|
|
HomeGraffitiAboutSitemapVisualDevWork
Email BrianGPG Key |
GRAFFITI -- November 14, 2005 thru November 20, 2005>> Link to the Current Week <<Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week Welcome to Orb Graffiti, a place for me to write daily about life and computers. Contrary to popular belief, the two are not interchangeable. About eMail - I publish email sometimes. If you send me an email and you want privacy or anonymity, please say so clearly at the beginning of your message. |
 
|
MONDAY
Tues
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
November 14, 2005
0749 - Good morning. Sunday's post sure drew a dedicated bunch out, with Svenson, David and John all chiming in on a Sunday afternoon, asking me to say Hi to the Syroids for them, next time we chat. Will do, blokes!
Now today, in just under an hour, I've got to be sitting in the dental surgeon's chair for the penultimate visit, just X-ray and evaluation of the upper left implant, that incorporated the bone graft (which is why it takes the longest to integrate). Pending approval of that, we'll schedule my last visit, to have that implant exposed and capped, then two weeks later we can get the process of the last two crowns going with my regular dentist. We should be done by Christmas, with luck.
The balance of the day will be eaten by continuing to add users to the exchange server. Poor bastards. I guess I'd better prep for the road, as there's going to be traffic again (Friday was a breeze, what with the Federal holiday aspect of Veteren's Day. Ciao!
Mon
TUESDAY
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
November 15, 2005
2031 - Good evening. Exchange servers and traffic court and Sony rootkits! Oh, my! That's what my day was like, and I'll send some more details your way tomorrow, as life settles back down to normal for a little while. See you then...
Mon
Tues
WEDNESDAY
Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
November 16, 2005
No Post...
Mon
Tues
Wed
THURSDAY
Fri
Sat
Sun
November 17, 2005
1941 - Good evening. Well, that didn't work, did it. I'm sorry I've been so lax around here lately, but there's so much going on, and so little time. This site, while central to me in a number of ways, has a lower priority than some other stuff, and traffic has eaten into my schedule quite a lot recently. That said...
Topics from the other day. Exchange servers ... well, Exchange server, anyway. It's behaving relatively well, except for the bleeping Veritas backup software that doesn't do precisely what I want and what it does do, it does it badly: If there's a directory that is supposed to be backed up, and it can't be found (because I deleted it), then the backup fails. It doesn't keep going and backup the rest of the system. Nope, it just fails. Bastards. But migrating the user-subset that's designated to have Exchange inflicted upon them is going fairly well.
Traffic court was not a total loss. Given that the speed trap was a setup just past an obstructed speed limit sign, I am disappointed that the Judge didn't throw the ticket out. So I paid the fine, and have to do driving school to keep the points off my record. There's one more official that won't be getting my vote next election, for not listening.
The Sony rootkit is turning into a nightmare. I'm going to have to find a simple test I can get all of my users to run to determine whether or not Sony Corporation has compromised our security, and determine the best action to take next... The latest buzz is about this rootkit and it's even worse removal tool being considered as an attack on government computers. Heh. Sony takes one in the ass for the industry, film at eleven.
Intelligent Design. The Flying Spaghetti Monster Hypothesis. Evolution. The Matrix. One of these things doesn't go with the others. One of these things doesn't belong... That's right! Evolution. All the others are fiction. Now, what's funny to me is how, in the debates between Bob and Jerry, Bob keeps saying fine, teach it in any school you want, allow students to opt out, and don't call it science! Jerry (and other ID advocates) keep talking about gaps that evolution doesn't explain. Okay, I've taken this to mean that there are gaps in the evolutionary record for which we have no fossil remains to show intermediate stages, therefore evolution has enough problems to leave the door open for Intelligent Design.... Which is what, precisely? Um, nothing testable, nothing provable, nothing falsifiable. Not science. So fine, offer a course on ... Philosophy of Science? Philosophy? Theology? There, make that an elective, and talk there about how Intelligent Design bridges those thorny gaps in the evolutionary record where we haven't found fossils (yet, if ever). But please, if some particularly bright student says that the Evolution bits talk about things you can touch and point at, while this ID seems to be all faith and smoke and mirrors, then please, don't berate him, just send him over to where they can teach proper science to the students who can handle it.
I will grant you that ID offers an alternative to Evolution, and given a canny-enough designer (such as Slartibartfast), you can even touch all those fossils and regard them accounted for. That is, indeed, faith, and I'd not want to take that from anyone. But for those broadminded enough to have faith in a deity of any nature (or none at all) and still use the scientific method as defined everywhere (except in Kansas, as of this writing) to account for explainable phenomena, well, I'm just hoping to have more of the latter and less of the former in charge of things. I'll also grant you that Evolution as currently forumulated doesn't address the origin of life. That's because there are no facts to support ANY SUPPOSITION AT ALL about the origin of life. Oh, yeah, except that it did happen, so there's some explanation, whether natural or supernatural.
Jerry makes use of miracles to point out how science has areas where it can't cope. Well, duh. Oh, and let me know next time one's happening, because I'd really like to see it. I don't even need an explanation. Cancer going into remission without treatment. Miracle? Probably to the lucky get-out-of-death-free ticket holder. Not to me. Shit happens, stranger shit every day.
