35 posts from 2008

Let this be a lesson in why you want to proof-read anything you put on a webpage if you're selling something from it...

Newfirewall2

Went looking for a new firewall yesterday for my home, as we're going to be adding a couple of additional computers that the children will be using. Since they won't be directly supervised while using them a good portion of the time, I've invested in a content filter and I wanted to get a firewall appliance as well. Now I know Checkpoint makes a quality appliance as we use them in the rather large enterprise I manage at work. So I thought I'd check one of my favorite discount sites to see if they might have a refurb or something for sale.

Lo and behold, I came upon this little gem. Listed at $149 was this enterprise class appliance...something that was really much more than I need, but less than half the price of the class of device I was looking for. So after checking around to make sure it was the deal I thought it was, I immediately purchased it.

Today I decided to check the website to see how the order was progressing and found item in the picture. It seems they've discovered their error and the device is now "out of stock" but set for the correct price point...$1029.

I fairly certain that they will honor the price as they're a reputable company, so I'm feeling pretty good about the purchase and thought I'd share. Check those sites carefully...you never know what gem you might find.

peace,

Aielman

Wow...weeks fly by sometimes.

So the election is finally over. Thank GOD. Obama pulled it out. Good for him. Let's see what he does with it. Be nice to be able to take the offense and snipe over every little detail of his administration the way my liberal friends have done with this one. I kind of feel sorry for the poor guy. He's been touted as the second coming for so long by so many that they're really setting him up for a fall. Any mistake is going to get pounced on mercilously. Gonna be rough for him because so much that isn't in the control of the government is going on right now that people are going to blame them for when they can't change them.

So many things taking up my time recently. Work has been insane. Many projects and no money to do them but they have to get done regardless. Then there was the release of the new WoW expansion...had to check that out.

So the posts have been non-existent, and I haven't been visiting my friends blogs much. Sorry about that.

Hope all are well.

Peace,

Aielman

They're both completely full of shit.

Both candidates stretched facts, sometimes past the breaking point, as they addressed the financial crisis and misrepresented each other's position on health care during their second presidential debate.

Man I can't wait until this farce is over.

peace,

Aielman

You know...I really can't wait until election season is over. I'm at a point now where I am so sick of it all that I don't even want to vote.

In any case, having drunk deeply of the Obama Koolaid, my good friend E over at Eclectablog has been doing a bang up job of chronicaling every single possible mistep of the McCain campaign and all it's "lies," so in the interests of equal reporting, I thought I'd mention some of the Obama inconsistencies that the faithful seem to miss.

Now...Obama, much like any other candidate, hates to be behind is opponent in anything. Recently, it seems he's been concerned about being behind McCain in the number of ads that are completely bullshit about his opponent, so he's upped his game and he's in the process of catching up to him. I guess he was jealous of the amount of airplay McCain was getting on Saturday Night Live and the Daily Show for his less than accurate ads.

For instance, in several up for grab states, Obama ads have erroneously suggested (my buddy would call this a lie, heh) that Mr. McCain “has stood in the way of” federal financing for stem cell research. Now while it's true that McCain did once oppose such federally supported research, he broke with the President after that one time, and has consistently supported it since in 2001.

In another commercial running in NYC on Thursday highlighting McCain’s votes against incentives for alternative energy incorrectly asserted that he supports tax breaks for “one source of energy...oil companies.”  McCain’s corporate tax proposal would cover all companies...including those developing energy generation techniques.

In yet another tv spot playing all over Florida, and other states with high concentrations of retirees, reminds everyone that McCain supported the adminstrations failed plan of Social Security privitazation, accounts misleadingly clamed that McCain supported “cutting benefits in half..." a claim that doesn't hold up too well once an analysis of  Bush’s plan is done, which shows that such a cut would have applied only to upper-income Americans retiring in the year 2075. Good scare tactic though...sounds like something the GOP would do in their campaign ads.

Then of course there's the Spanish language ad that's been running for the last few weeks, and is still running, that links the McCain's support of Bush's rather sweeping immigration overhaul, to those of Rush Limbaugh. The ad implies Limbaugh is a close “Republican friend,”  of McCain, and goes on to quote Limbaugh calling Mexicans “stupid and unqualified.” The truth is that the quote was cherry-picked from a completely different context, and as much of a tool Mr. Limbaugh is, he never said it in the way it's been implied.The truth of it is that Limbaugh is a harsh critic of the Bush plan and, frequently, of McCain in general...and they don't get along very well.

The NYT, of all places, wrote a piece on this penchant for less than accurate campaign ads yesterday in the political section. From that piece:

In all, Mr. Obama has released at least five commercials that have been criticized as misleading or untruthful against Mr. McCain’s positions in the past two weeks. Mr. Obama drew complaints from many of the independent fact-checking groups and editorial writers who just two weeks ago were criticizing Mr. McCain for producing a large share of this year’s untruthful spots (“Pants on Fire,” the fact-checking Web site PolitiFact.com wrote of Mr. Obama’s advertisement invoking Mr. Limbaugh; “False!” FactCheck.org said of his commercial on Social Security.)

Never let it be said that Obama wasn't good at playing catch up ;)

peace,
Aielman 

peace,
Aielman

So...I'm sure everyone's seen the cute little ads by Apple in the "I'm a PC" series with Justin Long of movie fame playing the Mac. They're pretty good copy.  Good enough that they've helped seriously propel Mac sales enough to keep the company more than just floating just above insolvency.

