In Support of Writers

In support of the writers out there on the picket line, We at Beach Ninja Blues (okay, so it is just me) will be going on strike in support.

With one note, the studios and producers got out of paying writers their fair share for video sales, claiming that the market was "too experimental" and there was, at the time, no proof that there would be any profit.

They are still claiming that today, and saying the same thing about Internet distribution....yeah, there is no profit in on-line video...like from iTunes. Makes you wonder why NBC wanted to start their own net video store/service if there was no profit?

nuff said.

Leopard- It is the little surprises

So, I am recovering from a terrible hard drive crash, I got things up and running again and upgraded to OSX 10.5 Leopard.

And I have to say, there is a lot of great things I am finding...But some of the little surprises--

While my old drive was severely dying, I popped it into an external enclosure to see if I could save any of my docs or photos. So, while TIme machine was backing up, software was updating and spotlight was indexing, I plugged it in.

Now, I knew a lot was going on, so I was only slightly concerned about how slow everything was going....And then I got a little more concerned....

and then suddenly a message pops up.

"We were unable to repair the disk Mac Sapphire. You have limited access to it. We suggest you back up your data immediately."

Wow! That was cool...I was able to yank off all my pics and all but a couple docs that were corrupted in the crash.

The new activity status in Mail is nice. Also, the streamlining for saving attachments -- Clicking save, saves to your folder without opening the directory menu. Same for clicking download from the context menu. Adding RSS feeds to mail is great too.

Of course, spaces and stacks have already become a natural part of my use, and I am even thinking of adding .Mac for the added functionality of remote access to your home computer. Apple may have actually made the serves worth the money finally.

Well, as I discover more little tweeks, I will keep you updated. I am sure every other tech news writer has gone on and on about the big changes, so I will spare you the yadda-yadda.

And as for problems and bugs, I have not had any major problems. I think they need a new flash player plug-in to address some problems (A few myspace pages will crash Safari and the warning points the finger at Flash), but I haven't had the problem consistently.

Until later.

How did that happen?

So I was listening to the podcast of Real TIme Bill Mahr and they started talking about the how the President should be put up on charges and sent to jail.

And I agreed with them.

Last week, I signed a ACLU petition against the REALID regulations being proposed by the American KGB...I mean...Homeland Security.

What the hell is happening? Am I becoming a liberal?

For a moment I was scared. Then I realized, no, I am just beyond the normal brainwashing of liberals and conservatives. I just realized that just because I am conservative(read not a liberal) doesn't mean I can't be pissed off on how this Administration has fucked things up, lied (no big surprise there), and betrayed American soldiers and values with a farce of a war.

I will admit that I supported the war, originally, when we were going after bin Laddin. I even agreed that Iraq was a threat and Saddam had to be removed before he did something bad with his WMDs. But, then we spent years wasting time, find out intel was bad. THe WMDs were already gone. Where or when, we still don't know. And damn it all, we still can't get a deal on a barrel of oil. At least the French were getting some in their little scam.

So, my position on the War has shifted, and as we learn more, I believe rightly so.

However, mine is not the only opinion moving around here.

Back when the Patriot Act was named the Anti-Terrorism Omnibus Act (written by the Clinton Administration), you never heard the ACLU whisper one word about how it would violate the Constitution and privacy rights. When they were burning down Waco or sniping up on Ruby Ridge, there was no word on lies or abuse of power. When they started illegal search and seizures for the "War on Drugs" and made it Guilty until proven Innocent even if they raided the wrong house, the Liberals thought that was all right.

But, suddenly there is a Republican in the White House using all the "cool toys" that Clinton had, and suddenly the Liberals are all jumping on the Constitutional bandwagon with me. Back then, when I complained about this, I was a paranoid radical. Today, I am just another one who has finally come around to what the Liberals have been saying all along, or at least since 2000.

But I don't expect it to last. Let's face it, in another year or so, the Democrats will be back in power and will return to their agenda of ruining this country and turning us into a third-world country so we will fit in nicely with all the other countries and no one will be able to point to us and say "Look at the Americans. They make so much more money than us. They buy gas so much cheaper than us (Although the Republicans are doing a fine job of picking up the slack for them on that one.) They has so much more freedom than us." Hard create a world-wide populace of peasants when one guy is making $15/hour for something the slave children only get 15 cents for.


Of course, this is going to continue happening to until people realize that Democrats and Republicans/Liberals and Conservatives are the same side of the counterfeit coin they have been selling us for too long. It is smoke and mirrors, folks, and for all of you who think your side is different, time to pull your head out of the donkey/elephant ass and see the truth before we are living in the USSA.

