1. My car (1997 Maxima) wouldn't shift; took in for repair; would cost $4000 to fix rusted-through core support; Got new 2008 Honda Fit.
2. Got new computer, Mac Pro, with insurance money from my PowerBook being stolen (jerks).
3. Had a super fun time at computer camp, as always.
4. Scuzzy had cancerous bump removed and was diagnosed and treated for Addison's Disease.
5. Katie and Charlie visited, we had a great time at Zoombezi Bay. If interested, please ask about Pickle Soup.
6. Had my car smashed by some drunk people; Insurance company considers it a collision: won't pay; Police don't consider it a collision: won't investigate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Living_people

So since the last post, I had a fun time in Chicago at the end of December, got burglarized in January, and my CPU or Motherboard died in February.

Also, Team Fortress 2 came out, I played it a bunch, and while installing snapped this shot:

Where are they getting these fifth graders? I went to one of Ohio's best school districts (according to Ohio, not me) and they didn't teach the things they claim these fifth graders knew.

• Bavaria is a state in what European country?
• What is the name of the first first-lady?
• Of the following, which is a blood vessel in the human body? Tibia, capillaries, cilia.
• (First grade spelling) how do you spell nervous? (Example first grade spelling words)
• What is the official language of Australia?
• How many demonstrative adjectives are in the following sentence? That scruffy dog with the short tail chased the multi colored cat through the tree.

I call bullshit.

Last summer I decided to fix some problems in a series of Wikipedia articles. I fixed all these cyclic links, dead links, poor pages, etc related to this bug tracking software called Scarab. I did this all from my account.

A few hours later, I get on Wikipedia to look something up. I notice this “new message” thing. I click the link to my user discussion page and low and behold, this wikitroll (his signature: ) has reverted all my edits! I of course retaliate by posting this huge rant on his discussion page. At the end I called him an asshole for violating the spirit of Wikipedia. He of course proceeded to ban me for 48 hours due to a “personal attack”. He also posted all this crap on my user discussion page.

Flash to yesterday. I see all this crap on my discussion page and just delete it: all of it. The entire content of my discussion page, consisting entirely of this assholes bullshit, is gone.

Tonight I come home and I see “new message”. I think to myself ‘Oh great, wikitrolls are lurking about and going to come out of nowhere and wikirape me again’. To my utter surprise, it’s a warning that I shouldn’t blank other people’s user discussion pages. Apparently I erased my page anonymously. Thank god this guy (signature: ) came to the rescue and reverted the changes. And thank god he commented on my page wikipissing his holier-than-though wikicrap all over. How constructive, now I have to revert TWO pages. How wikidiculious.

Lets check out some abbreviated Wikipedia guidelines on signatures!

• Be sparing with color
• Be sparing with superscript or subscript.
• In one case, a user who refused to alter an unsuitable signature was ultimately required to change it by the Arbitration Committee.
• If you must use different colors in your signature...

If you must use color? What are these people thinking? "I REQUIRE color in my signature. I cannot sign something unless it is colored the way I want it to be!" Who do these people think they are? The most famous signature, John Hancock's, isn't in color, why does yours need to be? Why does it NEED to be?

Oh Wikipedians... Lets check out a typical UserPage!

Ah, WikiProject James Bond. Is there a WikiProject BanTools?

And finally, lets check out a discussion page!

It is all very important

Microsoft has decided on the following default setting for installing Windows updates:

1. Download the updates in the background.
2. Pop up a balloon stating that updates are ready to be installed.
3. Wait for the user to accept the updates or wait until midnight, install the updates anyway, and kill all open applications including ones that have unsaved work open to allow for the restart.
4. If the user is available and accepts the changes, minimize the status window and popup a balloon stating that the status has been minimized.
5. After the updates have been installed, popup a window asking to reboot. If the user clicks no, ask again every ten minutes until either the user clicks yes or the restart request goes un-dismissed for five minutes. These reboot requests should steal focus, minimizing any full screen applications. If the five minute timeout passes without a dismissal, kill all applications including ones with unsaved work and restart.
6. If a restart was forced the following message is displayed, completely ignoring the fact that work may have been lost.
   
