Many of my friends/fans will notice a new person popping up as a fan in the next few days. I'll also start posting in your JEs. So hopefully you'll recognize the snetiments and style. This account will probably be used strictly for toying with the retarded Scott Lockwood trollbots and finally go dormant for a while. Maybe I'll pop up again like Twirlip of the Mists! ;P It's been fun folks. See you on the other side.

To the trollbots. Get a sense of style guys. Even I can troll better than you can and I'M NOT A TROLL!

A challenge: Anyone care to try and analyze my posts content and see if they can track me down? I will give you a few clues. I have five accounts on Slashdot. You'd be surprised at one of them if you have any familiarity with my T4D posts. ;P Finally... *time is of the essence* Let's see if the trollbot slashtards can figure any of this out.

In fact... I think I will.

I have to do a little research, but my wife read last week that in a poll (for what they're worth) that asked what religion Americans identify with across the country, the answer was 41% evangelical/fundamentalist christianity. Sorry, but that just frightens me. When nearly half of the population of the U.S. believes in such a damaging and destructive faith, we are in SERIOUS trouble. It also goes far in explaining why this country is so fucked up. These people need to be educated and shown why their beliefs are extremist and in many cases flawed. It's one thing to believe in god and be nice to people. It's something entirely different to think that your chosen faith is the only game in town and everyone else is destined for hell and damnation. I'm going to see if I can find this poll to link here. Honestly. I thought that in 2004 we'd have less of that thing rather than more.

Update: The closest I could find was this link at ABC.com. Even though it's not quite 40% it's still a little alarming. The numbers break it down a bit more across various demographics. And if I'm being completely and unabashedly honest, it's the WHITE evangelicals that frighten me more than the non-white. Either way, it's still unnerving.

Before anyone jumps to any conclusions about this being a right vs. left thing, I'll say that it's not. I'm specifically asking about personal opinion. If you want to bring up BJs in the oval office vs. coke snorting political marionettes, that's your own look out. The other thing I'll say is that there seems to be a lot of difficulty discussing anything related to sex on /. I haven't figured out why, since contrary to popular belief, many of us "geeks" get some on a regular basis. But it does seem that "geeks" have a problem with actually openly discussing sexuality with people they don't know closely. Odd.

My personal feeling is that drugs are a worse vice than sex because of the damage they do to the most important part of your body: the brain. Sure, you COULD get an STD (possibly life threatening) from casual sex, but if your brain is in good working order, there are plenty of ways to prevent that. I've had a good number of sex partners and was smart enough to know how to avoid STDs, so I know it can be done. On the other hand, every person I know who has fallen victim to drug use has either had a tragic end to their lives, or is miserable now. I've had drug using friends go to jail for committing crimes that were the result of impaired judgement. I've had friends who are currently struggling to get out of poverty but are finding it difficult because they never made it through college due to their drug habits. Being in their mid 30s and having police records doesn't help either. The friends who indulged in very extreme sexual behavior have come out of it just fine. No STDs. No criminal record. And in every case, just a normal life (at worst) where they are now married and have some kids. However, here is the most telling fact in my opinion: the sex focused people can still indulge in their "vice" with no negative impact on their lives whereas the drug focused people seem to fall lower and lower the more they indulge. The only solution for the drug focused people is to completely stop using (a few of my friends fall into this category) otherwise they continue to decline.

What do you think?

DISCLAIMER: If you find profanity offensive, move along.

This is kind of a fill in poll. This morning when I was headed into work, some asshole cut me off and I went into one of my Tube Bar text strings:

"Why you motherfucker cock sucker! Ya yellow rat bastard! You'd fuck your own mother for a nickle you sonuvabitch"!

That always has the effect of putting a smile on my face.

Anyway I started thinking about me and some of my friends and how we actually all have personal curses that we use when we get REALLY pissed off. Back in high school one of my friends had a few choice ones:

1. Geezus CHEEESEBURGERS!!!
2. Ohhh..... COCK!!! (Usually said in a rage with a fairly lengthy pause between both words)
3. What a ball jockey!

Recently another friend of mine came up with one he was particularly happy with:

1. Why that god-cocking mother... (Again said in a rage)

He also has this one:

1. God Mutha.... (Said with a strained voice. Interestingly it's not really a curse per se...)

Still another friend has:

1. What a bunch of asscocks!

Myself, I've got:

1. Mudra Fakah! (Must roll the R)
2. That's just nadtacular! (Said in a mild rage)
3. You sack! (Said with derision. Imagine applied to Metzler.)

