Shine on, you crazy diamond...

In the category of "Wow, I'd totally do like that guy" goes this one: Jason Niccum of Longmont, CO was arrested after using a device to cut his commuting time. He picked up an Opticon, one of those devices that the cops and ambulances use to change traffic lights, off of eBay and started using it. The cops noticed a pattern of disturbances at specific intersections at specific times of the day, and busted him.

Yes, he was, according to the letter of the law, impersonating an emergency vehicle, and is thus subject to arrest/prosecution. He lucked out with only a $50 fine, though. He's pretty lighthearted about it, saying, "I guess in the two years I had it, that thing paid for itself." Longmont is now going to change the frequency their traffic lights use so this won't happen again.

Come on now, who hasn't wanted to change the light in his/her favor while sitting at a red at 3 am with no one else around?

I know I would...

Flushing our children's privacy

A Houston-area school district just got an enormous amount of money to implement district-wide random drug testing on its students. According to click2houston.com, the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, which enrolls 87,000 students, got nearly $1 Million in Department of Education grant money, the largest of 55 similar grants in the nation. It should be noted that this isn't just in sports. This includes all extracurricular activities, including things like band, academic clubs and 4-H. If you want to do something other than simply attend class, you have to take a test.Yes, the US Supreme Court's 2002 ruling says that school districts do have the right to require these tests, since extracurricular activities are elective, but one wonders whether this is a right worth exercising.

This is not by any means the first time something like this has happened, but this is the biggest one yet.

"Texas has always been at the forefront," said Roy Garcia, assistant superintendent for secondary school administration in the Cypress-Fairbanks district. "It will be a positive way for students to find yet another reason to simply say 'No."'

People in support of this measure seem to think that this will give kids an excuse not to give in to peer pressure. "I've got to take a drug test for sports, so I can't." They must think kids are pretty dumb, too, to go in for that. If given a test at the beginning of a season, any kid knows they've got the rest of the season when they aren't being tested to indulge. They also know that if you lay off for a while, your body will get rid of what would show up. And these tests don't necessarily show everything anyway. Unless a student has drunk alcohol in the last few hours, for example, it won't show up on a test; things like LSD and Ecstasy are difficult if not impossible to detect unless the student is currently under the influence. I guess the assumption is that once a kid has to face the reality of a drug test, s/he will stop wanting to experiment. Bullshit. A kid who likes drugs is going to learn how to beat the test, plain and simple.

I have to interject at this point. The idea of Random Drug Testing is a lie. There is no such thing as random drug testing, because the tests cost too much to administer completely at random. They don't test you unless they think they have a reasonable chance of finding something to justify the expense. Cypress-Fairbanks is planning on testing about 40% of its 11,500 high school students who participate in extracurricular activities. Hmm, 4600 students sounds like a pretty focused group to me.

In the neighboring town of Tomball last week, the school board approved random drug testing for extracurricular students as well. Responding to concerns from parents, the board officials have stressed that the results won't be part of students' permanent records.

Yes, it's legal to do this. I'm not arguing that fact, but the idea that these tests can be required of any student at any time amounts to an invasion of privacy. Besides, under the aegis of "random" testing, they will mostly be targeting certain students who appear under the influence from time to time. Will they catch some students? Sure. But they may also embarrass themselves by testing a lot of students negative and spending lots of taxpayer money to do it.

Another issue raised is where this information will go. Suppose, for example, a student is undergoing treatment for depression and is taking medication. This also shows up on a drug test, when the student and student's family may feel it's none of the school's business to know. Drug tests may reveal things about students that the students are not normally obligated to share, and will force the issue and "let the cat out of the bag," so to speak. It's impossible to deny information like that, even if the school looks the other way, once it has come up in the first place.

Many adults have fought pre-employment drug screens on the grounds that they were unconstitutional. I just hope that kids can do the same. Making private information public doesn't do anyone any real good.

Boot Camp Triple?

Ah, dear readers, it seems I'm guilty of a gaffe. No sooner than I made a post about Apple's Boot Camp being used to dual-boot a Mactel, it seems someone else has one-upped it. OnMac.net, the home of narf and blanka's infamous solution, has created a new hack that allows a triple boot.

Well, ok, it's only really a two-and-a-half boot. They hacked the Windows loader instead of fooling with Boot Camp, so you still get the OSX or XP choice at the beginning, but picking XP gets you to a second set of choices between XP and Linux (they used gentoo).

