Letter to the Editor
It is my hope that now that Tom Delay has stepped down that his replacement Roy Blunt will take the Republican party in a new direction, back to smaller government, balanced budgets, and fiscal responsibility. Over the past years since the GOP took control government spending has been out of control with the government now spying on everything we do, soaring deficit spending, and rising taxes on the middle class America is being looted.
Roy Blunt was elected in 1996 replacing the retiring Mel Hancock who was one of the most fiscally responsible members ever elected to congress. It is my hope that Roy Blunt will take the GOP in a different direction than self annihilation and earn his place in history as the guy who turned things around.
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I ran for congress against this guy in 1998.
So - we have a governor who was elected with a special election who has initiated another special election to change the election rules.
Not with my vote!
I'm voting against everything Schwarzenegger wants. And I'm voting for everything he doesn't want.
This works for me. Here's the movable type example:
Location /mt/mtcomments.cgi
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^.*marc.perkel.com/.*
RewriteRule ^.*http://www.ctyme.com/comment-spam.html
/Location
And for Wordpress Blogs:
Location /blog/wp-comments-newpost.php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^.*dvorak.org/.*
RewriteRule ^.* http://www.ctyme.com/comment-spam.html
/Location
The way it works is - if the referring link isn't local - you don't ge to leave a comment. Am I the first one who thought of this?
Letter to the Editor
People who are arguing about the Pledge of Allegiance need to think about the two words before "Under God" - the words "One Nation". The phrase "one nation" means that New Orleans didn't happen to "them". It happened to "us" and "we" needs to step up and make it happen. And in order to do that we need to take a long hard look at the reality around us and figure out how "we" are going to make it happen.
We have to face the tough questions about what we are doing with our money. We spent hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq. Are we going to continue to choose Iraq over Louisiana. Are we going to take the money from old sick people by delaying their prescription drug plan? Are we going to take it from children by cutting Head Start? Bush has already ruled out taxing the rich so that leaves borrowing the money from the Communist Chinese. I think that borrowing from the Commies is not good long term thinking.
We can't afford empty promises and poor judgment. It's time for America to come out of the fog and begin to actually think. We are being tested as a nation to see if we are worthy of survival. We aren't just rebuilding New Orleans, we are rebuilding the nation As a sit here on the edge of the San Andreas fault I ask if we are really one nation?
Letter to the Editor
People have said that Americans shouldn't play the "blame game". President Clinton said that there's a time to review the failures of the government response but that time isn't now. I have to strongly disagree with that.
Because the people rose up screaming about what a poor job the government did the politicians are finally getting off their butts and getting the job done. If we weren't pointing fingers and screaming the evacuees would still be at the astro dome dying for lack of food and water. And if not for the blame game Bush wouldn't be on TV along with the governors and the mayors trying to get the job done (finally) and at least making promises about what they say they are going to do.
We Americans have to keep the pressure on and keep the blame going. We need to see if Bush is going to follow through. We need to see if they rebuild the levies right. We need to see that the money isn't stolen by Bush cronies, Oil Companies, and corrupt local officials. The blame game works. It is saving lives and helping people recover. What they call the blame game is what we call holding people accountable and taking responsibility. That's what we elect them to do and that's what we pay taxes for and we need to hold their feet to the fire and whip the stupidity out of them until they become the kind of people they represented themselves as when they ran for office. And if we can't afford to do it right, how are we going to afford to do it over?
So - after starting two other threads on the subject I have now made the conversion to the Athlon X2 server. The bottom line is - it works!
Basically running about 300 web sites of all kinds from a few static pages to PHP/MySQL. The system includes email and is running spam assassin.
This box replaces two servers merging them into one. One of the older servers was a 2.4 mhs Dual Xeon 32 bit with 4 gigs of ram and 2 WD 250 gig drives with 8M buffer. The second server was a 2.6 ghz Pentuin 4 that was running high volume static pages. (Well, 10mb average - high volume to me).
The new server is an Athlon 64 X2 4400+ also with 4 gigs of ram and 2 300gb Maxtor Maxline III drives with 16MB buffer.
The Results:
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The technology is still rather new and bleeding adge. I had more problems with getting 4 gigs to work than getting the dual core athlons to work. That's because the VGA and much of the hardware needs to be below the 4gb barrier. If I were running 2 gigs I wouldn't have had a problem. You need to make sure if you are running a full 4 gigs that the board actually supports it and it's all usable. I used an Asus and it did - but it wasn't pretty.
