Take a look at these posts:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171402&cid=14275722
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171402&cid=14275536
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=171402&cid=14275425

I have now entered WalMart three times in my life.

Before I go on I should mention that I really don't have time to be shopping today. I am moving today and tomorrow. I have other things to do.

Yet I was a WalMart today at 4:10 am. The prospect of a $378 laptop was too much to resist. There were about a hundred people in line in front of me. Assuming that they didn't all want a laptop I figured that I would be ok.

Wrong.

First, the line got mysteriously thicker as time went on. There were easily 300 people in front of me when the doors opened at 5:00 am. This does not include the people that stood in the parking lot and simply sprinted at the door when it opened. What kind of jerk do you have to be to do that?

Second, they put the laptops in the grocery area. At least this is what I was told. I never saw a laptop box. I went to the electronics area which was a mob scene but lacked laptops for some reason. According to a helpful WalMart employee, the laptops were gone from the grocery area before I got into the store anyhow.

Now if you claim to be selling a sub-$400 laptop but can't/won't sell anywhere near as many as people want then you really aren't selling such laptops. You are simply claiming to. Maybe if they offered rainchecks I would believe them, but they don't and thus I am convinced that it is a scam. Classic bait and switch.

I walked out of WalMart at 5:10 am vowing to never return. Unless they will give me a raincheck, which isn't going to happen.

This GNAA Troll is karma whoring using something I posted a year ago!

So I found the Apple iTunes developer stuff. Contrary to what I remembered it is free to download the API for iTunes. While they give you working code, it is pretty ugly as far as being a visualization. I have hacked it a bit to get a feel for it and have re-implemented the effect that I created way back when by rewiring an Apple // monitor and running my the wires to my stereo speakers through the coils.

So if you have a Mac you can see it. This similar to the WinAmp viz I posted before, but this version is much better. It scales properly and is green on black. Grab it here:
http//www.angelfire.com/games4/anirak/iTunesX_Visualizer.bundle.zip

As usual, unzip the file and place it in the user/Library/iTunes/iTunes Plug-ins/ directory.

If the direct link doesn't work, there is a link in the "links" section towards the bottom of this page

As I put more effort into this I will probably make a page for it, maybe on a .mac account. We'll see what happens.

Edit: corrected second link. It is probably the one to use.

After much hassle with FedEx the Mac mini showed up yesterday. The box it comes in is smaller than any desktop I've seen other than the Cappuchino that I never use.

I plugged everything in and it worked as expected. I began to see the beach ball quite a bit though when multi-tasking, so I decided to go ahead and buy a gig of ram for it.

Luckily, MicroCenter is about a 10 minute walk and a 4 minute drive away. I grabbed the ad at the door and saw that they had a gig of PC3200 for $139. This was a steal. When I finally found it though I was upset. It was a "kit", which wasn't mentioned in the ad. This means that it was actually two 512MB sticks. Only one slot in the mini, so I got a gig stick of PC3200 for $199. The mini takes PC2700, but I've seen rumours that it doesn't take all PC2700. Plus, the PC3200 was cheaper.

I then went to the hardware store since I don't have any puddy knives. They had one type that was thinner and a second type that was thicker but had a sharpened edge. I bought two of the thinner ones, since my experiements with a razor knife had shown me that it wasn't easy to get anything in the edge. Maybe the sharpened ones would have worked better, but they were pretty thick. Anyhow it is not easy to open the thing. It took me over 15 minutes, and I can't say that I didn't leave some little marks. I don't think anyone would notice, but I did. Having two knives made it easier, but once you get one in one side it is hard to get anything in the other side.

I finally got it open and popped the memory and put the new stick in. It works fine.

My first project is going to be writing an OpenGL based music visualization program with a twist. It will actually make a movie out of the visualization that can be written to a DVD. Also, it won't suck the way many visualization programs do. It will actaully react to the music rather than spraying color on the screen for no apparent reason.

Oh, I forgot to mention. No iWork. For some reason I thought it was included, but it has AppleWorks instead. Too bad. I was looking forward to trying out Keynote.

This has been mentioned by others. It has happened to me before. Yet I will complain anew!

FedEx was supposed to drop off my Mac mini today. Instead they left a note on the door. No ringing of the doorbell mind you, just a note on the door. I was home, waiting for it. Why can't they ring the bell? Is it that hard? I called less than ten minutes after the note was left and asked them to come back. They said they would. They never did.

There is now a big note on the door with an arrow pointing at the doorbell.