Still, it's pretty cool. I haven't figured out yet who would need to use all three on a regular enough basis to warrant having them all installed, even if said person was a software developer. Any suggestions?

Ooh! Ooh...well, maybe not.

If you're like me, you've been fascinated by the whole UMPC (ultra-mobile PC) thing that a bunch of manufacturers have been working on. Something even smaller than a Tablet PC that's a full-function computer, with a touch screen and virtual keyboard. Cool. Most of the companies working on UMPC projects gave them really cryptic names to boost the hype a little: Microsoft's project is called Origami, and this one right here from Samsung is the Q1. I was really excited to hear some details about them in the podcasts and blog feeds from the trade shows that happen every spring. That is, until I found out about this one...

Seems the Samsung Q1 has a few bugs to be worked out. The company held a huge press conference at Seoul's Grand InterContinental Hotel last week, with the VP of Samsung, Intel Korea's President, and Microsoft Korea's President all set to do demo spots during the conference to show off their great new toy. Then all three of them had "technical difficulties," including a failed battery, an on-screen keyboard that wouldn't appear for a PowerPoint presentation, and another presentation that went into rapid slideshow mode on its own.

On the upside, I'm sure some of the tech support staff who were repeatedly called up onto the stage to help out their bosses might have appreciated the face time. I'm sure the investors weren't so pleased, though, because if anyone should have been able to make one of these products work, it should have been these three guys. Maybe I'll let somebody else buy one first...

Good guys don't always win.

Well, we had a show last night in Des Moines at a place I'm not going to name. It was a good show...we really played a tight, focused three sets. Problem was, after the show we ran into a problem with the owner. Our sound guy had noticed a bad cable in the monitor setup and pulled it out to show him, and replaced it with one of our own (we always carry enough for our setup). Well, the owner was looking around for this monitor cable, which was nowhere to be found. He insisted that he had done inventory on all his stuff the previous Saturday when another band had played, and that it had been in the setup when he set everything up before we came.

Not wanting to look like jerks, we went through all of our stuff. Three times. We did find one cord in our bags that wasn't ours...it was the bad cable that Chad had pulled out of the setup before the beginning of the gig. The owner insisted that it wasn't his, and we sure knew it wasn't ours. We offered him the cable, knowing full well that it didn't work, but it was the only thing we could do to show him that we weren't trying to rip him off. His next statement was, "I believe that you don't have it, and I know I don't, so I just need the cable by the time you leave, that's all."

Ok, so we had pretty much stripped our vehicles down and gone through everything, and it was now 2:30 am, when Riemann Music would certainly not be open. So facing the prospect of being blacklisted in the area by this guy, who is pretty connected, we had to buy him a new cable. Stan made sure to mention this whole thing at Riemann this morning, and the head sales guy, who knows this owner pretty well, said that he's a great guy, but that if he gets an idea in his head, he's not changing his mind for anybody. So here's what we think actually happened:

Last Saturday, this band switched in one of their cables into the setup, and accidentally took one of his cables. Since they're friends of his, he didn't think to check the cables to make sure. This Friday, when he set up, he didn't think to look at the cables, since he himself took them down the previous week. This week, he thought of it because he lent a microphone to us for our show, so Eric wouldn't have to sing into an instrument mic. When we gave him back his mic, he checked the cable, and lo and behold, it didn't match...so there we were at 2 am, watching his security tapes with him. Yeah, there's a cable you can see on the screen before we set up, but I don't think it's the cable he thinks it is. The thing vanished, plain and simple. I don't think there was any malice or sneaky dealings on anyone's part, including the band last week, but I bet if he has them go through their stuff, he'll find his missing cable.

It just stinks that we've gotta buy him a new cable, when we've proven we don't have it. In the interest of peace, and in not being called a bunch of crooks in public, and losing the good rep we're building, it had to be done. Next time, though, we're whipping out our union cards.

Has the War on Drugs done any good at all?

Well, it's been about thirty-five years, give or take a little, since the War on Drugs was launched. In that time, it has been an abysmal failure. Have we rounded up lots of drug dealers? Yes. Have we caught some drug traffickers? Yes. Have we caught a lot of people using drugs? Resoundingly, yes. So it might be time to ask, is all of this doing any good?