To get it to work I needed the 2.6.13 kernel. With 2 gigs of ram it was fine with the stock kernel in FC4. But with 4 gigs the SATA drives crashed the system until I compiled my own kernel.
But - once I got it all working ....
The load levels on the new server are running about 1/2 of the dual xoen server and that's with the combined load of both servers. The second old server however wasn't running much of a load.
I am comparing however an older Xeon to a new dual core Athlon. But guessing that new Xeons are faster than the older ones I would say that the single processor dual core Athlon would probably still beat or be about the same speed at 2 single core Xeon systems.
But - the cost is like 1/2 of a dual xeon - power consumption is less than 1/2 and the motherboards are much smaller. So it looks to me like this is a really good deal.
So - as compared to what I expected and predicted I was about right on. Except that I ran into more problems than I thought I was going to. But in the coming months this isn't going to be quite as bleeding edge.
Oh - and ----
Here's a picture of it.
Yes - too kool for a data center - but I like to build a computer that looks hot.
I find it disturbing that the news media is falsely reporting that the Pledge of Allegiance has been ruled unconstitutional. That is not what happened. What the court ruled was that the inclusion of the religious words "under God" in the pledge is unconstitutional. No matter what side of the argument to are on the news media should at least get the story right.
The pledge ends with the words, "Liberty and Justice for All". The world "All" means everyone including non theist religions, those who are without religion, and those who believe in deities other than the Christian's God. Issues of religion are very divisive and our founding fathers went out of their way to make sure the government was religiously neutral so that everyone is equal and have the freedom to express their beliefs without the government choosing sides. If the words "Under God" are left in then they should take out "Indivisible" and "Liberty and Justice for All" because liberty has no meaning when the government makes religious choices.
Letter to the Editor
The tax cut that Bill Gates alone got under the Bush administration would have paid for levies that could have saved New Orleans. Ross Perot's tax cut could replace all the bridges that were destroyed. When we hear about the government not having enough money we have to wonder why they are giving such big tax cuts to the rich. I think it's time we went back to taxing the rich and not making the middle class bear the brunt of paying for everything.
Letter to the Editor
In 2000 we had a fake energy crisis with priced of gas, heating oil, and electricity doubling and rolling blackouts in California and it all turned out to be fake. It was just a coordinated scam to raise prices by companies like Enron. Now it's happening again. So why isn't the media asking if this isn't a scam? I have a hard time believing it after being lied to the last time.
I tried posting this on NewEgg's review forum and it censored me. Apparently it doesn't let you post honest reviews, so I'm posting it here.
I was very disapointed with this product. maybe it's the state of the technology but I had expectations this board would actually work. BEWARE - As of right now 09/04/2005 there are no ram combinations listed that will get you to 4 gigs of ram. I need 4 gigs and struggling to find a solution. I AM NOT HAPPY!!!
I first ordered it with Rosewill ram figuring that if the system needs DDR-400 that it will take DDR-400 memory. Silly me. I don't yet know if the memory is bad or just incompatible.
Then I went to Fry's and bought some high powered Kingston KHX3200/1GR gamer's memory and it does seem to work, sort of. That is - works with 2 gigs installed. There seems to be issues with 4 gigs that I have yet to resolve. Running Fedora Core 4 Linux 64 bit version.
The CPU - Athlon 4400+ X2 dual core and memory access speeds are lower that my Pentium 2.8 ghz extreme edition. L2 cache data transfer rate is 1/4th that of the P4 and main memory bandwidth is 1/4 of the 6.4 GHZ that AMD advertizes.
When you buy a 64 bit CPU you expect it to be able to at least address 4 gigs of ram. If this were a 32 bit processor I could understan that this would be an issue.
Bottom line is - I spent $1000 on memory alone and I don't see light at the end of the tunnel.
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UPDATE - I did get this working. I got the Kingstom ram to work by recompiling the Kernel. Actually I unstalled the 2.6.13 kernel and I don't know if it was different options or if they fixed something in the new kernel - but - it's working and it's fast. So I am now happy.
Apparently this is more bleading edge than I thought. Probably 6 months from now it will be more mainstream and stable. This 4 gig barrier reminds me of the old 640k PC days with upper memory and the 1 meg barrier. It is similar in that as of now certian things need to live below the 4 gig line so if you have 4 gigs you have to remap ram to open up a hole for PCI stuff, roms, and video ram. That means you have to move memory and when you do - the operating system has to understand that. Fortunately Linux does. If you're running Windows - lots of luck! It's going to be a while before Windows deals with the 4 gig barrier.
