Feel free to make yourself at home in my personal corner of the web. Comments, questions, and even criticism are encouraged.

1:42 PM
A nice, peaceful Sunday afternoon update on the ole website. I've been watching CNN pretty closely, except now they are really running out of things to say. This whole situation is pretty embarassing for the US. At this point I don't care which one takes the presidency, as long as there is a declaration, not a lawsuit.

I've almost converted completely to Red Hat linux at work and at home. The learning curve is immense, linux still isn't ready for prime time. It's still great, though, if you want to be on a constant learning diet of compiling, bug-fixing (well, mostly bug-hunting), and cutting-edge technology. So cutting edge that it gets obsolete within a few months.The thing that tipped me over the edge was EveryBuddy, an IM client that connects to ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, and MSN chat. It even keeps a log! I get segmentation faults all the damn time, but at least I can see what the problem is instead of Windows just giving me a terrible error message.

Linux is impressive in the way that the actual community works. I find it amazing that there is almost always someone who is willing to write a driver for some random device, especially given the fact that most companies don't help you at all and sometimes actively try to stop you! For example, I recently got DSL from Verizon (may competition bankrupt their apathetic souls) with this antiquated Westell modem using a new PPPoE standard. One quick search on Google and I was reading a step by step installation guide for the novice DSL user with links to other sites, more information and the driver itself!! 30 minutes later, I have DSL ticking like an Internet Time swatch!

A lot of people knock this whole Internet Time thing that Swatch is trying to market. I think that's just traditional thought getting in the way. Yeah, I hate the fact that some corporation feels the need to sell it to us by making the watches sexy and cool as opposed to nice rational discussions. Okay, after the 10 seconds it took to write that sentence, I realized that wouldn't work. =)

Internet time, although it wouldn't solve all of our time confusion problems, would help the world tremendously! No more confusion when you are reading the TV guide when it says the game in LA starts at 1300. When reading your plane tickets, there is just one time...no screwing with your watch at every stop. Heck, set your watch once and travel around the world always knowing what time it is and never missing a train! And time calculation is just ridiculous right now, Quick! How many seconds are in four hours?? Or how many minutes in 4 days?? We all have to do these calculations at some point and it's aggravating to have to think 60 seconds times 60 minutes times 4. Our current system of time is stupid. 24 hours in a day? What genius thought of this? Of course in the scientifically aware USA, we wisely break that down into two segments of 12. Then there are 60 seconds in a minute and 60 seconds in every minute. What does a second break down into? 100ths. *sigh*

I don't think Swatch will get their way, but at least they'll spend a ton of marketing money educating a few of public on the benefits of a more comprehensive system of time. Now, if only we could slow the Earth down to have exactly 1000 days in a year....

1:15 PM
Happy Halloween everyone! I hope you are all going out trick or treating like me! You know, trick or treating in Manhattan as a kid must really suck....ya gotta talk the doorman into letting you in so you can solicit for candy. It's more likely you're going to get escorted off the premises. It's not like Manhattan is the most tolerable of cities, either. We're jaded to people begging for things every day...so much so that we'll barely stop on the street to give someone directions 'cause their likely to want to shove a flyer in your hand, ask you "Do you like comedy?", or tell you they are collecting money for the poor.
Ah well, I'll likely schlep out the door tonight in some blackened garb to ogle at the party goers. This city is great for people who like to dress in costume, almost everyone walking around will be dressed. Especially on the west side with the parade.

I know it's been a while since I last posted, I've been working til late every night. It will actually pay off on this site as I'm able to migrate the content into my apartment. More on that later! =)

This entry was written by Mr. Pifer's personal secretary as he is away for the week attending the Middle Eastern Peace Conference.

11:11 PM
Welcome to the new site! Of course it's not finished, and never will be, but it's becoming a bit more polished and easier on the eyes. As web purists may note, I've taken advantage of several web no-no's. One being that this site is more targeted at IE web browsers, as you'll notice by the tabling I've done. Two, the fact that I'm embedding tables as deeply as I am goes against my typical beliefs for the web, but I really wanted to have control over the page and until HTML gets ousted for something real that allows us control over a person's browser instead of the browser control over HTML, designers will be forced to take a slower and more cumbersome route to page control. I am maintaining a different hypertext color. Sadly, users should be accustomed to clicking on blue underlined hypertext. Now they try to click on anything on the page due to years of poor page design. I'm taking advantage of this broadening of user experience and keeping the hypertext very visible, while changing the default. Lastly, I've finally converted over the Dreamweaver completely. It's really a give and take tool, you gain a lot for direct HTML editing, but it won't let you use advanced tags. Even the bullets on the side of this page aren't visible in editing mode. Hopefully the end result is better due to the advanced table control I have.

I was watching Democracy In America tonight. Very interesting, I had no idea of the level of violence that had occured there and the US didn't bother to step in at all. But should it? It amazes me now how the news shows these aftermath war scenes with piles of dead bodies, I've discovered I have a weak stomach when it comes to that. One of the reasons I'm happy I live in America is because I don't have to deal with the violence that exists elsewhere. How can it be that so many and so many people across cultures believe in preserving human life, but so many people are killed in war? I find this double standard very intriguing. You can ask almost anybody if they believe in cold-blooded murder and they will give an emphatic "No!" But when it comes to sending in troops to defend [random cause here] then we all happily agree if we deem the cause worthy. Why the double standard?

Once you break the international boundaries, it seems that rules tend to change easily. Because it's "them" and not "us"? Is that why? If the whole of a society on an individual basis does not believe in killing, how can that society then go out and kill to protect its interests? Is it because when its a group of people anonymity then shields culpability? Or is the reversal in morals acceptable for groups like vigilantism.