The argument that really blows my mind (and apparently that of a number of other hard scientists, in a slightly different way) is that because the probability of a Universe that has the right set of physical properties for the existence of our kind of life is so low as to be inconsequential, there must be a god who designed the Universe for us to exist in. Some scientists actually seem to worry about this, in the sense that they're concerned that possibly the Universe is the way it is because we're here to observe it (presumably in a collapsing-wave-function sort of way). Yeah, so?Here's what I think is true: If the universe didn't have the right physics for me to exist, I wouldn't exist. That I apparently do exist merely points out that the Universe must indeed have had those particular sensitive initial conditions just right. Or perhaps the starting conditions aren't that sensitive. Or that life happens in any circumstances that it can make work? I harbor no lingering doubts that the Universe was made for me to exist in ... it just happens to be that way.
When the religious hear me say that, the general reaction is that it's a bleak, bleak place, where my mind is, to imagine such a heartless existence. That I don't understand at all! The Universe is a place of wonders untold, and adventures yet to be written. That Earth-bound humanity is likely to be only a small part of that story and only confined to this one little otherwise unremarkable speck of matter that we call the Earth has little bearing on that. I find it exhilarating to be so unlikely, in so unlikely a Universe. If it turns out there is a God, (or Gods, as the case may be), then that'll certainly add to the wonder, but only that. Nice party, dude!
In the meantime, I'd prefer a framework of knowledge to hang in the bits that I can know and understand. If I were a faith-holder with Intelligent Design as my grail, then I could merely make lists of things that happen, and why bother searching for an explanation, as ID covers it. Of course, the searching for explanations leads to so many interesting places. I can't really understand an computer technologist and science fiction author with an engineering background giving ID much traction, but that doesn't faze me either. There's plenty that I don't understand, even in stuff that doesn't involve people, belief and faith. People are irrational most of the time, I think, and are performing at their best when balancing between humanity's irrational nature, and humanity's quest for knowledge and truth.
When it comes down to it, here's my core concern: Teach me about Intelligent Design and I learn the ability to point at something I don't understand, and say "God may have done that." Teach me Evolution, and I learn the ability to point at something (in the biological record) that I don't understand, and try to fit it in along with all the other bits into a larger tapestry of biological history, of speciation and forks and extinction. Personally, I find the first to be possibly comforting, but ultimately a dead end, because if I accept that, then what's left to look into? I find the second to be a challenge, and an opportunity, without eliminating the possibility of a prime mover (whether God or supernova or panspermia). If I had children, I'd explain to them that ID is comforting to people who believe that their faith is threatened by the success of science, that ID may be right, but that science is the way you get ahead in this Universe.
And with that, good night.
Mon
Tues
Wed
Thu
FRIDAY
Sat
Sun
November 18, 2005
0638 - Good morning. Much ranting last night. Bloody cold this morning, it was 30 degrees Farenheit out at 2200 last night as we ascended, I haven't been downstairs yet to access the current low. Rick Moen in another forum shared A collection of Prince of Darkness jokes, courtesy of Lucas Electric. Then there's more on the Sony rootkit and fallout, via this Bruce Schneier article on Wired. Oh, and Thank Cthulhu it's Friday! Ciao!
Mon
Tues
Wed
Thu
Fri
SATURDAY
Sun
November 19, 2005
1131 - Good morning. Happy Saturday. There's just a little bit of leaf work to do outside and I'll take advantage of the sunny day to do just that. By bedtime last night we were at 26° and dropping. I'd expect that a bit of moisture would have led to snow. The weather geeks are predicting possible snowshowers for Thanksgiving day. Lovely. Now off to the yardwork.
Mon
Tues
Wed
Thu
Fri
Sat
SUNDAY
November 20, 2005
1704 - Good afternoon. Marcia wasn't feeling very perky last night. I was up at about 0700 this morning, and went off to do the shopping without her a bit before 9. There wasn't much on the list, as we'd done a lot of our Thanksgiving food shopping the week before, figuring on crowds today. Of course, with my early start, I was done and home by shortly after 10.
Over in the corner, I've had Gentoo installing on my testbox. They've made some changes in how they do things - there's no more Stage One installation route. Now they recommend a Stage Three install, then rebuild everything from underneath if that's significant. Install took less than an hour, including following all the steps and building, testing kernels, etc. The correct flag settings and full rebuild took about 2 hours. After that, I installed the KDE metapackage, Xine-UI and a couple of other packages. All told, that took 10 hours to run (handily overnight from my perspective). Why? Well, it's been a little while since I put Gentoo on hardware, and while Debian and derivatives (mostly Xandros on the desktops, these days) are my clear favorite, Gentoo continues to poll a strong second.
As we approach the US Thanksgiving holiday, I'll be giving thanks for many things, not least of which is our steadfast troops, making sacrifices far from home on our behalf. This last week was another bad one...
That was over two hours ago. I felt a bit light-headed, and went to take a nap. Now I'll give this to you, and call it a week. See you tomorrow!
Last Week << Mon Tues Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun >> Next Week
Visit the rest of the DAYNOTES GANG, a collection of bright minds and sharp wits. Really, I don't know why they tolerate me <grin>. My personal inspiration for these pages is Dr. Jerry Pournelle. I am also indebted to Bob Thompson and Tom Syroid for their patience, guidance and feedback. Of course, I am sustained by and beholden to my lovely wife, Marcia. You can find her online too, at http://www.dutchgirl.net/. Thanks for dropping by.
All Content Copyright © 1999-2011 Brian P. Bilbrey.
Except where otherwise noted, this site is licensed under the
Creative
Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States
License.