Why I like Ben Stein

Ben Stein wrote this article almost a year ago, but it's just as relevant today:

Lately, there has been much gnashing of teeth in the media and on liberal talk radio about Protestant preachers urging their megaflocks to get involved in the fight against abortion on demand. There has also been a good amount of muttering about Republicans using churches to promote the vote--up or down--on a few of President Bush's nominees to the federal bench. And of course, there is ever more screaming about what secret plans the new Pope might have for controlling American Catholics in their views on abortion and homosexuality.

All of this, it is darkly hinted, is a violation of the Constitutional bans on the Establishment of a religion, a new and sinister development in political life, and a threat to the Republic.

What foolishness. Who was was leading the marchers heading towards the Pettus Bridge in ( or near ) Selma, Alabama forty years ago during the heyday of the Civil Rights movement? Ministers and nuns in clerical garb. Who was there in Birmingham? Again, men and women of the cloth. What was the greatest political/moral figure of the twentieth century in America? A Protestant minister, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Who was leading us from the pulpit, sounding out fury at the seemingly endless Vietnam war? The Reverend William Sloan Coffin, a minister of the Gospel. Who was at all of the anti-war marches? Ministers and priests and rabbis. No one was complaining about that, for some reason.

Who thundered against slavery and urged on the Civil War? Henry Ward Beecher and other men of faith in the north.

This is what has always been going on in political life in America. The political is the moral. And the moral is the political.

Men and women of faith have always been involved in political/moral issues as long as there has been politics and as long as there has been religion. (Think of Moses urging the politically explosive issue of freeing the children of Israel from bondage, or of Jesus telling followers it was fine to pay taxes to Caesar.)

The only new thing is that now it's conservatives marching for life and preaching for life, not ministers marching for civil rights or disarmament. But surely men and women of the cloth are not just allowed but commanded to assert their moral beliefs on issues of supreme importance. Men and women who wear the cloth do not check their first amendment rights and their moral duties when they take their vows. They never have, and they never will. And we are far better for it.

Windows Rot and Memory Leaks

There is a term out there called 'Windows Rot'. What this term means is that over an extended period of time, Windows will keep slowing down as you use it. Essentially this means that after a year or two, Windows is slower than it was when you bought it. Now some slowdown is expected as you use more software, but the problem of Windows Rot has more to do with your registry and file system than your usage. They get full and out of index (or corrupt, or both).

In my time as a developer, the shelf life of Windows for me was about six months. Because of the amount of compiling I would do.

I would expect it to be longer now that I've switched my primary role to sales / marketing (anyone from my work reading this knows I abuse computers and probably laughs at that statement).

Anyway, I have a 3.0 Ghz, Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM (which is not enough, but I'm working on more). Above is a screen shot of my Windows Task Manager with nothing running (literally nothing, no background apps, no foreground apps, nothing). Explain to me how if I have nothing running my computer is using 369 MB of RAM? I'll tell you how, Windows Rot and Memory Leaks. This PC is maybe 1 year old (probably not even that) and that 369Mb of RAM was probably 10 minutes after I've closed everything down (because I was getting mad at how long everything is taking too run). I've mentioned it before on this blog... Windows Sucks!!!! If it wasn't for the fact that I still dable in development (in Microsoft's .Net) I would be using a Mac. I'm fed up.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it Billy Packer

Update: Shockers make the sweet sixteen
Wichita State: 80
Tennessee: 73

Bradley: 77
Kansas: 73

Wichita State: 86
Seton Hall: 66

Sorry for the lack of posting lately, I've been busy with work and it's tourney time. Anyway, I can't stand Big East and ACC blowhard Billy Packer. Here's a quote from Packer talking about the MVC getting four bids in the NCAA tournet (courtesy stltoday.com):

"I'm really not an expert on the Missouri Valley, but . . . it doesn't make any sense to me," he said. "You put Florida State and Maryland into their league, I'd like to know where they'd end up (in the MVC standings). Do you see any of those four teams taking Duke to overtime, at Duke (as Florida State did this year) and beating them on their home court?"

I hope the rest the three other MVC teams get a win, to help put Packer, Phelps and Nantz in their place. In the same article on stltoday.com Packer talked about how he thought the MVC and Colonial teams would do:

"What's going to be great about this first week is what those six bids actually do in the first round," he said. "I don't know how many they'll be favored in."

Nice job Captain Obvious... I wondered how they could be favored considering the screw job they got from the commitee. Only one of the four (Wichita State) is the higher ranked seed in the 1st round. I'm thrilled the MVC got four bids, but their pairings pretty well stink.

Good luck MVC. I hope you shut these east-coast biased announcers up.

MHCC

Just a post to help MHCC in the search rankings. MHCC is the home of Maryland Heights Chamber of Commerce.

KB892130 Update

I've made two previous posts (here and here) about the 'Windows Genuine Advantage Program'. After somebody posted a comment that the page was still not found on Microsoft's website. I sent an email to Microsoft support. They actually emailed me back quickly and fixed the dead link. The page now appears here.

Here is Microsoft's verbiage of what the 'Windows Genuine Advantage Program' is:

If you access downloads on the Microsoft Download Center or on the Microsoft Windows Update Web site, you may be prompted to complete the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation check process. On the Download Center Web site, you may be prompted to install an ActiveX control when you select a download that is marked with the WGA icon. On the Windows Update Web site, the ActiveX control is a mandatory update. This update is required to access downloads that are specific to Windows.

On both the Microsoft Download Center and the Windows Update Web site, an ActiveX control that is known as the Windows Genuine Advantage Validation Tool performs a validation check to verify that your copy of Windows is genuine. If your copy of Windows is genuine, you may continue to access the download. If the copy of Windows does not pass the validation check, you receive a message that states why Windows did not pass the check. Additionally, you receive information about other steps to try and about how to obtain a genuine copy of Windows. If you are using the Windows Update Web site, you are returned to that Web site, where you can obtain non-Windows downloads.

I guess the mystery is solved. As we all assumed, you can only download Windows Updates if you have a genuine licensed copy of Windows.