Barnson.org

Good evening, one and all. I’ve been lurking, shame on me I know, and reading with great interest but not chiming in so much. But, to explain a little about what has been occupying my time: some of my coworkers and I have been doing some unofficial blogging about the Museum where I started working back in November. You might enjoy clicking through to A Repository for Bottled Monsters. If you are in DC and interested in a tour, let me know.

This morning, I ran across an article by Farhad Manjoo entitled Why Apple Fans Hate Tech Reporters

I’m really not an Apple or Windows fanboy myself. My wife and my mom use Apple laptops; I run Windows on my laptop, and Linux on my desktops. I prefer Linux because I think it’s satisfactory for most heavy-lifting corporate jobs as well as computers for grandma where needs are limited. But I’m negotiable as far as that goes; for instance, if you’re into computer games, the anemic selection for Linux probably won’t do (thus why my laptop runs Windows at the moment). Just pick the best tool for the job.

I also think the Dewalt 36V cordless tools are the most rugged, longest-lasting cordless power tools you can buy. They are really contractor-quality instruments, and if you do construction for a living you could use just the one battery and have enough power to get a full day of work in without swapping. I also use the batteries from the tool packs for my model airplanes, so this brand of tools is doubly useful to me. These tools are expensive, though, and quite large and heavy. If you are concerned about weight or expense, a different brand or smaller model is probably the best fit for you. As a 6’1″, 230lb male who is used to tossing around 80lb metal boxes full of backup tapes every day, the weight and size don’t bug me and I really like the tools because they won’t poop out on a job. To each his own.

The reason the article was so interesting to me is because I fancy myself a moderate. The way I act, speak, and write are all informed by an overriding thought: what’s the most moderate course?

OK, OK, Timpane, stop laughing!

Anyway, no, OK, so other than one little blind spot surrounding the whole God/religion thing — a bias that, while I try to tone it down, I must acknowledge is present at least a little, teensy bit — I tend to try to choose the most moderate course.

And this is what amazed me about this artle, because Sanjoo was the first writer I’ve seen to address media bias this way. He discussed some research into the issue performed in the aftermath of a 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees by Christian Lebanese:

The researchers showed the students six news segments… People who were neutral on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — presumably those from the psych classes — came down somewhere in the middle….Pro-Palestinian viewers said the news clips excused “Israel when they would have blamed some other country”; that the news accounts didn’t focus enough on Israel’s role in the massacre; that the segments would prompt neutral observers to take Israel’s side; and that the journalists who’d put together the stories were probably advocates of Israel. Israel’s supporters, meanwhile, said the exact opposite. … “If I see the world as all black and you see the world as all white and some person comes along and says it’s partially black and partially white, we both are going to be unhappy,” Ross says. “You think there are more facts and better facts on your side than on the other side. The very act of giving them equal weight seems like bias. Like inappropriate evenhandedness.” … Psychologists call this the “hostile media phenomenon”.

The news clips were identical. They were considered by neutral third parties to be objective analysis of the events. Yet partisans on both sides thought the news clips exhibited media bias in favor of the opposing party because they gave both sides of the conflict equal weight.

I think this is a key concept in this age of right and left-wing media pundits claiming media bias. If you think the media is biased, it may say a lot about you, and almost nothing about the objectivity of the media.

I guess since I agree with this, it must mean I have a pro-media bias.

If I understand correctly, the general rule of thumb on a TV screen is that if it’s standard 480i/480p, you want your viewers to sit between 3 and six times as far the diagonal screen size in inches. The reason for this is picture clarity; at these distances, the image is viewable without any noticeable artifacts or quality issues.

So if I had a twenty-seven inch CRT, the ideal distance for viewing according to this formula is between 6.75 and 13.5 feet away. That’s pretty close to our current viewing distance: 12 feet away (more or less, the old TV is quite thick).

Now for HD viewing, the rule is 1.5 to 3.0 times the screen size. Reversing that means that I should look for a screen according to this formula:

144 / 3 = 48 inches minimum size 144 / 1.5 = 96 inches maximum size

We have a sectional couch, though, so I am taking the minimum viewing distance into consideration, as well. If we have a big party, some individuals may be as close as 5-6 feet (72 inches) from the screen, and well off to one side (so screens with poor side view angles are not an option):

72 / 3 = 24 inches minimum 72 / 1.5 = 48 inches maximum

So it seems like the ideal screen size for viewing from the whole space, without making it too big for people up close and too small for people farther away, is right around 48 inches.

Do you have experience with large wide-screen displays and have some recommendations on viewing areas for a non-theater living room arrangement?

