What the heck is with this Wii obsession? It’s a computer, a skinny white computer that plays games. It’s all I see on digg. Now we have pictures of a Wii being taken out of it’s shipping box. I don’t remember this amount of fuss with the Commodore 64, or the highly acclaimed Amiga (which by the way was light years ahead of it’s time for publishing and graphics).
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Author: luken7
An avid and passionate sailor, drummer and technologist. My career focuses around computing and storage technologies. My passion is sailing and playing drums. I love music, especially progressive jazz and rock.
JohnKerry.com – Press Releases
Finally, someone says what ALL veterans in the background have been saying all along. It truly is amazing, and absurd that the most military “hawks” have never defended their country, or even worn the uniform in peacetime.
So let’s see,….
* John Kerry, combat vet. Rush Limbaugh, prescription drug vet.
* Colin Powell, combat vet, Dick Cheney, Duck hunting vet.
* George Bush, oh wait he served. Defending Texas from an air invasion from Cancun, John McCain,, combat vet and POW
Looks like it 3-0 of true honorable men vs. the lip talkers
Statement of John Kerry Responding to Republican Distortions, Pathetic Tony Snow Diversions and Distractions
Washington – Senator John Kerry issued the following statement in response to White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, assorted right wing nut-jobs, and right wing talk show hosts desperately distorting Kerry’s comments about President Bush to divert attention from their disastrous record:
“If anyone thinks a veteran would criticize the more than 140,000 heroes serving in Iraq and not the president who got us stuck there, they’re crazy. This is the classic G.O.P. playbook. I’m sick and tired of these despicable Republican attacks that always seem to come from those who never can be found to serve in war, but love to attack those who did.
I’m not going to be lectured by a stuffed suit White House mouthpiece standing behind a podium, or doughy Rush Limbaugh, who no doubt today will take a break from belittling Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s disease to start lying about me just as they have lied about Iraq. It disgusts me that these Republican hacks, who have never worn the uniform of our country lie and distort so blatantly and carelessly about those who have.
The people who owe our troops an apology are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who misled America into war and have given us a Katrina foreign policy that has betrayed our ideals, killed and maimed our soldiers, and widened the terrorist threat instead of defeating it. These Republicans are afraid to debate veterans who live and breathe the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor.
Bottom line, these Republicans want to debate straw men because they’re afraid to debate real men. And this time it won’t work because we’re going to stay in their face with the truth and deny them even a sliver of light for their distortions. No Democrat will be bullied by an administration that has a cut and run policy in Afghanistan and a stand still and lose strategy in Iraq.â€Â
JohnKerry.com – Press Releases
Project Blackbox
Project Blackbox is a prototype of the world’s first virtualized datacenter–built into a shipping container and optimized to deliver extreme energy, space, and performance efficiencies.
OK, so here we go. Sun is at it again, this time with what I see as a really good idea. Trouble is, too many of today’s CIO’s just aren’t pregressive enough to think outside the box, or in this instance, inside the box. As teraflops continue to increase and with projects the start and stop on a whim, this is really a good idea, have it dropped off, lease it, then “dispose” of it.
My Beef with the Iranian President …
Damnit, will somebody get this guy a suit? If you’re gonna rant on with nonsense, at least look good doing it. Everytime I see this guy he has the same jacket, $11.68 from Walmart. Hey due, follow the lead from the other tyrants out there. Even Saddam had some style while slaughtering tens of thousands. Id like to recommend Canali, great Italian tailoring, and you couldn’t look better. And they have a great sportswear line, for when you are in your casual killing mode. So when you’re spurring your nonsense about whiping Isreal off the map, at least have the decency to look sharp. Oh, and by the way, you need to trim up that mess you call a beard.
For his latest tyrade, click the link below….
Ahmadinejad: Israel led by ‘terrorists,’ has no reason to exist – USATODAY.com
The Art of Complex Problem Solving
Interesting..just go see it
The Art of Complex Problem Solving
The Octavarium Conspiracy
OctavariumAh yes, the nevering conspiracy and analysis. I think DT did that all just for fun. Must we always look for something more than it is? Anyway, great research on DT’s part for the title and associated artwork and musical and natural meaning.
Due to its unusual name, many Dream Theater fans speculated on what they believe to be the meaning of the album’s title.
