Scott Bradford: Off on a Tangent

Completing Our HD Transition

Posted

So last week I talked about our new high-definition LCD television that has brought us kicking-and-screaming into television modernity. Getting our gaming systems—a Nintendo Wii and a rarely-used Sony PlayStation 2—set up was very easy with some of those new-fangled component cables we bought at the same time as the TV, but our DirecTV setup was not HD and our DVD player was an older model that didn’t support anything close to HD quality through its retro RCA cables.

So, the day after we bought the TV, we made another trip to Best Buy and picked up an upscaling DVD player (which plays DVDs at near-HD quality over a really new-fangled HDMI cable) and an HD receiver for DirecTV. Our DirecTV installer guy came out today, and now we’re totally hooked up: HD-capable satellite TV and an upscaling DVD player hooked into a 36″ LCD television with 720p resolution. Cool.

I have one fairly-minor disappointment: I’m paying an HD fee, but very few DirecTV channels are actually available in HD. Fox News Channel, for example, started broadcasting in HD in May but DirecTV only provides the non-HD version. TruTV began broadcasting in HD when it transitioned from being CourtTV in January but—again—DirecTV only provides the non-HD version. Fox News Channel and TruTV are each part of my DirecTV package, and since I’m paying the extra surcharge for HD content DirecTV should provide me with their HD versions since HD versions are available. The only ‘standard’ definition content I should have is content that is broadcast by its originators that way without an HD alternative. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.

Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware

Posted

A few days ago, a friend of mine came to me looking quite sullen with her Windows XP notebook in-hand. In a lapse of judgment, she had downloaded an illegal copy of a well-known software product to try it out and, upon trying to run its installer, discovered that what she had downloaded was actually malware—software designed to hijack your computer and make your life miserable. Her desktop was littered with links to pornography sites, trying to visit web sites like Google or Windows Update took her to other, shady-looking places on the web that were clearly incorrect, and the system wouldn’t even boot half the time. Things were looking grim.

It has been a while since I have had to deal with a malware issue. In the past, I have used a trifecta of software that is free for personal use: Microsoft Windows Defender (Windows XP and Vista only), Lavasoft Ad-Aware, and Spybot Search & Destroy. Running these tools on my friend’s computer seemed to work and they identified and removed quite a few pieces of unsavory software. The porn icons disappeared from the desktop, the system started booting consistently, and things seemed a lot better . . . but something was still wrong. Trying to run Windows Update resulted in errors, and trying to visit the Windows Update web site didn’t work. Google searches seemed to work, but actually clicking the search result links seemed to take me to mismatched and incorrect web sites.

Nothing obvious was wrong. I didn’t see anything suspicious in the list of running processes, the ‘hosts’ file (which could have been modified to send certain web requests to the wrong places) looked clean, and clearing out and recreating the TCP/IP settings (and flushing cached DNS information) all accomplished nothing. I was stumped.

Then, on a sojourn into various message boards (on my Mac, of course ;-)), I heard about Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware.

Read more . . .

Remembering September 11, 2001

Posted

September 11, 2001, started off normally for me. I lived on-campus at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA—a mere 20-or-so miles from the Pentagon. I was late waking up (as is fairly normal for me), and so in my rush to get to my 9am class I didn’t check the news web sites I usually read every morning. Thus, I had missed the early reports of a plane hitting the World Trade Center tower in New York City.

After class, I saw I had received two voicemails. When I tried to check my messages, the call wouldn’t go through. I distinctly remember thinking (sarcastically) how typical it was that the one day I get voicemails would be the one day that the nearby cell tower doesn’t work. Little did I know that the two were connected to an ongoing tragedy.

Soon enough I learned what had happened in New York, and not long after that I learned what had happened at the Pentagon. The remainder of the day was a whirlwind of news-watching, prayer, phone calls, and—admittedly—a lot of unbridled anger toward the yet-unidentified perpetrators of that act of pure evil.

Read more . . .

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

Posted

Have you heard the phrase ‘you can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig’? It’s a common phrase that I’ve heard perhaps hundreds of times before. It refers to the fact that superficial, external gloss does not change the underlying, ugly nature of a thing. Microsoft’s ill-fated Windows Vista operating system is a fine example of a product that can be accurately described with this clever bit of slang.

Democratic Presidential nominee Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) recently used the term in reference to Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain’s (R-AZ) efforts to co-opt Obama’s mantra of ‘change’:

“You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig. You can wrap up an old fish in a piece of paper and call it change. It’s still going to stink after eight years. We’ve had enough.”

In a shameless example of sex-baiting that should be beneath McCain, his campaign has accused Obama of using a sexist slur against his running mate, Governor Sarah Palin (R-AK). Of course, it’s quite silly since in October of last year McCain himself used the term when talking about Senator Hillary Clinton’s (D-NY) health care plan:

“I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.”

So was that a sexist slur again Clinton? No. Nor was Obama’s comment a sexist slur against Palin. Can we please talk about real issues, rather than fabricating goofy claims of sexism, racism, and so on out of innocent comments made on the campaign trail?

Fannie and Freddie Dying a Slow Death

Posted

Succumbing to the home loan ‘crisis’ they (and poorly-educated home buyers) created, the federal government has seized control of the Federal National Mortgage Association (’Fannie Mae’) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (’Freddie Mac’).

I’ve written a bit about this before and my general disdain toward hybrid public/private organizations. Trying to conglomerate public and private goals never works well for anybody—if you need proof look at Amtrak, the Postal Service, the DC-area Metro transit system, or any public university. Hybrid organizations were intended to combine the best features of government with the best features of private industry; instead, they usually combine the worst.

All-in-all, since Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are essentially banks, it makes sense for the government to seize control as they teeter on the brink of insolvency. After the great depression, the government is well equipped to take over failing banks. The big test is what they do next, and I certainly hope they don’t nationalize our mortgage system. The government, I’m sure, could mess this whole thing up even worse than the hybrids did.

The only logical solution is privitization. The discredited hulks of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be sold as quickly as possible to the highest private bidder. I have no doubt that some enterprising corporation out there would be able to steer one or both of these ill-fated hybrids to private-sector profitability if given the opportunity.

Scott Bradford is a writer and technologist who has been putting his opinions online since 1995. He believes in three inviolable human rights: life, liberty, and property. He is a Catholic Christian who worships the trinitarian God described in the Nicene Creed. Scott is a husband, nerd, pet lover, and AMC/Jeep enthusiast with a B.S. degree in public administration from George Mason University.