hibernate since I run server services. It just makes Windows come up so much quicker for me.
Next week, once Adobe's tech support opens, I can call them and straighten out some licensing issues with moving my Macromedia and Adobe products over to the new machine. So far I'm running on trial versions.
Well.... I'm gonna lock up the computer for a couple of days and celebrate the New Years.
I copied over a folder containing about 600 pieces of artwork that I wanted to use as my wallpaper. When I checked them today, about 50 of them, all GIF's, were corrupted and could no longer be opened. I have not figured out what happened. I suspect that it might have to do with some subtle differences between how a Mac and a PC process GIF files. I'm not sure, so I will have to do some research into this later, when I get some more time.
Another odd thing is dissapearing files. Some have vanished, and I have no idea where or why. For example, my system Janice had left a video she made on the desktop before she mailed me my machine. That video is gone. I didn't delete it, move it, or anything. I can't find it anywhere. Thankfully, I had backup it up to an external HDD, so I still have a copy.
Usually in Windows, and in MacOSX, you can drag a file into an application to have that application open that file. I found that when I drag an image file into Apple's preview, it (1) corrupts the image that is currently previewed, and (2) deletes the original file. And to make matters worse, there is no "undo" command. I can't reverse the process. So the file I dragged is gone and no where to be found. It is not in the application to be saved. Instead it is imbedded somewhere in the original file, and seems to not be able to undo. What a pain in the neck.
I've decided to not spend any more time on the MacOSX side for now. In order to migrate to this new laptop, I need to establish a replica of the environment I have on my old laptop. So in that regard, I have spent the last day installing applications under WindowsXP on the Mac. So far, not too bad. Since I do a lot of development work, I have some pretty massive applications to install. These massive apps also have massive amounts of patches and updates that I need to download too.
I've installed OfficeXP Pro, my Macromedia/Adobe Studio 8, Cold Fusion Server, SQL Server 2000, Java Netbeans IDE, IIS, and a million smaller apps that I use. Since I'm running servers for development, there is a lot of configuring and security issues to iron out. It just very tedious.
For fun, I also installed a couple of demanding PC games that I own.. Doom3 and Counter Strike Condition Zero. These are both very demanding FPS (First Person Shooter) games that my old laptop could not handle. The video demands were simply too much and I would constantly end up dead simply because I could not react to threats quick enough. By the time the graphics engine would catch up with the action, I would have been shot or ripped to shreds by a monster. So I had ended up removing these games and setting them aside.
I tried them out last night. I cranked the video setting to max, the most punishing on the graphics card. The results were impressive. The game play was smooth, even will full texture rendering, shadows, high FPS rate, and large resolution. I could tell the Macbook was working hard because I heard and felt a fan kick in that I have no heard before.
I discovered something else that irritates me, but it is not deadly critical. I found that MaxOSX can't seem to figure out what time it is. Even though I have it configured to get the time against a time server, AND it knows what time zone I am in, it seems to always be off by 5 to 6 hours. I can only correct it by switching to a manual time setting. Windows doesn't seem to have a problem. It always comes up with the correct time. Logically, this means that Apple's time server is off. That would make every Mac on the planet off too. So it must be something is wrong with the time zone database on my machine. Weird.
Another thing that bugs me. I found that if I hibernate WinXP, when I wake it, the touchpad no longer works. So that means I have to reboot WinXP, or plug in a mouse. Like the time issue, what a pain. I prefer hibernate since I run server services. It just makes Windows come up so much quicker for me.
Next week, once Adobe's tech support opens, I can call them and straighten out some licensing issues with moving my Macromedia and Adobe products over to the new machine. So far I'm running on trial versions.
Well.... I'm gonna lock up the computer for a couple of days and celebrate the New Years.
Friday, December 29, 2006
The Mac OSX Experience - Day 2
I installed WindowsXP on my Macbook Pro today using Bootcamp. Sweet! It runs smooth and fast. Now I just have a shit load of work to do to install all the security and applications that I need. So that will pretty much waste my New Years Weekend.
