Category: geek stuff

Posted on

Of Star Trek and Christianity…

“If his words hold wisdom and his philosophy is honorable, what does it matter if he returns? What is important is that we follow his teachings. Perhaps the words are more important than the man.”
— Kahless, ST: TNG

In the episode “Rightful Heir” of Star Trek: TNG, religious leaders clone their Jesus-type character, called Kahless (they’re Klingons…w00t…), in order to speed up his prophesized return. He finds out he’s a clone later and says the above quote…I thought it was very appropriate to Christians in today’s day and age…especially the more conservative ones…

Ironically, I drove by Woodcrest earlier today, where on their sign I see: “Where one visit can change the way you view church.” I have long disliked this church and many “mega churches” like it because what they call “church” becomes more of a production and presentation, rather than an opportunity for learning, communing and fellowship. Granted, I’m all about contemporary worship, but there’s a fine line where the congregation begins to expect entertainment rather than the true purpose of worship.

Posted on

All Good Things…

That was the title of the final episode of Star Trek: TNG, widely regarded as the best of the Star Trek franchise television shows…and it is representative of where I sit today… As of 3:30 pm this afternoon, June 10, 2005, I will no longer be employed in the Truman ITS department… I think this is of significance for a few reasons. First of all, this is the longest amount of time I’ve ever worked at a job (4 years, almost entirely without stopping…there was one summer I didn’t work up here…). Secondly, this is the highest I’ve ever advanced in a job (…promoted to “lab manager” after my first year…worked in that role ever since…).

The third reason, however, is the clincher… This marks the cutting of my final umbilical connection to Truman State. After today, I will not attend class here, will not work here, will not need to be at Truman State for any reason (besides visiting folks, of course…). Today marks the first day in 5 years that I will never have to be here…ever…again… Today marks the end of an era of my life, the final chapter in perhaps the most exciting volume thus far… Subsequently, the next volume promises to encompass a much wider scope, including marriage, graduate school, and insurance in my own name…and it’s going to be weird…

…but in the end…it’ll still be a good read…

Posted on

The **AA can suck it…

So yesterday, I worked on a laptop here at the HelpDesk (everything was in Japanese…so it was a little interesting navigating Japanese Windoze XP…) and noticed that the girl had WinMX installed, which is a P2P program… Now, I heard about WinMX, like, Freshman year…back in the days before Napster was shut down (old-skool Napster, not this new “legal” crap), so I didn’t expect anyone to still use it… Then, the same day, I see this article.

The gist of the article is that the NPD Group recently released statistics saying that Apple’s iTunes music service is used as much as popular P2P services. It is actually ranked second (surveying the number of users on the service) in programs used to download music …behind WinMX… Kazaa, Limewire, etc. are all apparently used less than iTunes to download music…and eDonkey is not even on the list (even though you can log into it right now and find 4 million users…as opposed to the 2 million users on WinMX…). The real kicker here is that the RIAA and the MPAA both use the NPD Group for their statistics…

So yeah, essentially, the **AA pisses me off tremendously… I actually did a speech on this subject for (you guessed it…) speech class a few years back, so that research pissed me off even more… As the article points out, the NPD Group uses old school statistics to survey data and extrapolate for the general population…but you’d think they could, oh, I don’t know, actually log into the services and see how many people are using each service at a given time? It seems these fools do everything they can to distort the facts (namely that they aren’t losing money at all due to file-sharing and that they are, in fact, perhaps even gaining revenues…) just to keep ahold of a system that has been in place far longer than it should have been… I’m thinking that the era of CDs in stores should be over and everything should be electronic as soon as possible, ’cause these lawsuits, etc. against people like Gertrude Walton is silly…

Posted on

…w00t…OS X on my PC…

Yeah, so Steve Jobs officially announced that Apple will now start using Intel chips in their systems beginning in mid-2006 for their lower-end systems and 2007 for their high-end systems…

I guess there are two likely possibilities for this move:

  • Apple will increase their user-base by getting their millions of iPod customers and Photoshop aficionados to use Mac OS X on their PC.
  • Apple will lose their user-base because the hardware is now sub-standard (like many PCs today…and all Dells…) and their target market (people my age…) will be able to download OS X for free to install on their PCs, thereby relieving any need to ever buy a Mac

So yeah, I dunno about this. I mean, it’s cool that I’ll be able to have a sweet OS on my PCs (besides Linux…although, OS X is essentially Linux anyway…which is even sweeter…), but at the same time, it’s more than likely that Apple will fold over this…and also possible that they’ll exist in the future only as a software company and iPod company, no longer making computers…since I’ll now be able to build my own Macs… I dunno, it’ll be interesting to see how this paradigm shift plays out…

Posted on

The Linux Mob

In this article posted at TechNewsWorld, Rob Enderle suggests that Linux has reached the point globally that others only wish they could achieve… He cites examples of situations where Linux users have formed coalitions (ex: The Union of Free Software Professionals), have organized to meet their goals (ex: bashing SCO with denial-of-service attacks), and controlling the media (ex: influencing a column published by Sys-Com Media that initially tried to discredit Groklaw’s founder, but was later pulled for “lack of evidence”). The only thing needed, says Enderle, is strong leadership.

I guess I’d have to agree on a few points with the article… I mean, I read a decent number of postings on Slashdot every day and see what kind of responses the posts get. Slashdot readers alone could probably organize a decent DOS attack against anyone they wanted…if they wanted to…and if they wanted to stoop to Microsoft’s level (…of bullying, that is…). I guess I’m glad to see that Linux users have a decent amount of power and organization, but at the same time, it would be nice to have some leader step forward (IBM? Novell?) and control the masses a bit…so they do more good than damage…

Posted on

Of Star Trek and rap music…

So yeah, according to TrekToday, there should be another Star Trek movie in production in the next 2 or 3 years… Jerry and I watched Star Trek: Nemesis yesterday, the last one that was made, and it still irked me how poorly it did in theaters, even though the acting and special effects were better than Episode III… Hopefully in a few years, it’ll be time for Star Trek to once again take its place in the annals of cable TV science fiction…but for now, I’ll just have to be satisfied with Stargate SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis… 😛

On another note, it appears that Cirroc Lofton is producing a rap album… For those who don’t know (i.e. everyone reading this…), he played Jake Sisko on Star Trek: DS9. Apparently, one of the songs will be some kind of hip-hop version of the original theme song…and this worries me greatly… On the other hand, maybe it’ll actually be better than William Shatner’s “musical offerings”…

Posted on

I love my little sister…

Quothe Kristen:

Reasons why Lucas sucks and Star Trek is better:
1. One word: “NOOOOOOOOO” ~Darth Vadar (oh my god!)
2. R2D2 and C3PO were the best actors in the damn movies
3. Roddenberry was smart enough to know that computer animated characters look fake
4. Why does Yoda need a walking stick if he can do back flips?
5. He waited for the advanced technology only to use it to screw everything up!
6. At least the “droid” in ST was smart and had a sex life.
7. Props for the light sabers, but everybody still had guns, so why didn’t they just Indiana Jones their jedi asses?
8. Why do people make fun of trekkies so much when Lucas fans camp out in front of theaters for weeks and whore themselves out for tickets aside from wearing rolls on their ears and dressing up like huge dogs?

Posted on

First Post!

Yeah…I have a blog now…we’ll see how this goes and whether I stick with it…or whether I break this computer and lose everything… Updates will follow, I’m sure…