I have only bought two computers myself. I certainly didn't have the cash to buy the Commodore 64 that my dad brought home when I was in 3rd grade. This is a bit strange, given that I am one of the bigger "computer nerds" that I know. I have a CS degree and I work for big blue. Anyhow, back to the story.

I bought an Apple Performa 614 in college. This was because I was sick of going to the CS lab to do assignments. I wanted to program in my dorm room. Of course it took about 45 minutes to compile anything with only 8 megs of RAM, so I went to Fry's and bought a 16 MB stick, to bring me up to a total of 24 MB. No more thrashing, compiles took mere moments. That computer stayed with me through college and then I gave it to my brother so that he could use it in college, since it already had the software he needed. Even though the Performa line is looked upon now as the dark days of the Mac, I look back on it fondly. They might have been coasting on inertia then, but the foundation of quality that had been laid before carried through, at least in my mind.

I then defected from the Mac camp and bought parts to build my own Celeron 300, which I occasionally overclocked to a magnificent 500 MHz. Why did I defect? Well, mostly because I could cheaply put together a machine that had a 3D card. This would make it easier to improve my 3D asteroids game.

That computer is still running, but doesn't see much use. I get a new laptop from work every few years which has killed my need to buy a fancy machine of my own. Of course I occasionally have wanted to go back to the Mac camp, at least for personal use, but I never had a good excuse, and I while I've had the money to buy one if I wanted, I was never quite able to justify it.

Why am I writing this? Because I just ordered my third computer, a mini Mac. The price is too good to ignore, and I admit that the design impresses me. They lowered the price to the level of impulse buy and they hooked me. Now I just have to find a cheap 1 gig stick of RAM somewhere...

The "In Korea, only old people..." meme started in the article In Korea, Email Is Only For Old People.

In particular, I see this post as the original instigator.

I find this to be exceedingly amusing.

This is a very easy plan on how to pay off the national debt and balance the budget. It is quite easy to grasp.

Let's say you borrow $100 from a friend. He asks you to pay back $15 over the next 10 years. At the end of the ten years, your debt will be paid off. If you only make enough money to handle all of your expenses, plus sum to pay off the money your owe on your debt, then after ten years, the debt will be paid. Simple, huh?

All we need to do as a nation is make sure we are making our debt payments. After only 10 years of doing so, the debt will be gone. This is because the money is borrowed with T-bills that expire after 10 years. We don't need extra money to pay off the debt.

Now let's talk about making sure that the money coming in is the same as the money going out - in other words, the deficit.

Our economy is constantly expanding. That means our tax base (the amount of money we can tax from) is increasing over time. We will be able to raise more money in the future with the same tax rate today.

If we can do something to make the tax base expand faster, then we can get more tax revenue in the future. Think of it this way: If I spend $10 today, with the expectation that I will get $50 next year, is that a good investment? Of course! I will gladly borrow money if I have to to put that $10 in.

Whenever we do the following things, the economy expands. These are all things that the Bush agenda stands for.

* lowering taxes on the rich. See, the rich are rich because they know what to do with their money. They make money with money. The poor doesn't have money because they can't make money with money. If we allow the rich to retain more of their own money, they will make even more money, *increasing the tax base*!

* Reducing regulations. Regulations are generally good in that they accomplish good things. Take the clean air act. I mean, clean air is good, right? But regulations cost money to the tax base. Someone has to do something to comply, and it usually means that they have to do something more than what they are doing. We need to balance the benefit of regulation with the cost of regulation. Some things are hard to put a price on - clean air, for instance. But we must know how much we are going to spend for it, and balance that out.

* Eliminating corporate subsidies and welfare. By giving government money to the poor (both corporations and people), we are funding projects that don't have a negative ROI. In other words, we are taking money from people who can make more money and giving it to people who can't. We are reducing the tax base even more so than just taking the money.

The other side of the equation is spending. One way to balance a budget is to spend less.

* Eliminating corporate subsidies and welfare. I already mentioned this, but this is the same as burning money. The people won't go hungry - there are more than enough programs and shelters and charitable people who would love to feed these people (myself included.) I will gladly promise to do my part in helping the poor if government would stop competing with me.

* Reducing responsibility and thus spending. The government should be doing less and thus need less money to operate. By reducing the ambitions of government, and thus reducing the costs of government, we are lowering the amount of money needed to balance the budget.