The Mac OSX Experience - Day 1
Since I've opened up the new MacBook Pro and started getting it working right. I have a lot of work to do on it.
Now I want to state for the record that I hate Mac bigots. These are the Mac people who are always slamming Windows, telling everyone how perfect Macs are, and looking down at us non-Mac people with distain. I've been working on computers for almost 30 years now. I know that non are perfect. I feel sorry for these Mac bigots. They remind me of cult members who simply can't open their minds up enough to see the real world.
So it has been a day of working on the Mac. For those who claims that Mac's work perfectly out of the box, well they are lying. I've run into a lot of problems. It appears that I am really going to have to roll up my sleeves and dig deep into the OSX to figure out how to do what I need.
USB Thumb Drive Lock Up: My Macbook Pro locked up tighter than a drum when I plugged in one of my USB keys. I had to reboot. No error messages or anything. It just froze and stopped working. I took the key over to my WinXP laptop and reformatted it as FAT. Now the Mac will read it and not lock up.
No TrueCrypt: Damn! This is very disappointing. I love TrueCrypt. It use it to secure my USB keys incase I loose them. It turns out that there is no version of TrueCrypt that runs on a Mac. That means I can't use my TrueCrypt secured USB keys on the Mac.
I prefer TrueCrypt because it is open source public project with the best security and encryption methods. It is the only one that I ultimately trust. What is going on?
No Western Australia Daylight Savings Time Support: Hello Apple! What the hell is going on? Microsoft got right on the new DST for Western Australia. I noticed that Apple doesn't have it. Their advice? Tell your Mac that you are in Japan, or manually change your machine twice a year. Nice. How hard is it to update your clock files to support DST here?
No SpinRite: Another Damn! SpinRite is a critical program for the prevention of hard drive failures. It actually runs under FreeDOS. You have to boot a diskette, CD-ROM, or Thumbdrive with FreeDOS and SpinRite to get it started. I am seriously worried now. Running SpinRite on my drives allows me to sleep better knowing that the best program in the world has been watching them for problems.
No Java IDE: Hells Bells. It turns out that Sun doesn't make a Java compiler that runs under Mac OSX. They have them for most other OS's. Just not Mac. Why? Java is supposed to be a Write-Once, Run-Anywhere language. I use Sun's NetBeans IDE for Java development on my WinXP machine. But I can't use it on the Mac. I now have to learn a new IDE, Apples.
I blame this one on Sun, not Apple.
Firefox Profile Manager: Boy, Apple doesn't make it easy to customize the way programs start. I don't feel like learning a new browser. So I installed Firefox on the Mac. However, in order to start the Firefox Profile Manager, I have to drop into to Unix shell under MacOSX and manually enter the start line.
That is not that big of a deal. But what I can't do is then create a quick start icon under OSX that will fire off the Profile Manager for me. I can do this easily in Windows by editing the properties of a shortcut. No such animal on OSX that I can see. It tooks like I will need to spend a lot of time figuring out how I can tweak that command line parms that OSX passes to the underlying Unix system.
So in the meantime, I have to go through the profile manager everytime I start Firefox. I prefer to have it set up like I have on my WinXP box, when I go into the profile manager only when I need to.
Bootcamp: I downloaded and installed BootCamp from Apple in order to prepare my Macbook for dual boot. But after I run the install program, Bootcamp just goes away. It doesn't issue any messages that it is done. I finally figured out what it had done when I ran into Bootcamp hidden in the Utilities folder under the Applications folder.
Jeeze... you would like that the install program would at least tell you that it finished and to go find the app in that folder. Instead, it just disappears.
Quicktime Can't Play AVI files: This made me laugh. Mac bigots often speak of how Mac's run perfectly out of the box. Well, Apple's Quicktime video player can't play my AVI files. I had to go install the 3rd party player, VLC, which plays them fine. What is the computer idiot who bough a Mac cause they don't know computers supposed to do with stuff like this?
