Signs of change with the holiday (marijuana)

The title on this link should just forget it and say users.  And my main response is, why doesn’t everyone shut the hell up?  If you have any brains at all, you don’t walk up to a police man (or woman:  so fine, policeperson) and say:  “My pot is stronger than yours.”  You just don’t.  Especially if it is, because then the sucker gets paranoid and shoots you.  The real point about it is that tempting as it is, flirting with the media is always deadly to the message.  Their only role in life is to get more listeners.  Truth is a concept they’ve heard about occasionally, and they’ll look into it if it gets controversial enough.

The best thing of all is to do the tiny bit of research necessary and find out the basis for the current drug laws in the good ol’ US of A.  I will say this.  Heroin is definitely not marijuana, and neither actually is a necessary component for jazz–or even related, for that matter.

Government types are uneasy with any meeting that isn’t absolutely controlled by rules they understand. 
–Glenn

Scribefire (Firefox Extension)

Scribefire is a useful tool for posting to your blog online.  I’d forgotten I had it/considered it to be new and therefore usable in a later version.
–Glenn
Do I need to add that I’m using it to publish this entry?  The link process actually looks more usable than the native one on WordPress, but looks quite a bit different. 

Humans and Protocols

This study has, to me, entirely different meanings than those assigned to it.  One of the unstated assumptions, for instance, is that “good” scientists can be defined by some criteria or criterium (it almost seemed like the latter was indicated).  The main one is once again that proximity at the least implies a causational relationship.  It doesn’t, and the directionality of causation isn’t a given.  At times studies have been done that were like saying a stream being polluted caused mining.

“We are extremely susceptible to how questions are posed.”  That would be the likely result of the phrasing indicating the kind of framework of judgment that’s expected.

For right now, I basically wanted to earmark the article and say this; language is the DNA of society, just as necessarily humans are the cells.  There is practically infinite evidence that mammals default to using language, and a fair amount of evidence that life forms that aren’t warm-blooded don’t.  (This also depends on your definition of language.  Technically, the usage of pollen can be counted as language, although it’s not “realtime” compared to ordinary human usage.)  Cold-blooded actually do use genetic transmission of knowledge, warm-blooded don’t do as much (there is some real evidence that we have a genetic predisposition to find the nearest thing we can and act like it, “we” being warm-blooded; humans, of course, tend to be a tad helpless at birth).

The kinds of protocols, then, that humans use as components of a group are fairly limited.  First of all, there are task-oriented and generalized protocols; those two broad trees.  A task-oriented protocol is short-term by nature.  We’re perhaps most familiar with such protocols in situations involving money, modernly.  Spend or save?  Does saving make sense in sense of such-and-such a percentage of profit in terms of such-and-such a percentage of inflation?  Generalized protocols involve “bonding”, basically.  They do something to establish identity.  Remember the roots of the word “identity” here.  Identical means the same.  Identity in social terms means relative position in an effectively infinite sequence of ordered sets.  However, being analog the way we sloppy humans are we tend to summarize things like this with “He’s rich and an a**hole,” and so forth.  (He’s actually a very nice guy.)  Identity in term allows some automatic decisions.  This makes things easier.

And an actually final note.  One passing comment was that humans will consider the negative before the positive.  In a situation involving survival, you’ll always try to make the right choice.  We model on things.  That means we get taught.  Like, by adults, or what passes for them.  Rewards, that is, are handled by the same person as the one who gives the punishments.  And for the first few years, this doesn’t tend to be terribly consistent.  Well, I’ll back up.  It’s no problem at all getting punished.  Getting the reward is a great idea and may never happen.  I’ll say it again.  Humans learn. More than that, language/society evolved to its present condition because (at least in a specific environment) it was the best way to survive, for one and all.  A multicellular organism was best for a lot of situations once again.

–Glenn

Huh

My apologies for the title; I couldn’t resist*.  This is a rehash, because Mil Millington’s Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About actually started the whole deal, and was hysterically funny.  Yes, in fact, if nothing else I do expect you to follow the second link, or at least do the search on Google or whatever.  It is also a book.  The book is fictional.  The website is not, or not entirely.  I can assure you that both characters are well, characteristic of the breed.  I used to have an e-mail subscription to the site, so I assume Mil quit updating it.  I did communicate with him.  I think he might have been taken slightly aback by my bizarre sense of humor (nah, don’t ask).

The point is, too, that as the article actually points out “Tom Sawyer” used “this method” to plan out books.  “Mark Twain” (I’m sorry, I don’t remember his real name right off and I’m too lazy too research it) is more likely to be the subject, since Tom Sawyer was one of his characters, and he did write books based on the audience’s reaction to his travelling road show comedy gig.  We might just finally mention that the method itself wasn’t particularly new; it’s just that the writer was an American, and therefore automatically prejudiced (no matter the color involved–and the green dudes are really weird).

