This is just a quickie only because I can't believe the price.

I've been wanting an M-Disc drive ever since I saw the Slashdot article last August.

I was looking for a replacement DVD-RW drive for one of my machines last week when I saw the LG internal SATA version of this drive on NewEgg for $18!

I've ordered discs separately, with a 10-pack costing me $35. And here is why I think this drive isn't going to sell well (and thus is basically on clearance at NewEgg). Most of the discs I burn are disposable. I need to move something to a non-network computer, or need a start-up disc.

A 10-pack of the "forever" discs should last me, well, forever. There are only 3 or 4 CDs/DVDs that I've burned over the years that I've kept over the last decade. Things like tax records, scans of medical records, family history records, etc.

Once the discs show up next week, I'll burn a disc and post a little more in-depth review. But for now, if you ever wanted something like this, NewEgg can't be beat. This drive is still $80 over at Amazon as of today.

Ron Paul has a snowball's chance in Hell of winning the Republican nomination. But he's fighting hard for those delegates. Here is a little speculation as to why.

The Republican Party doesn't like Ron Paul. They've tried their best to marginalize him in the House, to the point of violating their own rules on committee chairmanships. Everything in the House and Senate is done by seniority. Ron Paul is way up there in service years and seniority, but is consistently given non-prime appointments. So Ron is going to flex a little muscle.

Ron Paul has an ace that Newt, Rick S. nor any other Republican wannabe can play. He can take his base and run Independent. He has the organization and can get the money. The rest do not.

Can he win? No. But that isn't the point. He can most likely pull enough Republican voters to cost Willard victory and send President Obama back for a second term.

That is the muscle he'll flex. Give me a substantial concession or I'll pull the plug on the Republicans for 2012. (Turn your head an cough while I just give these a little squeeze, says the Doctor."

And yes, he'd do it. He sees absolutely no real difference between the two major parties, so Mitt would be no better or worse than Barack.

Of course, this is all idle speculation. I have no knowledge of what Congressman Paul is thinking or planning.

But I do find it interesting that the Libertarian Party website on their 2012 candidates was recently changed to simply this:

Things that make you go "hmm...."

http://www.lp.org/blogs/staff/2012-libertarian-presidential-candidates

In a desire to try different interfaces and WMs, I reinstalled my main system with Xubuntu 10.04.

After keeping an eye on the things I use a computer for, I narrowed it down to just the following:

1. SSH terminal to remotely administer stuff.
2. CD/DVD ripping and encoding tools. Mostly MakeMKV and Handbrake for video/BluRay.
3. Lite programming and/or heavy text editing.
4. Gaming (Enemy Territory: Quake Wars)
5. Everything else through a web-browser.

I'm using the 10.04 LTS version of Xubuntu because sound/voice on ETQW dies a horrible death with PulseAudio, which is what is used on newer versions.

However, under XFCE 4.8 using Thunar 1.2, if I browse to a network location and right-click a file and select "edit" it doesn't work. The text editor opens, but I have to make a local copy of the file to work on it.

There doesn't seem to be any network transparency. Is this right? Can anyone who works with XFCE tell me how to fix it? If not, the early 2000s are calling and laughing at you.

And, can anyone recommend a good CD ripping tool that integrates with FreeDB or CDDB?

I foresee an "apt-get install kde-desktop" in my near future.

As a parent you discover there are a couple "big" conversations you have with your kids. They're big in that they really mark a major milestone in their growing up.

The birds & bees is one of them. (Sex, for those of you not used to 1950s euphemisms.) Death is another. For some, divorce can be a biggie.

I just had one with my daughter, aged 23. She has had the opportunity to live at home, comfortably, her entire life and not had to work. School, yes. Gainful employment, no.

I have involved all my kids in financial discussions from an early age, so they know exactly how many hours daddy had to work and where all the money goes. I've never had issues with them demanding things, or doing without if I didn't have the money or it was allocated for something else. An entitlement attitude they don't have.

However, there is still that last step of earning your own way and a few things that just don't sink in until it happens to you.