Adobe Bridge Tryout: Thanks Adobe! I downloaded and installed the Mac version of Photoshop CS2 Tryout version. It comes with Bridge, their image browsing product. But it won't run because of licensing restrictions. How in the hell am I supposed to "tryout" your product when your trial version won't let me?
This is stupid Adobe's fault, not Apple's.
Adobe Photoshop Tryout: Thanks again Adobe! The CS2 version of photoshop can't read Canon RAW files from my 30D. According to your website, CS2 has the Canon RAW support built in. But no..... it won't work. Nor can I find the RAW plug in to download and install after the fact. I want Photoshop CS2 software for RAW processing. That is what it is supposed to be able to do.
Grrrrr.
Font Problems: Oh man. This one sucks. I noticed that when I browse web sites with a lot of text (such as news sites), the top of some sentences get shaved off here and there. This is not good. I am going to have to do some testing and call Apple to solve this problem.
Now I want to state for the record that I hate Mac bigots. These are the Mac people who are always slamming Windows, telling everyone how perfect Macs are, and looking down at us non-Mac people with distain. I've been working on computers for almost 30 years now. I know that non are perfect. I feel sorry for these Mac bigots. They remind me of cult members who simply can't open their minds up enough to see the real world.
So it has been a day of working on the Mac. For those who claims that Mac's work perfectly out of the box, well they are lying. I've run into a lot of problems. It appears that I am really going to have to roll up my sleeves and dig deep into the OSX to figure out how to do what I need.
USB Thumb Drive Lock Up: My Macbook Pro locked up tighter than a drum when I plugged in one of my USB keys. I had to reboot. No error messages or anything. It just froze and stopped working. I took the key over to my WinXP laptop and reformatted it as FAT. Now the Mac will read it and not lock up.
No TrueCrypt: Damn! This is very disappointing. I love TrueCrypt. It use it to secure my USB keys incase I loose them. It turns out that there is no version of TrueCrypt that runs on a Mac. That means I can't use my TrueCrypt secured USB keys on the Mac.
I prefer TrueCrypt because it is open source public project with the best security and encryption methods. It is the only one that I ultimately trust. What is going on?
No Western Australia Daylight Savings Time Support: Hello Apple! What the hell is going on? Microsoft got right on the new DST for Western Australia. I noticed that Apple doesn't have it. Their advice? Tell your Mac that you are in Japan, or manually change your machine twice a year. Nice. How hard is it to update your clock files to support DST here?
No SpinRite: Another Damn! SpinRite is a critical program for the prevention of hard drive failures. It actually runs under FreeDOS. You have to boot a diskette, CD-ROM, or Thumbdrive with FreeDOS and SpinRite to get it started. I am seriously worried now. Running SpinRite on my drives allows me to sleep better knowing that the best program in the world has been watching them for problems.
No Java IDE: Hells Bells. It turns out that Sun doesn't make a Java compiler that runs under Mac OSX. They have them for most other OS's. Just not Mac. Why? Java is supposed to be a Write-Once, Run-Anywhere language. I use Sun's NetBeans IDE for Java development on my WinXP machine. But I can't use it on the Mac. I now have to learn a new IDE, Apples.
I blame this one on Sun, not Apple.
Firefox Profile Manager: Boy, Apple doesn't make it easy to customize the way programs start. I don't feel like learning a new browser. So I installed Firefox on the Mac. However, in order to start the Firefox Profile Manager, I have to drop into to Unix shell under MacOSX and manually enter the start line.
That is not that big of a deal. But what I can't do is then create a quick start icon under OSX that will fire off the Profile Manager for me. I can do this easily in Windows by editing the properties of a shortcut. No such animal on OSX that I can see. It tooks like I will need to spend a lot of time figuring out how I can tweak that command line parms that OSX passes to the underlying Unix system.
So in the meantime, I have to go through the profile manager everytime I start Firefox. I prefer to have it set up like I have on my WinXP box, when I go into the profile manager only when I need to.