Well, people still use drugs...that hasn't gone away. The rates of drug use are roughly the same as in the 1970s, accounting for population increases, etc., even though we are locking up lots more people. The DARE program has been eliminated in lots of places because it actually made kids more likely to use drugs. According to the statistics, we lock up about 750,000 people a year since 2004 for possesssion of marijuana. Note that I'm just talking about simple possession, not dealing, trafficking, or cultivation. This figure of course leaves out the numbers of people convicted for other drugs...meth is really popular lately, especially where I live, and crack isn't going away. Add to that heroin, plain old cocaine, etc. etc., and you begin to wonder if the War on Drugs is doing any good at all. The United States spends billions of dollars a year trying to pretend that we can stop drugs from existing in this country when people just want them...and it's just like flushing money down the toilet.

I do not either condone nor condemn drug use by adults. I do not feel it is appropriate for young people to use them, but if we as adults can vote, drink alcohol, go to war, and otherwise exercise our rights, I think that people who choose to use drugs responsibly maybe shouldn't have to go to prison. It's worth mentioning that the majority of those convicted in the 750,000 statistic I mentioned earlier were not people with long criminal records; they didn't do anything else wrong besides choose a different method to relax than going to a bar. The continued prohibition of drugs in this country is doing us more harm than good. Maybe we really could win the War on Drugs...but it'd be a pyrrhic victory, and that's worthless when there might be another way.

So here's my idea. I know I'm not the first by any means to say this, but maybe eventually if enough of us say it someone will listen.

Legalize them. All of them. Tax and regulate them.

Some people reading this are probably going to say, "Oh my god, rampant drug use will abound...it'll sink the country!" Well, they said that about alcohol just before prohibition too. Yes, I agree, there will probably be a temporary spike in drug usage as it's a new thing, but by and large, the people who use drugs now will continue to do so...they will just make the numbers seem bigger because they're not afraid of getting caught anymore. Some people will try new things and like them, and some will try new things and they won't. Some people won't care either way, because they're just not interested in drugs. All of these are great choices for some people.

A legally taxed and regulated market has a number of distinct advantages.
First, it gets them off the streets. Drug dealers will sell to anyone who can pay, whether it's you, someone older than you, or the third-grader down the street. Now some dealers, I'm sure, do operate under some ethical code about not selling to kids...but not all of them by any means. A regulated market means having to show ID and prove you're an adult before you can get your hands on it. Do kids get alcohol when they're not supposed to? Sure they do. But it's a lot harder than if it was illegal, when someone looking to make a few bucks would sell to anyone interested. I fully agree, drugs are not for kids. But selling them behind a counter by someone who has to be licensed to sell would make them an awful lot harder for kids to get than the way things are now.

Second, taxation in a market produces local and state money. We tax alcohol and tobacco. Why not cocaine or marijuana? Instead of locking up peaceful, responsible people who only are guilty of possession, we could make money off of them by selling them a service.

Third, laws can be easier to enforce on legal substances. Make new laws about public conduct to encompass these drugs. If you shouldn't drink and drive, you shouldn't smoke and drive, etc.; drinking from an open bottle in public, except for certain specially designated areas, is illegal, so make it that way for other things. Properly created and enforced laws will keep all of these things either in bars (or you can read specially designated areas) or at home and off the streets.

Fourth, there are an awful lot of dangerous and life-threatening things we can do to ourselves that could possibly have negative consequences, but no one would think twice about telling us not to do them- "It's our right." The information out there on most drugs is pretty accurate. Someone choosing to do drugs has a wealth of information available about his/her drug of choice. If any of you have seen one of those Faces of Meth displays, you know that anyone who does something dangerous like that deserves what they get.

Finally, the Law of Supply and Demand says that if people want it, someone will supply it. Let's spend the money on treatment programs for people who develop drug problems, or more police to go deal with rapes, murders, robberies and real crimes. Most people who get arrested for drugs aren't doing anything wrong other than having something they're not supposed to. Did you know that you can get a life sentence just for possession of drugs in certain quantities? Not selling them to anyone or smuggling them (although that's what the law says you're doing with a large quantity, probably a safe assumption in most cases), but just having them. I don't think that drug use is necessarily drug abuse. I believe that for those who choose to do so, responsible use is possible, and that if we are truly a leader in the world, we should take a page from many other countries and re-evaluate our stance on drugs. I like to drink beer sometimes. Does that make me an alcoholic? No, but that's exactly the kind of statement that we're making to anyone who uses drugs. "You use them, so you have a problem."