   
   I propose changing the message to the following:
   

Thanks to iPhoto and FaceBook it was pretty easy to get these online!

Camp Fitch Computer Camp 2007 Part 1
Camp Fitch Computer Camp 2007 Part 2

James Randi

I anonymously posted on four Wikipedia user pages:

== Your signature ==
Your signature is inappropriate and distracting, please change it to the default.

Because their signatures looked like this:

It took sixteen minutes and six edits to my anonymous talk page for the anonymous alias of another user, Meteoroid (who by the way defaces Wikipedia on his user and talk page by means of CSS), to tell me I had made a personal attack on him. He did so by giving me a “final warning” of being “blocked from editing wikipedia”.

I was then accused of “act[ing] like an abusive Rent-a-Mod” by E. Sn0 =31337= (I am not kidding, that is this person’s username). He then said he may have offered his friendship (no thanks, seriously, look at your MySpace page) had I not “reconsidered [my] approach recognized [my] own right to be offended at other individuals' exercise of the free speech rights inalienable to all individuals at birth”. He continued: “I hereby decide against cessation, modification, or waiver of my free speech rights with regard to my sig; I also humbly request your recognition of this reasonable assertion of my rights and bring this discourse to an amicable close.”

Dale ( AKA E. Sn0 =31337= )

It’s too bad he isn’t as articulate on his MySpace profile:

A new note, right at the top of my profile, just in case it makes a difference: If you are a FUCKING advertiser, do not waste your fucking time on me. Do not waste my fucking time on me. Do not create fake profiles of hot girls (or guys in case you cunts try the gay angle) with no blogs, no imformation about themselves, and no alterations to their myspace page whatsoever. It's fucking transparent.

Any how, the funny and yet somewhat depressing part is:

• I was expecting an immature response (such as this) from these so-called Wikipedians.
• Meteoroid warned me anonymously and doesn’t even have admin rights to begin with.
• Meteoroid couldn’t even warn me correctly the first 5 times he tried. He fudged up the template and messed up the formatting.
• Meteoroid changed his signature anyway.
• They all have been arguing at each other about their signatures even without my help.
• Dale’s Userboxes.
• And his MySpace page.

Funny search results

First result for Google image search for 'trex'

Pumpkin?

Apple must have a lot of time on their hands to copy all my files via a floppy drive. We had 50 or so floppies for our 350MB HD backup back in the day. That would be 14 thousand floppies for a 20GB hard disk. That's almost 10 days if it's one floppy per minute all day/night long. Wowza. Thanks Apple!

What a nice screen shot of their product: The purchase a license screen. Nice jpeg compression too.

From Apple's service manuals. That is like 20 times as much heat compound as you need. It won't hurt anything if it's that much, but it's certainly going to make a mess.

A few good Windows errors

Thanks for the "warning". A thank you would have been a little more appropriate.

Does this really have to be said? It's like nothing happened.

The Sony Ericsson w810 is a really great phone. It was a 2MP camera, which is pretty dang good for a camera phone. So a common thing to do with a camera phone is to take pictures of people to be displayed when they call you. With this phone, even when you go into the pick a picture for a person setting, then hit from camera, it still takes a 2MP photo.

This wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but guess what? When come one calls, the little itty bitty CPU inside the camera has to resize the image to fit on the little tiny display. Little itty bitty CPU’s can’t resize relatively huge 2MP image in under two seconds. So when some one calls, you have to wait two seconds while the camera is frozen as it resized the image. Fantastic design.

Thanks for the comment! It was very insightful.

The December MegaParty™ in Chicago was really fun. Keith stopped by on his way home from Oakland and Tom flew in from Omaha. Ed and Austin lived here so they didn’t even need to travel!

