Rant

For starters I don't even really like people.

Now that I've pissed everyone off and don't have to worry about site traffic anymore, let me amend that to state that I like certain people who are clearly not like the majority of humanity that has its head up its own ass.  If that's you (meaning someone who does not have their head up their own ass), hopefully you already know this (and if not I apologize in advance for not telling you) and if that's not you then you can take this opportunity to fuck off.

Let the hate mail commence.  Let me point out that you could simply change this situation by pulling your head out of your ass for a change, at which point we could be great friends.

But I digress.

So for a good long while there I held out.  No fucking MySpace, I said.  Fuck LiveJournal, I said. Then I had friends that devoted themselves to keeping in touch with each other on these spaces, and nobody could be arsed to get their own Blogspot account like I had done (not that I use Blogger anymore, I'm doing it right with my own personal LAMP server thank you very much), so suddenly I needed a LiveJournal.  I had LiveJournal for several months, posting this and that.

After Hurricane Katrina, I said fuck you to LiveJournal after I noticed there were a certain breed of anonymous commenting trolls that liked to sporadically appear on and mock people's misfortune, which wasn't the sort of positive support one needed after surviving a major natural disaster that forced us back to square one in terms of possessions, home and employment.

A few months later my wife was pointing out to me all of our friends from New Orleans that were now on MySpace for us to reconnect with.  Fine...(sigh...[clickety]) ok I've got a MySpace account (shudder).  Ok I've got contact with my old friends now.

Of course eventually everyone shifts over to Facebook, causing the inevitable transition to Facebook, resulting in the mounting aggravation as Mark Shuttleworth turns out to be a complete douche who wants nothing more than to ownz all yer private personal secretz and sell it to the highest bidder.  Aggravation rises further as I find myself fighting an ever losing war to maintain my security settings in such a way as to protect pictures of my kids and loved ones from being available to any perv surfing the web.  And they are, make no mistake.

So Twitter comes along, and seems basic, clean, no friggin malware advertisements, pretty straightforward, groovy. Then they start dissolving how they do things and initiating an evil plan involving the use of Java on their entire goddamn site.  In the meantime I've deleted my Facebook account, but due to overwhelming demand created a new one with the hopes that I could better protect my data by not loading as much of it and poisoning the well by submitting inaccuracies regarding my physical location, age, etc.

So along comes the almighty Google, promoting their solution of Google+ with its circles of trust that you can maintain.  But you still have to use your real goddamn name, first and last, no funny stuff, or risk having your account suspended.  If it's someone like me who has a Droid phone that would also become less useful in the process as a result of account suspension, I can't even tempt fate. So it sticks in my craw something fierce, even though I quite like the rest.

But then I watch as Facebook attempts to become more Google+ like, while Google+ seems to steadily become more Facebook-like and it seems inevitable to me that everything will implode.  Add a little YouTube nonsense involving someone reposting footage of my kids without permission and all hell starts to break loose, because it becomes painfully obvious how easy it is to track me down, whereas before Hurricane Katrina I didn't even exist online.  I dump my initial G+ account and create a new one under a different user to throw the possible stalkers off the track, but thanks to Google's caching of search content the original stuff still floats somewhat in the results, attached to my real name.  Thanks Google, your real name policy did cause a legitimate issue after all.  Fuck.

So I start listing shit on the new G+ account and after a while it hits me.  Fuck this, I'm just setting myself up again.  At some point G+ is going to follow the path of Facebook and MySpace and sell out everyone who has an account registered.  Furthermore, if I've really got something to say why the hell can't I just say it plain right here? I mean seriously, isn't that why I still have a blog?  It's not so I can waste my time posting inane vacuous shit on some other social media site, that's for damn sure.

The problem is laziness.  It's easier to post a quick blurb about how Taco Bell gave me the shits than to sit down and write something long-winded like this post.  And everyone's at the same site already posting about how their own feces turned liquid upon eating some other fast-food laced with parasites and human body bits that came off at the factory from some poor worker.  I mean, fuck, it must be really hard to type fatedtoend.com into the address bar of your Internet Explorer that you won't get rid of no matter how many times it's the direct portal to the viruses and spyware that turn your personal computer into a swollen bloated infected mass.  I can see why you'd rather just set your home page to http://www.facebook.com and forget that there's even an internet out there.  It's kinda like the shopping mall.  Or Walmart.

Sarcasm phone, it's for you.

So yeah, fuck it.  I deleted all content on my G+ account under my real name.  If you need my real name, G+, you can have it and a two year old photo of me without facial hair.

If you do check my website from time to time, check it more frequently because due to the sudden lack of social media sites I no longer post to, I should theoretically have more to spout off about here.  I apologize in advance for the technobabble, I'm a geek and that part won't change.  I likes me LINUX.  Maybe you could give it a go instead of rolling your eyes and heading off to http://icanhascheezburger.com for the rest of the night.  You might learn something.

Let me start off by stating that when it comes to technology, I tend to hold a grudge for a very long time.  I'm still pissed off about what nVidia did to 3dfx.

I've been an avid fan and user of Ubuntu LINUX starting in 2005, sometime after we survived the Hurricane Katrina disaster.  The first release we installed was Hoary Hedgehog (5.05), and we've been using each subsequent release ever since.  Ubuntu has been great.  I've loved how each release has made massive leaps and bounds from the previous release, and how problems with each tend to be corrected in the next.  I've loved the usability, the style, and the overall sense of freedom that comes with using a LINUX desktop operating system on my personal computers, regardless of how sometimes things didn't quite work the way I expected.  I love the community and the additional support they provide.  With Natty Narwhale (11.04), I made the complete transition away from Microsoft Windows on my personal computer and haven't looked back or felt compelled to reinstall Windows ever since.

There was a lot of community grumbling with the introduction of the Unity window management system with Ubuntu Natty Narwhale, but it included the option to revert back to the classic Gnome 2 style desktop during login (which I took advantage of).  Most people violently hated Unity when it was first introduced, and many people still do.  I was ambivalent about it from the standpoint that there are always choices when using LINUX, and if I wanted to switch from Unity to Gnome after installing the next release (Oneiric 11.10) then that should be fine.  Regardless, I still gave Unity a shot and came away feeling that while it is an interesting approach to UI, it does not allow enough customization for me to make it feel comfortable, and breaks away so much from the Gnome 2 UI as to make transitioning between the two difficult at best.  The difference between the default Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat (10.10) and Natty Narwhale is night and day.  Canonical's statement that they are moving toward tablet, phone and television UI development helps clarify why Unity is the way it is, but that doesn't change the fact that many people (myself included) find it a detriment to day to day computer use.