As the amount of money spent decreases, and as the tax base increases, eventually the two will meet. If we played our cards right (IE, encouraging tax base growth), we can have a balanced budget with a low tax rate. A little deficit now is nothing to worry about because the economy and the tax base grows faster than the interest rate on our debts.

I want to revisit the point that really rich people are better than kinda rich people in our nation. Let's imagine these two scenarios:

(1) We have a low tax rate. Rich people keep a lot more of their money and they get really, really rich. We have thousands of multi-billionaires who have more money than they know what to do with.

(2) We have a high tax rate. The rich are only kindof rich. Maybe one or two people are billionaires, on we only have a few more multi-millionaries.

Would you rather have 50% of a million dollars, or 10% of a billion? Let's do the math:

50% * 1,000,000 = 500,000
10% * 1,000,000,000 = 100,000,000 = 200 times 50% * 1,000,000

Obviously, having a huge tax base with a low tax rate is far superior to a small tax base with a high tax rate.

Bush has been climbing in the polls, despite the intense pressure the democrats have been exerting since last year. What is the secret of his success? Why is he doing so well despite such a coordinated effort to tarnish his record?

Quite simply, the democrats do more to drive the republicans than the republicans do. More than one republican has told me that they are voting for Bush not only because he is a good guy, but because the democrats have to be stopped.

I see unprecedented participation on the ground in this election. As for myself, I spent 8 glorious hours treading cement to spread the word about Bush and the GOP. I was quite well received. Sure, there were a few vehement anti-Bush Kerry-ites. But the majority of those I met with liked Bush and his policies.

The other reason Bush will win because of the GOTV effort. GOTV stands for "Get Out the Vote". It is a coordinated campaign to target exclusively republican voters and get them to show up at the polls. Here's a dirty little secret: There are more republicans who don't vote than democrats that do. This is the 6th year of the GOTV coordination, and this year, it is so precisely coordinated that in my precinct alone (of about 100 actual voters) 40 republicans are turning out for the first time in a long time. We've been split down the middle since Reagan, and this year, we are going to get a whopping majority.

We didn't do it for the primary, because we didn't want to tip our hat. But we are doing it for the generals. It's already begun.

Kerry will be lucky to take New York and Massachusetts.

If you are a republican, or a conservative, it is important that you hook up with you local party immediately and ask what you can do. There are phone calls to be made, doors to be knocked on, and parties to attend. This year is the year of Bush, and the end of the democrats.

In this journal entry pudge and jamie trade barbs as usual. I don't agree with much of what pudge says, but I think his positions are well thought out and well explained. He also is actually willing to point out when Republicans lie! Shocking I know.

I modded two of jamie's posts in this journal entry. I hit this one with a troll mod and this one with a flamebait mod. You tell me if the mods were fair. I did them mostly because I don't think jamie is able to present a point in a civil manner.

I look at the discussion tonight and suddenly those two posts, and only those two posts are modded as informative and insightful. Tell me if either of those mods are fair. Interestingly only three of the 54 posts under that journal have been modded at all. Those that I (and jamie?) modded and one other. How likely is it that jamie modded his own posts back up?

The latest article about the Rather scandal have all but ferretted out the last of the loony left. My favorite conspiracy theory: that Karl Rove masterminded the entire event. I have this picture burned into my mind of Karl Rove typing furiously on his computer. He calls out to Dick Cheney, "Hey, does this look fake enough? Or should I use the Times New Roman font?" Cheney responds, "Times New Roman. And here, let me sign the thing. My handwriting is terrible."

I guess when you have to come to terms with reality, it's always easier to slip back into the security blanket of delusional idea.

Here are some more, just to keep you looney lefties calm. George Bush really did cause 9/11. He even paid Osama to do it. George Bush really invaded Iraq for the Oil. No, it was for revenge! No, it was for Oil! Well, I'm still torn on that one. And John Kerry served honorably in the Navy, and never ever did anything to hurt the United States afterwards.

And let's leave them with this whopper: The majority of Americans agree with you and Michael Moore, and John Kerry is going to win in a landslide this November.

Good night, sweet dreams.

If you want to get your posts modded higher, and as a group of conservatives, get your rational viewpoint out there, try these tips.

(1) Go fishing. Post several different ideas in a single post that are all good. Each idea will appeal to different moderators. Your post will be carried upward.

(2) Avoid unsubstantiated claims. It is easy for someone to pass you over or even mod you down because you say something controversial. It is a lot harder for them to do this when you have substance behind. Name names, be specific, and have your references ready.