A few hours before Tom needed to get to the airport on his way home, we had an hour or two to kill. We were standing in front of Macy’s crazy horrible Mary Poppins bullshit window animation things trying to figure out what to do. We spent a good 10 minutes coming up with things we didn’t want to do and not coming up with anything we did want to do. I decided we would all at least go into Macy’s to discuss this.

It turns out that our Macy’s visit was one of the most memorable things we did all weekend! And here is why:

These amazing arrows are on all four sides of every directory column, every end of an escalator, on every column, and on every wall. There are probably many thousands of them around the store. And get this: EVERY SINGLE one of them is freely rotatable. You can rotate any one of them without any effort at all. So naturally, every one had one in four chances of pointing in the right direction since every one between the ages of five and 30 are drawn to them and instinctively want to turn them. They stick out of the surface about an inch. Whoever designed these things MUST have wanted this to be a huge social experiment. There is no way this person didn’t know about this amazing ‘feature’.

Oh my gosh! They turn!

An ad I got from Wide Open West

High speed? Who are they kidding?

Pretty bold to "owe" us "Complete Satisfaction" for free

This is from the generic Target pasta package

The new iTunes 7 will use ~60% CPU time while holding down one of the following while iTunes has focus:

• CTRL
• ALT
• SHIFT
• CAPSLOCK
• maybe more?

Its pretty sweet in Ventrilo press-to-talk mode.

I'm glad they know what's important.

These two articles are pretty ownage:

About Microsoft's "Delegates"

Java theory and practice: Garbage collection and performance

I have used Virtual PC for quite some time. I'm really into how easy it is to use.   It used to be made by Connectix. Microsoft was really cool and bought them so that they could compete with VMWare.

Microsoft re-branded Virtual PC, replacing all the Connectix graphics with their own. The application maintained its relatively simple and easy to use interface. It was nice.

Microsoft used the virtual machine technology to create Microsoft Virtual Server. I had never used it or really even knew what it was. But I knew it was made to compete with VMWare's similar product.

So a few months ago I read that Microsoft was giving away a free version of their Virtual Server application. I thought… RIGHT ON! How cool is this? Virtual PC improved and free!

I downloaded the application and ran the installer.

The first thing it says is “This program requires Internet Information Services”. I thought ‘it must be lying'. I just knew that it was bullshit. I was so sure that it must be part of some auxiliary feature that no one would use, or at least that I wouldn't use. So I click the ignore button or whatever and it keeps going.

It finally finishes and I go into the start menu looking for something to run like I don't know… “Microsoft Virtual Server 2006” or whatever. Nothing. NOTHING! I thought “maybe I clicked past some “you need to restart” box and that Microsoft cant write installers worth shit so it would actually finish installing when I rebooted. So I rebooted.

Windows came back up, started like normal. I went into the start menu again, and still nothing. I dicked around for like 20 minutes looking for an EXE or something. I couldn't find a single exe besides the uninstaller. It was insane!

I opened up the documentation looking for the slightest clue as to how the installer must have failed. After looking through, I figured it out!

Apparently the entire application is driven over a web interface! INGENIOUS! The reason it wouldn't work is because A: I was looking for … get this… an application. And B: I don't have IIS installed!

Stupid me. I ignored the warning that it required IIS, and it still let me install even though I didn't have it. Stupid me. I assumed that installing an application would install an application. Stupid me. I thought that Microsoft couldn't completely ruin a good application.

Let's think about the Microsoft development process now. Why make an application into a webpage? Is a web page really the best platform for a Virtual Machine manager? Honestly. HTTP… I can't think of any way you could use hypertext to help improve a virtual machine interface. So obviously IIS is REQUIRED for one to use Virtual Server. There is absolutely no way to use Virtual Server without IIS. Why would it let you continue installing it if there is absolutely no way for it to work? HTTP? WHAT THE @#*!