My wife uses:

1. Aahhhh... EAT ME! (When someone is bullshitting here and she wants them to know)

So what about you? Do you have any favorite personal curses?

Read this and tell me what you think. I think it's cool AND stupid. Oh... and don't tell me it grosses you out. I'm not going to stand for that sort of thing. We are Devo.

There is a tendency for human beings to assume that everyone else is just like them. It's kind of hard to NOT do that, but eventually we all are able to accept that people CAN be different to varying degrees of success. With that out of the way...

Are there not more geeks who got their start as electronic musicians on Slashdot? I've posted a few JEs and comments over the years and in my various accounts that are related to electronic music. But, I usually get very few responses. Part of me feels like this can't possibly be right as electronic music and technology are virtually married. Hell... that's how I first learned hexadecimal. My old Ensoniq Mirage sampler required that you could count from 0-256 in hex if you really wanted to get anywhere with it. Understanding the signal flow of audio and the routing in a MIDI network translates pretty readily to ethernet networking equipment. Using a computer to make music basically gets you about 75% of the way to being able to be a good network admin at the very least.

Am I wrong in assuming that there must be more geeks here who got into IT via electronic music? Am I falling into that old trap of human nature of assuming that everyone else is like me? I can't be THAT unusual!!!

On another topic: How many of you who are being pretty vocal about voting for Bush actually plan to vote for Kerry secretively? I've talked to a few close friends who have been republicans for a long time, but they aren't happy with Bush. They've told me that they are planning to vote for Kerry but they have Bush signs and stickers on their cars and in their front yards because they need to keep up the appearance. I found this very facinating because it doesn't make much sense. But it leads me to wonder are there more than just the handful of friends I have who feel the same way?

After having worked professionally with computers since 1997 and having gotten only one professional certificiation (an NT4 MCSE which was dead simple to get), I've often wondered about going back to school to get a CS degree. But is it worth it for a 34 year old guy to do this?

My college degree was a BS in Communication (Telecomunication with emphasis on audio production) and was basically just to appease my folks. I've been out of college for over ten years now and the degree only really helped me in terms of being resume helper. Considering that it wasn't a hard science and I suck at math, I imagine I probably have a good deal of catching up to do before I could even pursue a Master's in CS. The thing is that over the past seven years, I've picked up a lot about networking, general OS support, scripting in CMD, Bash, Perl, a little TCL and programming in C (my big project is to really do a lot of C after the kid is born). Computers as a profession never occurred to me before because I mostly used them for music and graphic design. But once I moved to Linux, I got bit by the bug and started to play with computers at a much more advanced level and found it to be enjoyable. The whole D.I.Y. feel of the *nix OSes is much more fun than just using applications on Windows. So... the big question, should I try and take this interest and really hone my skills by getting a CS degree.

Finally, the setback. Like I said earlier, I suck at math. Not that I don't understand it, but I have a severe problem seeing my own mistakes unless someone points them out to me. Once, when I was taking a geometry class in undergrad school, I would literally check my work five times over. This made what should have been a 45 minute homework session more like 4-5 hours. But, I STILL couldn't catch my mistakes. When I would go in to talk to the teacher, they would instantly spot the error. usually a set of transposed digits or a minus sign instead of a plus sign. Even today, when I write something in Perl or Bash, I will make mistakes that I can't see... until the machine points them out. Fortunately, since the machine points them out, I "get" the problem and can usually fix it about 99% of the time. But working with computers hasn't required much actual math for programming in C or writing scripts in Perl/Bash. Instead it seems that logic is much more important and at that I excel. I knew this back in undergrad when I took a deductive logic course and aced it without trying while the rest of the students bemoaned their Cs Ds and Fs. So... in the "real world" of programming, how much math (as in figuring out the calculation before the computer can tell you that you made a mistake) is required?

