I forgot to mention this incident after we moved from Hawaii to San Diego. As everyone who has flown in the US knows, you have to send your bags through x-ray machines. After 9/11, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the federal agency responsible for baggage checks at airports. The TSA screeners are supposed to monitor all passengers and baggage going through the checkpoint, to the point of requiring people to remove their shoes for independent x-raying. > more <

Bittorrent is an alternative to other peer-to-peer networks, such as Limewire. Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a way of distributing files between users, rather than downloading directly from a central server. This offloads the overhead of file distribution from organizations and moves it to the customers, making it cheaper to provide software files. > more <

On Slashdot today there was an article from Computer World entitled 10 Things We Hate About Laptops. As I was reading it, I couldn’t believe some of the things being said. I’ve used laptops for a while, though I’ve never had to support them for other people. However, I found much of what was said to either be fallacious or misleading. > more <

First, I am not a Constitutional lawyer. These are strictly my opinions and interpretations. Everyone has their opinions about gun control so I thought I’d weigh in on the matter and hopefully apply some “common sense” to the argument, if possible. Second, when I mention “Army” below, I mean all branches of the military. It’s just easier to use one term for them.

If you read the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, this is what it says:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. > more <

In the course of pursuing my Master’s degree, I’ve written many papers (with more yet to come). In the interest of helping out others (and to toot my own horn) I’m going to be adding them to my Google Docs account and “publish” the links here.

Please be aware that, even though I wrote them originally for school, they are still copyrighted. If you wish to use them outside of normal “fair use”, please contact me. Heck, even if you link to them, quote them, or whatever, please let me know. I would like to know who’s benefiting from them.

The first couple of papers that I’ve uploaded are listed below: > more <

It continues to amaze me that people aren’t willing to try new things. Whether it’s food, books, movies, or software, people stick with the tried and true. My wife’s friend refuses to try any ethnic food besides Mexican and Chinese; we’ve offered to take her to Greek, Thai, Indian, Japanese, etc. but she’s afraid she won’t like it so she doesn’t want to go.

However, the biggest gripe I have is when it comes to computers. I understand that people are “brought up” using Windows (home, work, school, et al.) so they are comfortable with it. It just kills me when people bitch about Macs, saying that they suck yet they’ve never used one; if they have, it’s been for five minutes at an Apple store. > more <