I generally have a lot of respect for police officers. Lately, there have been a lot of questions raised regarding the use of tasers by police. To me, a taser is an alternative to deadly force: if the cop feels they have to use a gun, or if they feel that the next step will be hand to hand combat, then the taser gives them an alternative.
I stumbled across this video which gives a stop-action view of someone using the least impressive of computer tools to perform some rather impressive illustrating magic…
It is thanksgiving in the U.S., and so there the usual news items regarding how many things we have to give thanks for abound. I’m Canadian, so our thanksgiving was a few weeks ago…but our friendly neighbors to the south generate the majority of our news, so we sort of get the benefits of two holidays through a sort of osmosis. Unfortunately, I’m feeling under the weather today, and any time I have a cold or flu I end up feeling a bit sorry for myself- I wasn’t feeling any particular “thankful” vibe today.
In computers, bugs are a fact of life. No matter how much someone might claim that an application or operating system is “perfect”, the truth is always quite different.
Take the Macintosh, for example. I’ve been using my MacBook Pro for a while, and am pretty impressed with its behavior. But “bug free? Heck no. Here are a few recent examples of “unexplained” behavior:
I like watching movies in my home. A nice big screen TV, comfy chairs, a DVR or DVD player…I can pause whenever I want, stretch my legs, rewind and re-watch scenes. It can be a better experience than what you get at many commercial theaters these days.
I am generally tolerant of different cultures. But after reading about a young woman sentenced in a Saudi court to 200 lashes and six months in jail for the crime of being gang-raped 14 times by seven men…well, tolerance is out the window.
When I cracked the case, however, it actually wasn't too bad: yes, it definitely needed cleaning, but the dust/hair build up had mostly been stopped from entering the chassis by the air filter on the case.
...When I listened closely to the fans, I noticed that it seemed like the power was going off and on at about a half second cycle during that minute, before finally "catching" and staying on.
I am sitting here in the gathering dark as our short winter day comes to an end. We had a serious wind storm here during the night and into the morning, and around 9:30 am or so our power failed. It is a bit past 4:00 pm now.
I realize that the American legislative and judicial system is flawed. Money drives both systems: lobbyist groups can “encourage” legislators to re-write laws to suit them, and wealthy individuals or companies can sue the innocent and wronged into oblivion before their case is even heard in a court.