Penn and Teller’s Bullsh*t! show, speaking about gun control and how useless it is. Needless to say, there’s language used. If that bothers you, then don’t watch it.

I’m not libertarian, but Penn & Teller make a lot of sense sometimes.

Yes, I’m a member of the NRA. I believe in the right (yes, a right) to bear arms. I do believe that if more people had concealed weapons permits, it would help, and not hurt, in situations such as the recent Virginia Tech shootings.

And if you’re someone who wants a concealed weapons permit, odds are you are one who is not afraid to use it in the appropriate situation. And that’s why there are rules/processes to obtain a concealed carry permit. Here in California, it is up to your local county sheriff to make the call.

Anyways, I get tired of hearing the same old baloney every time there’s some mass shooting in the news. Newsanchors/public blaming guns, lack of gun control, blaming video games, etc… God forbid we actually blame the thing responsible— the person who was firing the weapon!

Look, we have enough gun control laws. And criminals, murderers and general psychopaths just don’t care about those laws. If they want to harm someone, they’re going to. Regardless of what the law says. What if this guy had used a knife instead of a gun to murder 30+ people? Would we be hearing public outcry against the lack of knife control laws?

Guns are tools, and can be used for good as well as bad. Don’t blame them for what their owner is doing with them.

I suggest everyone check out A Human Right.

Does Outlook 2007 just crawl on your screaming-fast machine? Microsoft has a new patch:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c262bcfd-1e09-49b6-9003-c4c47539df66&DisplayLang=en

I just applied it, and already can tell a huge difference. My PST file is fairly large, and this fix is meant to target just that. Enjoy.

Pandora can seem weird sometimes, but hey, I dig all three songs/bands, so there ya go. It works. Now it’s playing Flyleaf… awesome!

It’s not fun, let me tell you.

The motherboard in the XPS 400 requires a special driver in order for Windows XP setup to see the hard disks. If you’re trying to install Vista, you’re going to be just fine without these drivers (as they come with the Vista disk.)

However, for the unfortunate few who must reinstall XP on this type of machine, you’ll wonder why you don’t see your disks. You have to create whats called a slip-streamed XP installation disk.

This is definitely not for the non-tech savvy. I don’t know how Dell expects grandma and grandpa to be able to stick their Dell XP CD in and have it reinstall properly (because it won’t.) And why didn’t Dell put the drivers on the XP disk in the first place? Bah.

Anyway, you’ll have to use a program called nLite to assemble this slip-streamed Windows disk.

I’m not going to spell out the directions here, hopefully you can follow along to these instructions.

I recently started working at my new job, and my boss was generous to provide a top-of-the-line system for me to use. It’s got a Core 2 Duo processor, 2 gigabytes of RAM, and two 80 gigabyte 10,000 RPM drives in a RAID 0. Vrooom.

Problem is, every so often, my machine would “pause”. Not freeze, because I could move the mouse and such, but couldn’t perform any actions. Then the machine would “catch up” with itself and work fine again. While this was happening, the hard drive light would remain lit.

Looking in the system’s event log, I found numerous entries that said a timeout occurred in iaStor.sys — I’ve had my share of problems in the past with this particular driver, so I knew it was an Intel driver.

I tried updating to the latest drivers. No joy. I tried the Dell drivers.. nope!

And then I searched the internet and found the jackpot. A post over at the Things Worth Knowing blog regarding this very issue. There’s so much in the comments, it would take you days to wade through. Let me just save you the trouble: Intel has admitted that it’s their fault.. and they blame Microsoft! I found this information on The Flying Nerd blog.

You can read the full writeup at Intel’s website. They have a registry fix you can attempt yourself if you’re savvy enough. It solved the problem for me. But isn’t it a bit childish to blame Microsoft for your lack of proper testing?

And in the end, I feel sorry for Joe-Schmo consumer who spends $2k+ on a computer just to get it home and have it freeze every so often. I also blame Dell… I mean, come on, even basic computer usage tests would have revealed this problem. And judging by the response online, you can bet a lot of people are unhappy and affected.

Scott Hanselman writes a blog post about missing image previews under Media Center in Windows Vista. I recently faced something similiar, but with video files. I tried everything, and nothing would bring back the preview icons for .MPG, .WMV, etc… I eventually wound up reinstalling Windows Vista. And I believe I tracked it back to an older version of Nero.

So if you’re having the same problem, you too may need to reinstall. Or try the registry tricks from Scott. Maybe you can add that “PerceivedType” key to the different video files and get it working again. Who knows. I’m just frustrated that a company I have trusted for years (Nero) could have released a version that blows those away with such ease.

I’ve become a bit of a contest junkie lately. I enter contests left and right, without care to my personal information floating around the intarweb. Yay me. But hey, I might win a free Macbook or iPod, right?

The two sites I’ve been using have been http://www.online-sweepstakes.com/ and http://www.contestgirl.com/ — they both seem pretty on-top of the internet contest “scene”.

So yeah, check it out if you like that sort of thing.

From an excellent post by Mark Shuttleworth, and the main point I’ve been driving home about the silliness of DRM for years:

It only takes one crack. For any given piece of content, all it takes is one unprotected copy, and you have to assume that anyone who wants it will get it. Whether it is software off a warez site, or music from an MP3 download service in Russia, or a file sharing system, you cannot plug all the holes. Face it, people either want to pay you for your content, or they don’t, and your best strategy is to make it as easy as possible for people who want to comply with the law to do so. That does not translate into suing grannies and schoolkids, it translates into effective delivery systems that allow everyone to do the right thing, easily.

Mark makes numerous other fine points, so be sure to visit his blog to check it all out in detail.

If someone wants to steal something, they’re going to. Regardless of whether or not there is DRM on it. There is _always_ a way to crack it and come across it for free. Why are good customers treated like potential criminals?

Recently Apple (and Microsoft) announced that a large catalog of tracks will be available without DRM from their stores. This directly stems from the announcement from EMI (a major record label) who is authorizing the sale of their entire catalog DRM-free. This is a step in the right direction, however…

Apple has chosen to increase the cost of this DRM-free music ($1.29 from $0.99) And why? Ahh yes, they’ll be sending you a higher-quality AAC file (256kbps versus the iTunes standard of 128kbps.) So are we paying for that track? The right to the listen to that track? For the digital bits themselves? Why is a higher quality track (which should’ve been provided in the first place) costing us more now?

I recently had a friend call me and ask why he couldn’t get iTunes songs to import onto his Creative Zen music player. He had just received a $50 gift card from his wife and wanted to load up his player with songs. I had the unfortunate job of telling him that he’ll only be able to sync his purchased iTunes music with an iPod. Nothing else. He wasn’t too happy about that, to say the least.

In the end, the legitimate consumer gets screwed with DRM. I’ll be glad to see it crumble away.. audio is the first step, then we just have to work on video. Did you know that if you have a first-gen HD-DVD player, you are going to be forced to get a firmware upgrade soon, because of the HD-DVD encryption being cracked a short while ago? Isn’t that just lovely for us legitimate users of content! I’m sure we all have plenty of time in our schedules to do this upgrade. Not to mention the technical know-how to pull it off.

Bah.