It's like the fields of Psychology and Sociology, there are rules that apply to individuals that cannot be applied to groups, thus the separate disciplines. Even the religious commandments followed by many in the world are tossed aside for the group belief of the necessity of war. The actions of nations can be likened to animals hunting for food in world of limited resources, they do whatever is necessary to survive. Can it be like Venk postulates that differing societies are organisms unto themselves? It certainly seems so. Given this theory, then do societies evolve into better and more intelligent societies? If the creation of the Nation-State is any indication, then yes, they are certainly becoming more specialized and intelligent, forcing other societies to do the same.

Perhaps this is one of the causes of modern genocides, in the far past, this wasn't as prevalent since people could always escape and start anew. Today, millions of refugees from a hostile Nation-State can go nowhere, there's no more free land, thus, they must war to either create their own Nation-State or to survive.

How many Palestinians are there left??  The link is to one of the many outbreaking articles of the latest clash of the Palestinians and Israelis.  Actually, can one really call them Palestinians?  That implies that there is a nation of Palestine.  They are a people without a country getting shoved nomadically all over the middle east and cause clashes like this again and again.  Maybe one of their leaders should pick up a book on the Nation-State.  Not having land is a big, big problem.  An even bigger one is trying to take it from Israel.  Let's face it, they don't have much land to give anyway.  I'm not sure what a viable solution here is, but I'm *positive* it doesn't involve hurling rocks at Israeli soldiers.

It's unfortunate that the cellular phone that Handspring (and Q1 for Palm) are releasing is going over the GSM network.  I'd hoped to see them running it over the Omnisky (OMNY) network using Voice over IP (VoIP).  Yeah, sure you'd have a terrible connection, but it would be free (or at least the cost of a flat rate internet).  I'm not sure what kind of quality you'd get over that 9600 baud wireless line.  Probably worse than I'd want to connect over.  It *would* be a beginning, a starting point for real flat rate voice connections all over the world!  I'm not that out of my mind....

For years, we've seen the battle of broadband between cable or wireless modems.  The debates rage about which is better and many of us still await access to one of these services.  I'm in the middle of Manhattan and can't get either.  Needless to say, I'm a bit perturbed about this snail's pace rollout of the next (r)evolution of the Internet where all of us are supposed to be watching full-stream motion video over our computers.  You know, the world where NC's (network computers) rule the roost instead of PC's??  Here's a newsflash for you: They will both lose!!!

What's your broadband solution going to be?  Wireless!

Not because of superior technology, I'm not chasing the latest acronym like many industry analysts, but just making a frank appraisal based on simple economics.  The most expensive part for both industries is the last mile.  Both of them can lay major pipes from city to city quite easily, but when they have to start running lines to each user the costs skyrocket...and they're not shy about passing these costs on.  Wireless can solve this problem.  Blanketing metropolitan areas is far less expensive when you can install strategically placed transmitter/receivers as opposed to ripping up concrete to lay fiber.  Sadly, both industries are blinded by their own legacy initiatives to see this easy escape route, I expect it to sink in a few years down the road...hopefully when it's too late and some enterprising ISP has stepped in to fill the gap.

I'm too braindead to post anything substantial tonight.  I'll do some tomorrow after some java...

Well, well, well -- Today I've found one of my favorite pet peeves on US News' web site.  The rankings of colleges.  Yup, your top 50 are there for you to see and pick where you want to go to college based on their selections.  Now before you run off and check where to send your son or daughter based on what you can afford, let us reflect a moment on what people go to college for.  *I* thought it was to prepare you for the real world.  To ready you to either hit the workforce or create your own workforce -- and to be as successful and happy as possible fulfilling your dreams, right?  So what barometers would you use to select the rankings?  Here's what US News says:

"Can rankings help you identify colleges and universities that are right for you? Certainly, the college experience consists of a host of intangibles that cannot be reduced to mere numbers. But we believe that it is possible to objectively compare schools on one key attribute: academic excellence. The tables that appear on the following pages should help you weigh some of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the schools that you're considering."

Academic excellence?  [flame on] What the hell does that have to do with the real world?  A breakdown on the link above shows variables such as Acceptance Rate, % of classes under 20, Reputation Score, Alumni Giving Rank, etc.  These stats are irrelevant to the task to which we assign universities.  I'd like to see stats like Most Money Made, Most Money Made After 10 years, Most Famous, Most Nobel Prizes.  I want to see ranking on what we can expect given the education that we get at the universities.  Education for education's sake isn't a bad goal, but it's not the goal that we've assigned universities.  A very few people actually go to learn and continually learn about the same specialty fields in a strictly academic environment.  Most likely, one goes to college to make ones self more marketable.  I'm sure you'd rather see my suggested poll than the Academe propaganda US News is compiling. [flame off]

Oh yes, and before I slink off to bed, notice that Transmeta has changed their business plan!  Taking away IBM and Toshiba's ability to make devices based on their chips...ooooooh, they are such an easy target.  Should I stop?  NO!  =)

(Linus, run while you can!)

I signed up for cable today...er...at least, I tried (again).  It's amazing how difficult it is to get broadband in Manhattan.  I tried with Verizon, formerly known as Bell Atlantic, twice.  But they weren't willing to change my local service back to Verizon to get my business for DSL.  Ugh.  Of course, Road Runner here is 2 years behind schedule. They are supposed to be in my neighborhood now so I hope to capitalize on it.  It's going to be interesting when wireless starts to rival the landline monopolies.  WOO HOO!  I hope there will be enough bandwidth to go around.