Now Apple makes a nice product. They're fairly innocuous and are just fine for the home user who doesn't want to have to use their brain to compute, doesn't need to use the same productivity software most of the rest of the world uses and doesn't have a need for much networking. In the business world, however, Macs are pretty much a disaster outside of small design shops. They suck at networking in large environments...they don't interact well with the Active Directory used by Windows, or other LDAP based directory services that between the two of them are in use by almost every medium to large scale business. They require a different infrastructure for software and patch delivery and different anti-virus, as well as proprietary networking equipment for wireless connectivity. And they don't use business aps well unless you use parallels, and even then they can be iffy. Apple doesn't make a server worth a damn, and doesn't have a directory service so you can't make an all Apple shop to keep cost and complexity down.

All in all, they're a nice toy that can emulate a PC, but don't really do what a PC does.

Which is kind of the annoying thing about the ads by Apple, especially for an IT profession like myself who works with tens of thousands of computers on a daily basis. Because they imply that the Mac does replace the PC, and infact they infer that the PC doesn't work as well as the apple. That it's just a substandard device...which is patently ridiculous.

In any case...the cute little ads have run unopposed for a couple of years now. But that is about to change.

Microsoft has decided it's time to "tear down the walls for a better view", as they put it...and they've devised a series of their own cute ads to highlight the PC and Microsoft's products. There have been a couple of new ones with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates recently...and now there's a new one which will be out this week.

Check it out...

Not bad for the not so hip kids from Redmond.

peace,
Aielman 

Yet more hay being made on the airwaves of late about Governor Palin. Her inteview last week was interesting. After watching it I came away with a couple of serious questions.

Number one...how the hell can you not have at least some idea what the Bush Doctorine is?

And number two, just how much of that interview was edited out?

The whole thing just sounds stilted and canned. It's certain it was edited...it took them a week to air it after they actually interviewed her. And it's to be expected that they'd trim some of it for time, but how much they trimmed it is the question. It seems extremely odd that anyone who is even marginally interested in government would be so short sighted on some of the answers to the questions posed. And it just really didn't flow very well either.

Well it turns out that the interview was fairly heavily edited. Apparently the original tape has been obtained and there are transcripts available in various places. I saw one that I've posted part of here.

For example...Gibson asked her about Georgia being admitted into NATO. What was played in the interview was:

GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?

PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.

GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.

PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.

Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but…

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn’t we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help.

What they edited out is what followed that sentence:

PALIN Continues:

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to — especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that’s a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

This type of thing happened quite a bit throughout the interview, and it's pretty evident that what was cut substantially changes the tone, pacing and the content of the interview. There's more you can read here.

What it looks like is that they tried to get a gotcha by making her look less knowledgeable than she is...which is a helluva thing for one of the major networks to do.

We certainly need to have a few more interviews with Palin to really get to know her, but quite frankly I think that everyone is missing the boat here.

The fact of the matter is, she's not running for President. She's running for Vice President...and all the press and all the invective is centered on her...which is stupid. The discussion should be centered on the candidates for President. And what's more, half the people centered on Palin are going after personal bullshit that has nothing to do with her candidacy. Insinuations about her children and about her fitness to be in office as a mother are alienating women at an alarming rate. Constant cracks about her small town roots and about all things rural by the east cost big city elite are alienating a large portion of the electorate who also come from the same humble stock.

And of all the issues that could be questioned, they're going after ones that democrats themselves are guilty of. The same people who defended the Kerry "i voted for it before I voted against it" are now pounding Palin for the bridge to nowhere. The same people who defend Obama for listing "community leader" as leadership experience are now deriding Palin for being the mayor a small city.

Get off the bullshit express kids. McCain is the target. Palin is just a distraction...and you're buying it, hook line and sinker. Get back on the bus and turn it around before you drive your candidate right off the cliff with you.

peace,
Aielman

S.C. Dem chair: Palin primary qualification is she hasn't had an abortion

South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate " whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn't had an abortion."

 

Now that's an interesting strategy for getting votes. I hope Obama thanks her for her contribution to his campaign.

Maybe he can get Corrine Brown to say all white republicans look alike to her like hispanic republicans do.

peace,
Aielman

From Shacknews...

Ever watch the same disaster movie twice and find yourself trying to warn off the actors?

Collider

Some gamers might be doing the same after checking out this photograph  which appears to show an unwitting Gordon Freeman standing in the CERN test

peace,
Aielman

Many of my liberal blogger friends, when, ironically, they're not overly concerned with Sarah Palin's personal life, like to point out, over and over...and over...that Sarah Palin is for abstinence only education, while snickering about her daughter's pregancy.

Here's the thing. I don't think they understand what abstinence only education means.

Abstinence only means you don't have an explicit sex education program. It doesn't mean you don't explain what birth control is. It means you don't give explicit instuctions about sexuality.

Palin, in point of fact, disagrees with McCain who not only wants abstinence only, but doesn't think birth control should be discussed either. She said as much during her Gubernatorial run, which was written about in the LA Times yesterday.

In her own words, Palin said:

 "Explicit means explicit," she said. "No, I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don't have a problem with that. That doesn't scare me, so it's something I would support also."

Mind you, this was in 2006...2 years before her daughter got pregnant, so it's not something they just whipped up for teh campaign.

McCain, stupidly in my opinion, thinks that message is too confusing to teens, but seeing as it's been 54 years since he was 19, maybe he doesn't remember how smart kids can be.

peace,
Aielman