Any way, I uninstalled it as soon as I could. What a complete waist of time. Microsoft should have saved me the trouble and put across the Virtual Server webpage “This isn't actually an entire application. This is a dll that uses IIS to run.” Thanks Microsoft!

Here’s how!

Using a meta tag named “ProgId” with a content value of the registry key under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT that contains information about the icon. In the registry, you have a key under that ProgId named “HTML Handler”. Under that, you have a key named “Icon”. In that key, you create a new string value using the extension of the file you want to change the icon for as the name, and the data being the file extension that has the icon you want to change to.

You can see in this example I created a new file with an extension HTML. I then specified a ProgId of “testType”. I create a new ProgId in the registry. I pointed to an icon of a text file.

Pretty complicated and completely undocumented: Totally Microsoft.

I was never into Star Wars as a kid. The first Star Wars movie I saw was Episode 1. I really liked it. Then I saw Episode 2. I really liked that one too. Then I saw Episode 3, again, I really liked it.

Ever since the release of Episode 1, I have heard over and over the cry of all the fans of the original Star Wars movies. So many people went on and on about how bad the three new movies were. How bad the acting was. How bad the ‘virtual’ sets were. How unbelievable it was. How the characters ‘came out of no where’ or ‘had no base in the story’.

I thought, hey, maybe I should see these older three movies, seeing as how I loved the new three, so these must be spectacular. I watched Episode 4. It was crap. I laughed at how bad it was as I watched it. I decided not to watch the Episode 5 and 6 because if they were anything like Episode 4, it wouldn’t be worth my time.

I gave in and watched Episode 5 and 6. They were much better than 4, but still no where near as good as 1, 2, and 3. All the reasons I had heard over and over about why the new movies were so bad held true for the originals!

I hate criticizing acting. For one, it’s subjective. And second, most people don’t know good acting any way. And third, people usually use “bad acting” as a reason to hate a movie because they are left with no other reason to say they didn’t like that movie. Obviously this is debatable, but the acting in the original three movies was crap compared to the new three. I’m not saying Harrison Ford or any of the other star cast was bad, but so much of the supporting actors were garbage. And normally I don’t care if the acting is bad, that’s a very small part of a movie. But when people say “Episode 1 sucks because of how horrible the acting is”, they should go back and watch Episode 4 without bias. The acting was miserable.

Virtual sets are amazing. You can create anything in a virtual set. If the lighting matches the blue-screen live action, there is absolutely nothing you can complain about. Some movies have really bad virtual sets. But in episode 1, 2, and 3, I never thought “wow these look like crap”. All the ‘virtual sets’ in the new movies were fantastically done. They were all photo realistic and the lighting always matched. If we go back to the original three movies and look at their ‘virtual sets’ in the form of miniatures and puppets, we can make a pretty good comparison. It’s obvious when they are using miniature sets, props, and puppets in the original movies. In fact, it’s often very poorly done. Yes they were on a limited budget. But don’t say the virtual sets in the new movies were bad if the virtual sets in the old movies were so amazingly bad.

If something is unbelievable in a science fiction movie, and you think that’s bad, get a life.

As for characters ‘coming out of no where’, meaning they were only in one or two of the six episodes, what’s the problem? You could remove characters like Grevis, or Duku and not really affect much. You could continue removing characters. Maybe Laya. She didn’t have much to do with anything. Maybe Yoda. In the scheme of things, he wasn’t really necessary. If you removed all the ‘characters from nowhere’ you would be left with a single short movie. You would also make things boring. Short term plots are fun. Long term plots are fun. Long term plots without short term plots are really boring. Star Trek Voyager’s long term plot, getting home, didn’t need any short term plots. However, they had about 170 of them. They were mostly all great. It made the long term plot a lot more fun. That’s the point of the characters from nowhere. It was nice having the long term plot finished, although I’m sure that episodes 4, 5, and 6 could have been much more entertaining if they had better short term plots.