Today was that day for my daughter. Her first payday after working a real job for 2 weeks. This was the "yes they take that much in taxes" talk.

She called me up and did the math -- 7 hours a day, $10 an hour, 10 days over two weeks is $700. Why is my paycheck $430?

First, you're an hourly employee and you clock out for lunch. That means only 6.5 hours a day or $650 for two weeks. Then there is Social Security withholding, Medicare, Federal and State Income Tax. Keeping 2/3 is about right for you.

After she fumed for 10 minutes, I then reminded her of great-grandma in the nursing home. And that Medicare was covering a good portion of that cost and her Social Security was covering most of her other expenses. And this is where it came from.

I believe she has a new appreciation of just how hard it can be to make a good living and afford to raise a family.

Welcome to the real world, sweetie.

I'm documenting this here so Google may find it. Right now, if I look for this issue, I see tons of reports for Vista and Windows 7 64-bit that has this problem, but little to nothing for Linux.

I believe I was having this problem on Fedora 15, 32-bit, but can't be sure if it was something different or not. I *can* confirm that this issue happened on an up-to-date install of Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot, 64-bit. The current kernel on my machine is 3.0.0-14-generic SMP.

My wireless card is a D-Link DWA-552, H/W Ver A1, F/W Ver 1.10. This uses the Atheros chipset and the Ath9k driver. My wireless network uses DHCP and this card connects as Wifi-N on 2.4 GHz with auto 20/40 MHz channels and WPA2 Personal for security.

If I ping a destination there is a spike every 30 seconds. For example, if I ping my home router, which is my next hop in line, I will see pings on the average of 2-4 ms. However, every 30th ping sees a response time between 900-2000 ms. Every 31st ping is between 200-300ms. After that, the next 28 pings are back in the 2-4 ms range.

This isn't really that noticeable for e-mail or standard web browsing, but it is a KILLER for online gaming.

I replaced the card with a Cisco/Linksys WMP600N and no longer have the problem. It has same configuration except it uses a RealTek chipset with the rt2800 driver and has the option for 5 GHz as well as 2.4.

This leads me to believe it may be an ath9k bug, but I don't have the chops to dig much further. That is now in the mainline kernel and I am loathe to challenge the gods with a user request/bug report. (Mostly because I'm not getting an "Oops" and am only assuming this is an ath9k/kernel issue.)

I'm reading thru how to report a bug and may brave that this weekend.

OpenELEC exemplifies one of the reasons I really like Linux and FOSS. It takes an already excellent product, XBMC, and pares it down to a nub.

In case you're unfamiliar with it, XBMC is a software media player and entertainment hub for digital media. It is available for Linux, OSX, and Windows. In short, it plays damn near anything and has a fantastic interface.

OpenELEC takes nothing away from XBMC except the fat. That is, there is no functionality at all. What it does is pare the OS down to the absolute bare minimum needed to run the hardware and software. Nothing extra.

XBMC has a "live" version based off of Ubuntu-minimal. While small, there is still unneeded cruft. OpenELEC is designed for embedded devices, so there is no Windows or OS-X version. It is designed for OEMs to put on base hardware and deliver media center appliances.

In short, it takes about 105 Mb fully installed on my Zotac HD11, ION-2 based terminal. I have it installed on an SD Flash card and it boots from cold to ready-to-rock in 15 seconds. That is using the ION-optimized build.

If you're looking for decent media center software, do yourself a favor and look at XBMC. If you like it, and are planning on building a media center PC for convenience or technology-challenged relatives, look at OpenELEC.

I watched Sucker Punch last night. In my opinion, it is the absolutely perfect movie -- if you are a typical 15 year old boy.

It has absolutely everything in it a young teenage boy would fantasize about.

There are steampunk, mechanized, zombie psuedo-Nazis. (It was a hybrid WW1-WW2 scene, so I think they were more Kaiser-era Germans than Hitler-era).

There is a battle mech, zeppelins, an orc army, a huge dragon, Japanese anime-esque sword fights w/demons, futuristic bullet trains armed with a nuke and killer robots. Much of that is mixed together in scenes with little rhyme or reason.