Gnome 3 Shell also dramatically changes UI, but in a more intuitive manner, and I ultimately felt that once the Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot (11.10) release had a chance to settle down and work out the initial release bugs I would give it a shot with an upgrade install and use it as my default UI.  Things did not go as I intended, or hoped for that matter.

Part of the issue is that in terms of computer hardware, I'm extremely picky.  I'll use Intel products because I can (grudgingly) admit that they are typically high quality, reliable and stable and have a good reputation, regardless of how Intel chooses to run its business.  It's the Intel company that I dislike, not their products.  nVidia, on the other hand, has managed to earn my ire from both a company and product standpoint, and I wouldn't touch their unstable, overheating, poor-quality crap with a ten foot pole.  They very well may now make reliable products that are superior to the crap they were slinging a few years ago.  I could care less if they do.  The fact remains that they knowingly shipped defective product and tried to cover it up when they were discovered, which in my book lumps them directly into the same category as Dell.

So, sadly, in the LINUX environment, nVidia is more popular and therefore tends to have better support than AMD's graphics cards.  Part of the issue is that nVidia provides better driver support also (although they are not 100% perfect on the driver support end, nobody is).  But to cut to the chase, given a choice I only pick Radeon graphics cards.  And since Gnome 3 shell and Unity are both bleeding edge, driver support is limited at best.

Unity with fglrx drivers renders strangely, with artifacts all over the various window decorations.  Gnome 3 shell is unstable and frequently crashes, sometimes for something as inane as closing a tab in a Firefox browser window.  This is true whether the drivers are from Ubuntu's repositories or straight from AMD.com, and they've caused me endless frustration.  A newer version of the driver set listed as fgrlx-updates corrects some of these issues, but not enough to generate a stable Gnome 3 shell environment.  Consequently I found myself using the Gnome Classic (no effects) option when signing into Ubuntu, which is pretty much a stripped down version of Gnome 3 shell with a more classic interface and fewer customization options.

The next insult came when I found that installing the latest Catalyst drivers from AMD.com resulted in broken 3D rendering support, because Oneiric wouldn't load the drivers.  I've since logged a bug with AMD reporting the issue, but it has not been assigned to anyone and there do not appear to be any solutions for the problem other than to install fglrx-updates from the Oneiric repositories.  I don't know if this is just a 64-bit issue, or it is because I upgraded from Natty to Oneiric instead of doing a clean install, or what, but it turned into a major time sink for me as I attempted to find a better solution and failed.

So for the next few weeks I lived with fglrx-updates even though I knew I could get better 3D performance from the drivers from AMD.com, if they would only work.  I lived with signing into Gnome Classic (no effects) mode even though I could not fully customize to UI for ease of use.  I waited for updates that never came.  Then I made a big mistake.

I came across these instructions for installing the latest bleeding edge release of Gnome 3 shell, and even after reading the warnings, the comments from users who had suffered upon installing the PPA and so forth, opted to give it a go in the hopes that it would resolve these issues (and I will be removing the offending site from my favorites column on the left as soon as I'm finished with this post as a result of their keeping this bullshit published and available to the general public).  The resulting broken, unstable mess was too much for me to bear.  The ppa-purge program is a total pile of epic fail and did nothing to help me.  I struggled for over an hour trying to undo the damage and ultimately gave up.  Angry, frustrated, and just wanting a computer that simply worked correctly, I did something I have never before had to do since I started using Ubuntu.

I downgraded my system to the previous Ubuntu release version by restoring the backup I had created before upgrading to Oneiric. 

I am now running Ubuntu Natty Narwhale 11.04 again, and I have no intention of returning to Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot 11.10, either now or in the future.

I am doubtful as to whether I will install any of Ubuntu's future releases other than their server OS, which I currently run on the system hosting this website (it does not have a Window manager installed).  However, in the event that I upgrade the server to a 64-bit multi-core system, there's a pretty good chance that I will pick a different distro based on how misused I'm feeling right now.

This is not a tenable solution because it prevents me from being able to run GIMP 2.7.4 - I have had to revert to 2.7.3 because I cannot install the newer version on this release of Ubuntu.  There are a significant number of improvements between the two, enough to make this a rather serious issue in my mind.  I am going to have to find another distribution.

So to get back to the title of this post - Canonical has pissed me off by forcing everyone to use Unity in Ubuntu by default, and to further development of Unity they have forced everyone to switch to a new UI that is a) not finished and b) intended for tablets, phones and televisions, not laptop or desktop computers.  How this makes Canonical any different from Microsoft is a good question - in my mind Ubuntu's Oneiric Ocelot is akin to Windows Vista.  It's new, it's a departure from what has gone before, and it's a fucking broken turd.  Granted, it's free, and there are some out there who will point out that I have no cause to bitch, but getting this crap working does cost me an investment of time, and that's a luxury that I currently do not have in great abundance.

Likewise, Gnome has completely dropped support of Gnome 2 - the only way you can find documentation on how to customize the Gnome 2 environment is to use The Wayback Machine because they've scrubbed that data from the current website.  Gnome has turned its back on Gnome 2, and the Mate fork is just getting underway so it's barely an improvement when compared to Gnome 3.  Gnome 3 is an unstable UI when combined with AMD's Catalyst drivers, making it (in my book) an unusable solution.  Gnome Classic is worse than Gnome 2 in terms of usability, even though it mimics it relatively well. 

So basically I'm pissed because the Gnome development team cut off the branch we're all sitting on, and they're now sitting in a helicopter that has no tail rotor and offering us an opportunity to climb up the rope ladder to check out what they have so far, hoping we'll offer useful suggestions on the style of tail rotor they should use so that Gnome 3 can do something other than just hover in place.  I'm less pissed off with Gnome than I am with Canonical, because at least Gnome is attempting to build something usable for personal computer owners.

Canonical betrayed their user-base when they released Oneiric, in their pursuit of expanding their market for televisions, tablets and phones.  Something just doesn't sit very well with me there.  There is no longer a Gnome Ubuntu.  If you want a version of Ubuntu for your personal computer that is designed to be used on a personal computer, the choices are now Kubuntu, Xubuntu or Lubuntu - or else a derivative such as LINUX Mint.  To me there is now a vacuum to be filled here - there will probably soon be a Gubuntu or a Mubuntu (for Mate), take your pick as to which one.