Until one of the people from ‘the new movies sucked’ crowd gives me a good reason why they really did suck, and one that out ways how crappy the original movies were in the first place, I am going to stick with my belief that those people are crazy. I would bet that if the people who ‘like’ the originals more than the new ones never saw the originals, then saw them after the new ones came out, just like I did, they would think the originals were crap… Just like me.

For about one and a half years I have been using an NEC-Mitsubishi FP2141SB CRT monitor.

Up until recently, every single time the monitor was set to 60 Hz (During BIOS POST, Windows boot, OpenGL Games, DirectX games before it was patched, or manually) the monitor would display this huge warning about how 60hz is really low and that it should be higher, refer to the manual for how to set it. Now if this were in Windows only, I would have no problem. 60 Hz sucks. But during POST, I can’t see any of the information. During Windows boot, it nearly completely covers the Windows logo. And during games, I can’t see shit! It did have a method to exit it, but it was so annoying to exit it all the time.

I called tech support. They said that that window was by design and that it was impossible to disable.

Well I am happy to report that I DISSABLED IT! This may not work for you, but I reset the monitor to factory defaults, and now that box never comes up! Hope this helps at least one other user of this display.

This is the registration page for the US Selective Service. Sexists.

This is a Case Logic USB flash memory holder. They use a plastic that turns opaque white when its folded or bent. I think they probably could have found a better plastic to use.

If it's corrupt, then what's the point in not emptying it? And how did it get corrupt in the first place?

Here we see Microsoft Windows Performance Monitor. I was using this to help locate spyware on a friend's computer. For whatever reason, it just stops recording data for a few seconds.

Yes, I can

Can you guess what product or service this is for?

It’s not anything related to self help. It’s not drug that makes you feel better or a drug at all. It’s not something that will improve your ability to do anything that you couldn’t do before you bought it like a car or tool. If you guessed a small urine leakage pad, YOU’RE RIGHT! The slogan for Poise pads is “Yes, I can”. Totally appropriate.

Digg is a pretty cool website. Digg has lots of frequently updated news, lots of great links, and is pretty great overall. However, the community around digg is pretty… mindless.

For whatever reason, there seems to be some reoccurring topics that keep getting diggs. These are AJAX and Web 2.0. Now AJAX has been around for many years, but up until recently it didn't have a name. Some guy was nice enough to give it a name, a slightly cool name at that. Now it's THE thing to talk about. Anything that uses AJAX, no matter how useless, poorly designed, redundant, old, or crappy in general, is immediately dugg up to the front page. Searching for ‘AJAX”, there are 60 pages, 15 items per page. Most likely 60 pages is the maximum result count. That's an average of 2.0 diggs about AJAX per day. Insane. WHO CARES ABOUT AJAX YOU TOOLS!

Yet another reoccurring theme on digg is “Web 2.0”. Some have even mentioned “Web 3.0”. I have yet to see a single definition of either term. I think its safe to say that it involves AJAX, but it has to be more than just that. I can't think of anything though. I mean I can think of things that people may think is important, like the backend scripting language, data transfer protocols and formats, many things. But nothing that has been around for less than 5 years, which would most definitely have been part of “Web 1.0”. Anyone that uses a word or term without having a definition for it has no reason to use it. If I made up a term like “Internet 6.3b1” and defined it, it would be much more right in using it because it actually has meaning to at least one person. Joel Spolsky says: " The term Web 2.0 particularly bugs me. It's not a real concept. It has no meaning. It's a big, vague, nebulous cloud of pure architectural nothingness.” Correct!

