This just in...

Using less of a drug means the drug will not be as strong.

Shocking..a revolutionary idea that will cause a paradigm shift in out quantum understanding~

Homeopathy still does not work. Never has, never can. Please stop wasting your money. Stop endangering the lives of others, and take some critical thinking course.

Seriously, using less of a substance can not produce more of an effect. Nothing in anything man has ever found about the universe supports that, nothing ever tested supports that, it is literally nonsense.

Here is a nice write up:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4750

Some humor:

http://dilbert.com/2010-04-16/

Finally a quote from Michael Specter:

“When you start down the road where belief in magic replaces evidence and science, you end up in a place where you don’t want to be.”

iPad

I finally went to look at the iPad. It was very...meh.

Nothing really new there. I had high hopes, but it pretty much does what the Touch does, only bigger.

Moving through a book as slow, and as an eBook reading I would place it write in the "It's OK" status. The kindle is a lot easier on the eyes.

At no point would I have used the word 'Magical'. It's known tech.

Not to say it doesn't have an use, or wouldn't be interesting to have, just that nothing about it makes me want to jump right out and get one.

The only reason I wouldn't want to ge one is Apple's obsession with control on their appliances.

What I can read, what I can put on it, and planned obsolesce is all a little much for me.

It's always a trade off. If it was substantial cheaper, then the trade off would be worth the risk. If it did something mind blowing, maybe it would be worth the risk of not being able to do what I want with it.

As it stand, meh.

To put technology that's being used in perspective:

http://xkcd.com/728/

Not so magical now, is it?

People are going way too nuts over this thing.I understood the iPod. It was a revolutionary mp3 player. The iPhone was pretty nice.

I can only think the people who call it 'magical' are either getting paid my Apple to use the as a buzzword, using it to justify not actual having a reason to spend that money, or have been brought here from 1989.

WePad

The tablet/eReader I am looking forward to is the WePad.

It has what Apple lacks. Open platform, a web cam, and a better sized screen.

Open Platform:

There is plenty of talk about how Apple likes to be the dictator of what you can do with the device you buy, so I'm not going to rehash that here. I will say that it looks like the WePad doesn't suffer from one person delusions of grandeur. It will run anything that runs on Android; which is a significant number of Apps.

Web Cam:

I mean, come on Apple, how could you leave this out? You could have grabbed the book market and the video phone market. I suspect it will be in future releases. I also suspect their will be a mad rush of people selling their 1st Gen iPad for a newer one. At this point they will all suddenly agree that it should have had a web cam to begin with.

Screen Size:

Its a bigger screen that looks more comfortable to use for media and browsing. This is actually a minor detail, but when I was looking at an iPad, it just didn't 'feel' quite the correct size.

WePad Cons:

It has less battery life. This is to be expected; however I am still waiting for some battery life numbers to come in from the iPad after it's been out for a moth or so.

It's not out yet, so the fact sheet could be wrong. According to the site, on 4/26 a WePad will be put into the hands of critics.

The WePad's price is listed as 449 Euros. I don't know how that will translate to US dollars at the time of release.

The biggest downside is that its initial mass release will be in German this August.

Still if it does what it's claimed to do, then it will be worth the wait.

My advice to everyone is to hold off on buying the iPad.

Authors

This was in my previous post, but decided it need it's own posting.

Would you rather make 1000 dollars by selling a thousand books at a dollar a pop, or sell 2,000 books, make 2000 dollars even if it means another 100 people don't pay for it?

We have seen this is the music industry where the artist put their product online, and even though a lot of peopel pay nothing, the band still makes more money then if they went through tradition means.

That doesn't surprise a lot of us who realized that most people who download a song from someplace that doesn't have authorization to distribute it, would never buy it anyways. I'm not saying it's right, just that is just how it is.

eBooks and whatnot

eBooks have come under some heat lately, mostly because publishers are craving to make the same mistakes the music industry did. They could jump up and make a lot of money and adapt to a new market just by following what Apple did with iTunes. A central place to get and manage music.

The publisher could make a consortium and create similar software for books. Nothing about it would really be technically new or really challenging. It WOULD require them to think about future contracts, and how to charge. You will be a lot more successfully with eBooks if you charge less. The digital price point is different. By different I mean lower.

There is still billions of dollars to be made with eBooks, different strategies to getting people published and effectively infinite shelf space.

This is only a problem because publishers are loosing their monopoly on who gets published. They need to realize this is going to happen, and figure out how to be the company people buy their eBooks from. They also need to stop penalizing the consumer when the person selling a book does something wrong.