I'm really not fond of any of the above choices.  I am planning on testing out Xubuntu as part of a tutorial I'm compiling for people who are still using Windows XP who want to switch to LINUX, and it's the distro with the XFCE Window Manager that Linus Torvalds, the father of LINUX, said he would be switching to as a direct result of his experiences with Gnome 3.  He's not the kind of person who minces words about things.  I tried Xubuntu once before and found it lacking, so I'm not really hopeful there.  Lubuntu is for really old computers that have as little as 128MB of RAM, and Kubuntu is the KDE version of Ubuntu, that again I'm not particularly fond of probably due to the amount of inspiration it seems to have drawn from Microsoft Windows. 

LINUX Mint seems to be on the path to migrate to Gnome3 as well, even though it is a step behind Ubuntu in that regard, so switching to Mint would only forestall the inevitable.  I am doubtful that Gnome3 is going to mature enough in the next six to eight months to fix its UI and driver support issues.  In a year or more...perhaps.  But I can't wait that long, support for Natty ends in October of this year.

So at the moment I'm at a loss as to which path to take.  A really significant part of me wants to go the route of Gentoo, or Linux from Scratch, but there is a significant time investment and learning curve involved before I would end up with a usable system.  Debian would have the shortest learning curve, but the whole Iceweasil incident was fucking clownshoes and they name their releases after Toy Story characters (petty, I know, but there it is). Archlinux is steadily gaining in popularity, but again seems very Windows-like in its UI.  OpenSUSE has been tainted by Novell's licensing agreement with Microsoft to not get sued and therefore cannot be trusted.  Mandriva may not be around much longer unless it can raise enough capital to pay for its development expenses.  Fedora just isn't my cup of tea, even if it IS based upon Redhat - and besides it was the first distro to embrace Gnome 3.  Slackware is tempting - it was my very first distro back in 1996, but it doesn't have package dependency checking by default, will entail a significant time investment in the form of a steep learning curve, and does not release new versions as frequently as I would like (the latest version 13.37 was released in April of 2011).  Any other distros I've looked into just don't seem nearly mature enough for me to even bother, although CrunchBang looks interesting enough for me to give it a serious try.  Downloading now.

Dear Canonical and the Gnome development team,

When you want your windows management system to evolve, it's generally a bad idea to take all the usability features and throw them out the window so that you can start over with a clean slate.  Those features were implemented over time for a reason, and forcing your userbase to do without them so that you can properly test out something is not going to win you many fans.  I understand that by eliminating support for these older systems you are making sure the new system are getting the proper testing they need for development and bug elimination, but the price you pay by pissing off the community at large cannot be measured.  Ego may help you in certain situations, but it will assuredly trip you up at the worst possible time.  I hope you both learn something from these experiences and avoid making these same mistakes again in the future. 

Dammit, I hate being in this situation.  Time to go do some more research.

So now it comes out that India's military strong-armed Nokia, RIM (Blackberry) and Apple into providing back-door access into their cellular phones using what sounds like some sort of rootkit application similar to Carrier IQ's rootkit.  The explicit purpose?  Unlike the supposedly benign purpose of providing cellular providers with helpful data to assist customers who are having technical difficulty, as claimed by Carrier IQ (right, sure), RINOA SUR is meant to spy on India's citizens.

So combine that with the increasing pressure to pass SOPA and you've got a nice recipe for complete takeover of all systems, whether they be on tablets, cellular phones, notebooks or desktop computers.  Clearly, Richard Stallman was correct from the beginning.

Now when I say takeover, I don't mean that you won't be able to use your computer.  I mean that you won't be able to use your computer without everything you do being recorded, and possibly interfered with.  I mean that what you do on your computer could possibly be used against you, and if you think you have nothing to hide, that won't protect you. I mean that someone else could use your computer to frame you, if they didn't like what you say or what you stand for.

A rootkit with backdoor access provides more than just a way to snoop.

Why do I have CyanogenMod installed on my Motorola Droid?  Because I don't trust Motorola or my carrier to provide me with a phone OS that has not been compromised.  Why does my personal laptop only have Ubuntu LINUX installed, and no other operating system?  Because I don't trust Acer or Microsoft to have provided me with a laptop and Windows operating system that are 100% secure from intrusion.  I don't even have the original hard drive installed.

Call me paranoid if you will.  They've been calling Stallman paranoid for years.  But the fact remains that commercial interests drive closed operating systems and software, and because there's no way for the code to be inspected by a 3rd party, there's no way to find out immediately whether it's been compromised, intentionally or otherwise.  If making money from software sales is the provider's primary goal, they will sell out their customers in order to sell their product, every time.  Prove me wrong.  I dare you.

Redhat LINUX generates money via Enterprise support contracts.  The software is free.  It is open source and can be inspected by anyone.  The likelihood that it, or any other distribution of LINUX, contains a hidden backdoor rootkit or some other access for military, government or law enforcement officials to snoop, compromise or take control of computers or servers upon which it has been installed is next to nil. I won't say it's impossible, but I will say it's highly unlikely due to the fact that the code can be independantly verified by anyone.  If it did have such a backdoor, it would be discovered almost immediately, as compared to the seven years it took for the RINOA SUR agreement to come to light.

I call bullshit on all of this.  Apple, RIM, Nokia, and anyone else who pulls this sort of crap to generate sales - fuck you.

To anyone else who wants to prevent this from happening - now is the time to start looking at making the switch to LINUX.  If they've been doing this to cell phones for the past seven years or more, what have they been doing with your Apple or Windows computers?

Update: YouTube finally took the video down!  It used to be here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXdlhCcgSXI

The last thing I had submitted to YouTube before writing this article was a defamation complaint, at which point they directed me to contact a lawyer to press charges against the uploader directly, or else to use their Safety Center to file a report.  I'm really not interested in turning this into a big legal battle, so I picked the latter option, even though I had already done this before.  I checked the uploader's channel again tonight and the video was no longer there.  A search yields the above link.  So all in all, I'm now a pretty happy camper.  Okay, now you can read the backstory drama if you wish.

I'm pretty good at embarassing myself.  It really doesn't take a whole lot, basically it occurs whenever I violate one of my own personal principles.  I managed to do that over the holiday, more than once, and I'm pretty much fed up, not just with myself but the entire situation.  It's hopeless, I feel helpless, I made a crapload of mistakes in the process and I don't know exactly what to do anymore except nothing.  Doing nothing seems to be the only smart course of action.