(3) Be quick. When a post first comes out, that is when the moderators are watching it. As a post ages, moderators ignore it. You'll have to keep your facts at arms reach so that you can compose that ground-shaking, substantiated post in time to get attention from the moderators.

(4) Moderate up, not down. Spend all your points moderating good posts up. Don't waste any points modding anyone down. As conservatives, we want to debate the issues because we win every time when everyone gets their complete say.

(5) Meta-moderate. Watch closely for moderations that are not done the way you would do it. If something is modded up that shouldn't be, then disagree with that. If something is modded down that shouldn't be, disagree. What happens is those that abuse their moderator points will get less of them.

(6) Mark people that make good posts as your friend. Eventually, a network will be built up so that you will have a little signal that a post should get your attention. Don't mark people that you disagree with or would like to mod down as your enemy. You will show up on their radar and get noticed by them. The idea is to be recognized by your friends, but hidden from your enemies.

Make sure you save your moderator points for those really controversial topics that get heated. That is when you can really shine. That is where it really counts. So pick you battles well, follow the guidelines above, and we will begin to get our conservative, rational voice heard.

I posted a comment that said that humans think more like a relational database than a hierchical one. (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=120762&cid=10169159). I think enough people don't understand what a database is, nonetheless a hierchical or relational one.

A database is a store of information. Everything you put some data in and then retrieve later on is a database. Your filesystem is a database. The internet is a database. Even memory can be considered database.

The easiest way to keep track of the data is merely to retain a pointer to it. That is how we manage data stored in a memory database. The ext2 filesystem has something called an "inode" which basically is a pointer to a specific file stored on the disk. We use URLs on the internet to reference a particular piece of data.

But how do you find the data when you don't remember the exact pointer? And what if the pointer to the information has changed since the last time you accessed it or stored it?

Enter the hierchical database. In the hierchical database, there is a root node. The root node points to several other nodes, and so on and so forth, until every node is pointed to. This is an awful lot like some scripting languages. It is also how data is stored in a traditional filesystem. Notice how using these databases is quite difficult. The pointer to the node in question is now a path rather than a single bit of information. The paths can get quite complicated.

In short, hierchical databases really suck. They are not natural because we don't store data hierchically. Quick, what is the parent node of "the picnic last summer where you played baseball"? You don't know because you don't store information like a hierchical database.

Enter the relational database. In a relational database, data is stored and referenced by its relations with other data. Hierchical databases are a subset of relational databases. That is, you can store data in a hierchy in a relational database. But a relational database can do more than a hierchical database.

The types of relations possible are limited to your imagination. Typically, in real relational databases that are well-designed, data has three or more relations to other bits of data. The number of relations can reach into the hundreds, yet our minds can easily keep track of it. For instance, how do we map products to people? I can think of three different ways immediately. I see the products sold by a particular salesman, who is a type of person. I see products bought by a customer. I see products bought by the store from a distributor, who has a representative who is a person. There are more you can think of.

So, using the example above, how does you mind store "the picnic last summer where you played baseball"? It stores it in a number of different ways. First, it goes under the topic picnic. It relates to all other picnics. Then it goes under the topic of last year, and all the activities you undertook that last year. It is also filed under summertime, which includes all the activities you ever undertook during summer. Don't forget the relation to basebal games you played.

If you wanted to look that particular event up, you would search all your relations for the one event that matched "picnic", "last year", "summertime", "baseball". Even only using two of these four criteria, you would probably get a set of events that is small enough that you can identify which one you were looking for easily.

How does this relate to filesystems? You files should be stored relationally rather than hierchically. Rather, it should be stored relationally in addition to hierchically. You letter to grandma that you wrote last week should be filed as "the letter called "/home/jgardn/letter/grandma-2004-09-01.doc". It should also be filed under "letters", "grandma", and "stuff I did last week". These in turn will be related to other data. "letters" are "documents". "grandma" is "family" and maybe "friend" depending on your relation. "last week" is part of "this month", and part of "september" in the "year 2004". Again, searching for the letter with just two or three of the above criteria should give you a small enough set that finding the letter is trivial.

Now, a final point. Since relational databases are so similar to how we store data in our minds, performance is actually increased, even though the actual implementation is slower. This is because the act of finding a letter doesn't include just "loading the letter from disk into memory", but also "finding the letter in the first place, and identifying it as the one we want to see correctly." The second task is far more efficient in a relational database filesystem, and happens to also take the most time in any filesystem.