OK. Hopefully that got your attention. Especially those of you who are electronic musicians like me. I am riding high right now because I just compiled and installed Linuxsampler along with it's GUI interface "QSampler" (can be found in a link from the Linuxsampler page). What is this, you may ask me? And I will tell you... it's a software based sampler akin to the Tascam Gigasampler product for Windows. It's in ALPHA right now, so it's not exactly stable, full featured or reliable. But it's a VERY nice start to something that is likely to beat the pants off of Gigasampler and hardware based turnkey systems. I should know since I've worked with the following samplers:

1. Ensoniq Mirage
2. Emu Emulator III
3. Emu Emax
4. New England Digital Synclavier
5. Roland S550
6. Roland S760

It's quite exciting to see my P4 outperforming my own Roland S760 in terms of sound quality and polyphony. I paid $2400 for the S760 back in 1994 and you'd be hard pressed to find a used one these days for less than $1500, they're that good. But, with the style of playing I have, you can go through 24 notes of polyphony pretty fast. That means it can be a pain to sequence your stuff in muptiple passes from MIDI to audio tracks just to emulate more notes of polyphony. After seeing this program, I'm hoping that within the next few years, my studio will be completely inside my PC with only an 88 key weighted action MIDI keyboard as the interface. It looks like Linuxsampler is going to support Gigasampler and Akai sample formats which opens up a pretty decent library of sounds. However, it would be REALLY awesome to be able to get my hands on old Fairlight samples... :)

I'm happy! Happy!! HAPPY!!!!

Bill and Steve,

I know you guys have a lot on your plate with Windows right now, but I thought I would try and make your life a little easier by solving the piracy problem for you. I've worked out a plan to completely put an end to piracy of Microsoft products and it's just a modification of your current licensing scheme!

Ever since you guys moved to using Windows registration combined with license keys, you've certainly put somewhat of a roadblock to piracy in place. But, people are still pirating Windows. You know that and I know that. I think part of the problem is that you guys were a little soft on the issue. If you really want to stop piracy of your products try this:

1. Keep track of every one of those codes in a database
2. Require that all Windows machines have an always on or "phone home" connection to the internet. No internet? No Windows.
3. Disable a Windows installation if any one of those codes was not generated by MS, thereby destroying all registration key generators
4. Disable multiple Windows installations if there are duplicate registration codes/software keys
5. Get rid of Volume License Key versions of Windows
6. Require users with disabled copies of Windows to buy a new registration key at the full price of a new copy of Windows. This can be extended to people who originally had pirated copies so that they don't lose the data they have on that machine.

These simple changes would most assuredly end Windows OS piracy because it would no longer be possible for people to install Windows on multiple systems without MS's knowledge. This is good because it would end piracy as we know it today. This could be extended to MS software such as Office as well. People would complain but that doesn't really matter as the end goal is to end piracy. Or is it???

UPDATE: I will note that no one seems to want to touch this topic with a ten foot pole. Is it because no one really wants to stop piracy? Including the big companies that purport to loathe it? Is because a lot of you are afraid of being caught with a pirated copy of Windows or other Microsoft products? Is it because a lot of you don't want piracy to stop since it is how you acquire some or all of your software?

Having watched just how much the Bush administration has screwed Iraq reminds me of something very similar that happened a few years back in a local business. It wasn't reported on the news because it was pretty much unknown to anyone outside of the business. I had a friend who worked for a company that hired out to do lots of different types of computer related technical work. In general, they had a fair reputation and got all sorts of things done. Migrations, mass deployments of workstations and servers, etc. This one friend had gotten employment in this firm through a friend of his who we will call X. Even I was invited to come and work for this firm since X vaguely knew me from previous business. I declined because the position I had at the time was very stable and in the public sector.

This firm assigned X and my other friend to a transportation company that was migrating from Unix to Windows. X had connections through family and friends that had gotten him into this firm in the first place. Even though his technical skills weren't quite up to par (don't tell him that) for this project, he still got the assignment. So... I heard about the progress of this migration over the course of a few weeks. Initially things seemed to be progressing slowly. Not much work was getting done other than the movement of some hardware. Then there were other delays that were, as far as I could gather, stalling tactics in order to distract people from the fact that X had no plan for the migration at all.

I kept talking to my friend about X and found out that there was also some dirty dealings going on. Systems were being pilfered for personal gain and hardware was going home. I heard that X and a few of his friends were the beneficiaries of the missing systems. Then, one day, X didn't show up for work. It was advantageous because he was to be fired that day. The people at the firm had figured out that something wasn't right about X and were getting ready to ditch him. But X was warned ahead of time by one of his connections and already had started working at another company. Meanwhile, my friend and the few people who weren't friends of X were left to complete the migration which turned out to be a disaster in the end.

