Sep 25, 2016 | Current Events, Philsophy, Tech |
I read this article today and was pretty shocked at the recommendations and viewpoints of the author. I felt it was not only fear mongering, but uninformed fear mongering (i know, what fear mongering is informed) but this was shocking in terms of the advice given.
Taping over your camera is like taping over the check engine light. You aren’t really solving the problem, just ignoring it and hoping it won’t get worse.
The article states that most of hackers get on your PC when you click on email links or website links. So maybe we need to teach kids in school a computer safety education (since it seems like kids get laptops in grade school now) like we do (or should do) with sex education. Don’t click on emails from people you don’t know, how to read email headers to make sure its coming from the right person, don’t punch the monkey, don’t send personal details/images etc.
The more prevalent technology is in society, the more infrastructure we need to support it. and that include education on how to interact with it safely
Apr 5, 2014 | Bright Ideas, Current Events, Philsophy, Politics |
I am a bit behind on the new episodes of Cosmos and took some time to catch up this weekend. Episode 2 is one of the best presentations of evolution, mass extinction, and life that I have seen. It is clear, concise, and factual and (I think) a much watch. This is the type of things we should be use to educate children.
Check Out Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey: Some of the Things That Molecules Do on Hulu
Dec 19, 2012 | Current Events, Politics |
With the recent Sandy Hook shooting, there has been an increased call for gun control laws. Items such as the assault weapon ban, closing the gun show loophole, and magazine capacity limits are all back on the table. I will not try to argue that what happened at Sandy Hook wasn’t horrible – it was. It is made worse for many people by the fact that so many children were killed.
However we should not allow our outrage, shock and anger to have us make rash decisions.
In the wake of the 9/11 attack, many people – myself included – wanted a solution in terms of legislation. Something that would prevent such an attack from ever happening again regardless of how it affected my life. I admit that I was willing to give up some of my freedoms so that we could catch and punish the terrorists. After all – I wasn’t a terrorist so what did I have to fear?
Sadly, the effects of the Patriot Act do affect me and now there is no going back. I must provide proof of innocence when applying for a mortgage, I must go through x-rays machines at the airport, I must have my email/phone communications monitored. The government uses the Patriot Act as an excuse to harass good Americans but how much has it actually helped to stop terrorism?
Violence is a problem – but before we pass sweeping gun control legislation that turns honest Americans into suspects and criminals we need to step back, take a breath and think rationally. Any decision we make in anger will be the wrong one.
Oct 28, 2012 | Hobbies, Literature, Politics |
I got this book as part of the Humble eBook Bundle. I paid $25 for 13 books. (If you don’t know about the HumbleBundle, click here to learn more, its awesome!!) Over all I say its a 3/5 star book.
This book was released 10/2/2012 and you can also get it from Amazon.com. Here is a synopsis:
Trent McCauley is sixteen, brilliant, and obsessed with one thing: making movies on his computer by reassembling footage from popular films he downloads from the net. In the dystopian near-future Britain where Trent is growing up, this is more illegal than ever; the punishment for being caught three times is that your entire household’s access to the internet is cut off for a year, with no appeal.
Trent’s too clever for that too happen. Except it does, and it nearly destroys his family. Shamed and shattered, Trent runs away to London, where he slowly he learns the ways of staying alive on the streets. This brings him in touch with a demimonde of artists and activists who are trying to fight a new bill that will criminalize even more harmless internet creativity, making felons of millions of British citizens at a stroke.
Things look bad. Parliament is in power of a few wealthy media conglomerates. But the powers-that-be haven’t entirely reckoned with the power of a gripping movie to change people’s minds….
So why 3/5 stars? I think the content is appropriate to what is happening in the world now, but I felt the author tried a bit to hard to make it “geeky”. There was a lot of name dropping of actual programs and parts that I felt interrupted the flow of the story. It’s not because I didn’t understand the terms, but it was more a WTF moment on why you would even mention it unless you were trying to prove how computer-savvy you were to your audience. I also did not like the attitude of the main character. To me he felt very one dimensional and I didn’t really care how his story turned out. I didn’t feel he was responsible for any of the successes in the story – it was either luck/chance or the supporting characters turning the events to wins. The last point I will make is that since this story was set in England it was a bit weird for me to follow – mostly the slang terms. I’m sure the author was authentic here but not being familiar with some of the terms had me spending lots of time thinking about them. So much so that I often had to go back and re-read pages to grasp the meaning
Overall I do recommend it. The copyright/piracy/patent laws in the US are bad and they are getting worse as old-media corporations try to put in place laws like SOPA, ACTA, PIPA, etc. These corporations and lobby groups use many of the same arguments that were used in the books to pass the restrictive laws. I’m not sure if this book will spur anyone to action. I think it does a great job of opening your eyes to how people see it – that if it doesn’t affect them directly they don’t care – and why we must continue to spread the word against laws that restrict our freedom online. Give them an inch and they will take a mile
Oct 31, 2010 | Bright Ideas, Current Events, General Chit-Chat |
When we first got our apartment I had big dreams of being the friendly apartment who handed out candy to all the kids. Sadly, no one trick-or-treated in our apartment complex so we had to eat the candy ourselves. (We actually ended up returning a lot of it too)
So when we bought our house I was super excited to actually have trick-or-treaters!! I always loved going out as a kid, then sorting and counting my haul later. (I never really ate the candy as a kid, just sorted and counted…)
K also had fond memories of trick-or-treating when he was a kid. He was in a more rural area so he especially remembered the houses that would give out full size candy bars. So we decided that’s what we wanted to do.
