Category Archives: Quality

Laura Ingraham vs. Charlie Rangel: Internal Squabble

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[dc]R[/dc]ightScoop calls out Ingraham for her RINO ambush (audio cued up, ready to go, at that link) of Bachmann just before the debt ceiling disaster vote.

If you think I’m wrong, I bet you back away from that after listening to Ingraham being just plain nasty to Bachmann.  The week before she went after Bachmann (so three weeks ago), she high-centered herself trying to drain support for Rep. West!

Rangel is a turd, but I have come completely off the Laura wagon over her badgering of Michele Bachmann two weeks ago.  It may be fun to watch Rangel get beaten about the head and shoulders (it may be VERY fun), but this is just Ingraham’s motormouth abuse schtick.

[pullquote]merely provocative, uninformative style of debate[/pullquote]

I very much … Continue reading →

Rush to Conservatives: I’m damn proud of you | The Right Scoop

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Boehner 3.0 passed, Senate killed it, and now Reid will replace it with a craptastic compromise.  This is the sell-out we are bracing for.  But it doesn’t have to be this way.  We did win, after all.  We have a veto on spending.  If we show the fortitude required, the Democrats will crumble.

RightScoop currently hosting a great clip from Rush:

Rush says that the only reason we have Boehner 3.0 is because of the Tea Party members in Congress and because of us conservatives who made our voices loud and clear, and he says he’s damn proud of all of us. And then he turns it on.

He blasts the leadership for doing Obama and Reid’s bidding and says we should not be the lifeline to getting … Continue reading →

MacBook Air to Kick Ass, Chew Gum

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Apple has dropped the aging and sturdy line of just plain Macbook laptops. You can buy the mobile powerhouse MacBook Pro, or you can buy a MacBook Air. So with the new OS 10.7 “Lion” standard, the addition of the new thunderbolt port, and upgraded processor and RAM, the featherweight MacBook Air is all out of bubble gum.

These changes seem incremental and individually they are. After all, SSDs are not new, low-volt processors and thermal controls are not new, and one can hardly argue that leaving off the optical drive is some sort of improvement. Taken together, they represent most of a revolution in mobile computing. The MacBook Air, once the parlor-trick publicity stunt by an otherwise serious computer maker, has just become the standard laptop offering, … Continue reading →

Apple Thunderbolt Display Non-Review

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Here’s a puzzling excerpt from a supposed tech review:

Are you ready to meet an Apple’s new Thunderbolt Display (27-inch) that costs $1000 and features 2560 by 1440 pixels solution and high speed Thunderbolt connectivity? Sounds really cool, yeah?!

These new displays boast the main feature that has already become a talk of the town – they have the Thunderbolt port and that is why they are called the Apple Thunderbolt Display.

I am ready to bet you will be genuinely happy to find out that the 16:9 displays use IPS panels that feature a 178 degree viewing angle. Each display has a built-in FaceTime HD camera, 2.1 speaker system, and integrated MagSafe charger.

It seems to me that these features turn the display into more than just … Continue reading →

Reading Graphs

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There’s a blog, Political Calculations, which is immensely satisfying to a highly political data junkie such as myself.  So it’s a good blog, but the proprietor really hoses his interpretation of this graph:

[government spending] has literally “gone vertical” during the last two years.
In mathematical terms, that’s the sort of thing you see when you divide any number by zero. Applied to the chart above, that means that the relationship between the change in total government spending and the typical income earned by an American household from year-to-year is now “undefined.”

The problem is that this is a bivariate graph, and the concept of slope in terms of dy over dx does not apply.  More precisely, it has little meaning, and manifestly … Continue reading →

Fukushima Cover-Up Also Leaking

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The broad strokes are known, while the details are sketchy.  The cover-up consists of TEPCO and the government issuing a steady stream of tut-tuts and there-theres trying to reassure a populace being poisoned that there’s nothing wrong, or not much, or it’s getting better, or whatever the feel-good phrase of the day is.

The government has been honest in some refreshing ways, but don’t expect cheerleading for only lying part of the time.  There’s a certain amount of half-full, half-empty debate as to how lucky we are that certain aspects of this disaster may have prevented or limited certain other aspects.  That’s great, but with how difficult it is to get straight facts from TEPCO and the government of Japan (which our acronym-loving government refers to as GOJ), … Continue reading →

Another Reactor Fire in Northeastern Japan

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Another fire at a Japanese nuclear plant.  Don’t worry, though:

TEPCO spokesman Naoyuki Matsumoto says there’s no fear of a radiation leak due to the fire.

Thank Heavens TEPCO is here to announce that everything is under control, and that there is nothing to worry about.  Especially radiation.  Whew.

And those of us who criticize, rather than fellate, traditional Japanese management practices are still wa-a-ay off base.  Probably just racists.  Not a management-improving thought in our empty heads.

Note that I am not criticizing the fact that there was a fire.  Accidents happen, and while not at all desirable, are still “in bounds” for management.  I am criticizing the fact the TEPCO has zero credibility left, after decades of consistently lying and covering up problems … Continue reading →

FUbuntu

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The PulseAudio death-march is killing off the Linux base.

I have been using Linux off and on since 1997. I would still like to know what typeface was used in the early Slackware config screens, where I had to select video modes, add modules for an ATI busmouse, and in general describe by hand the hardware environment to the software. Back in the days when licensing was still in the future for the most part, and pico was not yet nano.

And I am done. For years, sound issues in Linux have been due to the all-consuming drive to accomplish a direct network-packet-audio whatnot that I DO NOT CARE ABOUT. Meanwhile, this effort has meant that the very successful solutions for just plain listening to things on your … Continue reading →