The client was left with a system that didn't work and more than likely had to contract out with someone else to clean up the mess. Meanwhile X moved on to another cushy "tech" job where he didn't do anything other than outsource all of his responsibilities at the company's expense. The only reason X hasn't faltered is that he really does have vast connections in the local business world that were established by his father and grandfather. All he has to do is coast along in pseudo tech jobs "managing" other people.

Bush is very much the same exact type of person as X and Iraq is a lot like that failed migration. I suppose that some conservatives might change their tune if there was a "quarterly report" issued about the president's performance in the handling of Iraq that was formatted in corporate style and sourced with info from outside of the US media. But then again maybe not since they don't seem to trust anything that isn't in line with their views.

In light of the dumbed down quality of radio and television in un-America, are there any audio or video feeds in Real format that any of my friends or foes would like to recommend?

A few years back, before the bubble burst, I used to watch some movies from movieflix.com. However, when they went to a pay service with very few free streams, I lost interest. Most of the stuff there is not worth paying to see.

The other place I frequent is The Internet Archive's Prelinger Film Collection. It can be kitchy fun to watch those old outdated hygeine films from the 40s and 50s. Or the clips about the great "future" with flying cars and robots.

For good, relaxing "space music", I go to Hearts of Space which is Linux friendly as it has RealMedia streams. This is the perfect way to relax on a Sunday night before the start of the week. If it's not on your local Public Radio station, then you should look into the streams available in neighboring cities. The show features mostly instrumental music with which you can typically relax and zone out. The progams vary in theme from classical to world beat, electronic to jazz, folksy to sacred. I've been listening since before they went into syndication. My first listen was in 1982 when I was 12, and I've continued to follow the program as I can. A+++

For decent news that you can trust slightly more than the "news" in un-America, great music compared to Clear Channel crap, and radio shows that we don't really have here anymore, there is BBC Radio. It's a shame that radio here in un-America is in such bad shape. All they play is worthless news-o-tainment, and shit "music". NPR and Public Radio Internation have some interesting programming, but since their funding is pretty low because most Americans are too stupid to appreciate real music, news and entertainment, the donations don't come flooding in. At least in the UK, the Beeb is funded from a tax that provides Auntie with a richer base for decent production. Oh... and the Brits tend to be a lot more literate than your typical citizen in un-America, so they appreciate programming of a higher caliber. Check out Radio 2 and Radio 7!

So... those are a few things I've found for entertainment, but I want more... Are there any local TV stations from around the world that netcast over RealVideo? There used to be, but I'm having more and more trouble finding them. I'd love to be able to see some programming from outside of the U.S. So far eDonkey has been the only ticket, but I'd really like to know if there are live streams of anything. eDonkey allowed me to see "The Worst Week of My Life", by far one of the funniest comedies I've seen in a long time, in March about a week out of sync with it's original air dates. BBC America is just starting to run it now. If you get BBC America, watch this series, it's hilarious!!!

Out!

Due to my somewhat harsh, but called for troll in one of his JEs last night, Brent Metzler foed me. I am happy about this because it is well deserved. I don't like the arrogant sack. Not one bit. He opposes everything and everyone that I stand for, therefore it's really apt for me to be on his foes list. He's a self-centered, egotist who doesn't regard people beneath him as his responsibility. He is a perfect example of what's wrong with the U.S. today. Too many people are too busy thinking about themselves and not asking themselves these questions:

-How can I help those who have less than I do?
-How can I make life easier for people who don't have all the opportunities I have?
-How can I make the world a better place for everyone regardless of their social, economic, or racial background?

Instead he represents the worst un-America has to offer. He represents people who are soley focused on their own personal gain. These are people who ask the following questions:

-How can I make sure that the deck is stacked in my favor?
-How can I make certain that any wealth I accumulate is always in my possession even if I can live without it?
-How can I set the system up in such a way that those people over there who don't have what it takes are filtered out and any benefit from the system comes only to me and my friends?

I don't want to be on Brent's team. I want to be on the team that is going to be more beneficial to everyone on the planet as a whole. That means, native Americans, the peoples of the African continent, Aborigines, South American Indians, the people struggling to get out of poverty in every nation on the planet, basically the underdog. Brent Metzler and his lies only serve to help the people who want to screw anyone who doesn't belong to a certain class, or look and act a certain way. Who wants to be associated with people like that other than damaged un-American jerks? People like Brent are damaging the United States and it's global reputation. Remember, humans live on the planet Earth, not just the United States. I'm an Earthman first and a REAL American second. Brent is just a fucking jerkwad.

