Category Archives: tech

A questions of ethics

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So I was looking for a soundtrack that I thought was out of print and it cause me to ponder the ethics of downloading it.

I fully support buying material to support the artists. I buy my books, I buy my DVDs and Blu-rays, and I buy my music, but there are times when what I want is not in print. I cannot buy a copy that will support the artist. (Buying a used copy generates no royalties for the copyright holder.)

So in that situation is it ethical to download a copy? Certainly on the legal front it is illegal, but I’m asking a question of ethics.

I think so. I will support the legal methods of reimbursing the artists and such whenever I can, but if the copyright holders do not make it possible for me to pay them for the product I then I really do not feel bad about finding a copy on my own.

My story had a happy ending for the copyright owners. Not only was the soundtrack to The Wicker Man (1973) in print it was available from iTunes!

Where does a person’s rights really begin?

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This is of course the classic question in the abortion debate. The prochoice side generally selecting some moment after concept and sometime only after birth for considering the unborn to have right and with the right-to-life side generally selecting some point before birth or right at conception.

I am not going to debate the merits of either side here. Abortion is a topic on which very few minds are capable of being changed. What I want to do is take the idea that the unborn have rights and play them back within our new understand of human biology. Continue reading →

Databasin’ fool

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So I have spent a few hours this morning databasing my DVD/Blu-ray collection.  I have according to the database 222 movies in my collection, but this number is not completely accurate. The database software counts boxed sets as a single entry, so for example my boxed set of the Star Wars movies is one entry, but it has three movies.

Given that my feature film count is closed to 290 from boxed sets. (The el cheapo 50 ‘classic’ horror films bosted that count by 49 alone.)

The database software is Movie Collector and I love it. After the jump is a screen capture of what it looks like. The software cost me $30 so it is not pricey. You can enter films by title, barcode number (typing it in by hand) or by scanning the barcode on the box of the DVD/Blu-ray. I bought a cheap barcode scanner off Ebay ($8) and it took me just a couple of hours to enter all the films. Continue reading →

iPad

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Short post — I want one.

Longer post. I can’t afford to buy one right now and unlike Steven Colbert I can’t beg for one on television.

So here’s the deal I made with myself.

I can buy myself an iPad when I can pay for it entirely with monies earned from my writing. Not from my day job, not from tax overpayment returns and not from any gift cards, but solely from money paid to me for my writing.

It could be a long time before I get one.

Interesting Research paper

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So here a link to a report that I found interesting.

The basic upshot is that this scientist, Wolfgang Knorr, did a study to see what has happen to the atmospheric fraction of carbon dioxide over the last 150 years. The assumption is that increasing fractions of carbon dioxide will drive a ‘greenhouse effect.’

In contradiction to some recent studies, he finds that the airborne fraction of carbon dioxide has not increased either during the past 150 years or during the most recent five decades.

I found that very interesting.


Our Puritanism is going to get people killed.

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Over Christmas we had another attempted terror attack against America. By now I assume  that everyone reading this blog knows that a young man smuggled explosives aboard an International flight — the bomb making materials were apparently in his underwear — and after determining that the aircraft was in American airspace, attempted to detonate it.

Only by a combination of luck and in competence did the device not explode, but merely burned. Even that could have been very bad had passengers not acted quickly and subduing the terrorist and putting out the fire.

It stupid that this man was able to smuggle the bomb-making material aboard. We have the technology to catch this crap. It’s back scatter x-rays.

These devices can image right through clothing down to the skin. The likelihood of getting contraband through such a system is much lower than with our current wand and pat down system. (Nothing is assured – a dopey scanner operator can still miss things, but this is so much better than what we have now.)  We have not instituted these scanners because it is able to image people in the nude, right through their clothing.

Horrors, someone might see my wang.

Bloddy hell people, I’d rather have TSA people seeing an endless parade of naughty bits than not be able to see bombs. Hmmmm, nude or dead, I know which I’ll want to be.

The only reason to hold back this technology is that we are so scared of skin we’d literally rather die than have someone see some.

To quote Plan 9 from Outer Space…

“Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!”

Vindication

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Not that I had gotten much push back on it, but I am now vindicated on my choice for a blu-ray player.

When I was looking into blu-ray players one of my prime concerns was compatibility. There was already Blu-ray 1.0 and 1.1, and 2.0, the basic discs would work in any machine, but some special features would only work if you have the latest version of the blu-ray playing software. Because of that I selected the Playstation 3 as my blu-ray player. Its internet connectivity allowed it to update its firmware as the needs arose and keep up to date on playing blu-rays. I have been quite happy with its performance and not regretted buying it for a moment.

Today the specs were released for something I knew was coming, Blu-ray 3D; 3-D movies with full 1080p quality from you home TV.  Sony a prime backer of blu-ray is going to have a firmware update for the Playstation 3 to show the 3-d Blu-rays.

No hardware upgrade for me.

An Early Christmas

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So I spent today setting up my christmas present from my sweetie-wife.
My wife and id usually do not engage in trying to figure out the perfect gift for each other and instead buy gifts from each other’s wish lists.
A few months ago I had commented in the $99 walmart special audio system I owned couldn’t keep up with the high end data and audio coming off the PS# when it played blu-rays. My sweetie-wife offered to buy em a new sound system for Christmas. I did the research, found an affordable system that met my needs, and gave her the information.
This week Fry’s had it on sale for a very good price so my sweetie bought it and I set it up today.
It is a Sony STR Dh 700. I am very happy with the sound I am getting out of this system. (I also had two speakers that some former owner of the condo left behind when he moved out.)

The most frustrating aspect of the set-up was the speaker connections for the front speakers. I had never seen anything like these and my sweetie-wife and I puzzled over it for a few moments before figuring out how to connect the wires in.

Then I allowed the systems to self balance itself. (It has a very nice auto-diagnostic routine to figure out where the speakers are and how to balance them.) After that I went through each component of our entertainment system and made sure all the outputs were the highest quality.

Man this sounds great. I put in blu-rays and got blown away by the quality, but even older DVD with mono soundtracks – like Destination Moon — sounded great.