• The lighting is uncontrolled (two windows, open archway to the kitchen, open doorframe with no door toward the kitchen, high ceilings, two large windows), so I need something that can handle glare and bright surroundings… that means DLP is probably out, because I’ve never seen a DLP rear-projection screen that can handle brightly-lit areas well. Nor can regular projectors, though they definitely have a HUGE cost-appeal due to arbitrary screen sizes.
• LCD or Plasma seems to be the best option. Due to the sectional couch with some people at extreme viewing angles if it’s full, a plasma seems to be the better choice. I checked out some LCD displays, and the brightness drop-off if you’re not in the “sweet spot” is pretty dramatic. It’s not deal-killing, but plasmas seem to stay at full brightness at all angles better than LCDs when I looked at them in the store. Newer LCDs are much better than older ones, but still pretty dim viewed from angles beyond about 45 degrees off-center. It’s even more pronounced in the up-and-down angle than left and right… but that’s not easily tested in the store, and you can compensate for it with correct placement in the room.
• Wall-mounting, I think, is a must. We have several small children, and a large TV that can topple onto them is a safety hazard. Plus, wall-mounting just looks cooler 🙂

I already have a couple of top contenders for my “heart of my living room entertainment system” crown, but I’m interested in other products you may have had a good experience that fit the above criteria.

So this week, I finally got my kids onto a new(ish) computer, and retired their old PC into duty as a media player. I got it set up attached to the TV, and was happily loading it with some of my personal DVD rips and whatnot. I then tried to attach to Netflix in order to play some movies.

Now, I’ve enjoyed Netflix’s streaming service. Because I’m a bit “bandwidth-challenged” at the moment (1.5mbit DSL), I don’t get the full-quality streams, but it’s still nice to kick back with a new(ish) release on Netflix and watch a show with my wife on a Friday night or whanot. It’s not near-DVD-quality like we got on Comcast, but I guess that’s what we get for moving out into the “country” (dirt road off a main road, you can see the subdivisions from here, but we have a rooster next door, horses behind us, and cows lowing into our windows in the morning).

I was greeted with a Microsoft DRM error, immediately after the Netflix player finished filling the buffer. I tried several workarounds, to no avail.

Finally, I called Netflix tech support. We walked through a few options, the tech kept consulting his knowledge base, and got nowhere. Finally, the tech asked “What kind of graphics card do you have, and what screen is it hooked up to?”

Well, I mean, that’s an obvious red-herring, right? What kind of screen? “I have an NVidia GeForce4 MX 440 with 64MB RAM, attached to an old Samsung twenty-seven inch CRT. We haven’t really gotten with the times yet.”

“Connected via S-Video?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have another screen you can try it with, perhaps via S-Video or maybe the DVI or VGA port?”

“Yeah, I have the old monitor we used to use right here.”

Five huffy minutes later, muttering about red herrings the whole time, I hooked up the monitor, disconnected the TV, and rebooted. I went to stream a Netflix movie… and it just worked.

The tech suggested that I should contact NVidia and indicate my displeasure to them. “Over a six-year-old video card not supporting streaming movies to a CRT? Yeah, not likely to make a difference to them. What is the exact problem?

“According to my knowledgebase, certain cards don’t support certain monitor or screen combinations. Since you seem to be a technical sort of person, you should search for “COPP” in your favorite search engine.”

I thanked him, got off the phone, and did so. I came across a half-dozen sites talking about COPP, then finally found Davis Freeberg’s description of COPP. Other than which devices are connected, it’s EXACTLY what I had been experiencing.

So here’s the situation: I can’t play back to my old TV. I’m not even assured, now, that if I connect my DVI port on this graphics card to a new HD television that I’ll be able to view the media I’m paying for. I even tried mirroring the output, leaving an old video monitor connected… and that worked, sorta. The content played on the monitor, but left an empty IE window on my old TV CRT.

This isn’t an NVidia problem, folks. This is a Netflix, movie studio, and Microsoft problem. NVidia hardware adheres to the standard: the app can’t be sure that the card is not connected to something that would record the output, so it refuses playback on that device. Doing exactly what the movie studios, Microsoft, and Netflix have agreed to: refuse to play back on anything that they can’t be certain isn’t a recording device.

I’m in a quandary: it’s now much more practical for me to download movies illegally than attempt to work within their system because their system is BROKEN. If I want to watch a movie on my CRT without having a physical DVD in my possession, there’s only one way I can do it: copy it illegally — DVD Rip, BitTorrent, or sharing among friends — one way or the other.

