My view of the world

According to this article Justice Nancy Saitta abused her authority when she issued a gag order concerning former Clark County Family Court Judge Robert Lueck and his failure to pay back child support.

The unanimous 13-page ruling, written by Justice Michael Douglas, calls Saitta’s decision to seal the case without a written request and without findings or public notice “a manifest abuse of discretion.”

At the time she sealed the case she cited the potential use of the child support information for negative campaigning.

She acknowledged in October 2006 that she made the statements about negative campaigns, but she denied any favoritism toward Lueck and said she ordered the gag order and sealed the records to protect the child.

This judge has abused her position with such regularity that anytime she doesn’t play favorites it’s a newsworthy event.

Here’s a bit of information by Steve Miller.

Here’s another report on the most honored and respected Judge.

Ethics? We don’t need no stinkin’ ethics.

I ran the witcher demo on my main machine. I had no problems that weren’t caused by the machine being a bit slower than I would like.
I have defragged my drives and loaded the boxed copy I was given for Xmas on my game machine and got the “Please insert original DVD of “The Witcher’” error.

The forum says that the problem could be that it is a DVD writer I am using instead of just a DVDrom.
Sorry guys, but I don’t recall seeing a straight DVD reader in practically forever. Nor do I wish to DOWNGRADE!

They also say that Alcohol 120% could be the problem and that it should be uninstalled.
First I not only uninstalled it, I cleaned the registry, then manually checked the registry.
Second, when last I looked Alcohol was a legitimate program.

They tell you to edit the hell out of you registry. ——Back it up first——.

I am going to take a break until after Christmas, when I’m sure the list of forum pages for this problem will have grown from 16 to a hundred.
Maybe then these arrogant, overpaid, rip-offs, will begin to understand the difference between copy protection and forcing people to strip all legitimate programs from their machines and go back to antiquated hardware just to run a single game.

BTW: I’m pissed. Does it show?

I’m afraid that the programmers were so worried about somebody pirating the game that they failed to consider that their Draconian measures would hit legitimate owners and that the pirates would just laugh.

I received a copy of Witcher as a gift. Now it’s on my machine, and how shall I put this???
—LOAD TIMES—
I have played through Oblivion after tweaking this and that, but the load times on this far outstrip anything I ever ran into in Oblivion or Shivering Isles.

The person who gave this to me waxes poetic about the graphics. The technical aspects were great, but how come they use the same basic models for everything and why does our intrepid hero stand there with his arms absolutely straight like a big dumb manikin.

There’s lots of implied sex and watered down dialog. I’m told that the female cards issued here were less offensive? than the European cards.
The dialog is milder in english, but after seeing some of the dialog that was left in, I think it was a combination of time allotted for translation and perhaps a certain lack of familiarity with the American vernacular.

All in all, any game that allows NPCs to reference your mother sucking Dwarf cock can’t be all bad.

I’ll know more after I actually play through the bloody game. –They say it’s about 120hrs worth of game play, so I doubt it’s something to start in the evening, if I have to get up for work the next morning.

“Due to unverifiable media license authentication, the most common audio and video file types cannot be shared with different users using WD Anywhere Access.”
–This is a statement issued by Western Digital.

Strange, the first page of the WD site advertising the My Book™ World Edition™ II Network Storage System with
Remote Access. Says:
Anywhere, Anytime Access
Share Photos and Documents
Extra Data Protection
Access your data anywhere, anytime, even when your local computer is off.

Oops, I’m sorry, I misunderstood, I thought I could share any data.
I didn’t read the part where this device is only to be used for photos and documents….. My Bad.

According to WD and the assorted assholes that support DRM in all it’s draconian glory. You have no right to share the data on your hard disk. Primarily, because you are presumed guilty, until proven guilty… Fuck the evidence.

Aunt Jane couldn’t possibly record an avi file with her digital camera, much less record her granddaughter’s first recital in mp3 format.

Any of you who would dare to share avi or mp3 files are evil.
Nobody would possibly share anything but doc files and photographs without a nefarious purpose.
So speaks Western Digital!!!

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console can create a strong signal that disrupts wireless LANs.

Evidently the Xbox is capable of disrupting not only your wireless lan but your phone’s bluetooth earpiece. In fact it should to one degree or another interfere with anything that runs in the 2.4ghz band.

M$ is still investigating as are a number of universities. The problem seems to originate with the radio used to communicate with the wireless game controls.

Can you imagine how much fun it must be for the sysadmin in a school with a wireless network and a dorm full of Xboxes.
The signal is described as strange. But it wasn’t discovered until the IT department at Morrisville college in NY ran rf spectrum tests with a Cognio Spectrum Expert.

Not too long after that they wrapped an Xbox 360 in a standard static bag and the interference dropped dramatically.

I bet they can’t wait until right after Christmas.

Old Dude, the guy from the Some Old Dude blog has a food blog of sorts.
It consists of food recipes and a few drink recipes. Most of which are taken from a selection of note cards, scraps of paper, and older cookbooks.

In his collection are a number of cookbooks from American religious groups in Latin America. These tend to have recipes that are not so modern or easy, but remind me of the food I ate when I was growing up.

The older recipes call for ingredients like lard. I believe such things are now forbidden in modern kitchens, but they make things taste good and that’s all I care. Which could explain why I can’t fit into the clothes I wore just a few years back.

He’s still on the road, so posting is a bit of a pain. But I know damn well he has at least some of his recipes with him because he mention them…. Hint, Hint. Nag, Nag.

I just ran across this bit of unsurprising news.