This should really be a story submission on the front page,but considering how poorly run Slashdot is, it would never make it. Like I care at this point.

My move from Windows to Linux was precipitated the first time that I saw the Enlightenment Window Manager and G.I.M.P. At that point, I'd been working on Windows 3.1 and then 95a. I was using Windows for audio production (because I couldn't afford a Mac) and desktop publishing. My most used applications were Cakewalk Pro Audio, Wave for Windows, CoolEdit, Adobe Photoshop 2 and then 3, Aldus Pagemaker (later became Adobe) and Goldenhawk Technology's CDRWIN. I started off with a 486 DX2 66 with 16 Megs of RAM in August of 1994 and DOS 6.22/Win 3.1. Then I progressed to a 486 DX4 100 with 32 Megs of RAM, and Windows 95a. I also upgraded from cheapo IDE to a SCSI disk system.

With Windows 3.1, I really felt like I was slumming it compared to Mac OS 7 from my college years or even my Atari 1040ST. In word, the user interface sucked ass. When Windows 95 came out it was a nice improvement, but it still needed work. What was particularly frustrating was when I found out how little effort had been put into the MIDI subsystem of Windows 95. It was basically carried over from Windows 3.1! That was when I decided that Microsoft cared only for the business world and not the creative media world (which was growing in import at the time). I got sick of the promises from Microsoft and sent in a letter telling them they'd better start paying attention to musicians and artists if they ever want to be taken seriously by us. However, I knew this would fall on deaf ears because business is where they think they can make more money. They didn't seem to realize that many of the creative folk who AREN'T in business was willing to drop hundreds or thousands on our tools in one pop without batting an eye if the tools are good.

I'd played around with Unix and VMS in college and when a friend at my first real job out of college introduced me to Linux I gave it a try. At the time, Linux was pretty hard to get going, but I did it and was intrigued. I couldn't get X running though, so back to Win 3.1 and my Mac emulator. But as time went on I kept my eye on Linux. Then one day in 1997, I saw the Enlightenment Window Manager and realized Linux was where I needed to be no matter how hard it was to set up. I installed Redhat 4 and then set out to try out Enlightment. I finally got it installed and running after a week of reading and trying to understand what I was doing. The end results were truly rewarding. What had previously been a boring old Windows 95 system was now a much more reliable and powerful desktop with a lot of great eye candy.

My other goal was to try out G.I.M.P. Since it came with the OS distribution, I just ran it and played with it. The reasons I was using Photoshop (digital image manipulation) were more than suited to GIMP and I was sold. I never bought another Adobe product again.

Within the first six months I discovered SAMBA, IP Masquerading/NAT, and Apache. Since I was also learning how to work with Windows NT 3.51 and 4.0 on the job, I soon realized I could have the same functionality at home for free. Since I'm not rich and am completely opposed to piracy, I saw an instant appeal in Linux that went beyond the initial eye candy (Enlightenement) and killer app (GIMP) phase. Now, there is no going back for me. The only thing that has kept me dealing with Windows at home is audio and video production. In the Spring of 2004 I finally got my pro audio interface (An Echo Layla 20) working in Linux. I've been playing around with it for a bit. Technically, Linux, at the OS level, is farther ahead than Windows in the audio/MIDI realm. The application realm is starting to progress, but there are still things I am missing from Windows or the Mac. However, at thisd point, I only have one installation of Windows XP here at home. It's on my audio/video workstation. If the apps move further along within the next year or two, Windows will probably disappear from my life other than work.

What about you?

Update: Hell and bat's doos. I forgot to enable comments earlier. Thanks Sam.

The senior project for my computer engineering degree is to implement a new medium access protocol, that our professor has developed, on an 802.11 wireless network card as a replacement for CSMA/CA. What we need to determine is what hardware is it feasible to disable the current access protocol and implement the new protocol on. Once we know what to buy then the university can acquire it. So if anybody knows which type of card I should use, and how to get ahold of the tools for it I would appreciate it.
If you don't want to reply in a public forum you can email me: briankimmel{}gmail.com