Let's review the definition of addiction. Dictionary.com says:

1.Compulsive physiological and psychological need for a habit-forming substance

2.The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.

Any addiction can be harmful, whether it's to money, cars, sex, alcohol, video games, drugs, the internet or anything else; it's something that interferes with your normal life functions and makes it harder to deal with the real world. I know loads of people who go out and drink themselves stupid on weekends and then drive themselves home (and sometimes they, their passengers or other motorists/pedestrians don't make it). Given the choice, I'd much rather hang out with some people who got slightly stoned and stayed home safely.

US Security? ::snicker::

Stuff like this just chills me. We spend so much time swaggering around like we're the greatest, most powerful nation in the world, and that we should be feared respected by everyone in the world. What we keep forgetting is that the bigger we are, the less we can keep to ourselves, and the dumber that strength makes us. Case in point:

According to the BBC News this morning, it is possible to buy flash drives containing classified US Air Force materials in Afghanistan. Shopkeepers in a market next to the Bagram base outside Kabul (which we have occupied since we invaded) have been selling stolen American military property like unfiroms and binoculars as well as the drives. The drives were said by members of the LA Times and the Associated press to contain things like:

Names of corrupt Afghan officials
Reports on enemy targets and details about US defenses
Confidential information about US soldiers.
A description of the type of training a group of soldiers had received.
A manual for flying the Chinook helicopter
Information that could put the lives of several informants and sources at risk, including pictures, phone numbers, and even the names of their family members
Intelligence gathering strategies
Photos of classified portions of the base

With all this really secret stuff on them, you'd think they'd encrypt or password protect this stuff, right?

Nope, not most of it.

Many Afghani citizens work inside the boundaries of the base. This is not a problem in itself at all, but some of this kind of stuff isn't exactly something we should be leaving lying around in a sensitive area! A shopkeeper told the Associated Press that he wasn't interested in what was on the drives, but was selling them for their value as hardware. He said they were stolen from offices on base and that he gets them all the time.

Ok, maybe. And maybe he really is selling them for the hardware value on the street. But if the wrong person happened by his shop that day, they might end up with more than they bargained for.

Or maybe exactly what they bargained for.

Decisions, decisions...

I'm really torn. For a while now I've been nickel-and-diming myself to buy a new instrument of sorts. I've been playing guitar for 18 years now and bass for 16, and for a while I've been looking for a way to do both at the same time. Well, lo and behold, I have two options:

The Chapman Stick



or the Novax CH8 8-String Guitar .
I've known about one of these two instruments since high school, and the other since college. There is no question that I will own both of them someday, but which one to go for first...that's the question. Also, I don't nearly have enough cash to do so at the moment, so I'm on the verge of asking my entire family, "Hey, don't get me any presents for the next two or three years. Just chip in on this if you want to buy me anything."

I figure the best way to go about this is to list some pros and cons...I'm particularly interested in commentary from players of these instruments, because while it may not make my final decision, it could certainly help guide it.

Stick pros:
1. Costs about a third as much (reconditioned) as the CH8
2. Greater low range
3. Potential for musical expression and usage in different styles might ultimately be greater
4. Melody strings tuned in fourths just like my basses; easy to learn that side.
5. All tapping: new, interesting sounds

Stick cons:
1. Reversed bass strings on bass side (lowest in the middle) means a serious learning curve, and some serious practicing will be needed before I can comfortably gig with it.
2.Different tuning than I am used to on my other instruments; will need to learn.
3. New technique of the instrument means parts will have to be slightly different than standard bass or guitar parts.
4. Have to get on a waiting list to get one, that could take a year to get one at all, not even specifically the wood, etc. I'd like

CH8 pros:
1. 3 bass strings, 5 guitar strings; standard tuning I'm already used to.
2. Technique very similar to instruments I'm already familiar with; could probably gig with it after a month of practice.
3.Novax Guitars has one in the shop right now in exactly the wood, finish, etc. I want. Novax usually takes a year to get you a guitar when you order. This one's ready to ship.

CH8 cons:
1. Would the fact that I can only play as many things as five fingers of my right hand will allow ultimately limit what I could do contrapuntally?
2. Costs 3 times as much as a Chapman Stick

I don't know what to do here. I'm looking for the next big leap in my musical life, and it's one of these. I just can't figure out which one...