Bootcamp: I downloaded and installed BootCamp from Apple in order to prepare my Macbook for dual boot. But after I run the install program, Bootcamp just goes away. It doesn't issue any messages that it is done. I finally figured out what it had done when I ran into Bootcamp hidden in the Utilities folder under the Applications folder.
Jeeze... you would like that the install program would at least tell you that it finished and to go find the app in that folder. Instead, it just disappears.
Quicktime Can't Play AVI files: This made me laugh. Mac bigots often speak of how Mac's run perfectly out of the box. Well, Apple's Quicktime video player can't play my AVI files. I had to go install the 3rd party player, VLC, which plays them fine. What is the computer idiot who bough a Mac cause they don't know computers supposed to do with stuff like this?
Adobe Bridge Tryout: Thanks Adobe! I downloaded and installed the Mac version of Photoshop CS2 Tryout version. It comes with Bridge, their image browsing product. But it won't run because of licensing restrictions. How in the hell am I supposed to "tryout" your product when your trial version won't let me?
This is stupid Adobe's fault, not Apple's.
Adobe Photoshop Tryout: Thanks again Adobe! The CS2 version of photoshop can't read Canon RAW files from my 30D. According to your website, CS2 has the Canon RAW support built in. But no..... it won't work. Nor can I find the RAW plug in to download and install after the fact. I want Photoshop CS2 software for RAW processing. That is what it is supposed to be able to do.
Grrrrr.
Font Problems: Oh man. This one sucks. I noticed that when I browse web sites with a lot of text (such as news sites), the top of some sentences get shaved off here and there. This is not good. I am going to have to do some testing and call Apple to solve this problem.
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year
Greetings Friends and Family. I have been neglecting my blog lately. Just been too distracted by other things since I got back from Vanuatu.
I meant to post this yesterday. But the earthquake that hit Taiwan yesterday did a number on the trans-Pacific Internet traffic. In case you did not year, a major quake damaged some of the fiberoptic cables that carry most of the Internet traffic across the Pacific to places like Australia, where I am. So I have had a hard time getting to Google and Blogger.
An update on my health. All good news. I was given a clean bill of health by the doctor when I got back. No cancer. He suspected some kidney damage. But an MRI scan showed them to be in good shape. And I feel good. So all is well.
The main reason I have neglected my blog is because of a new mistress in my life.... my digital SLR camera. I've been spending a lot of time teaching myself how to use it. And how to use Photoshop for post-processing. There is a lot to learn. I've been enjoying it tremendously.
So for Christmas, I bought myself two things. First, I bought a good lens for my camera. I found a company in Hong Kong that can sell me the lens I want for about half of what it goes for here in Australia. I got myself the Canon 18-35mm f/2.8L lens. That won't mean much to those of you who don't know much about cameras. But in English, it is a lens with Canon's best optics, and it is very fast and accurate.
It turns out there are a handful of photography nuts at work who have been working for years in their hobby. They have managed to acquire a lot of good equipment over the years. And they have been nice enough to let me borrow some too. A friend had the lens that I just bought. I was so impressed with that it could do that I decided it was worth it for myself.
I've been checking out the pawn shops too, looking for gear that people are dumping cheap. So far, no luck. Almost all of the gear is for older film cameras. However, I did score one day and found a top-quality Manfrotto tripod for about a third of the normal price. So I grabbed it. It works very, very well.
On the post-processing side, I've been teaching myself Photoshop CS2. But it turns out that my old laptop just can't keep up with the new demands I've placed on it. I was planning to upgrade this year anyways, so I just went ahead and did that.
But rather than get another true and trusted Dell Latitude, I decided to take the plunge and go with an Apple Mac. I bought a MacBook Pro laptop with the new Intel Core 2 DUO processor. What convinced me to switch was the fact that I can boot WindowsXP on the Mac now that they went to Intel in late 2006. So all of my software and expertise will not go to waste.
I plan to use the Apple OS-X for photo-processing and use the WindowsXP for my professional work, such as application development. Plus, I have a steep learning curve for me since I've never touched a Mac before.