The movie studios, Microsoft, and Netflix together have created a situation where they have ruined the value-add of this product. Using their player is now actually a REDUCTION in value compared to the options available to me if I ignore their restrictions.

That’s backwards capitalism. Make it better, faster, and cheaper, and I’ll buy it from you. Make it incompatible with my equipment, slower, and more expensive, and I’d rather just ignore your existence.

Anyway, off that soapbox.

On to the next.

What, then, are the options? After a long around-the-water-cooler session with co-workers, the logical options seem to be:

• Apple TV. I already have three Macintosh computers in this house, what’s one more Apple device? Upside: I can rip my existing media and watch it. Downside: Their library of movies to rent or purchase is kind of anemic… the video store around the corner has better selection.
• Linux with MythTV. I would probably want to pick up a TV card for the computer so I could record live TV, and maybe have to do a small upgrade to the PC so it can handle recording and playback simultaneously.
• Buy a new TV. That’s an option I’m seriously looking at… but again, I have no guarantees their DRM won’t break my setup again.
• Linux or Windows with DRM-free, unprotected content… running the risk that I’ll have a Cease & Desist slapped on me for trading copyrighted content. Realize, I have exactly ZERO pirated movies on any of my systems right now. Zip. Netflix was that nice… but this new restriction makes me think maybe it’s worth the admittedly low risk.
• Just do the whole video-rental-store thing again. Probably the cheapest option.
• Ignore the major movie studios, and only watch independent films. Yeah, no, I’m too much of a pop-culture junkie.

Options I’ve missed?

My co-worker, Christopher Lejeune, was interviewed for an article in the Deseret News.

He came away from Iraq feeling like the military effort there had been accomplished and that the rebuilding work, although essential, was not the military’s job. “They need good, clean water, good electricity. But these are not the jobs of tank gunners and Bradley drivers and artillerymen,” he said. U.S. forces, he believes, need to be in Afghanistan.

When I write about events in the Middle East, I’m pretty much mostly concerned about their domestic effect. Were I living in Baghdad, I’m positive my outlook would be different, but I live in Utah. I felt like, although the writer did a fair job representing Chris’s views, the following quote was just left dangling without much explanation:

LeJeune said he would “love to see a withdrawal from Iraq and a real focus on Afghanistan, Pakistan, what have you,” he said. “The forgotten war there is still raging and they don’t have the resources because we’re tied up in Iraq.”

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “have gained strength, as we pulled resources from Afghanistan. Not only has this war devastated our national security, but it has devastated the people of Utah.”

How has it devastated the people of Utah?

• 21 servicemen from Utah dead in Iraq
• A thousand Utah National Guardsmen deployed in Iraq. These represent some of our best and brightest young men and women — the intellectual capital of our state, and the future of our democracy — deployed for great lengths of time with very brief stays back home in Utah before being re-deployed.
• Utah Guardsmen are being placed at risk doing jobs they are not trained or equipped to do.

Surprisingly, one of the effects I thought I’d see — a decline in Utah Guard enlistment rates — doesn’t exist. To their credit, most Utahns, particularly those in Utah’s majority religion, have a strong patriotic streak which is reflected in Guard enlistment numbers.

My greatest concern regarding this use of the National Guard is due to the Total Force Act of 1973, stipulating that the National Guard was to be treated as an extension of the federal US military. Combined with the 1987 Montgomery Amendment to the National Defense Authorization (opposed by all 50 state governors), we’re now in a situation where state governors cannot withhold their National Guard troops from foreign service for any reason, including local disaster, civil unrest, or invasion. The President has used this authority to such an extent that the occupying force in Iraq is — if I understand correctly — principally composed of Guardsmen. This deployment has already had a profound effect on relief efforts in Tornado Alley, resulting in the displacement of and hardships to citizens who could have found emergency relief if their National Guard weren’t already deployed.

I think the 1973 Total Force law is simply a bad law. The Guard is here to defend our country and serve domestically in times of emergency. It serves as a supplement to our standing army.

The Guard should not be our standing army.

I realize I’ve gone a bit off-topic from the interview, but his situation upon returning from his tour reminds me viscerally of what’s currently wrong with our military strategy. After serving abroad, a soldier should be able to enlist in the Guard and look forward to helping out on the domestic front when disaster strikes. He should march in parades, a proud symbol of the strength of our citizen militia. He should supplement our police and search and rescue teams when necessary. He should serve a few weeks a year to keep his training up, and keep physically fit to be ready for the challenges of serving his neighbors. As his neighbor, I willingly supplement his income through my state taxes because he will protect my family when the worst happens.