To top it all off, a quintet of beautiful protagonists who alternate between enslaved dancing prostitutes and ass-kicking, super-ninja chicks equally at home with samurai swords, .45 caliber pistols, fully-auto never-run-out-of-bullets guns and even lift-it-up-like-Rambo-or-Arnold heavy machine guns. Amazingly enough, they show almost no skin. A bunch of anime-style baby doll outfits, but little actual flesh.

They are advised, of course, by a Kung-Fu style master played perfectly by Scott Glenn.

Oh, yeah. And fairly good music that was usually way too loud.

All of this is thinly wrapped in a double-dream like plot that is nothing more than an excuse for babe-a-licious mayhem.

Not being a 15-year old boy anymore, I found it entertaining but only on my third attempt at watching it. On the first two tries I didn't get 15 minutes in before thinking "WTF? Are they serious?" and turning it off. On my third attempt I was in a much more relaxed mood to begin with and just said "No, they aren't serious. Relax, have another drink and enjoy the (mindless) show."

I went to buy a balloon for my daughter's birthday last weekend and was told the store couldn't get any helium. A shortage currently has driven up prices and right now hospitals and other critical infrastructure have priority when purchasing. Helium is used to cool the magnets in MRI machines.

There is a finite and dwindling supply of helium on planet Earth. The vast bulk of it seems to reside in Texas. It looks to run out in the next 25 - 100 years.

Besides parades featuring large floating cartoon characters, NASA, the military and microprocessor manufacturers are large consumers of helium.

Interestingly enough, the Moon is speculated to have large deposits of helium that have accumulated from the solar wind. Maybe a lack of supply of this critical element on Earth will spur more interest in returning to the Moon.

The United States is on track this year to become a net exporter of oil-based fuels for the first time since 1949. According to data released by the U.S. Energy Information Administration on Tuesday, the U.S. sent abroad 753.4 million barrels of everything from gasoline to jet fuel in the first nine months of this year, while it imported 689.4 million barrels.

The U.S. was a net exporter of petroleum products in six of the first nine months this year, and the trend accelerated in the third quarter, with September data released Tuesday showing net exports of 919,000 barrels per day, more than any month this year.

It should be noted that this article is about refined petroleum products, and not crude oil. The United States imports about 9 million bbls per day of crude oil, which is 49% of total daily consumption. Also, the refining of crude oil by about 6%. So a single 42 gallon barrel of crude will refine out to 45 gallons of various distillates.

While browsing for videos to keep my son busy while I cleaned up after breakfast, I stumbled upon a trailer for Disney/Pixar's upcoming Planes. Think Cars, but airplanes.

I clicked on that, knowing it would keep him quite for a minute while I finished.

Now, Disney has always been big on music. Most, if not all of their animated features could be classified as musicals. It was no surprise to me that the trailer then started out with a song.

But, when out of my speakers emanated the dulcet tones of White Zombie's More Human Than Human, I paused.

WTF?!

If you aren't familiar with it, after about 5 seconds it has a nice "voice over" of a woman working her way up to a good orgasm. There are several versions floating around the internet, if you are interested.

No, they didn't use that part, but still. How exactly are they going to work that one onto the soundtrack? What is the reaction going to be -- especially with some clueless new parents who aren't familiar with Zombie -- when they hear the beat start up from some car in the next lane and it isn't the Disney version? (It is a song meant to be played loud enough to feel the vibrations 3 lanes over.)

This should be fun.

Deviant posted a in the discussion on the front page that I thought it deserved a bit more focus.

There is an article/slideshow on Business Insider that gives a wonderful overview of what much of the Occupy Wall Street people are complaining about.

The system is too far out of whack. I'm all for capitalism, but the path we're on now is unsustainable. The system itself is threatened and that isn't good.

Right now I'm off to the store to pick up a copy of Inside Job. Later, I really need to do some research that correlates large corporate losses with executives who still, after running things into the ground, got paid exorbitant salaries, bonuses and stock options.

A couple signs of the times.