The first year we gave out full sized bars it was a huge hit. Kids were all very excited, some to the point of changing costumes and coming back a second time. (Yes these were the teenagers). The next year we did it again and we were already developing our reputation. We’d hand out the bars and the kids would tell their friends “see I told you!”. Excellent!! The third year K actually had to run out halfway to buy more since we were such a popular house!
So the fourth year we decided to up the ante to KING SIZED bars. I’ve never heard such squeals of delight from both boys and girls. We even got a few parents who came up to the house to get in on the action. So here we are, year #5 and the king sized bars are back! There is no greater joy then watching a kid walk away from your house screaming “Look Dad its KING-SIZED!”
Now a lot of planning goes into pulling something like this off. We want to avoid having to go out halfway to buy more candy, we want to make sure we get stuff the kids actually like, and we need to keep track of what we are pilfering from the fund. So last year we started keeping a log of what we bought, the weather, times of trick-or-treating, what we took, etc.
2009 –
Weather: Clear but coldish. Forcast from www.weather.com
Trick-or-Treat was from 1pm-4pm, kids came to about 5pm
12:05 PM Cloudy 43°F
From W 12mph
1:05 PM Cloudy 42°F
From W 9mph
2:05 PM Cloudy 43°F
From W 9mph
3:05 PM Cloudy 44°F
From W 10mph
4:05 PM Cloudy 45°F
From WNW 6mph
5:05 PM Cloudy 44°F
From W 12mph
We had 4 boxes of king-sized bars (kit kat, snickers, twix, reeses peanut butter cups) and used them all.
Each box was 24 ct
2 peanut butter cups went into the “j-fund”, 1 kit kat bar went into the “k-fund”
We also had 1 box of regular sized caramello bars (36 count) and used 29.
Twix and Reeses Cups were most popular, followed by Kit-Kat.
Twix was probably the more popular of the two, but they were very close.
Snickers were the least popular of the king-sized bars with many kids asking to trade them in for other types. Only 1 kid asked for snickers by name
Kids weren’t given a choice on the caramellos (they were saved until we ran out of other candy) but upon eating the leftovers decided they weren’t very good. (low quality chocolate)
For 2010 trick-or treating is from 2pm-6pm (+1 hour from last year), its on a sunday and the weather is forecast to be high of 50, low of 45 – a bit warmer then last year. So I’m expecting more kids. We ditched the snickers and caramellos this year and went with Butterfingers (what can I say I love them) and peanut butter m&ms. We also doubled up on Reeses and Twix. We purchased an additional 2 boxes of king sized bars. This gives us 6 king sized boxes and 1 regular sized box. I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂
« Reply #1 on: October 31, 2010, 01:54:13 PM »
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So far its going well – Reeses have an early lead as the favorite, but Kit kat and Twix are also doing well.
Some of the kids are asking to trade their candy for others which is fine. I let them do that.
Several have already run away from the house screaming about the king-sized bars – so yay!
right now the temp is 48 degrees but it feels like 52 according to accuweather.com
Kids have been relatively steady since 2pm.
Will try to update again later!
« Reply #2 on: October 31, 2010, 03:01:37 PM »
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OK its 3:56, and accuweather says its still 49 degrees, but the sun is shining into my house so it feels more like 80.
By 3pm we were onto the second box of Twix and Reese’s. By 3:30 we were out of Butterfingers (esentially…there is 1 left but I am not giving it up until I have to!) by 3:45 we were out of Kit Kat.
I’m getting a little nervous now, however the flood of kids seems to have died down a little so that is good.
One kids tried to get double treats…gotta watch out for those sneaky ones – greedy little bastard! Another one told me a story about her sister who needed some treats. I asked how I could know she had a sister and her friends backed her up so I gave her one. I had to make some pre-teen boys explain their costumes cause they were everyday clothes….apparently they were characters from video games. Weak but I let it slide.
Interestingly several kids have asked for Hershey’s by name…will have to consider that for next year.
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