The last thing about digg that bugs me a lot is the comments people leave. Here are some comments from some of the latest digg postings:

“YAY!”, “This isn't new.” (could have rated it old news), “Awsome!!”, “Awesome”, “Digg++”, “Cool !” (notice the space), “Fun stuff. +digg.”, “Great news.”, “nice..”, “i love wikipedia.” (don't we all), “i digg it yo !”, “Fantastic!”, “lol”, “cool”

Do any of these contribute anything to anything? No. Not only did you waste 5 of your seconds and 500 KB of your bandwidth (digg has really HUGE Javascripts if they aren't cached), you wasted 5 of my seconds and maybe 5 KB of my bandwidth. Multiply that by the number of users, and that's … (if you use 3 times the number of a front page digg, 3000 people, reading the comments) 5 hours of wasted time and 16 MB per worthless comment. Multiply that times 10 or so worthless comments per digg, that's 2 days of wasted time and 160 MB of wasted traffic. Thanks for making my day just that much better by making those amazingly awesome comments. Your life--.

Some nearly verbatim quotes from my Civilizations book:

The people from long ago probably ate things.

We can conclude this obvious worthless information and make all these worthlessly useless detailed comments on that information that you probably would have guessed by yourself without us telling you about it because you are obviously smart enough to read or you wouldn't be reading this book.

I am a student in a physics class that is using the text book you and your co-authors wrote. I have a few comments to make about it.

I enjoy the consistency of the book. The style of the images and diagrams (however absurd) are remarkably consistent.

I like the idea that I only ever have to buy one physics book (theoretically) for 3 classes.

The book is well organized.

The URL in the preface of the book is incorrect. It reads "http:www..." this is an invalid URL. You need to have slashes after the colon. It should be "http://www...". I would suggest you look for more competent editors.

The lightning on the cover of the book is obviously added using a computer graphics program and looks amazingly fake. Also, the vast majority of lightning strikes from the ground to the sky. The lightning on the cover of the book looks like it is striking from the sky to the ground. This is unacceptable for a book about physics. Its like me writing a computer programming text book and putting source code on the front that wont compile due to syntax errors.

Claiming that combining two chapters and changing the problems around warrants a new edition is bullshit. These changes CLEARLY do not warrant a new edition. You should be honest with your readers and tell them that a new edition was published so that you would be able to make more money.

Eagerly awaiting your response,
Charlie Hayes

Charlie:  i think YOUR insane
Person:   that's fine
Person:   I make more money than you :)
Person:   and I'm going to bed
Charlie:  good night
Person:   have fun in ny

Of course checking to see if you actually have a modem installed in your computer wouldn't make sense. Most people have 56k I'm sure. WHO HAS 28.8? It's cheaper to get DSL! All major providers have it for less than $20 a month.

I'm Alive [CD-SINGLE] [IMPORT]
I'm Alive Pt.1 (Enhanced) [CD-SINGLE] [IMPORT]
I'm Alive [CD-SINGLE] [ENHANCED] [IMPORT]
I'm Alive [CD-SINGLE] [ENHANCED]
I'm Alive [CD-SINGLE] [IMPORT]
I'm Alive [CD-SINGLE] [IMPORT]

Here is a quote from a foam matress store's website:

During the course of the day, the human body accumulates and stores static electricity. This stored static charge has a negative effect on sleep. Lowering the body's static charge helps the body rid itself of tension and improves the quality of sleep. This is the primary function of the revolutionary Intense cover. Dr. Chris Idzikowsi, one of the world's leading specialists in sleep research, demonstrated that people sleeping on static-reducing Intense were better rested and required less sleep.

Apparently when you get shocked touching a doorknob, you aren't actually disscharging that static charge? Must be so!

Some more single word sentences

Zircon Axia A108

Capture it. Share it.
Save it. Print it.
Work with it. Play with it.
Learn from it. Prepare for it.
Use it. Feel it.
Your life. Your call.

Apple Airport Express

Connect. Print. Listen. Wirelessly

Target

Cool People

An actual person posted this message on digg.com. I think it says a lot about the person's character.

Could Google be making an IM client similar to Trillian. If  they did I would sure use it.

Pictures

Some how the Add Hardware window turned into this.

I don’t know where this picture is from, but it looks like a bee, not a fly as the caption would sugguest.