Why do Mens Magazines always get it wrong?

So, I was over at dailygeek.tv ranting about this 21 cheep, cool things you can buy. It was an article from men.style.com (which I guess is suppose to be a cool name for GQ on the web),

And I have to stop and wonder why these magazines always seem to get it wrong. Either they expect every tom, dick and joe to have a couple extra Gucci Attache cases filled with $50,000 in unmarked, non-sequential bills laying around the trunk of their Porsche or they are pointing out some stooopiiiidd junk that just isn't worth the over-priced mark up.


Go Read the article

http://men.style.com/features/big_story/cheap_chic/slideshow/h/042007CHEAP?loop=0&slideshowId=slideshow41012&iphoto=0&nphoto=21&play=false

Now here are my thoughts:


Timex - many of us don't have the $1000s it takes to get a good watch, or even one of the semi-cool $100+ ones. Timex is a good brand, but this is a lame watch.

Shaving Brushes and Art pads? Why are these on the list?

Who the hell cares about somebody's Egg McMuffin knock off from a place in New York? I live on the Beach. This isn't cool, cheap or worth the print. My bet is somebody had to come up with one more item for the list before deadline, and this was on his desk.

DVDs?

Underwear? The only cool underwear are the naughty little panties your date was wearing last night and are now living in that special hidden spot with other mementos of previous nights. Mens underwear haven't been cool since we got too old for underoos.

Cheap ($90) shoes from the UK? Not cool. That simple.

And as a final point...

THere is nothing cool in the Gap and definitely not $50 bucks worth of cool. I think if you fall into the gap, they tie you up and waterboard you until you think that wearing pink Polo shirts with the collar turned up will be much cooler now than when it was lame in the 80s.

Mac Hacker gets no attention, wins $10k

So, there has been a lot of news about this hacking into a Mac.

First, let me remind everyone that the CanSecWest security conference was holding a contest to win a Macbook if you could hack into a Mac from a remote location. No one could do it, so they had to change the rules, allowing physical access to the Mac. So the winner of the MacBook basically “allowed” this access by physically typing in the address of the web site. So, this was not someone taking over a computer but more like giving up control.
Now, that is not to say that Zovi, the engineer behind the actual hack did not come up with a critical flaw that needs to be fixed. I will admit Macs are not perfect, but that is one hack compared to the thousands in Windows.
Speaking of thousands of hacks, here is the real point that they seem to get wrong in every “Mac isn’t so tough” security story.”

(I will explain after the excerpt)

Security experts not surprised the Mac was hacked
Jim Dalrymple - MacCentral
Thu Apr 26, 3:09 PM ET

Security researcher Dino Dai Zovi sent a shudder through the Macintosh community late last week when he successfully hacked the Mac with an exploit that he sent to a friend attending the CanSecWest security conference. By gaining shell access to a Mac by pointing the Safari Web browser at a specially-constructed Web page, Dai Zovi won a $10,000 prize from 3Com’s Tipping Point division—and took a lot of Mac users by surprise.

…snipped for space…check out the whole story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20070426/tc_macworld/securityexperts20070426_0 ...

“If a hacker turned their attention to the Mac, it would suffer just as much as Windows,” [Ray] Wagner, [Gartner’s managing vice president in the secure business enablement group] said. “Attacking the 95 percent of the market gets them more attention.”

Really, now, read that last line again? When was the last time a Windows hacker got any attention? I can’t remember, can you? But, I can remember the attention those two guys got when they hacked third-party wireless drivers on a Mac (note: They didn’t hack the Mac, just someone else’s software, and there is still some question as to how much was BS and how much was real hacking). And Zovi, here he is getting tons of media attention, like this blog and the MacWorld article I am citing, and thousands of other tech news sources. Not only that, HE WON $10,000 for finding it!!!

When was the last time a Window hacker got that kind of attention? Even the Vista hackers that have already busted the DRM and Authentication routines in Microsoft’s brand-spanking-new cheap rip-off of OSX haven’t gotten as much attention as this one hacker who devoted his time to OSX.

Therefore, Wagner, this security expert contradicts himself by being quoted in one of the many articles that give attention where none should be had.

Apple's DRM-free movement just another poke at Windows

So, it maybe completely beside the point that most Vista ready computers aren't, and that drivers aren't ready, and it is going to take 4 gigs of Ram to run Vista and a word processor, but after reading/listening to this security/cost analysis paper that explains how Microsoft has made DRM the true reason for being of Vista and how it hands security decisions over to Hollywood and literally degrades performance if your hardware is too good.