I am waiting for some established writers to say good buy to the publishing house and just sell their book online. IN fact, I can see an editing industry popping up where authors pay to have their book edited and prepared for eBook distribution. A company completely separated from publishers. Authors just put their book online through any of the new emerging channels.

The 'Butcher fiasco' should be sending a clear message to all parties involved: "Digital books are hear, and you need to stop assuming everyone is ripping you off."

Or they can just let Apple become such a power house they have to do separate negotiations for eBook with them, Just like the music companies did.

HDMI Cables

Because this topic seems to rear it's ugly head every now and again, I thought I would link to some articles showing the differences in cables:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/tests/4235717

and here:

http://www.audioholics.com/education/cables/long-hdmi-cable-bench-tests/hdmi-cable-testing-results

the short answer? it doesn't matter.

I paid 5 cents + 2.95 shipping and handling for my cable, and it pushes 1080p just fine.

I got it from an Amazon seller.

For home use systems, what you should look at is where the cable meets the connector. It should not seem flimsy. This is you most likely place for failure. Bear in mind most people don't touch the cable for years after it is set up., so it doesn't need to be a heavy duty connection. Obviously if you are using equipment you move around, you want a heavier duty cable that can take being pulled out and tossed around. It will probably cost more then my nickel cable, but it should costs 100 dollars.

For industrial grade use, you will need an expensive cable that is thick, shielded and designed to be handled by people who might not care.

Finally, check to be sure it's rated for your system. Most of the time this wont matter, but it doesn't hurt. Rated for HDMI 1.3 should do it for almost ever system. For the true home theater set up, at this point 1.4 is what you are looking for. Again, Many 1.3 cable will do 1.4, but there isn't a guarantee. In the Amazon link above, on page 3 there are 1.4 HDMI cables for 12.99.

Save you money for a nice Blu-ray player the supports streaming.

Tiger Woods

Alert - Tiger woods is a human who plays golf. Nothing more. What he does in his own life is his business, what he does while golfing is public business.

And then this:

“It is not simply the degree of his conduct that is so egregious here,“It’s the fact that he disappointed all of us, and more importantly, our kids and our grandkids. Our hero did not live up to the expectations of the role model we sought for our children.” Billy Payne

Listen Bill, If a golfer has become a hero and role model to your children, you have failed as a parent. Plus his attitude and tone was so condescending I expected the word 'Boy' to exit his mouth.

Where are his harsh words for Mickelson? Oh yeah, Mickelson is white so he doesn't care.

I don't even watch the game, and I am sick of this.

What the Hell

I watched th Daily show. Newt was on it, and he basically called all Americans cowards and stupid. Well done Newt~

Americans don't want Terorist tried in New York? really? Another out of touch wind bag.

"When you poor money into the federal bureaucracy, it doesn't come out,"

Really? I see a lot of money coming out in the way of private sector contracts, military, federal employees. In fact sometimes too much comes out.

Why do people think the federal government is a vacuum? all that money, every single penny, ends up beck into the economy. We can discuss who that money gets back into the economy, but to act as if it doesn't is incorrect. Either Newt is stupid(he is not), or he is spreading FUD. Hint: He is spreading FUD.

He then goes on to include TARP as part of the discretionary budget, claiming it's 1.4 trillion and doesn't account for the money the financial institution has paid BACK to the feds. Oh yes, they don't like to bring up the fact that most, if not all, returns to the feds.

I love how is uses a few abuses of Medicare to claim that's why it's cheaper. I would argue if it costs you most to look out for abuse then the abuse costs you shouldn't worry about the abuse.

Some change

The initial point of the blog was just a vent for ideas that pop in my head. I am going to morph this into a skeptic Blog.

Regarding new punctuation I proposed

I just found out that author Ambrose Bierce wrote his essay "For Brevity and Clarity" and proposed a new type of punctuation mark to convey jest, which he knew would make the satire a little more clear in typewritten correspondence.

So I'm not some sole loon to think that snarky or jest deserve to be its own sentence type.

The Garrett update

The Garrett has been changed from 'Sarcasm' to 'Snarky'
This is a more accurate reflection of what I am trying to do. Make a punctuation that adds a level of clarity to online conversations.

Warm beds

Imagine a cap over a heating vent in the home. A plastic tube comes out of the cap and attaches to your bed.
Now hot air is blown into your bed or box spring whenever the heat comes on, or A/C I suppose.

Swine Flu

How come there hasn't been any stories of news people looking into the illegal alien culture to see if people are getting sick but are to afraid to report it?
Maybe someone has and there isn't a story, but still I would ahte for there to be an underground spike in swine flu that suddenly blossoms into the main stream media without warning.
Not that I think this is the end of the world, just to be prudent.