First it is remarkable that the album should not even be called Octavarium first but Octave. Though when prog rock band Spock’s Beard released their (also eighth) album Octane earlier in 2005, Dream Theater decided to differentiate its name a bit more from that.
Some thought that the title referred to Octavarium Romanum, which was a book of Catholic liturgy referring to a period known as the Octave. There is also a similarity to the musical Octave: Root, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, Octave – and the title of the first track is “The Root of All Evil”. Others theorized that the title came from Latin words meaning “Various Eight”, since it has eight tracks and the band has said that the eight songs on the record are all of different styles. However, this is incorrect Latin; the Latin word for eight is “octo,” not “octa,” and “varium” is singular when it would need to be plural. This theory may have come from the fact that Octavarium is the band’s eighth album, since “octavus” is Latin for “eighth”.
Yet another interpretation was that the “-arium” suffix is used to denote a place where something is held, in this case musical octaves. This turns out to be the closest to the truth, when the lyrics from the title track (“Trapped inside this Octavarium”) are considered, creating a portmanteau from the words octave and aquarium.
It is also interesting to note that Octavarium follows a pattern started in Dream Theater’s 6th studio album, Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence, which had 6 songs and the word six in the title. The next CD, Train of Thought, contained 7 tracks, and Octavarium follows both of these apparent “trends” with 8 songs and a title related to the number eight.
Every song of the album is in a different minor key, starting with F, then G, A, B, C, D, E, and returning to F. This is evident by the treble clef staves in the liner notes.
Many fans have made observations about the recurrances of 5s and 8s in the album art, possibly a reference to the Golden ratio, very common in art throughout history and in Nature itself. The name Octavarium itself has 5 syllables, while connotating 8. The use of 5s and 8s stems from the number of natural notes (white keys on a piano) and black keys (sharp/flat notes) in an octave. It may also refer to the number of members in the band from its inception in 1985 to 2005, Octavarium being the band’s 8th studio album, and the subsequent “Score” being their fifth live album.
Several of the blatant 5 and 8 references in the album are:
1. On the cover, there is a Newton’s Cradle with eight pendulums, which have five birds in between them, and the birds are arranged in the same pattern as piano keys (with the black birds representing flats and sharps and the balls of the pendulum representing the natural notes).
2. On the spine of the album there are piano keys in an octave.
3. The dominoes add up to five and eight.
4. The octopus has eight legs and there are five fish around it.
5. The stop sign has eight sides.
6. The star (which has five “legs”) is inside of an octagon (which has eight sides) also the scale of the star and octagon is – 5:8.
7. The spider has eight legs and is inside an octagon which has eight sides and five “layers.” Also, the maze itself has 8 doorways amongst the layers.
8. There is a billiards eight-ball on the space behind where the CD is.
Another thing is that there are eight references to five and eight, and the star in the octagon has musical keys written around it that go in a circle of fifths. This is ignoring the fact that the band didn’t actually create the cover art. Hugh Syme, who is known for creating art for music of the genre, conceived of and made the artwork for this album, rather than Dream Theater.
The Newton’s Cradle on the cover and the musical hooks connecting all the songs together lyrically and melodically have also given rise to the theory that the entire album is intended to be a concept album portraying continuity.
Octavarium – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shelley The Republican » Linux: A European threat to our computers
And if want a further example of the fanatical extreme right, take a look at this post which perports that now Linux itself is part of the European-left centric attack against American dominance.
Like most things that are worth owning, Computers are an American invention. Look at any modern computer and you will see that the whole thing is the product of American brilliance. For example, this rugged IBM laptop I am using was designed and built by an American company. It runs software built by Microsoft, one of America’s most productive organizations. My computer does everything I could possibly want: I can do my work, submit my taxes and even search the Bible. Like all the greatest American engineering, it’s an example of innovation that makes a growing group of European and Chinese hackers jealous. They hate our lead in computing technology and will stop at nothing until they have control of all of our computers.