So - this sucker seems to be seriously fast. Comparing it to benchmarks posted on Webhostingtalk it is running at around the same speed as 2 AMD Opterons. It's going to be interesting to see how it runs as my new server.
Letter to the Editor
When a person passes we reflect upon the life of that person and how he changed society. I think that most people would agree that Justice Rehnquist's most enduring legacy will be the 5th vote that appointed Bush president, substituting his judgment for the will of the American electorate. Had he not joined in appointing Bush we would not be at war in Iraq. We would not have gone from the most prosperous nation on the planet to the biggest debtor nation on the planet. And - it would have cost less than half to fill our gas tank than it does today.
When a person passes they leave a legacy behind. What a person does in life often affects generations to come. It's just too bad Justice Rehnquist couldn't have taken his legacy with him because life in this world is far worse today because of his bad choices. His passing reminds us that when we face the judgment of history, if we want to be remembered well, we have to accomplish good things in our lives.
Letter to the Editor
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is directing donations to TV Evangelist Pat Robertson (Operation Blessing) who recently called for the assassination of the president of Venezuela. I think it's a shame that in this hour of crisis that Bush and FEMA are teaming up with crooked crazy evangelists to scam people who want to help. That might explain why FEMAs response to this disaster have been so ineffective. It appears that Religion has joined in on the looting of America along with the oil companies. Americans want to help the hurricane victims, not make Bush's political buddies rich.
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Details at:
http://www.sploid.com/news/2005/09/01/fema-directing-donations-to-rev-pat-robertson-123509.php
FEMA Web Page
http://www.fema.gov/press/2005/katrinadonations.shtm
Pat Robertson's Page
http://www.patrobertson.com/humanitarian/
I watch in utter amazement at the lack of response to the hurricane disaster in New Orleans. I see reporters being able to drive in and out.and cover the story, so why can't they get an army of thousands of buses to at least get the people out of there? They could at least helicopter in food and water but they don't. If I know the response was going to be this slow I would have grabbed a school bus and driven out there from California and started hauling people out myself.
We are sitting here doing nothing and allowing people to suffer and die when we could drive in there and rescue them. But we don't do that because we have to protect the tax cuts for the rich and make sure that the oil companies maintain record profits. All of America is being looted and it started 5 years ago. I'm sorry Bush had to cut his vacation short leaving his ranch after the hurricane rather than before. But at least he got past war protester mom Cindy Sheehan without getting noticed. I'm really angry. We need to fix this.
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PS - Several things confuse me about this. The reporters are driving in so there is dry clear roads into there. Not only could they grab every school bus within 1000 miles to drive them out - but if I were there I would just walk out. The flooded area can't be that big and a few hours of walking and you're out. Why aren't people at least walking out?
The only place for refugees is all the way to Houston Texas? Can't we take some of them to north? Can't we take over facilities closer than Houston? What about Dallas, Little Rock, Memphis? These are our people down there. This is fucking insane!
I've seen shows on the Discover Channel years ago predicting this, so we already knew what was going to happen. Yet when a cat 5 hurricane headed for the city the evacuation wasn't near as mandatory as it should have been. New Orleans actually got lucky at the last minute that it didn't hit directly. The military should have been mobilized for a forced evacuation before it hit.
Bush is asking his dad and Clinton to come pass the collection plate. Why doesn't the Fed drop something in. The 10 billion they are proposing 5 days after the disaster - which still hasn't been passed by the vacationing Congress - is less than the tax cuts the oil companies got. Do we see an emergency session of Congress like the one they convened to interfere with the death of Terri Schiavo? NO! Again - FUCKING INSANE !!!!!!!!!!
I also question rebuilding New Orleans. The city is way below sea level - continues to sink, and with global warming we are going to see stronger hurricanes and more of them. And September is just starting. We will probably be hit several more time this year in Florida and on the east coast.
Maybe Congress could end their fucking vacation and show up in Washington to do something about it. American is falling apart and the very character of this country is in question by our ambivalence towards our own disasters. When we protect the tax cuts of the rich and watch the poor die and do nothing it shows the world what kind of people we are. And it's not anything to be proud of.
