Golden G. Richard III, Ph.D.

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November 29, 2004

Comments

All comments were deleted in an anti-spam motion. Relevant comments are welcome (again), of course.

Posted by Golden at 9:55 PM | Comments (0)

George Will

Ok, ok. More bitterness. But it's time for people to stand up and raise the dissent flag a little higher before we're completely overrun by the sheep-who-don't-think.

Read George Will's column (11/29/2004) on why academia is stacked with liberals. It's (naturally) because academia is biased against the ideas of conservatives, even in the sciences. I'm sure glad I didn't propose a "conservative" approach to fault tolerance in distributed shared memory when I was working on my Ph.D.

Had I written the column, I would have had a little more to say about greed, worship of corporate culture, and the elevation of religion over knowledge. But that's me.

Posted by Golden at 3:27 PM | Comments (0)

Furniture and Firewalls

Norton Internet Security 2005: F.
Doerr Furniture Store on Elysian Fields: F.
George Will: F. But wait, I'm ahead of myself.

I can't recommend NIS 2005. It caused major problems on my laptop, including spontaneously eliminating Internet access during one of my classes (even though there were no rules in effect that should have resulted in this). Apparently, Symantec has removed its user forums. USENET is loaded with complaints and there don't seem to be resolutions to many of the problems. What to do, what to do. Zone Alarm. It's a brilliant product.

Doerr Furniture. On Elysian Fields. An amazing experience, if you like buying furniture--or trying to buy--in the same mode as buying a car. Harassment from the moment you enter the store until you are ejected for having asked (several times) to be left alone to look at the furniture. When the owner started a confrontation (!) with my girlfriend over why she was being "rude" to him because she asked to simply look around, I nearly snapped. And what will my revenge be? We're buying a couch online. May your little kingdom of furniture rot in the stench of Internet shopping and you choke on the fumes.

Posted by Golden at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2004

Collapsed lung, bad hospital food, books

A collapsed lung isn't fun. I was "struck down" Friday afternoon, but symptoms didn't get bad enough until Saturday for me to do something about it. I'm back at home now, but with one more hole in my chest. Another failed attempt to make me stop skateboarding and get a proper haircut. Although if they had offered to provide an anesthetic when removing the chest tube in exchange for the bearings in my 78d Kryptonics wheels, I might have weakened...

Hospital food is bad. I think I had a beneficial immune system response just to rush my exit.

The mobile computing book is finally completely done and should be out by the end of the month. Details haven't been updated on Amazon yet, so please don't go there looking for it--if you find "Essentials of Movable Data", that isn't it. Blech.

After promising (to myself) not to write anymore for awhile, now I'm contemplating writing a chapter on digital forensics for a book to be published next year. Best not to start thinking about this under the influence of pain killers.

Posted by Golden at 11:45 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

November 5, 2004

Comment spammers, corporate assholes

Massive comment spamming, so comment approval is now on. Thanks, Oscar, for pointing out the large number of...err...inappropriate comments.

I was at an anti-war rally at Lee Circle and the funny thing is that the least respectful people were some corporate types, wearing suits and ties, sneering from their designated smoking area across the street. Of all people, these are the least likely to strap on a gun and hit the streets of Iraq. Though I think the war is appalingly wrong, I respect someone more who disagrees with me and is willing to put their body parts where their mouth is. Easy to talk the big talk and be Mr. Badass when all you're going to do afterward is walk back into your air conditioned office and check your calendar for the date of your next golf game.

Posted by Golden at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)