–Glenn

A More Challenging Driving Test in Maryland

This will indeed freak some people out.  There’s going to be a real driving test.  Hopefully this will include the mandatory certification tests for the elderly.  A real-world test is going to be better.  Ideally it would include pedestrians throwing themselves in front of vehicles; vehicles flagrantly violating all rules of law, safety and reason; emergency vehicles–and simply the unexpected.  Especially the police officer with an attitude.  I suppose that would be taking it a bit too far.  Maybe we should be thinking in different directions.  One of the Supreme Justices was talking about a car being a privilege (driving and possessing one, rather).  He should try getting food at a bargain without a car.  At least in this valley, transportation for the handicapped is so fraught with requirements you basically can’t shop (and don’t forget you can’t shop for too much at a time).  Better than that, let him walk home with his dinner or better his savings, and do it on a minimal income.  He doesn’t represent the people.  I suppose what he represents and intends to represent is his idea of the rightness of things.  Perhaps he drapes nude statues in his spare time.

–Glenn

My back really, really hurts; in the way that reminds me I won’t be walking for all that long.  Pardon me for the attitude, and admire my lack of foul language.

LAN chats and file transfers (freeware)

LAN chats and file transfers
This can be a frustrating subject, particularly when working with two operating systems. Or like I did when one wireless technology was going out and the other phasing in (which come to think of it has been the rule–sort of like Google and everything they produce being forever in beta, like Chrome). To do an actual physical file transfer on a working network somehow adds insult to injury. The program I am going to recommend is in no way recommended for business use. For one thing, I haven’t used it for long enough, and from all I can tell there’s no separate log-in procedure. It could be argued that log-in to the network obviates that, but drive-by and the whole mentality negates that comfortable and easy assumption.

What I’m talking about is BORG chat. Easy search results. Small file, couple of megabytes. XP and Vista compatible, which means it’s compatible to Windows 2000 and will be to Windows 7. If you have anything older you’re asking for trouble. You can’t run some of the programs necessary to ensure your safety–pardon me, the safety of your data; we have indeed become cybernetic citizens willy-nilly.

Or Home page: http://borgchat.softnews.ro/
if you want to get picky about it.
–Glenn

(I just had to add the “social networking” bit with all the mis-use of the term going on currently.)

www.pcrepairdvd.com

That’s a valid name, and the research says it’s valid.  It’s an established business in Klamath Falls, which is near the Rogue Valley.  This is not a sponsored support.  I cannot vouch for the quality of the software, although I assume I’ll be talking with this guy relatively soon.  That will allow me more judgment.  The first question of course will be about virus software, which in the short ad I saw was mentioned.

–Glenn

MFA: Extreme New Problem

MFA is the latest in a new wave of environmentally-related factors that could be significantly counter-productive in a properly oriented work environment.  MFA, as all are of course by now aware, stands for Mother Fucking Acronyms, and is characterized by severe twitching (especially of the eyelids), alternate uncontrollable erections and attacks of the limps, and all sorts of stuff with bowel movements.  Add this to the fact that the first sentence in this post is similar to the modern memo, and you have a real tendency for office workers to go berserk.  Fire one of them suckers, and you better do it third-party behind a flak jacket (and use the secret entrance).

I wasn’t going to do posts like this.  Sorry.

–Glenn

Alternate Browsers, Freeware, Orca

Orca bears a relationship to both Firefox and Google.  It’s had something like one security vulnerability in the last year, and it’s one of the least-used browsers, mainly because there are so many of them.  You could add that each and every one of them has its own little peculiarities, too.  Orca uses little RAM, is fast to load, and lacks a lot of the built-in supposed security features of (say) IE.  You can disable Pop-ups, Sounds, Videos, ActiveX, Scripts and Java Applets as usual; there are several tab options…and you can use some Mozilla add-ons.  It’s an attractive browser and a work-in-progress.  And I am thinking about switching away from Firefox now because it is targeting more and more attention from badware writers.

–Glenn

You can even import favorites and that sort of thing.  Perhaps I should have mentioned that.  As far as passwords go, I would not import that kind of file but build it from scratch, just in case.  However, I am actually certifiably paranoid (part of the PTSD package) so if you want you can discount that.

[I forgot to mention that I carefully posted that using Orca.  The rendering problems I reported on about 18 months ago were not at all evident, not just on the pages of WordPress.  That is a tremendous step forward, believe it or not.  I should have added too that disabling ActiveX and so on (which are not enabled by default, necessarily, on Orca) is very easy--and may end up with some web pages that can't be navigated except by turning them on.  There are online gaming sites were some security controls aren't even possible (I even play on one of them, and not as 'oregonnerd').]

The Most Vulnerable Browser

Firefox, for now.

–Glenn

P.S.  Which is why I intended the review of browsers this week.  I haven’t forgotten.  I think I only have 8 installed.  The best was the freeware browser with the notepad…that led on a quick & easy search to the moniker for a hacker.  Incidentally, a recent scan turned up badware.  A trojan.  That was apparently installed courtesy of adware on the site he uses for his blog.  I was truly grateful.  I just hide it well.