I’m talking about a project called ‘Linux’, something you may not have encountered, but might do some day. It’s a computer program that was initially developed in Finland as a means of circumventing valuable copyrights and patents owned by an American company called SCO Group. Unlike Windows, which is a mature commercial product which is normally included with every new computer, Linux is given away. Now it may not sound like much of a problem, after all there is very little profit in merely giving a product away. This would be certainly true were in not for the Linux project’s seductive Marxist ideology and the effect that it has on ‘Blue-State’ liberals. Indeed, Linux is so pervasive amongst the blue states and many liberal universities that a leading computer expert Steve Balmer (from Microsoft) described Linux as cancer. The American software industry is worth more than $7 Billion; Introducing a foreign product like Linux which is often copied for free could threaten that entire industry. A generation of computer users might get use to accepting foreign software hand-outs rather than paying for a superior American products. If only the danger were just to our economy
When wil people like these simply understand that innovation, choice, and demand is what’s best for this or any industry. To leave out competition and innovation, we would be left to the devices of examples like our American auto industry from the mid 70’s to the late 90’s. I personally use Linux, for many things, and the reasons are numerous. It’s not because I want to see Microsoft fail, it’s mainly because it want softwar on my terms, I will not be dictated to on what I need, how I should run it or how it should perform. Now there are also applications to which I do use MIcrosoft products for, and gladly pay for them…Outlook and Onenote. And bythe way, to say that Linux contributes to Al Quada and terrorism shows just how out of touch this person is, and how disconnected from the realm of global society.
What’s troubling is some of the comments posted on the site, in support of these “claims”. Obviously, showing their immaturity and naiveté in business and culture, these are probably some 20 and early 30 year olds who probably don’t have a passport, never did well in history and are msot likely armchair flagwaving patriots that have never been in uniform…
As a side note to show that I’m not opposing this article based on political and religious affiliations, I’m a republican (in name anyway, because I have no clue what my party has become lately), and I’m a Christian in the sense that I try every day to follow Christ’s teachings, as opposed to the hijacked religion itself.
Read and enjoy the full article here….
Shelley The Republican » Linux: A European threat to our computers
The Apple iPhone
All of your rumerored iPhone wish pictures in one place. I prefer this one but of course the display will stay greasy.
Apple iPhone
Why Detroit won't go electric
How is it that Tesla Motors can build an all electric sports car that does 0-60 in four seconds, get’s 250 miles to the charge and produces no emissions, while Detroit, with all it’s R&D money and resources, can’t produce an effective electric car?
I would suspect part of the answer is below, snipped here: The engine and transmission of a conventional car need lubricating oils, filters, coolant, clutches, spark plugs and wires, a PCV valve, oxygen sensors, a timing belt, a fan belt, a water pump and hoses, a catalytic converter, and a muffler  all items requiring service and aftermarket replacements (which the auto companies sell), and all items that aren’t needed in an electric car. Simply put, Detroit hasn’t found a good enough model to replace the existing aftermarket revenue. Remember, the role of the comsumer is to support the corporation….
When you build a car that’s electric, you start with one built-in advantage: Electric cars just don’t have to be as complex mechanically as the car you’re probably driving now. Sophisticated electronics and software take the place of the pounds and pounds of machinery required to introduce a spark and ignite the fuel that powers an internal combustion engine.
For example, the typical four-cylinder engine of a conventional car comprises over a hundred moving parts. By comparison, the motor of the Tesla Roadster has just one: the rotor. So there’s less weight to drive around and fewer parts that could break or wear down over time.
But the comparison doesn’t end with the counting of moving parts. The engine and transmission of a conventional car also need lubricating oils, filters, coolant, clutches, spark plugs and wires, a PCV valve, oxygen sensors, a timing belt, a fan belt, a water pump and hoses, a catalytic converter, and a muffler  all items requiring service, and all items that aren’t needed in an electric car.
Tesla Motors – how it works
What A Terrorist Incident in Ancient Rome Can Teach Us – Pirates of the Mediterranean – New York Times
Very striking parrallel in this article.
The vote by the Senate this past Thursday accomplished some very scary things in the name of security.
1. to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees
2. denying them their right to challenge their detention in court
3. the careful wording about torture which forbids only the inducement of “serious†physical and mental suffering to obtain information;
4. the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant
5. the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant
This truly is a monumental shift in executive power, where legally, there can be ramifications against any American who opposes the president. While most people would say this would be far fetched, remember it was hte people that put their faith and freedom in Ceasar, and the rest truly was history. What exactly have we done to ourselves?
In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world’s only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome’s port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
Read the entire article below at the link below
What A Terrorist Incident in Ancient Rome Can Teach Us – Pirates of the Mediterranean – New York Times
L u k e n . o r g 