This is what happened when I was installing iTunes. Our favorite install program InstallShield appears to use something called “InstallDriver”, and that something crashed during the install. iTunes works fine.

A windows painting bug.

What's cool about Microsoft Word is that every time you save a document, it creates a new hidden temporary file in the same directory as the document you’re working on is in. So after you have been working on a document for 2 hours, you have about 20 temp files. What is even cooler is that they only go away when you close Word, so when the not-so-rare and expected crash of word occurs they don't get deleted.

When I change the style of this one image from "Header 1" to "Body Text" it goes into an infinite loop of adding blank pages to the document. It’s totally reproducible too. Quite amusing.

This screen shot was immediately taken after reselecting the style and clicking reapply. Even though the style explicitly states that it should not be italic, it some how is italic! When I click to uncheck the italic toolbar button, it remains italic, even though the button is released. If I move the cursor to somewhere else and then back, the button is again depressed.

I got this awesome message box when Windows shit a brick on me over the weekend. Fortunately it was not on my main computer and reinstalling wasn’t a problem.

Many people have noted that I like to argue. Some say that it's good that I have an opinion. Some say that it's annoying. Some say both. I say that if some one says something that is against what you believe, you are less of a person not to find out why they think differently or argue your point with them.

Some times it is inappropriate to argue. Some times a person's beliefs are really close or one does not have the appropriate domain knowledge to argue with them. However, it is hard for me not to argue against something that, up to this point in my life, my experience overwhelmingly proves my point of view correct over theirs.

In an attempt to counter my arguments, some people tell me that I must be wrong because I am not keeping an open mind and that I wont change my views to suit theirs without supporting evidence.

For example, by definition, momentum equals mass times velocity. Also, by definition, a photon has no mass and has momentum. There is no way that you can make that equation fit that definition of a photon, so one of those MUST be wrong. There is NO possible way to argue to the contrary. NONE! However, two people have argued to the contrary and say that I don't understand and that I must be wrong!

How can I be misunderstanding this? If mass = zero, then momentum must be zero. Maybe something times zero can be something other than zero. Maybe my entire understanding of algebra is incorrect. Maybe everything I have ever been taught and everyone I know that has been taught the same way, as I are wrong. Or maybe the one of the statements is wrong. Which is more likely?

What is more likely is that Newtonian physics falls apart when velocity approaches the speed of light. So if that is the case, teaching Newtonian physics is like teaching what is essentially not true. Don't get me wrong, the calculations involved in a superior method are most likely many times more complex and that the result is nearly the same as the Newtonian physics. Newtonian physics would obviously be more appropriate for computer games or similar simulations where exactness is not as important as speed. However, we should not be teaching (or in my case, I should not have been taught) something that has been known to be incorrect for many years!

As another example, the Amber alert inconveniences millions of people every time child abduction is reported. The statistics publish by the organization responsible for the amber alert state that since the alert was started, over 200 children have been saved! The alert started in 1996, so that means 40 saved children a year. I am pretty sure that more than 40 children are abducted every year, although you would never know that from their statistics. It doesn't say "200 of our 200 broadcasts have ended in success" or "90% have succeeded". Obviously a statement like that would be much more convincing of the success rate of the Amber alert. So the logical conclusion? The amber alert is so UN successful that they withhold vital statistics.

Again, don't get me wrong; I don't want children to die. But if the point is to save lives, then lets broadcast to millions every time any single person's life is threatened. If some one has a stroke, broadcast that a doctor is needed for immediate medical assistance! If some one is going to starve to death, send them food. And just to be fair, we need to broadcast to everyone, not just doctors or people with food. Since 99.99999 percent of the people the Amber alert reaches have no impact on the success of it, we need to make sure that we blanket broadcast so that we can get our success statistics just as low! If we give every person a fair chance at their own alerts, we will be forced to watch more alerts than we can possibly have time to watch. Obviously when you analyze the Amber alert, it's merits break down. Just so you know, I tried requesting statistics on their success rate, but the email address they have posted on their website for more information bounces back.