I've been following the issues closely. Any news article about Bush or Kerry is one that I've read. Every day, I look at the polls and the current issues. I can't tell if it is raining or not but I can tell you how many points Bush is up nationwide or even how many states they have locked in and how many electorate votes that counts for.

This is what Bush stands for:
(1) Pre-emption. Rather than let the terrorists strike first and then respond, we will hunt them actively and secure our nation first.

(2) Middle class wealth. Cutting taxes to the upper and middle class spur economic growth. (You can't cut taxes to the lower 50% because they don't *pay* taxes.) Home ownership among the middle class, especially among minorities is a priority. Also, entrepeneurship and investment is a priority.

(3) Social security reform. People, especially the poor and middle class, should be able to invest their social security money in the market. They will get a lot better return and they should fund their own retirement. Otherwise, SS will go bankrupt.

(4) Medicare. We should take care of our elders, but we should do so intelligently. Increasing the benefits while increasing the competition in this sector will solve a lot of problems.

(5) Regulations. In general, industry and the citizenry should have fewer regulations, not more. Government should partner with business and the citizens to get community responsibilities taken care of. Rather than taking an adverserial role, government should encourage cooperation.

(6) Keeping state out of religion. We shouldn't have a wall between church and state. The state should stay out of religion, but we welcome religious people and their contributions to society. Fact is that they are better equipped to help the homeless and abused than uncaring government officials.

(7) Tort reform. The law system has become like a slot machine. Lawyers are taking home the prize pots, leaving the truly deserving penniless. There should be limits on how much damages can be obtained, and there should be limits on how much of that can go to the lawyers. We need a less litigious society, not a more litigious society. Litigation harms progress when it is abused.

(8) Calming the tone in Washington. We all have our views. We all want to express those views. But we have to be civil and polite to one another. Bush went out of his way to get Democrat priorities passed, even at the offense of his base. He is trying hard to reach out and bring the vitriol back down to sane levels. Just because we disagree we shouldn't hate each other. We have plenty of that coming at us from our real enemies.

(9) Real education reform. School choice. The poorest students are stuck in schools that are failing. We should give them an opportunity to get the same education that John Kerry and George Bush received. Rather than dump money into a system that fails, we should dump money into systems that are working. High standards will help more students be more successful. Even if they don't obtain those standards, it will be better for having tried it. Standardized tests will give us metrics to measure the success or failure of schools and compare the rich areas with the poor areas. It will help parents and teachers and administrators make better decisions on what subjects are weak and strong.

(10) Judicial reform. We need strict contructionalists on the bench, or judges who will not rewrite law based on the political mood of the day. The Supreme Court and federal courts must protect the constitution, and subordinate themselves to the laws rightfully passed by the congress and signed by the president. The supreme court must respect the rights of the individual and states. Judges should be impartial, relying only on the law as written.

Now for what John Kerry believes in. I'm leaving out all the waffle issues where it is ambiguous.

(1) Reactive foreign politics. We can't act until acted upon, and we shouldn't respond to terrorists until we have been harmed. We should only respond in kind - eye for and eye.

(2) A kinder, gentler war on terror. If we weren't so mean to the people who are trying to kill us, maybe they wouldn't want to kill us as much.

(3) Putting Europe and China in control of our foreign policy. By turning the most important national decisions over to the UN, where France, Germany, Russia, and China have veto power, we will be helping to make the world kinder and safer because America will be bound down from acting unilaterally.

(4) Tax and punish the rich. Even though they contribute more money to charities and do more to help the poor than the poor and middle class do, and even though everyone in the middle and poor classes work for the rich, if we punished them for being so rich we would be better off. We should take that money and give it to the poor, funnelling a large chunk into the proper "authorities".

(5) Criticizing opponents, trying to shut down contrarian views. People who say things that hurt should not be allowed to express those opinions. Case in point is the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Because what they have to say may be true, we have to shut them up by seeking injunctions to prevent them from exercising their first amendment rights.

(6) Appointing judges who feel that it is okay to murder children (in John Kerry's view), and protecting the right to murder innocent, unborn children. Appointing judges who will legislate from the bench on issues such as Gay Marriage, the right of the people to pass laws, and the right of the people to hold their government accountable.

(7) Non-reform of education. We must keep doing the same thing we are doing, to protect the teacher's jobs and because it is unfair to help the poor get ahead with a good education.

(8) Race baiting. By calling the Republicans names, and encouraging the black people to hate white people, we will help calm the tone of politics and encourage people to get along.

These are the views that I see John Kerry being consistant on. Now do you see why I am voting for Bush?