Satan’s Garden

The Supreme Court ruled this morning that American citizens have a right to own firearms for self-defense and hunting, in a the first major pronouncement on the Second Amendment in the court’s history.

The ruling struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on handguns as incompatible with the rights of the Second Amendment, striking a blow to the 32 year old law.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority, stating that an individual right to bear arms is supported by ”the historical narrative” both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted.

Justice Stephen Breyer, however, showed that he cannot understand plain English, when he replied in decent, “In my view, there simply is no untouchable constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment to keep loaded handguns in the house in crime-ridden urban areas.”

As a service to Justice Breyer, I’ll dissect the language of the Second Amendment for him.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

First off, we need to find the subject of the sentence. This is easy enough. Change the comma separating the two clauses into a period. Whichever is a full sentence on it’s own is the subject of the sentence, whichever is not a full sentence is a supportive clause.

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.

Is this a full sentence? No. Let’s try the second part.

The right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Is this a full sentence? Yes. It is therefor the subject of the sentence. A pretty strong statement at that.

It’s not surprising in any way that Justice Breyer would have issue with this simple Amendment - it doesn’t support his statist desires. Justice Breyer has a long history of ignoring the literal reading of the Constitution, instead he looks to the “purpose and consequences” of the text. In short, he makes up whatever meaning he wants it to have and states that the text really meant that. Prof. Peter Berkowitz, in “Democratizing the Constitution”, argues that Justice Breyer’s position, “demonstrates not fidelity to the Constitution, but rather a determination to rewrite the Constitution’s priorities.”

Typical liberal bullshit.

I don’t think there’s anything more frustrating that dealing with the typical technical support call. In this case, my DSL modem bit the dust. It’s was an ActionTec GT701-WG, which I was not completely thrilled with for starters, but it did the job well enough - until yesterday.

Out of nowhere, the Web interface died. Normally people aren’t on the Web interface to their DSL modem everyday, but I have a script running which queries the status page once every ten minutes. If the PPP or DSL connection is lost for three minutes after first discovery, the script triggers an X10 power switch to reset the modem (complete with a 20 second pause between power down and power up.) A script like this wouldn’t normally be required at all, except that I had two incidences where I lost DSL connectivity while I was at work and needed to obtain files from my home machine and for some reason or another either DSL itself or PPP wouldn’t re-connect. The script had helped me out, according the logs, once since I enabled it.

Back to the current issue: Along with the Web interface giving up its mortal coil, the PPP connection finally dropped as well. DSL was still trained, but that was it. I had a modem which wouldn’t respond to me and no line to the outside world.

The system had worked flawlessly, as I said, for about two years, with the script in place for the last eight months, so nothing had changed on my end for quite some time. I tried connecting several times manually, and managed to get in on the Web interface for about two or three minutes a couple of times each, before its little brain went south again and then wouldn’t even respond to ICMP pings. From that data gleaned, I verified settings and what connection status there was with my ISP, just to be thorough. I tried the hard-reset process - which didn’t work. Finally, the beast simply wouldn’t come back to life at all.

All signs pointed to a dead modem.

Come this morning I gave Qwest a call. It didn’t take long to reach a “technical” support person, I have to give them that, but the rest was an exercise in stupidity. I explained the complete situation, from loss of the Web interface to the lack of reset capability and asked what it would cost to replace the modem. He didn’t answer the question, instead wishing to go through a series of trouble shooting steps. I won’t bore you here with the full conversation. Suffice it to say that after an hour and a half of walking through the various steps on two different computers over this “technical” support person’s script, he came to the thoughtful deduction that the modem wasn’t working correctly and needed to be replaced.

No way! I would have never guessed. How nice it is to have “technical” help like this.

Since it wasn’t under warranty anymore (nothing ever is when it dies) I have to pay for a new modem. They wanted $50 for a refurbished replacement. Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll get a brand new modem, thank you, even if it costs more. My biggest problem now is finding a decent modem on a timely basis. Everyone in Salt Lake seems to sell nothing but ActionTec - which I’m not very trustful of. Cisco 678’s are getting harder to find as well.

In any case, I wasted an hour and twenty minutes of my life, appeasing a script reader. Had this “technical” support person just listened to what I had to say at the very beginning, and answered my original question, I’d have that time for my purpose instead of their scripted nonsense.  I suppose I should have been more forceful in my demands, but I would have hoped that I didn’t need to be.

I do know now why Qwest’s motto is “Spirit of Service” - you certainly get nothing very tangible.

The Marine Corps has taken final action against two of the Marines involved in the incident where one Marine was filmed throwing a puppy off a cliff.  Lance Cpl. David Motari is being dropped from the corp and a second Marine received “non-judicial” punishment.

What little story there is of it can be found here.

Take a few minutes and watch this video of a demonstration of Windows 7 multi-touch technology. At first glance you may be thinking, that’s some spiffy new technology. I’m going to run down a whole list of reasons why this is going to flop.

Screen dirt

I can’t speak for everyone on this concern, but it is a big one for me. I can’t stand a dirty monitor. If there are fingerprints, smudges or smears which get in the way of my work, it simply pisses me off. At the resolution I run displays, even a tiny drop of pop spit up by carbonation of a nearby drink is noticeable. Now you want me to smear my fingers all over the screen on purpose? No thanks.

Tired arms

With your monitor in the traditional position of straight ahead of you and up at eye level, arm fatigue is going to set in very, very quickly. Don’t believe me? Try it now. Pretend you’re working with this interface on your monitor for a few minutes and see if your arms don’t start to tire. This means you either have to suffer through the arm fatigue and take more breaks from your work, or move the monitor into a non-tradition position of flat on the desk in front of you. Now try working in collaboration with someone else on a problem with the screen flat down on the desk.

Fat fingers produce little detail

Pointing with a mouse or trackball is as precise as the cursor. Pointing with our fingers works to a certain extent, but how often do we pick up a pen or other smaller diameter object to point with, even for a large screen presentation? Trying to run CAD or photo manipulation software with your fingers is going to simply suck. How about just spreadsheet work? Do you want to be pushing around on a spreadsheet, trying to narrow it down to the correct cell?

Blocked vision

Speaking of tired arms and fingers, what about the fact that your hand is in the way? Does anyone want to be editing a photo or laying out a spreadsheet with your hands blocking the view of your work? Try to imagine touching up a photo, where you’re trying to clone another portion or work at blending a scratch or other damage, where your hand is blocking your view.

Screen longevity

Touch interfaces take their toll on screens. I have a HP PocketPC, which after three years is already scratched and slightly worn in spots (such as the close button, which is always in the same place) in spite of my rather careful attitude toward keeping the screen intact. How many users are going to want to buy a new monitor every two to three years, because you’ve scratched up the one you’ve been using with your fingernails, or the touch membrane is wearing out and becoming less responsive? How many women with long nails are going to want to cut them short because their monitor at work uses capacitive connectivity rather than pressure?

Touch screens have their place, and they’ve been around a long, long time now (1971) - but never caught on for mainstream applications. Why? Because it is a senseless waste of effort for most tasks. Leave it to Microsoft to try to redo an otherwise limited vertical market of Point of Sale systems, pocket devices and industrial interfaces to a general PC interface. They just couldn’t take the clue that the reason this hasn’t taken off in the mainstream over the last 37 years is that there simply isn’t a need for it.

A whole lot of “gee-wiz” and not a damned bit of common sense in this one.