First, the McDonald's Monopoly game that is going on. The grand prize of $1,000,000 says on the advertisement "Give Up The Second Job!" Ouch. *SECOND* job.

Of course, it is paid out in something like $50,000 a year for 20 years but still...

Second, the positions in IT Security that were advertised at my prior place of work drew over 100 respondents each, before I left. Considering we had 9 openings listed, even with some overlap of candidates I am very glad I wasn't the one that had to go through the whole hiring process. There were close to 1,000 total applications!

Finally, Walmart is bringing back lay-away for this holiday. They did away with it a few years back but it looks like they're expecting year-end sales to be slow. It is just for limited sets of items, but that limit includes toys, clothes and electronics. There is a $50 minimum. People are reluctant to whip out the plastic -- assuming they have any available.

A couple of weeks ago, shortly before Amazon announced the Fire, I purchased a Skytex Skypad Alpha. Here are my impressions.

First, I chose the Skypad because it was the best on paper of the cheap, 7" Android tablets. I was looking for a 7" tablet for my 3-year-old son so he can watch cartoons when we're traveling. I didn't want to deal with a portable DVD player because disks get scratched and lost. I've gone down that road before and it wasn't worth it.

At $155 it was worth experimenting with. In addition to a portable media player for my son, my wife could use it.

Unfortunately, the quality seems to be off. My biggest complaint is that I can't seem to find any way to calibrate the touchscreen. I need to, because entering anything with the on-screen keyboard is impossible. Even using a stylus for the resistive screen won't let me enter anything of length without numerous errors. My WPA key was impossible to enter.

A quick summary is that Android 2.3 isn't designed for tablets. Google knows that but some of the others who are trying to make Android tablets on the cheap and avoid paying for Google's kit are turning a blind eye towards it.

For what I wanted it for -- a 3 year old to bang on and select his own videos that are loaded on a MiniSD card -- it is a solid C-. It works, but isn't great for much else and I won't be disappointed when he eventually trashes it.

However, all that was before Amazon announced the Kindle Fire at $199. There is no way I can see anyone in their right mind paying $150 or so for the Skypad when for an extra $49 you can get the Fire. If they knock the price down to $99, then yes. Short of that, I can't recommend this unit at all.

For anyone who reads this, and is looking for a job in InfoSec, here are two openings:

U.S. International Trade Commission IT Specialist (INFOSEC) (Washington, DC)

State of Florida INFO TECH BUSINESS CONSULTANT MGR. (Tallahassee, FL)

[Note: This is a cross-post of something I wrote on Google+]

In the past couple of weeks there were some high-profile calls by wealthier people -- Warren Buffet and Matt Damon (the actor), to name two -- to increase taxes on the rich. They *want* to pay more taxes.

My question is this. Why don't you do it yourself?

I mean, set up a 401(c)(3) tax-exempt charity that will accept donations from everyone, rich and not-so-rich alike. Those funds are then taken and distributed as taxes would be.

For example, taxes pay for our schools. There are no shortage of stories where teachers have to provide, out of their own pocket, extra supplies for their classes. Pay for those directly. Pay for school maintenance and repairs. Build buildings. Hell, give bonuses to teachers, administrators and staff as you feel needed. The first $15,000 of a gift to an individual annually is tax-exempt. I don't know one teacher that would refuse a $15k bonus.

A focused, dedicated group of private individuals should easily be able to reduce the needless bureaucracy and do this efficiently.

Don't stop with education. Provide private grants to needy people to subsidize power, heat and food. Build libraries. Set up public wireless networks.

Taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society. But the idea that government is the only one able to provide these types of services is harmful to society.

In 19th-Century French Philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville's book Democracy in America, the author explores what makes America different from Europe. One of the major points is the plethora of "fraternal societies" where individuals join and do what was once the function of only governments in Europe -- actively build and support civil society.

To sum up, it is not necessarily only the government's job to do these things. Fostering the notion that this is the exclusive domain of government is detrimental to a civilized society.

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma04/mccain/fraternalorders/page1a.htm