Here is a link to the text:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

And this is to the podcast feed where the reading of the document is performed by Cory Doctorow for your listening pleasure.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

But before you go away to check this out, consider this.

Just as Vista is being released, Apple suddenly starts working against DRM. Jobs calls for DRM-free music and iTune comes out with a deal for better, DRM-free tracks from EMI. Other production companies are planing ot follow suit, with Universal and Amazon are making moves for DRM-free content.

With Vista set to screw up your HD life with its draconian, "The USSR were pussies" security and controls", there is a lot more at stake with DRM than whether you can download iTunes to you Zune. I don't hear Norway complaining about the DRM controls in Vista, strange huh? Yep. No politics in the EU, just out to "protect" their citizens.

I have to give out credit to boingboing.net for turning me on to this, and the gaget/tecb news site gizmodo.com for turning me on to the very interesting news on boingboing.com.

Growing Up With Elminster

I can’t say that I grew up on Forgotten Realms stories, but they became a big part of my reading life through out the years.
I first discovered the world of Abeir-Toril while looking for an easy read. I had spent the previous year tracking down and reading the entire Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock. After all the dramatic intrigue and “heavy reading” of a series that spanned the life of Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum and John Smith in a multiverse-wide battle between the forces of Law and Chaos, I was looking to take a little break.
As an elf fan, I decided that I wanted to read something about the pointy-eared race, but there was nothing on the shelf. The Dragonlance series had devolved into slapstick fantasy rote about kenders, gully dwarves and gnomes, so I had given up on that series, and there was a long gap the Shanara series at the time, at least on the bookshelves available to me.
However, there was one book in the fantasy section of K-mart. It was primarily about a barbarian in some icy land, who had a Drow as a sidekick. I wasn’t too sure. D&D-based novels had become a disappointment after the first two trilogies. But, what the Hells! I was desperate.
We now know that the dark elf sidekick became a shooting star that launched the Forgotten Realms into the bestseller lists. Originally, an adventure setting for D&D designer Ed Greenwood, the Realms would become the most successful role-playing setting in the fantasy genre and in RPGs in general.
Going along with the game material were a continuing series of books under the Realms label. Most were trilogies telling the stories of particular heroes like Drizzt or Arilyn Moonblade. A few one shots were here and there, but what really made the Forgotten Realms series a success was its continuity.
While not on the same level as comic books or other series, the Realms books evolved and grew into a chronicling of the Realms, not only in novels, but also in what happened in the game.
When D&D 2nd Edition came out, the Avatar Crisis slew gods and rocked the very foundation of the Realms. Kara-tur brought an Asian invasion to the Realms and when the world was changing again, the return of the Sorcerer ushered in 3rd Edition D&D.
Now, it was not a smooth ride for me as a reader. During the 90s, I swore off most of most of the Realms books after the Harpers series brought me a book where an orc said, “cool” or some such modern slang. I really can’t remember the exact details, but I stopped reading everything Realms, making the Drizzt series my only exception.
But I came back around, and have been a loyal reader of nearly every Realms book that comes out. I’ll admit that I haven’t been able to keep up with them all, but I try to space some out so I have something to read during the long dry spells between releases of other series.
And the one thing I have noticed is the steady evolution of Realms books over the last couple of years. Just as characters in D&D gain level and skill, the quality of novels has increases, as has the level of writing.
In the Everis Cale trilogy, we read about a Chosen of the god of thieves in a dark but still heroic story. In the recent Depths of Madness by Erik Scott de Bie, a party of “old” elves, Halflings and humans is led by a “younger” Elven shadowdancer who uses sex, lies and a bit of ruthlessness not often seen in Realms books to deal with them and the twisted evils they encounter.
It was in reading Depths, that I realized that the Realms have changes. Growing up and adapting to its growing audience of adult readers instead of trying to pander to the young’ens that were like us so many years ago.
Sure these are still high fantasy novels with heroes that have almost comic book lives, with friends and enemies that come back from the dead left and right, but it is nowhere near the painfully bad books that came out in the dark times. There is still a wide range of styles, from the indomitable Elminster to the honorable Drizzt Do’Urden to the shadowy Cale or the dominating Twilight.
If you are a fantasy fan, a Forgotten Realms fan, D&D player or a comic book fan looking for a change of pace, step into the Realms.

VT Abuses

I extend my sympathies towards those who lost family and friends in the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech.


However, I am more sorry for the abuses the media is already heaping upon the survivors and the public to push for ratings and political agendas.