It's hard to do nothing when video footage of your kids is being portrayed in a less than friendly manner, and YouTube's staff does not appear want to do anything about it.

So  to give you the back story - my wife and I like to post videos on YouTube discussing somewhat esoteric subjects.  She studies religion, I study the nature of reality, and the two of us make a pretty good team.  Over the Christmas break my wife decided to upload footage of the kids opening their Christmas presents from their Nana, and we didn't think a whole lot about it.  20/20 hindsight has since told us the video should have been marked private while it was being uploaded, but there's not a whole lot that can be done about that now.

About a week ago a YouTube user posted a somewhat mean-spirited comment on one of my wife's videos.  Me being me, I responded with a quote from the Knights who say Ni in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.  That seems to have been the wrong thing to do.  This same user modified a still image from one of my videos, posted it online, and in a return comment accused me of using (I'm not making this up here) shape-shifter camouflage technology that had a glitch.

This user appears to either be a troll with a perverse streak, or someone with a severe case of paranoia, or both.  He has regularly posted videos of people in media and also other YouTube users, representing them as being some sort of alien hybrid reptilian species that are using some sort of high-tech camouflage equipment to hide among the "real" humans.

I'm generally not the kind of person to back off from a troll, even though I really should know better.  I've been a 'Netizen since before that term was even coined.  But I sometimes get a perverse streak in me as well; when I see what I consider the behavior of a bully, my natural inclination is to stand up to the individual and not let them get away with it.

I responded with a statement along the lines of "Hey Time Pirate, the Spanish Inquisition ended in 1834.  You need to update your travel logs.  Also, you should take a look in the mirror.  Clown shoes, they are upon you."

Both of my responses to this individual were intended to be light-hearted mocking of their behavior, which appears to have been the wrong thing to do.  I also was a little annoyed that someone would take the time to take an image of me and manipulate it in such a way as to make me look like something evil or scary, so I did a little basic internet sleuthing with Google and turned up a possible real life name for the individual.  I deleted my Time pirate comment, and replaced it with "All you need is love, [real first name redacted]."

I then created a YouTube video which indirectly mocked this user, by wearing a reptilian looking mask and making clicking sounds and waving my arms around on camera, before taking the mask off and explaining that everyone has a "reptilian" brain according to medical science.

In hindsight, both of these were bad moves on my part. I had violated YouTube community guidelines, which explicitly states that you should not use a user's real name, regardless of what the other user had done. This immediately put me on shaky ground when trying to deal with what happened next.  I had also baited the troll, which does not make them go away.

The following day we found a video uploaded by this same user titled Reptilian Family with my wife and my YouTube usernames in the title.  Adding insult to injury, it first they show me listed as "Reptilian Dad", followed by my wife as "Reptilian Mom", and then shows "Reptilian children" with the footage of our daughters opening their Christmas presents.

My immediate reaction was shock and rage, which was fed by similar reactions by my wife, which led me to make my next big mistake.  Again, against YouTube Community Guidelines, I used my channel which had over 80 subscribers to enlist help among our friends in the YouTube community to get this video removed by posting a bulletin.  Other friends on the internet jumped to help.  Unfortunately, things got very ugly in the comments section very quickly as arguments broke out among our friends and other YouTube users who thought there was nothing wrong with the content in the video.

All in all, this turned what could have been an easy to fix problem into a big dramatic event.  The reason I know this could have been fixed easily is that a copy of the offending video was uploaded again on another YouTube user's account the following day.  Instead of reacting the same way by calling everyone's attention to it, I flagged it, reported the video as a YouTube privacy violation and a YouTube safety violation, and it was taken down within an hour.  The original video, however, remains available on YouTube for anyone to see it, almost a week after it was uploaded.

I attempted to reason with the individual by creating a reaction video asking him to take the offending video down.  It was ignored.  I left a couple comments making the same request which were also ignored.  These behaviors were acceptable under Community Guidelines, but were ineffective.

I reported the video to YouTube again, hoping perhaps by re-reporting it someone else would review the issue and take it down with no success.  I deleted my YouTube channel and the twenty something videos I had uploaded hoping perhaps vanishing from the site would accomplish something.  My wife was upset, I was frustrated, so I did something I'm deeply ashamed of.  I created a new YouTube account with the express purpose of trolling the users who were (in my opinion) attacking my family.

I left a comment on another video uploaded by the same YouTube user, which was accusing another member of the YouTube community of being a reptilian / human hybrid for the second time.  The comment stated that both the original uploader, and the user who uploaded a copy that was later taken down, were actually the same person using multiple accounts.  I also accused the uploader of being a Golem, figuring if he could call me a reptilian then it was only fair that I be able to call him something that was not human also.  I was upset at his lack of morality, compassion and even simple reason, so I was reduced to lashing out.

My comment was deleted.  This had not happened to anyone else's comment before, so I got excited, thinking perhaps I was finally striking a nerve, and thinking perhaps if I applied the correct pressure he would take the video with our kids in it down on his own.

No such luck.  He deleted the next comment I left, but then ignored the rest.

Still angry, I created a video mashup in a meme style of the dual personalities of the character Gollum from Lord of the Rings.  I stated that his user account and the second uploader reminded me of the character, and created written lines of dialogue between the two dual personalities in a (pathetic) attempt to show how ridiculous their behavior was in a comedic light.  Then I left a comment on his channel letting him know it had been uploaded.

Then I started feeling really bad inside.

Here I was, behaving just as badly, if not worse in some ways, than this troll.  Against all of my own personal principles, I was listening to my base urges and following through on them.  This guy was winning just by doing nothing.  He wasn't commenting, he wasn't communicating to me directly, and he wasn't doing what I wanted.  He wasn't taking the goddamn video down.  And in the process, I had become just like him.

So I deleted my troll channel and its single video after it had only been live for about an hour.

I just want the video footage of my young children taken off the internet.  I understand that the nature of the internet is permanent, and even if I manage to get this video taken down it could be easily uploaded by anyone who has a copy, even the original user.  But that doesn't change how I feel because my little kids are involved in something they should have no business being involved in.

I don't know why it's so hard for this user to understand this.  But aside from taking direct legal action I don't know what else I can do.  I took a bad situation and made it worse by overreacting. So, for now at least, I'm going to ignore it and hope that a kind-hearted staff member at YouTube gets a chance to take a look at this video and then realizes that it needs to be removed.