CompUSA was owned by a Mexico based holding company, US Commercial Corp. SA de CV. Which sold it to an investment group, Gordon Brothers Group. A company who’s plan from the start was to dismantle CompUSA and sell the individual pieces.

Gordon Brothers Group is discussing with different parties the sale of stores in key retail markets and CompUSA’s other assets, including the Internet retail unit CompUSA.com and technical-support-services business CompUSA TechPro.
Retail stores that don’t sell will be shut down. The 103 stores will remain open during the holiday shopping season and provide heavy discounts on products.

Back in the first part of the year they started closing stores in spite of a large cash infusion. I believe the number was something on the order of 50% of their retail locations. In spite of the drastic measures and the added cash, partly because of the financial troubles of the Mexican parent and partly because of the cut throat computer market, they’re effectively gone.

This is not all bad. I disliked the way the local stores were run. And here we have a Fry’s, that may be a pain to get to, but that has most of what I’m likely to want.

The truth is, with online stores like Newegg, I only go to a brick and mortar store when I want something right away or when I want to see it in person.

Because I am not the only one doing this, the retail locations are loosing market share and having to cut corners.
The best example I can think of is Best Buy. It seems that every time I go in one of their stores the aisles are a little wider, the inventory is smaller, and they seem to be pushing washing machines and cellphones instead of computers.

The upside to the closing of CompUSA, is that they should have some great sales for the holidays.

Over on Pioneer Loan, there were two blogs. One titled Richard’s blog, written by a friend of mine named Richard, and the other titled Hostility, which written by the systems administrator, who’s name is Michael.

One of the women that works there is not only a self admitted princess but, from the sound of things, may well be beginning menopause.
The Princess was late yesterday, so she called Michael, who had to help with customers until she arrived. He was annoyed because this wasn’t the first time and he had other things that needed doing. He in turn complained to Richard, who preceded to put one line, without mentioning names, about the incident and one more line as a jab at someone else, for a total of two lines, on his blog.

The Princess read Richard’s blog and decided that she was being attacked, and rather than call Richard, called Michael and tore him a new one.

The company Christmas party was that evening, so when the Princess arrived, being the drama queen she seems to be, went straight to one of the bosses and made a big deal about it.

That was last night. This morning the woman he refers to as the Godmother called Richard. and ordered him to remove Michaels blog. Because nobody is allowed to say anything derogatory about their fellow workers. Even if it’s true –Make that especially if it’s true.
Richard has a strong enough sense of self-preservation to remove his own blog as well.

I know only one of the people involved in this passion play. However, we have all worked with “The Princess”. There is at least one of them in any large group of women.

When I offered them hosting, Richard accepted for both of them and the blogs are currently as subdomains on this site.

Hostility, a site we have been making fun of, is now at mike.rcnevada.com.
Richard’s blog is sitting at richard.rcnevada.com.

Most of the time freedom of speech is a fleeting illusion. You are allowed to say anything you want. Right up to the point that someone who out ranks you objects.
But as long as I believe that someone like the Princess should not be allowed to bully the rest of us, just because she thinks she the prettiest woman in the room, and has one of the bosses conned. I will be more than happy to lend a hand to a friend.

I had a chance to try the game Crysis on a machine that is very similar to my game machine:
AMD 64 x2 4800
2 gig ram
Radeon X1900XTX 512meg
On board sound card DirectX 9.0c Compatible
Windows XP pro

The minimum hardware requirements listed are:
Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista), Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2 GHz for Vista), AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better
1GB (1.5GB on Windows Vista)
NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or better
256MB of Graphics Memory
DirectX 9.0c Compatible sound card
XP or Vista

Recommended hardware:
Core 2 Duo/Athlon X2 or better
1.5GB
NVIDIA 7800 Series, ATI Radeon 1800 Series or better
512MB of Graphics Memory
DirectX 9.0c Compatible sound card
XP or Vista

We only ran the game for a few of hours and our online research was minimal but this is what we found.

With the setup on his machine we foresaw no problems…… WRONG!

Frame rate dropped to a point in certain scenes, that it felt like I should go out for a cup of coffee while waiting for the next one to load.
We also got the end of level, all objectives met, and no new objectives given bug. They say to restart the level or possibly load a save game from someone else. ——This is not acceptable.

You can tell that there will be a sequel since it never ends. I guess that the programmers are too busy writing that to bother with patches.

On the up side. It sure is purty.

My advice is to wait until the patches are issued and play something like Bioshock until then, but only after you’ve loaded their patches.

In case you haven’t heard, Apple has an interesting set of rules for buying an I-Phone.

First, you must use a credit card for at least part of your purchase.
Second, you are limited to two I-Phones per person.

Picture this: “Hi, I would like to purchase 100 I-Phones for my company. I’ll be paying in cash…. What do you mean you don’t accept legal tender? What do you mean I can only buy 2?” …….Only Steve Jobs could be that arrogant.

The only logical reason that I can think of for the restrictions is that Apple is trying to track customers.
With the added bonus of being able to force adherence to their two phones per customer BS that is designed to prevent someone from buying bulk phones and unlocking them for the gray market.

This also indicates that Apple is keeping the customer information including credit card numbers on file.

This last bit has started a major debate as to whether or not what Apple is doing is even legal.

First Apple has a huge price drop before the ink is even dry on people’s receipts.
Then they demand our credit card numbers without any justification, except to force adherence to a policy that is in place solely to protect their bottom line.
If you trust Apple you are incredibly naive.

BTW; Leopard reminds me a lot of Vista. It is has enough bugs to keep the Orkin Man employed through retirement and users are fleeing back to their previous operating system.