Spiral Solar Thermal

Traditionally Solar Thermal is trough about 100 yards long with a Fresnel lens focusing light to super heat a liquid. This heated liquid is stored and then used to heat water, creating stem and turning a generator to produce electricity.
The holding take holds the liquad through the night providing 24/7 power. There are also concentrated mirror types.

No imagine the top 10 floors of a high rise dedicated to solar thermal. Use a spiral design, the windows would be your lenses. Put the steam generator in the middle, even without an holding tank it would go a long way to offset energy costs.

Actually with the much smaller foot print, they could be used anywhere there is a little open space.

Vista twittter cloud

I would like to see a dynamic twitter cloud background for Vista. I would also like there to become a new name to replace 'cloud' when used in this regard. With Google over ten years old, when something new comes out, there needs to be an attempt to give it a unique original name.

Maybe 'Cl00d5', or 'Dynamic Twits', or whatever.

All Digital content exist on all harddrives.

Let's say you have a terabyte hard drive. That means any digital content that exists, will exist and might exist up to a terabyte exists on your hard drive. You just need to organize the bits.

I am creating something that you feed a hex number, it is save as a .zip, and then an attempt is made to unzip it.
If it fails to unzip go to the next one and so on. If it opens, write that to a log and then take a look. Yes, this will produce a lot of garbage but the hits will be interesting.
Now imagine google dedicating a cluster to something like that, it would be awesome.

I wish I acted on this when I first thought of it; a 10Mb hard drive is easier to get ones mind around.

Criminal trial experiments

For year I have wondered what the outcome would be if a group of 12 people decide a case by only reading the transcript of the case, with all mention of anything 'stricken' from the record removed. really all non pertinent information. Remove gender, race, and anything that was strictly supposed to be what the Jury rules on.

If this was done in a thousand random cases, would the outcome be significantly different then what the actual jury had decided?

I have not studied law, so I have no idea if this has been done. If it has, please post a comment with a link.

USB Key NAS

How about a Hub you can plug USB keys into that the computer see's as a Network Attached Storage Device?

The hub connects into your LAN, and can be powered from a wall plug or from the USB port you can plug in? Or better, A USB wall plug.
Got an old 1G USB key? plug it in and now you have a bigger NAS. Log intot he web interface and create mirrors of other keys in the storage Device.

Are Wii developers intentionally missing the boat?

once again another game comes out for a console besides the Wii first. I wonder if this due to the average age of new game developers? Developers looking at whats cool to their recently departed teen years and using that to drive their business decisions instead of just looking at who is selling the most consoles. People can discussed it's graphics, but the market seems to be wanting Fun before Looks. And Wii games are fun.

What I really like about Nintendo is the number of games they have for young kids. As a parent and a gamer I want to enjoy gaming with my kids.

Help the home owners, NOW.

We need to stop giving money to these financial institutions, and give money to the home owners. IN a much earlier post I talked about why the 700Billion dollar giveaway was wrong. I am going to elaborate on that a little here. Funny how it took, what 2 weeks for a bill to pass, but it is taking forever to get any real help to the citizen.

A) It turns out banks lied an several fronts.

B) Lenders took advantage of new borrowers who didn't understand the fine intricacy of the finance system

C) Banks were aware of what was coming, and kept lending.

D) Helping the home owner in default gets the economy moving faster then giving it to banks.
Maybe, Maybe if there was a sound plan when they wanted to give the money to these financial institutions it might work. It worked in englans during their crisis.

No, I'm not going to remove blame from the home owner. That's not what this is about, it's about helping the economy as a whole.

Personally I would do the following:
1) Foreclosure get's put off 90 days. If payment can restart at that point, it starts as per normal. No foreclosure penalties.

2) If it can't then restructure the loan to see if that helps.

3) Drop the interest rate to 4.5. If people still can't make payments, guarantee 4.5 to the next qualified buyer. This is to entice some to get into the home.

Now, I am having a hard time telling how bad it really is, reports are all across the board. Usually that means it's worse, but it's not a sure thing.

If it is extremely bad add the following.

Walk away. Someone can opt to walk away from the home, no credit hit.
Yes, the banks take it in the shorts on this one. But it will cause an immediate adjustment to the actual current value, and gets someone in the house.

This would all have to be passed by congress to force this issue becasue of Collateralized loans. where many people own a loan.

The banks have lent way too much, and the reaper as came to collect it's toll.