I used to sell and promote Samsung CRT monitors when I worked for a computer repair shop in New Orleans.  The brightness and quality of the screen was equal to anything sold by Sony at the time, and also significantly less expensive.  There were even cheaper brands out there, to be sure (cough, Viewsonic, cough, cough) but we were dedicated to carrying high quality, affordable and reliable computer equipment at that time, so to me it made sense to recommend that the customer spend a little more money in order to be better satisfied.

Fast forward to 2008 when I assembled my custom computer, Lain, I purchased a Samsung 22" monitor to go with it, believing (at the time) that I was making a wise investment by spending a bit more than I would for say, an Acer screen of the same size.

Three years and four months later and I get a phone call on my way home from work.  It goes something like this:

Brighid - "I think there's something wrong with your monitor, you'll need to check it when you get home, it keeps shutting off."

Me - "That doesn't sound good."

Brighid - "The kids were playing games on it all morning, but when they were done I got on Facebook and that's when it stopped working."

Me - "Okay, I'll check it out when I get home."

Brighid - "Isn't there some button I could press to get it working?  When I turn it off and on it says Analog, then Digital.  Which one is it supposed to be?"

Me - "It's supposed to be digital.  I'm pretty sure there's a button you can press to make it switch between analog and digital."

Brighid - "Which button is it?"

Me - "I don't remember - all monitors are not alike - it should be labeled there somewhere though under the button.  But it should automatically select digital as it turns on and scans available connections, so if it's not doing that and going to a black screen that means there's a problem somewhere."

Brighid - "I don't understand why it would stop working like that, it was fine all morning."

Me - "Right, well, I'll probably need to check it out when I get home, it sounds like something's gone bad."

Brighid - "Don't say that, I'm sure if I just hit the right button it will come back on again.  It keeps showing a picture just fine."

Me - "I thought you said it was a black screen with no picture."

Brighid - "Yes, but when I turn it on it shows the picture fine for about a second, then it goes to a black screen."

Me - "Oooh...that means the monitor is probably dead."

Brighid - "This nice monitor that you spent extra money on?  We haven't had it that long.  You must be wrong."

Me - "No, we have another LCD monitor that did the exact same thing, and it's an indication of an internal defect."

Brighid - "Stop being so negative, I'm sure if you just tell me which buttons I need to press it will be fine."

Me - "I've been fixing computers for over a decade, so I can say with 95% certainty that the monitor is dead and needs to be replaced."

Brighid - "Why do you have to be so negative?"

And so on, and so forth, for several more minutes until I finally got home and could smell the odor of burnt electronics.  My wife, I love her to pieces, admitted that I was right (I don't know how many times she's done that but I'm pretty sure it's less than five).

Luckily we had a spare 19" LCD monitor handy so I swapped the screens out, then got on Samsung's website to see if there was any hope of warranty.  On their site they recommend registering their product to obtain additional support and an extended warranty, so I bit the bullet after determining there was no quick way to verify warranty and submitted the necessary information to register their product.

I was then told by the website that the serial number was not valid.  I checked and rechecked everything I had entered in, I verified the information on the box (yes I still have the box) against the serial number sticker on the back of the screen, and tried a few more times just to be sure.  Noting that Samsung's official monitor warranty period is 36 months from the date of purchase (which is pretty much the standard of all monitor manufacturers these days), I gave up at this point.

This is not the first time Samsung has annoyed me - the first was upon receiving the 300GB Samsung SATA hard drive to install into Lain, I discovered that unlike most hard drive manufacturers such as Western Digital or Seagate, Samsung defers warranty to the reseller.  This is a major failure on Samsung's part because I am used to every other hard drive manufacturer I have ever dealt with offering a three year warranty.  Newegg, where I purchased the Samsung hard drive, only offers a one year warranty for hard drives.  I decided to keep it, although in hindsight I probably should have immediately exchanged the hard drive for a Western Digital model instead, even though it is still working.

So here we are, with a hard drive that went out of warranty two years earlier than it should have by other manufacturers' standards, and a monitor that failed four months after its warranty expired, when I spent extra on it and it should have lasted at least a couple more years, if it was really the level of quality that I expected.  I fully understand that nothing in the tech world is 100%, but it is extremely unlikely that I will ever purchase another product made by Samsung.

[End Rant]

Willow asked me to install her old Lego Star Wars PC game back on her computer last night, a game that we bought for her about five years ago.  This should have been a simple five minute task, yet something between half an hour and forty-five minutes were spent getting it installed and working.  Bear in mind that I know what I'm doing - this task could easily have taken someone less knowledgeable several hours, or possibly required professional tech support to accomplish.

Willow's computer is still running Windows XP Home, and has been relegated to the role of "family computer" due to the vast amounts of home tech support I was engaging in when I made the mistake of allowing each child in my house to have their own system instead of sharing one.  Part of the reason this machine still running Windows XP Home is because I haven't had the free time to set it up with LINUX and also install the various Windows games they like to play on it and make sure they all work - if that is even possible.

This computer also serves as a portal to their virtual public school; they get their daily lessons and attend virtual classes on it, and because the school primarily uses Windows-based software to accomplish these tasks, it's much easier to maintain a Windows computer for this purpose.  Unfortunately, due to the age of the hardware, upgrading to a more secure version of Windows (Windows 7) really isn't an option without performing some significant hardware upgrades.  As a result I have been forced to work with XP Home's archaic system of security, which is annoying at best and downright draconian at worst - the Limited user account.  At some point I would love to replace this system with an iMac computer, but at the moment that's not in our budget, so I'm still working with what we have.

In order to get this system a bit closer to the modern era of allowing administrative rights when needed, I turned to a free utility called SuRun (short for Super-User Run).  Windows XP already comes with the option to hold the left shift key, right click on an executable and select Run as - which, if you know the password, will allow you to use an administrator level account to perform a task.  That's fine, as long as you don't need this level of security EVERY time you perform a task.  For example, Mozilla Firefox is installed as the default web browser on this system to minimize the risk of applications executing as if they were native to the system from compromised web sites.  However, each time Mozilla Firefox starts up, it launches a Java update utility that checks to see if there are newer versions of the Java plugin available.  This utility requires administrator level access in Windows XP in order to work as designed.  SuRun is therefore very helpful because you can grant specific programs administrator access every time they are launched automatically, without requiring someone to type in a password, if you so wish.