Bush slips another one under the radar

Ah, the Patriot Act. That well-thought-out piece of legislative irony that makes it so much easier for Americans to spy on Americans. Not only did we use it for its first term, but we reauthorized it for a second one. Way to go, America.

It should be pointed out that I am in no way trivializing the loss of life that occurred during the World Trade Center disaster in 2001. We lost nearly 3,000 American lives, and the lives of those from many other nations as well. It was a horrific series of events that should not ever be repeated.

That said, the Patriot Act makes it very easy for the FBI, CIA, NSA and any other governmental agencies that use surveillance to eavesdrop, search and seize without a warrant those that it suspects of "Un-American activities." Has this netted any real terrorists? Probably it really has. But the expansion of power that it grants to law enforcement, especially without a warrant, basically on suspicion, really rings to me of McCarthyism. While the renewal of the Act does include 30 new "Civil Liberties Safeguards," it makes one wonder what kinds of other people they're picking up with this thing, since it basically authorizes them to listen to and spy on anyone just because they think they might find something.

The scary part, though, is Bush's signing statement about the Patriot Act's renewal. He signed the bill at a White House ceremony on March 9th, saying it was ''a piece of legislation that's vital to win the war on terror and to protect the American people."

But wait, there's more. After all the guests and the press had left, the White House quietly issued a ''signing statement." For those who might not know, a signing statement is an official document in which a President lays out his interpretation of the law. He said, ''The executive branch shall construe the provisions . . . that call for furnishing information to entities outside the executive branch . . . in a manner consistent with the president's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to withhold information . . . "

So basically, he's saying that he doesn't consider himself bound to tell Congress how the Patriot Act powers are used, and even though the new provisions say he's supposed to, he can withhold information if he decides that it would ''impair foreign relations, national security, the deliberative process of the executive, or the performance of the executive's constitutional duties."

This is just another in a series of moves by the President to expand Executive power at the expense of the other branches. Yeah, the three branches have checks and balances. But they're really starting to balance heavily at one end.

Apple's Boot Camp reawakens the PC vs. Mac debate

Ever since March 16th, there has been a new wave of debate in the age-old PC vs. Mac fight. The idea was that supporters would pledge money to be given to the first person who posted the solution to make an Intel Mac dual-booting (that is, to offer a choice of XP or OSX at startup. Two guys named narf and blanka posted the solution that day, won $13,000, and went down in history.

That is, until Apple announced something else new on its 30th birthday. It released a public beta version of Boot Camp, which basically will do what narf and blanka's maybe slightly less elegant solution would also do. It also mentioned that Boot Camp will come standard with the release of OSX 10.5 Leopard.

Yes, it has been proven since it was released that Boot Camp is not without its bugs (it's beta, after all), but you'd better believe that Apple will have worked those out by the time Leopard is released. I'm not surprised, though, that Mac would run Windows before Windows would run Mac (At least well. Anybody remember MacinDos? Bleccchhhh). They've also proven that it'll run the beta version of Windows Vista, so it's not just a "right now" thing.

Personally, I think it's just another part of the reason I'm already leaning toward a Mac for my next computer. Don't get me wrong, I'm a lifelong PC guy, but I'm getting tired of having to do every little trick I know just to install something that I can simply plug into a Mac and have work flawlessly. With a dual boot option (and hopefully a later option that will let me run both OSs at once and transfer files between them), it means that I could use one computer for everything instead of having two. Nice.

My question is this: Does this spell trouble for the PC community and a big win for Apple? Or does it mean that Apple is going to be selling Macs with Windows someday and the PC community is recognizing Apple's defeat?

Welcome!

Hello to all,

This is a little corner on the Web I'm choosing to call my own. (Does the Web have corners?) I'm going to put up items I find interesting from my own daily life, the news, philosophy, etc. I'm particularly interested in technology, education and music, so there will be plenty of things along those lines, but as most of my thoughts occur randomly, I can't say for sure what will appear here just yet.

One important note: While I encourage the participation of everyone interested, and I expect and even invite some of you to disagree with me, I want to make it very clear that flaming will not be tolerated here. Anyone who posts personal attacks against me or anyone else who comments here, or who feels it necessary to call names, will find that their comments mysteriously disappear from the blog. This place is for free exchange of ideas, debate and discussion, not badmouthing and childishness. If you want to discuss, feel free. If you want to point fingers and call names, this is not the place for you.

That bit of ugliness aside, I'm glad to see you here. Enjoy.