Amazing Technology

I am posting to my blog from my blackberry. It's amazing how people can communicate these days.

A brain implant would probably be better though... Guess I will have to wait a few years for that.

-- Dave
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless handheld

Vista Post 1-Month

I've had the Vista operating system on my machine for the last month or so and have become familiar with the OS' quirks and workings. In my honest opinion, Vista is a downgrade in just about every sense of the word.

My system is a mid-level box with a dual core processor, 2GB of memory and runs on a dual 10K Raptor raid. XP was much faster than Vista is, even with all the graphical bells and whistles turned off and the system optimized for performance. The most irritating thing is my backup box that I just formated with a new XP install is noticeably "zippier" than my main Vista box. The backup system should be about 2/3 slower from a hardware perspective.

My biggest irritation is that the file handling in Vista is molasses slow. Opening a folder with fair number of subfolders takes seconds to resolve where XP handled it almost instantly. Transferring files is also much, much slower than XP, both locally and via network.

I did a clean install of Vista (and deleted the restore files), and I'm too lazy to reformat and upgrade from Vista to XP. Maybe I will take care of it in a month or so.

-- Dave

Oh Noes!

I have a somewhat sophisticated computer system. There are multiple boxes with specific purposes (MMOG macro programs running, media center, primary workstation, etc.). Well, I ran into a problem.

The fan on the video card on my media box died. This means I'm without television until I can get it replaced. /cry

Fortunately, it's not a huge deal. I grabbed an after market VGA cooling system and hopefully it will arrive today. The bulk of the "enthusiast" part means that I have to rearrange some key inner-workings to make room, but I am hopeful the problem will be minimal.

Dave

Sleep - A Wonderful Thing

Yesterday, I held a meeting with my lab and associates concerning my latest data set. It went well, but the whole process was a bit exhausting. I think I am going to be able to squeeze out a third publication with the new data that I have.

This morning, I am feeling pretty good. Ten hours of sleep is wonderfully therapeutic after a long day. :)

David

Windows Vista

I've finally taken the plunge and decided to upgrade from WinXP Pro to Windows Vista. Yesterday, I went down to the university bookstore and grabbed a student copy in the Home Premium flavor.

I have built my own boxes since the early days of the Pentium. In fact, my first hand-built box was a 100mhz Pentium 1 with a whopping 32MB of ram and a (gasp) 1GB hard drive. Over this time, I've installed every OS one can think of from OS2 to DOS to every windows OS under the sun.

My migration to windows Vista was the easiest OS install I've ever done. My raid drives, Inet sharing server, dual video, motherboard devices, everything had the latest drivers automatically installed and worked! I'm impressed! The eye candy is kind of nice too, even though I will probably turn most of it off eventually to squeeze out a few more cpu cycles. I'm really digging the widget panel and love the desktop RSS feeds.

I'll keep you posted on more developments.

-- Dave

Enemy on US Soil

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is going to be giving a talk and taking questions from students and media at Columbia University in a short while. The President has also made a request to place a wreath at ground zero, a request that has been denied.

There are many critics that don't want President Ahmadinejad to set foot on US soil. The detractors claim that its disrespectful to all the people who died on 9/11 to provide a forum to a state sponsor of terrorist activity.

I understand the feelings. Clearly, the Iranian president is playing a shrewd political game. At the same time, I think it's important that we not allow Iran to vilify the US by making us look hateful. The wise man said, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." There is no harm in allowing President Ahmadinejad the opportunity to speak. In fact, it gives us the opportunity to put difficult questions to the Iranian president in a free-speech forum.

As far as allowing President Ahmadinejad to place a wreath at ground zero, I think we should have let him do so. He will, of course, use the gesture to claim that he is not a terrorist sponsor while giving comfort and aid to those he condemns, but it shows that we are not going to be spiteful about the whole matter. Politically, our response should be of reasoned retribution, both to deter future attacks and to deal "justice to the lawless." By getting all uptight about letting President Ahmadinejad see ground zero, we are playing into his propaganda machine. He will say we are waging a war of vengeance based on hate.

In situations such as this, where the game is about perceptions, I feel its best to figure out the course that minimizes your opponent's ability to grandstand while claming the higher moral ground. This is especially true when the opponent is a mortal enemy you are bent on destroying.

David

First Post

Well, this is my first post. I'm thinking that this blog will be a nice place to organize my thoughts and ideas regarding various geopolitical issue, a record of various happenings in my life, and a place to rant.

Stay tuned for more!

Dave