First, VT was not the deadliest attack on US civilians. 9/11 and Waco have that beat. But I guess Waco is forgivable because it was a government sanctioned, if misguided and unjustified, attack, and 9/11 was performed by Muslim terrorists and we can't say anything bad about them in the news anymore.

Second, I can already see the gun-control nazis coming out of the wood work, and I want to point out that if these students and professors were allowed their constitutional rights to bear arms, Cho might have been stopped before such a death count could be tallied, or he might have even been afriad to do something like that in fear of being shot. (Minor props to ABC Evening News for mentioning this side of the gun control debate, if not on equal terms as the anti-gun nazis but at least not belittling the argument.)

Is it too early to start talking like this? Not according to the news networks and not according to the anti-contitutionalist.


Personally, I feel kind of ashamed to have to say anything like this, but if people don't start now, we are going to have another Patriot Act shoved down our throats while the public is too emotional to realize how blind they were.

Hot News Delivery

I have been using podcasts to keep up with the news, and I just got to rave about the best kept secret on CNN. Virgina Cha reguarlly does the CNN Now in the News Podcast (available through iTunes) and she has to be the hottest news babe around.


This screen cap is not the best quality, but check it out for yourself.

Love those Lady Humps...

I have been collectiong weird covers for awhile. I have Typo Negative doing Possession and Hit Me Baby, I got Warren Zevon doing I Kissed A Girl...but this one might just take the cake.





Can't get much better than that...Except maybe for this one.....

So many fun new toys...

All right, boys and girls.

If for some reason you read yesterdays post, and came back today, you might find that I have again changed my template.

You might ask why?

Why? Because Blogspot is out of beta and has added some new stuff to the behind the scenes workings. As you see, there is now a Google search box and Google ads on the page (feel free to click, they are sponsors, after all), some news and video feeds and other new prettiness ot the page.

Needless to say, I have spent a few minutes playing with some of the new options available to me.

Expect new looks as I dig deeper into what I can do.

Really? You don't say!

Hmmmmm…….Deja Vu?

No, just more people trying to treat you like an idiot and scare you out of going on vacation.

By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 3, 8:47 PM ET

DENVER - A top researcher predicted a "very active" 2007 Atlantic hurricane season Tuesday, with at least nine hurricanes and a good chance one will hit the U.S. coast. The forecast by William Gray predicts 17 named storms this year, five of them major hurricanes. The probability of a major storm making landfall on the U.S. coast this year is 74 percent, compared with the average of 52 percent over the past century, he said. …. From AP, via Yahoo News…Go here for the whole story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070404/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_forecast


So, I got to wonder if this will be anything like last year’s Huricane season…The one that was predicted to bring even worse storms than Katrina to the US…The one where they “revised” their prediction to a “less severe” hurricane season…In September!

And, remember! These are the same “researchers” that are telling you that Global Warming is being caused by mouth-breathers.

“Mouth-breathers? Where did you come up with that?” you say.

Well, we all know that the Environmental Tyrants have been talking about all the bad carbon emissions.

For the longest time, I thought they were talking about CO, as in Carbon Monoxide, a poisonous gas released by combustion engines and other burning processes…

Excuse me for thinking that there was any science behind the Green Kings movement.

You see after the Supreme Court ruling allowing the EPA to regulate car emissions, all the news agencies – CNN, FOX, ABC, etc.—have been reporting and consulting experts about the need to control the most dreaded of Greenfarce gases – CO2, or Carbon DiOxide.

Now, for those of you who don’t remember your 3rd grade science, or had a liberal education where learning stuff wasn’t as important as playing nice and being like all the other kids, Carbon Dioxide is the stuff we, as in mammals and all animals, breath out! We suck in the oxygen and blow out CO2.

And does that CO2 go to waste, or to clog up the atmosphere and kill off the polar bears?

No, Plants…You know, those green, leafy things that are alive, but alright to eat because they don’t have a cute face? Plants suck up are unwanted CO2 like Al Gore’s houses suck up energy. They use it like we use oxygen, and in turn, they spit out Oxygen as waste.

Wow, that is like…in balance..or an ecosystem or something.

Anyway. CO2, the stuff plants breath in to live and we breath out, is what is causing the polar ice caps on Mars to melt. We are bad, bad people.

Now, this may be a little off subject, but it is all part of the same plot to keep you afraid and obedient. More, scary hurricanes are coming. The hurricanes are worse because of global warming. Global warming is worse because gas-burning cars spit out carbon dioxide. So, don’t go to the beach, because storms are coming and cars are bad and you should stay home and work and pay more taxes like the good little serfs you are.