I've decided that I will write up a log of my experience as a Windows guru learning my Mac. I've had it for 24 hours now. To be honest, I've found it to be frustrating to get things done that I consider to be simple (on Windows). I won't bore you with the technical details on this post. But I've decided to plow ahead and learn how to get around this obstacles.
IBM has renewed my contract for 2007. So no big changes to report. All is well. I'm just trying to perfect my new hobby. Man, I am such a geek.
I've cut back on reading news. I find it all just so depressing. All of the news from the Middle East is bad, and getting worse. The people there seem to hellbent on dragging themselves into a 15th century dark ages of ignorance, intolerance, and violence. I'm sick of them all. Any sympathy and compassion I had for their suffering has gone. They can all go around killing each other for all I care anymore. So until they actually do something postive for mankind, then screw them. I ain't giving them any more of my precious time.
I hope you all have a great New Years! I will!
Love
Ron
I meant to post this yesterday. But the earthquake that hit Taiwan yesterday did a number on the trans-Pacific Internet traffic. In case you did not year, a major quake damaged some of the fiberoptic cables that carry most of the Internet traffic across the Pacific to places like Australia, where I am. So I have had a hard time getting to Google and Blogger.
An update on my health. All good news. I was given a clean bill of health by the doctor when I got back. No cancer. He suspected some kidney damage. But an MRI scan showed them to be in good shape. And I feel good. So all is well.
The main reason I have neglected my blog is because of a new mistress in my life.... my digital SLR camera. I've been spending a lot of time teaching myself how to use it. And how to use Photoshop for post-processing. There is a lot to learn. I've been enjoying it tremendously.
So for Christmas, I bought myself two things. First, I bought a good lens for my camera. I found a company in Hong Kong that can sell me the lens I want for about half of what it goes for here in Australia. I got myself the Canon 18-35mm f/2.8L lens. That won't mean much to those of you who don't know much about cameras. But in English, it is a lens with Canon's best optics, and it is very fast and accurate.
It turns out there are a handful of photography nuts at work who have been working for years in their hobby. They have managed to acquire a lot of good equipment over the years. And they have been nice enough to let me borrow some too. A friend had the lens that I just bought. I was so impressed with that it could do that I decided it was worth it for myself.
I've been checking out the pawn shops too, looking for gear that people are dumping cheap. So far, no luck. Almost all of the gear is for older film cameras. However, I did score one day and found a top-quality Manfrotto tripod for about a third of the normal price. So I grabbed it. It works very, very well.
On the post-processing side, I've been teaching myself Photoshop CS2. But it turns out that my old laptop just can't keep up with the new demands I've placed on it. I was planning to upgrade this year anyways, so I just went ahead and did that.
But rather than get another true and trusted Dell Latitude, I decided to take the plunge and go with an Apple Mac. I bought a MacBook Pro laptop with the new Intel Core 2 DUO processor. What convinced me to switch was the fact that I can boot WindowsXP on the Mac now that they went to Intel in late 2006. So all of my software and expertise will not go to waste.
I plan to use the Apple OS-X for photo-processing and use the WindowsXP for my professional work, such as application development. Plus, I have a steep learning curve for me since I've never touched a Mac before.
I've decided that I will write up a log of my experience as a Windows guru learning my Mac. I've had it for 24 hours now. To be honest, I've found it to be frustrating to get things done that I consider to be simple (on Windows). I won't bore you with the technical details on this post. But I've decided to plow ahead and learn how to get around this obstacles.
IBM has renewed my contract for 2007. So no big changes to report. All is well. I'm just trying to perfect my new hobby. Man, I am such a geek.
I've cut back on reading news. I find it all just so depressing. All of the news from the Middle East is bad, and getting worse. The people there seem to hellbent on dragging themselves into a 15th century dark ages of ignorance, intolerance, and violence. I'm sick of them all. Any sympathy and compassion I had for their suffering has gone. They can all go around killing each other for all I care anymore. So until they actually do something postive for mankind, then screw them. I ain't giving them any more of my precious time.
I hope you all have a great New Years! I will!
Love
Ron
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