These two arguments are the big recipients of "I hate arguing with you" rebuttals. If you can refute my logic, please do. I don't want to sound stupid by stating things that are illogical or stupid. However, if you can't back up your claims, don't get mad at me. Arguing is a battle of endurance and logic. If you can't endure some one else's argument, then you lose. If some one else's logic breaks yours, you lose. If you say "I don't like arguing with you" then you are admitting you cannot endure and/or that your logic can be broken; you lose.

I don't want people to be angry with me or think I am annoying, but at the same time I do not want people thinking things that are clearly incorrect. If you have views that I think are incorrect and are not willing to accept that you may be wrong, can't argue your point, don't want to argue at all, or don't have the time, then don't say anything like "your wrong" when I state my opinion, say "okay" or "acknowledged". Then neither of us will be upset! If my views are wrong, prove it, and I will appreciate you making me look less stupid.

UPDATED: I reversed the order and fixed some formatting

From: Charlie Hayes
To: info@u3.com
Subject: U3 benefits?

I was reading through your list of benefits, and I can't find anything different about U3 devices over normal USB Memory drives:

Application mobility:
Any well-written application can run on any type of disk already.

U3 smart software works on any U3 smart drive:
Same as above, 99% of software isn't tied to a specific drive.

Intuitive user interface and application launcher:
Windows Explorer launches applications already, why are you adding another layer? Almost every application launcher in existence is Unintuitive and ugly. The Windows shell already has this functionality anyway!

Private and protected computing:
Already built into Windows using NTFS. Encryption programs have been available for 20 years, how is any of this new?

Seamless launch and exit:
Almost all existing applications have "seamless launch and exit".

Multiple applications on one device:
How is this different than any other USB memory device?

Always mass storage:
I have never had or used a USB storage device that was anything but USB Mass Storage

Easy Deployment:
You can already deploy your application to any type of memory without a special API, now your requiring developers use your API to get the same functionality that was available without it. This is harder, not easier.

-Charlie Hayes

From: Nathan Gold
To: Charlie Hayes
Subject: RE: U3 benefits?

Hi Charlie:

Why don't you give me a call when you have a chance or tell me how to reach you and we can talk.

Until next time,

Nathan Gold | U3 LLC | Sr. Director, Business Development |

From: Charlie Hayes
To: Nathan Gold
Subject: RE: U3 benefits?

If it's ok, I would rather communicate via e-mail.

-Charlie

From: Nathan Gold
To: Charlie Hayes
Subject: RE: U3 benefits?

Hi Charlie:

Actually, since the product is not yet released, you have not signed up as a developer, and we don't have a signed NDA with you, I can only have brief telephone conversations about this technology. Once the product is released to consumers in the stores later this month, I will be free to discuss anything and everything with you via email, smail, or any method you choose.

Until next time,

Nathan Gold | U3 LLC | Sr. Director, Business Development |

From: Charlie Hayes
To: Nathan Gold
Subject: RE: U3 benefits?

I think you misunderstand my interests.

As an educated consumer, I desire a market where companies compete by listing unique features of their products to differentiate them. I do not wish for companies, such as yours, to utilize buzzword marketing in an attempt to persuade un-educated consumers away from competing products. The end result of such marketing is a market where consumers are confused and unconfident in their purchases.

Your current product literature lists universally common features as unique to your product. 100% of current USB Memory devices offer 100% of the features you are touting as unique to your product.

If your product actually has unique features, you may wish to reconsider your marketing tactics and update your product literature to reflect those unique features. If customers such as myself see products such as yours in the store bullet pointing common features, they will simply skip to the more easily identifiable unique features of product such as the price/size ratio and aesthetics of the device in question. If your product only lists unique features, it will most likely be considered more often.

I plead with you to refrain from littering the market with clones that deceitfully list features as unique when they are not.

Educated consumer and developer,

Charlie Hayes