(I know this is kind of a rambling rant, but it is stupidity like these news stories that gets me so angry, not because they put them out there, but because there are people who believe this crap.)

Stick a Ford Motor in my Porsche?

If I were to go to a Ford Motor parts dealer and order a fuel injector, should I expect to be able to install it in my Porsche? No.
If I sign up for XBox Live, should I expect to be able to play my PS3 or Wii games on it? No.
If I buy software for Windows, should I expect to be able to install it on my Mac? (Trick question...ignore that one).
How about if I buy software for OSX, should I be able to install it on a XP machince? No.
If I subscribe to HBO, should I expect my Cable Box to be able to decode Dexter from Showtime? No.
If I log on to Star Wars Galaxies, should I expect to be able to use my Blood Elf from World of WarCraft? No. (although that would be really cool if I could!)
Then why the hell should anyone expect to sign up for iTunes and use it on a non-compatible machine?

Consider this guy from the EU....
(excerpt from this story -- http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/25/business/EU-FIN-Netherlands-Apple-iTunes.php -- from the International Herald Tribune ( www.iht.com)

Consumentenbond spokesman Ewald van Kouwen said his group had filed a formal complaint with the Dutch antitrust watchdog NMa asking it to investigate what he called "illegal practices" by Apple's iTunes Store.
"What we want from Apple is that they remove the limitations that prevent you from playing a song you download from iTunes on any player other than an iPod," he said.
"When you buy a music CD it doesn't play only on players made by Panasonic. People who download a song from iTunes shouldn't be bound to an iPod for the rest of their lives."
(Ninja comment - Does that mean that those of us who bought "Long Tall Glasses" on 8-Track shouldn't be bound to an 8 Track player for the rest of your life?)
Currently, songs bought on iTunes can be played only on iPods, and an iPod can't play downloads from other stores with similar premium content from major artists — like Napster Inc.'s service or Sony Corp.'s Connect.

Look, it is simple, if you want to download from the iTunes music store and take it with you, you got to have an iPod. That is the way the world works. If I wan't to play Rainbow Six on Xbox live, I got to have an Xbox and an Xbox version of the game. I can't use a PS 2, PS 1, Nintendo GameBoy, or PSP version...It has all got to be Xbox.
Apple didn't make iTunes to be a Wal Mart of the Internet music world. They built it as a service to their customers who bought iPods. Just like Xbox Live and most other product-specific accessories and services. I can't buy a Yu-Gi-Oh booster pack to use with my Magic The Gathering deck. I can't stick my (PS1) Final Fantasy 7 disc in my Xbox and have it work. And you can't take your iTunes download of the Backstreet Boys do Boys TO Men Video and load it in you Zune (or maybe you can, there has to be something that thing can do.)
If you have an iPod, you don't have to use ITunes music store to download music. Any mp3, and the dozens of variations and similar formats, will load into an iPod. There are plenty of legal download sites were you can get your music in a format that can be imported into iTunes and dumped to your iPod.
You can also rip CDs. I have yet to download a single song from iTunes store, and I have 9 days of audio content on my iPod. (not that much music, but a lot of audio books). Now, I have used iTunes to download podcasts and TV shows, just to be completely honest.
I don't hear this guy saying that Sony or Napster has to make their service compatiable with iPods--which would make more since, considering that the iPod is the #1 media player sold. And that doesn't mean it is the best or the greatest, even though I think it is, it just means more people want iPods than Zunes, Zens or Walkmen.
Of course, what this really boils down to is politics. These socialist political agents and their governments are always out to wipe out any individual or individual corporations that is doning something well and making money off of it.
I have never heard one consumer—a regular guy girl—complain about not being able to use iTunes because they bought a Zune, Zen or what ever failed "iPod Killer" Sony is pimping this week. They know that they should have bought an iPod for that.
Personally, I think someone high up in the EU bought the wrong MP3 player for his kid, and is too arrogant to admit it was his mistake, so he is orchestrating the entire thing so he doesn't have to shell out some Euros for an new iPod.

Hmmn...e-mail, what an interesting idea.

So, a friend recently contacted me through the comments of one of my posts, and I was kinda of surprised. After taking a look around, I realized that my profile needed a little bit of updating and wasn't displaying my e-mail.

So, for those who might need to know, you can drop me a line at ChristopherAHuff@gmail.com

I am also available on Yahoo Messenger as christopherhuff@yahoo.com

I have updated this info in my profile as well, so you can always find it there.

I am at MySpace to, under the name Christopher Zen. (I know, it's so over done, but I had to join to get to the girly pics.)