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Vol. 7, No. 32
8-24-07
1 Online civility part II
2 Black death
3 Google Galaxy, political youth pandering, Wal-Mart drops DRM, buggy whips
4 Pong for the modern age
5 Windows reload glitch
The web is rife with rudeness and textual cruelty but nowhere is that more obvious than political forums, at least if you read other political forums. According to many political sources the most vehement and partisan textual cruelty can be found at www.freerepublic.com and www.dailykos.com. If you’re a fan of Bill O’Reilly on Fox News you’ll think that Kos is nothing but a pack of bloodthirsty “liberals” out to hang all “conservatives” and plunge the nation into a Socialist dystopia.
These two websites are, in fact, the reason this newsletter is late this week. I’ve been rooting through topic after topic on both sites since Tuesday and the following quotes are the worst I’ve found. In reality, both sites seem to host people who enjoy intelligent rational discourse, or at the very least playful kidding, rather than any rabid online nastiness.
DailyKos on the ousting of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki:
“Kick out the democratically elected leader of the nation that we "freed from oppression?"
WMD's, Sadaam, "Terrists," "Democracy.."
What's the next excuse for the ongoing clusterf*** in Mesopotamia?
Saving an endangered butterfly?
Bush supporters heads should be exploding across the country from the cognitive dissonance.
There must be something in the water..”
FreeRepublic on John Warner’s call to bring home the troops and the media reporting of it:
“Warner is a dim bulb, he brought this on himself. His comments were stupid and he gave the enemedia a chance to use his stupidity to spew more propaganda. NBC is the worst in pushing propaganda...remember, Tim Russert filed a false affidavit in the Libby case, he is NOT to be trusted. Brian Williams is simply an idiot...so we have to excuse him (or better yet)
ignore him.”
Not the most pleasant posts I’ve ever seen but I’d hardly call them anything beyond slightly rude.
Other media seems to be far worse. Professional pundits Bill Maher and Dennis Miller are hosts of TV and/or radio shows and frequent contributors to various news outlets and their statements can often be caustic.
Dennis Miller on international military assistance in Iraq:
“You know something, if they couldn't — I say we invade Iraq and then invade Chirac. You run a pipe -- you run a pipe from the oilfield right over this Eiffel Tower, shoot it up and have the world's biggest oil derrick. We got a picture of it right here. Yeah. Listen, I would call the French scum bags, but that, of course, would be a disservice to bags filled with scum.”
Bill Maher on Vice President Cheney:
"I
have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying
needlessly tomorrow… I’m just saying if
he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact."
Much
worse, or as Keith Olberman of MSNBC would say, “Worse and Worser”.
The worst, however, have to be the cable network hosts mentioned above. It’s no secret that there’s no love lost between Olberman and O’Reilly, but the following videos show just how outrageous they both can be. At least Keith is well spoken, but he has writers I’m sure ;)
Bill O’Reilly on illegal aliens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3U9ENaTPLY
Keith Olberman on O’Reilly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IN__q9s4GOg
If people actually take these attitudes to heart is it any wonder they think rudeness is proper?
Next week I’ll talk with some local and state politicians about negative ads, yet another source of “rudeness training”…
Now, on a separate note, families of the miners lost in the disaster in Utah. In that incident one side says an earthquake caused a cave-in while the other side says the cave-in caused the seismographic readings, but the end result is the same. Six miners lost and presumed dead and three more brave men who tried to rescue them dead with even more injured.
At this point the cause is irrelevant, the families and co-workers have grief to deal with. The coming days and months will deal with the cause. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the folks affected and to the families in Kentucky and elsewhere whose loved ones work in the dangerous jobs.
Kevin Mefford, Editor
Terry Wise
Tech News of the Week
Google has already conquered
Earth. Now, the world's most popular
search engine is turning its attentions to the heavens:
http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article2886382.ece
In an appeal to the coveted youth vote in the
upcoming presidential
elections, MySpace and MTV announced Thursday that they have joined
forces for a series of "one-on-one dialogues" with all the major
candidates from both political parties:
http://news.com.com/8301-13577_3-9764866-36.html
Wal-Mart, the largest music retailer on the
planet, is set to offer
DRM-free mp3 files in an attempt to capture part of the iPod-owner
market:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070821-worlds-largest-music-retailer-ditches-drm-not-censorship.html
A Microsoft executive addressed the recent Skype
outage on Tuesday by
comparing VoIP to early automobiles in a horse-drawn world. Buggy
manufacturers were not available for comment:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/07/08/21/Microsoft-says-Skype-outage-shows-work-to-be-done_1.html
Copy us on the good stuff
Matthew Dattilo
thepcgurus@gmail.com
http://mattstodayinhistory.podshow.com
Download of the Week
In the movie "WarGames", Dr. Falken has a computer that asks, "Shall we play a game?” I think we should, so we can beat the heat.
PlasmaPong is a shining example of what a George Mason University student can do when he applies his higher math skills. I can only describe this game as the Barry Bonds of Pong, meaning that it has been greatly enhanced.
Student Stephen Taylor created a version of "Pong", one of the earliest video games that features a simple screen with a ball blipping between two paddles -- and made it graphically beautiful. Electronic music accompanies the display as colors dance amid the plasma current.
There is a free version for Windows and Mac OSX here:
You can watch a YouTube video of the game here:
Go
ahead, waste some time. You deserve it.
Art
Maley
Email
Question of the Week
Q: I have
read your past e- mails and found out how to access the CD-ROM
drive for a Dell computer with Windows XP. When it gets to the setup
and asks me to type "r" or "windows setup" or
"exit" it won't let me
go any further. Any ideas?
A: From this question and your earlier email I
assume you have a machine
that boots to Windows but has some sort of problem and you want to
reload it to try to fix the problem, is that correct?
Regardless, it sounds like the hard drive may be failing which
would cause problems with an existing load as well as hang or crash a
reload from the boot CD. If you have backups you can go ahead and try
to run a diagnostic program on the hard drive. If you can gain
physical access to the drive the manufacturer and model number should
be on it and all drive manufacturers have diagnostic tools available
on their websites. Download one to another machine if needed and make
a bootable disk, then boot your PC from that and follow the
instructions to determine if the drive is bad.
Email me back if that advice doesn't apply to your issue and let
me know what you're trying to accomplish with this reload and I'll try
to help further...
Kevin Mefford
Contact
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