At this point many readers may be scratching their heads and wondering why I don't just set up an account with administrator privileges and be done with it.  The answer is that in Windows XP, administrator accounts that are compromised by spyware or viruses grant those rogue programs full access to do whatever they want to the system, and also permit these programs to use the system to attack and/or infect other systems.  This can lead to identity theft, credit card fraud, stolen bank accounts, hacked user accounts on social networking sites and much much worse depending on the intentions of the person(s) who designed the rogue software.  In terms of basic security, Windows XP administrator accounts have none.  I don't care if you have special antivirus software, the best firewall programs in the world - if you access the internet with a web browser or email client on an administrator account in Windows XP, you are taking a potentially serious gamble that could affect your life and livelihood - not just the computer.

So, because my children are not yet as savvy as I am about how to avoid the potential pitfalls of the internet, they need to be using a limited account to access the internet.  Please note - as mentioned in a previous article - a limited account does not 100% guarantee your system will never be compromised.  It's just a smart practice to follow, along with maintaining a modern and up to date antivirus program (I strongly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials, it's free, it's designed by Microsoft and has excellent ratings from various security professionals who are not affiliated with Microsoft), keeping Windows up to date with Windows Updates (or Microsoft Updates if you also are using Microsoft Office), keeping Java, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader up to date, and using a firewall of some kind, either with a router or at the very least, the basic Windows firewall.  Let me reiterate here, when followed, these practices are not 100% foolproof.  The only way to avoid getting infected while using the internet is to simply not use the internet.

That brings us back to Lego Star Wars for the PC.  Lego Star Wars was originally designed as a console video game during the Playstation 2/Nintendo Gamecube/XBox era.  It was ported to the PC, which happens fairly often, and given some nice graphics updates to take advantage of 3d accellerators on the PC.  However, as is also often the case with ports, the installer is downright terrible, and the game itself for some unknown reason requires administrator priviliges in order to run at all.

I first attempted to install the game from the limited user account, using SuRun to grant the installer administrator privileges.  The installer failed over and over again with an 1182 error code.  I did some research on the error and attempted to resolve it by killing msiexec.exe from the task manager, clearing temp files, upgrading Windows Installer to the newest version for Windows XP, disabling antivirus protection temporarily, re-registering msiexec.exe - all of which failed to resolve the error.  I finally logged into the administrator account and the game installed flawlessly.  How annoying.

I then downloaded and installed the Lego Star Wars 1.12 patch for the game, logged back into the limited user account, removed the install disk and attempted to launch the game.  It failed with a bizarre error code indicating something had not run correctly in one of the C code modules.  I right-clicked on the launcher, selected "Start as administrator", and the game loaded as expected within the limited user account.

I then closed the game, relaunched it by right-clicking on the icon and selecting "Start as administrator", and added check marks "Always start as administrator" and "Do not prompt me again" from the password prompt that came up.  I closed the game one more time, went into the SuRun settings from the tray icon, accessed the list of apps granted administrator privileges, double-clicked on Lego Star Wars, and moved the selection from "Always run as administrator" to "Always run as administrator and do not request a password", then applied and saved the changes.

Lego Star Wars now runs flawlessly in a limited user account by left clicking on the icon, and it no longer requires an administrator password.  I gave Windows XP Home the proverbial finger and enjoyed the rest of my evening.

So my birthday is coming up again, and I'm going to be 36.  For the life of me, I can't really think of anything I would really like for my birthday, except perhaps a new tattoo and/or new computer tech.  Lain (my desktop computer) is now approaching three years of age, which in today's world means she's reaching the end of her component life expectancy and compatibility range with new operating systems and software.  I predict Lain is going to stick around for at least a few more years before she is retired, possibly moving from the role of workstation to server (yes, I'm backwards in that I prefer my workstation to have more processing power and RAM than my server, but that's just how I roll).  

My other system, Miho (my MSI Wind netbook), has just been repaired after coffee was accidentally spilled on the keyboard by someone (cough cough) but is underpowered for my needs and the screen size (10.1" with 1024x600 resolution) is just a bit too on the small side.  I find my Droid phone tends to be more convenient as a portable computer than the Wind, even though it is not as nearly as versatile.  I'm also not happy about the fact that the Wind is built on an Intel platform for various reasons, the biggest being that I do not feel that Intel is an ethical company by any stretch of the imagination.  Microsoft can be lumped into that category (unethical companies), along with nVidia.  I'm also not happy that the Wind repeatedly develops a noisy fan issue requiring me to crack it open and lubricate the CPU fan (sewing machine oil) every 30-60 days, so I'm considering selling it or possibly giving it to Willow, provided that she can show that she can take decent care of it.

That pretty much leaves AMD and VIA as my remaining manufacturer choices, and let's be blunt, VIA is not going to cut the mustard since they have left the standard motherboard market behind, and are now focusing on embedded technologies.  Their C7 processors (developed from technology formerly owned by Cyrix) are nowhere near what I am looking for in terms of processing power.

So AMD it is, not just for processor, but also for motherboard northbridge and graphics accelerator, now that the ATI brand has been discontinued (ATI graphics are now to be known as AMD graphics), and unlike some I do not have a problem with this.

In the processor manufacturer world, AMD is an underdog, but not only that, it's the best underdog to root for.  They may not have the fastest tech at the moment, at least compared to Intel's i7 product line, but they do have (and have always had) the best bang for the buck, and as a father of four that counts for quite a lot.  They are not perfect - AMD has released some real questionable products in the past such as the K-6-3 series and the socket 462 Athlons and I feel as though I have been waiting forever for the CPU/GPU combination chip, but by the same token, I don't feel as though I'm helping to fund a bunch of gangsters when I buy their brand.  Most of the time their products really shine.

AMD is also currently the only significant competitor in the graphics accelerator market versus nVidia upon their acquisition of the ATI company.  

nVidia permanently earned my hatred upon purchasing and then dissolving the 3dfx company, makers of the famous Voodoo series of graphics cards. nVidia has regularly produced some of the fastest recognized products for gaming on the PC.  I have found their products tend to be sub-par in quality, tend to overheat, tend to be unreliable, and particularly in their motherboard chipsets - are a big pain in the neck.  I have nothing nice to say about nVidia, so I will leave it at that.

