I have a story to tell you. But before I do, I want you to know that I have tried my hardest not to embellish any of it and tell it as clearly as I remember it, with all of my thoughts and statements written as accurately and truthfully as I can. This is because it is a story that really needs no embellishment and can stand on its own merits. Although I’d had two beers at the time it occurred, my memory of the events that transpired is crystal clear because I retold it a few times through the course of the evening, and reinforced the details in my mind with each retelling. So without further ado, here it is.
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A Moral Dilemma
Posted in Blog, Musings
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Should talking on a cell phone in the car be illegal?
Should any non-criminal behavior be criminalized? I think the more important question is, how many more of your freedoms do you want to leave up to a politician to decide for you? Haven’t we allowed them too much latitude already? Our founding fathers believed that people can and should govern their own behavior, and the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be left to us. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have died attempting to protect our freedoms for us over the last two centuries, and it is an insult to them and to the wisdom of our predecessors that we continue to allow a few thousand tyrants to strip freedom away from 300 million of the rest of us. The more freedoms we empower these tyrants to take away from us, the more they’ll feel justified in taking away other freedoms as well. Precedents are set and referenced by other politicians and lawyers for future policymaking, followed by phony statistics to convince us that we’re all safer. I don’t want to be safer, and I don’t want you manipulating my countrymen with the false promise of it either. Freedom is more important than safety. If you let politicians take away your freedom in exchange for safety, you’ll simply have less of both.
And of course, politicians won’t have to abide by these laws because we’ve allowed them to be above the laws they’ve created. Just look at the Kennedys and that Foley guy. I have no sympathy for politicians who are ensnared in the foolish laws they’ve created for the rest of us – but they still get away with breaking them anyway. Why do we allow this to continue?
Posted in Annoyances, Blog, Commentary, Musings
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Imagine never having to ‘boot up’ a computer again
Korean electronics manufacturer Samsung has produced a working prototype of a new type of memory called PRAM that is as fast as ordinary RAM, but it doesn’t lose its contents when powered off. It works like Flash memory, but it doesn’t have to erase a cell’s contents before writing to it, which boosts its speed thirtyfold over Flash. Its cell size is half as big and it requires 20% fewer steps to produce in manufacturing than Flash, so it’s cheaper and smaller, and lasts 10 times longer.
This is exactly the kind of revolution we’ve been waiting for in computer systems. We’ll look back on the days when transient memory that lost its contents when turned off was the stone age of computing. Powering off your computer will no longer be the time-consuming process it once was, and hibernation will be instantaneous. Power failure will no longer be a catastrophic event. Booting a computer will no longer be the five-minute coffee-break event it once was – simply turning it back on will return it to where it was when you shut it off.
Brilliant!
It is expected to be in mainstream use within the next decade. I’m not sure I can wait that long.
Posted in Tech Update
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We’re all fucked now!
Keith Olbermann had this to say about the MCA. If you haven’t read it yet, you should.
Tuesday’s signing of the Military Commissions Act has much greater implications than most people can imagine. It doesn’t just mean we’ve surrendered our last great freedom to our government. It also means to me that John Titor was right, and that is some very, very bad news.
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