He should never be deployed abroad unless his specialty is critical to operations and he needs to serve in a very time-limited capacity to train the standing army how to do the job.

I think the combination of amendments and laws, as it stands, allows abuse of state troops by the Federal government, and we’re seeing that abuse now in the constant deployment of our National Guard abroad. This degrades the ability of our citizen soldiers to respond to domestic emergencies and leaves us in a vulnerable position at home and abroad.

Thanks to the latest round of GPS products, I think I finally understand why so many people have a fear of technology.

For years, I was always amazed when folks always mentioned how much they hate computers because they don’t understand how to use them. What’s so hard to understand? You power on, log on, mess around with some software, figure out how to manipulate all the variables offered, and ultimately work the system. Sure, there’s a range of veritable jargon to master, but it’s all shop speak that can easily be conquered with some familiarity.

Then I got a GPS system for my birthday. Here’s what happened. I opened up the box. I took the unit into my car. I plugged the unit into the car battery. I turned on the unit. Everything was up and running without flaw within 30 seconds. The only thing I had to do was plug in an address which the GPS unit (Garmin 360i) recognized before I even finished. There was a voice that spoke to me about directions. The whole thing “just worked”. It was perfect.

That’s when I realized how complicated most consumer electronics are for people. There are many people who don’t care and don’t want variables, tweaks, hacks, configurations, add-ons, plugins, upgrades, versions, betas, optimizations, and driver modifications. They want their microwaves, refrigerators and TV sets. I open the box, plug in, hit some buttons and my food is warm. For me the “it just works” mentality has always meant, “I don’t have to download several extra .dlls and reboot four times to get the thing to sync remotely with work.” For everyone else “it just works” means “the only effort I need to put in is driving to the store and buying it.”

I realize this isn’t anything new, but until you’ve witnessed the magic of a GPS solution working without flaw, you haven’t seen the world from the eyes of people who just want to buy goods and services and never want to understand or manipulate them. I got my laptop and have already put in over 12 hours of work loading in software, taking off the pre-load crap, rebooting, defragging, cleaning the registry, etc. And I’m still not done. This is why Apple products are so appealing to the hoi polloi — they just work and everything is contained without extra effort.

February 14, as we all know, was Valentine’s Day. Those of us who are male and involved in a relationship surely spent plenty of time finding just the right gift for that special day. Lucky for our partners, March 14 — “Guy Valentine’s Day” — has a much simpler gift requirement (warning: link sometimes has provocative ad banners, nothing explicit).

So what did you get for Guy Valentine’s Day?

For anybody wondering why Utahns (and Latter-Day Saints) have so many children relative to the rest of the nation, here are a couple of illustrative quotes from the days when leaders were less concerned about public relations and saying plausibly-deniable things…

Joseph Fielding Smith: Birth control is wickedness. . . When a man and woman are married and they agree, or covenant, to limit their offspring to two or three, and practice devices to accomplish this purpose, they are guilty of iniquity which eventually must be punished.

Brigham Young: There are multitudes of pure and holy spirits waiting to take tabernacles … It is the duty of every righteous man and woman to prepare tabernacles for all the spirits they can.

Sure, times have changed. But for people wondering why Utah still has such a high birth rate… you can look right there for the answers. They are alive and well, though the current wisdom is phrased as “have as many children as you can afford”.

This year i decided that i am going to ride in the MS Bike ride. I have supported the MS society for many years since my mom has suffered with it for 20+ years now. My parents have lived on the west coast for the last 6 or so years and are huge supporters out there. During one of the MS bike rides out there last year, she was interviewed by the 24hour Fitness cycling team. Her interview is about 2/3 rds of the way through the video. Pretty cool to see her on youtube.

[Shameless Plug] As some of you know, I am participating in Bike MS: Beyond the Beltway on May 17, 2008 as a member of the Deloitte Cycling team in my mom’s honor. I am on a big fundaising drive to raise money to support reasearch to find a cure for MS. I would love it if you could take a moment a sponsor me on my ride.

Okay.. so here’s one.

I have recently wiped my laptop clean because of all the viruses and spyware.

I am using my laptop primarily for a single program which is memory intensive and can crash easily. I know virusscan prgrams can take a lot of resources and traditionally can make things crash sometimes.

BUT.. I don’t want those things again.. my friend who installed my new version of XP pro for me says I don’t need it and that windows firewall really does the trick.. claims he never gets virusses.

What’s your take? And if I do get one.. what one is the least intrusive?