To be fair, Intel makes a solid product.  However, they have been known to forcibly restrict their product because it is aimed at a lower pricepoint, even when it unexpectedly outperforms their top-tier products.  In terms of failure rate and instability - Intel processors and motherboard chipsets are very reliable.  Intel also contributes open source drivers for its product lines, which usually makes it much easier to run LINUX on their hardware.  My biggest beef with Intel is that I do not like how they do business - take a look at the Vista fiasco with Microsoft for an example.   Several other similar business decisions show that Intel's primary goal is to make money, and they will gleefully sacrifice their customers satisfaction whilst in that pursuit.

So to sum up - I only want AMD processors, motherboard chipsets and graphics accellerators in my systems.  The problem with this is that most major manufacturers prefer Intel and nVidia.  Maybe I'm being perverse - but I feel wrong when I use their products.  I wait for bad things to start cropping up in my computers.  I notice a glitch and start obsessing over what might have caused it, and when it is undoubtedly going to happen again.

Because of this obsession I cannot purchase an Apple computer - at least not for myself.  I may at some point in the future purchase a family iMac if only so that it would be one less system that I would need to actively maintain - Apples tend to be rather secure and don't require a lot of hoops to be jumped through in order to make things work.  If Apple was to start offering systems with AMD processors, AMD motherboard chipsets and AMD graphics cards (they used to offer ATI cards in their systems) I would purchase one for myself in a heartbeat.  Sadly they presently all use Intel and nVidia technology.  I just can't do it.  I'm also not okay with the Foxconn suicides, although that seems to fall along the iPhone and iPad line of product.

If Apple can't build my computer of choice, then quite frankly, I don't want anyone else to.  I've been fixing computers for well over a decade now, and I have had too much hands-on time with poorly designed, poorly executed systems with insufficient power supply wattage, sub-par components and every other imaginable corner cut in order to increase the vendor's margin.  I will not willingly purchase a Dell, HP, Gateway, Acer, Compaq, E-Machines, Lenovo, Sony, Toshiba, Averatec, MSi, Asus, Alienware, iBuyPower, VoodooPC, Commodore or a computer built by any other manufacturer, unless they can provide for me the make and model of every individual component contained within.  I would rather build my own.

However, if I am in the market for a laptop, building my own will cost me two to three times as much as a pre-built system.  Barebones laptops are very difficult to find, and are usually priced within $100 of a complete laptop, even though the complete laptop includes a hard drive, RAM, optical drive and Windows license (tallying up to well more than $100 when purchased separately).  If laptops were standardized, perhaps this wouldn't be the case.  My alternative option would be to build my own laptop from scratch, which would entail soldering, crazy wiring, crafting a working case and the use of a embedded processor/motherboard combo, of which there are few available that support AMD (and I presently do not have the tools or know-how necessary to complete such a project).   So presently I'm stuck looking at laptops starting at around the $999.00, because of the above listed manufacturers only Asus currently makes laptops with AMD processors, and only Asus (in my experience) consistently (but not always) makes a superior product than most other manufacturers.  I'm on the fence with Asus, however - they've made shady looking partnerships with Intel and Microsoft in the past, which is worrisome.  I've also run into very bizarre issues with their low-end products (price-wise) that are can be impossible to resolve.  I'm also on the fence with MSi thanks to headaches with my Wind netbook and weird issues with some of their other products.

But it gets worse - let's say I opt to not go the notebook route (which is a shame because I am really interested in a desktop replacement notebook computer) and would rather just build a new PC instead.  While I will save a lot as compared to the laptop purchase, I am still running into problems of branding.  Because of various issues I have dealt with while repairing computers I no longer trust the following motherboard manufacturers: Foxconn, Elite Group/ECS, Biostar, AsRock, Gigabyte, EVGA, Sapphire and I am on the fence with Jetway, MSi and Asus.

I also no longer trust the following video card manufacturers that produce ATI/AMD video cards: HIS, XFX, VisionTek, PowerColor, Biostar, Diamond, Gigabyte, Jaton Corporation or MSi - reducing my brand choices to ASUS (still on the fence) or Sapphire.

I no longer trust the following hard drive manufacturers: Hitachi, Seagate, Samsung, or IBM.  I no longer trust RAM from any manufacturer except Crucial.  I no longer trust power supplies from any manufacturers except Seasonic, Ultra or ThermalTake, nor do I trust power supplies that are included with any computer case, regardless of their brand or wattage rating.

I have become paranoid about buying computer parts.  And the worst part is I can't seem to find the parts I want, from the manufacturers I trust, at the price I can afford.  It is starting to drive me nuts.

At this point in the game my only reasonable path is to upgrade Lain with a reasonably priced motherboard + CPU + RAM + video card bundle.  But I am wracked with indecision about what to purchase.  I would like a faster processor with at least one additional core, preferably close to or above 3Ghz.  I would like a motherboard with an AMD northbridge.  I would like a nice graphics accelerator of the Radeon 5670 or 5770 series, preferably with 1GB of VRAM.  If I do not want to replace my case I will need to stick with a microATX form factor.  But as far as which brand to go with...I'm still at a bit of a loss.

It can really suck to be so picky.  I also realize I'm now at risk of being labeled an AMD fan-boy (but I can live with that).  I know that if I take the time to be so picky, the end result will be a much better experience than if I just purchase whatever I can afford and hope for the best.  This is why I have stopped using Microsoft products, and to be blunt, it can't just stop there.  To use LINUX means to be picky.  To make LINUX run properly means not settling for the cheapest components.  It means being patient, doing your research, and to a certain extent, trusting your instincts.  To me, the computer is more than just a basic tool - it's the gateway to the world of information that is now available to everyone - provided their systems work correctly.  I am willing to do what it takes to build the best system possible to achieve this.

So my previous post was about defending your PC from zombies.  Then irony struck and my PC got infected just two days later, even with following all of the advice I wrote in my article.  Talk about pot calling the kettle black, right?

I'm still working on virus cleanup. Yesterday, Willow noticed that Microsoft Security Essentials was reporting 30 infected files detected and shut the PC off, then told Brigitte. Smart kid - how many 9 year olds do you know of who would do that when they wanted to play a video game on their Dad's PC?

So I started cleanup last night with the UBCD4Win on USB flash drive, caught & removed some things with Antivir 9 Personal, other scans didn't find anything. Next step is to boot into safe mode, run MalwareBytes AntiMalware and a full scan with MS Security Essentials, disable system restore if it's not already disabled, clear temp files and look for rogue software in startup under services.msc and using HijackThis to scan for the ones not listed anywhere.

Following that will backup the entire drive, delete all partitions & erase the MBR, then will be loading Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit as the only OS install. Will be running Wine 32-bit to handle any games that I feel like loading that won't run under LINUX natively, and that will be that. Next step will be eliminating Windows on all other systems in the house one at a time (long-term project) - future pre-built systems will be Apple products, and systems I build myself will be LINUX.

Microsoft's crappy, vulnerable software is going to be completely purged from my home. The only thing that has really been holding me back is Netflix, but this will be addressed in the form of standalone Netflix players so I don't have to go through this again.

I've been in PC repair for 10 years, I know how vulnerable this crap is, and I know for a fact that nobody clicked on or downloaded something they shouldn't. These machines were compromised by the latest drive-by infections that exploit Adobe's equally shoddy and vulnerable software or Java vulnerabilities and even with added security measures in place and a Limited Access user account they still find a way in. You don't need to click anything anymore - all you have to do is open a website with a compromised advertising banner. I've known better all along & I'm done wasting my time with this crap in my own home. 

Toward the bottom of the Links section on the left side of this page are "Favorites", links to sites I tend to visit on a fairly regular basis.  It's been a while since I've added to that section, but for once I removed two sites from the list, and on purpose.  These sites are Linus Torvald's Blogger page and XKCD, and they both have been removed from this section due to their authors' ridicule of other peoples' beliefs.

Before we get too far into this I would like to point out that South Park ridicules EVERYONE's beliefs, without discrimination.  Because of this, South Park does not fall under this criteria.  I don't think that the creators of South Park hate everyone (maybe they do) but rather that they find the way the world works and the way people interact with each other to be completely hilarious.  Isaac Hayes quit South Park after the creators ridiculed Scientology, but seemed to have no problem with their ridicule of Judaism, Christianity and other religions in prior episodes.

In our society, there is an underlying tendency to believe something so wholeheartedly that when someone believes in something that does not align with someone else's beliefs the result is typically ridicule.  If, for example, I stated for the record that I believe in alien abductions as popularized on the series X-Files and elsewhere in the media, the majority of readers would consider me an idiot for believing such ridiculous nonsense.  Likewise I would be ridiculed for decrying a belief in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

If, however, I stated that I believed in God, Jesus Christ and an eternal afterlife in Heaven, there would be very little ridicule, except perhaps from some Athiest readers.  Why?  Because a large portion of the population believes in the doctrines of Christianity, even though there is little more evidence to support them than to support the existence than aliens, Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.

So let's get to the nitty gritty with some examples, shall we?

XKCD's episode 765 is titled Dilution:

When you mouse-over the comic on the XKCD website, the title field pops up and reads: "Dear editors of Homeopathy Monthly:  I have two small corrections for your July issue.  One, it's spelled "echinacea", and two, homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham."

Please note that in general I tend believe in natural medicine, and there is a distinct difference between homeopathy (which requires a laboratory) and natural medicine.  However, I have tried homeopathic remedies before, most recently to deal with a stomach virus, and found that they can help ease symptoms and speed recovery.  I have also found that homeopathic teething tablets are actually rather effective, at least where my youngest daughter is concerned, and they are certainly less potentially toxic than other options available on the market.

However, I would never recommend homeopathy as the only treatment for every ailment.  But the part that confounds me more than anything else is that the people who are so wholeheartedly against the "bogus science" of homeopathy, are 100% in support of the "true science" of vaccinations, even though the associated risks with vaccinations are exponentially higher.  Furthermore, the fundamental theory behind both vaccines and homeopathic remedies are essentially the same - introduce a small, safe(?) amount of the toxin/virus/etc. that is behind whatever illness the patient is currently experiencing or as a preventative measure in order to jump-start the body's immune system in order to create a surplus of anti-gens that will fight off the real thing.  The difference is that homeopathy introduces these things in such miniscule amounts that in many cases the original source cannot be detected by any means we currently possess, whereas vaccines add additional things such as mercury and other toxins in addition to the main ingredient with the idea that this will make the body's immune system even stronger.

Based on the above paragraph - why would anyone believe either of these things actually work?  Yet somehow vaccines are an accepted part of modern medicine, and homeopathy is not.  Why?  Because the pharmaceutical companies that create vaccines make more money, and they are behind the push as to what is accepted in modern medical facilities, while the majority of non-medical people in our society listen to whatever the men in white lab coats tell them without question.  Or at least, that's my opinion.

Regardless, XKCD's subtle snarkiness on the topic has some serious fangs with the statement "homeopathic medicines are no better than placebos and your entire magazine is a sham"; the implication that idiots rely on homeopathy in order to conceive is a bit rough, but that extra sentence was really unnecessary.  I cannot in good conscience promote a website that posts comics along those lines.

Linus Torvalds also weighs in on homeopathy here:  Peeve of the Day

Please bear in mind I hold Linus Torvalds in deep respect as the father of LINUX, without which this website would likely not exist.  However, Linus is a very strong-willed individual, and as a result can get rather caustic while discussing certain things.  Most of the time these things fall under the category of what should or should not be added to the LINUX kernel, which is his domain and final say.  I completely respect his decision-making process in these circumstances.  

However, as seen in the above article, he has no problem calling people who believe in homeopathy "ignorant" or "crackpots".  If Linus was a medical professional, his opinion might carry more weight, but it would still be ridicule.

I stopped reading his blog for a while as a result, but recently I got a bit curious (as the link was still on this site) and I came across this article:  Demons?  Really?

Let me state for the record as a recovering Roman Catholic (I was baptized, had first communion and was confirmed before I decided I was being a hypocrite when I attended mass) who is no longer a practitioner of any formal religion, and would be best described in a single word as agnostic.  Actually assigning the term "agnostic" to me is kind of like assigning the term "plant" to various species in the plant kingdom - it's a bit too general.

Regardless, as someone who has lived through Hurricane Katrina, the events leading up to it and the aftermath, I can assure you that demons exist (for lack of a better name), that they can inhabit human bodies, and that a large portion of humanities ills could potentially be attributed to them.  Those who indulge in alcohol, drugs, and other related behaviors are more open to being "possessed" than others (again for lack of a better term).  For the record, I would also like to state that I believe there are "good" demons who have humanity's best interests at heart.

Linus writes "What the hell is wrong with people?", and I have an answer for him.  Demons.  Among other things.

Look, I don't expect anyone to believe what I believe, nor do I assume that all of my beliefs are 100% correct.  Part of the reason something is considered "unknown" such as what happens to us after we die, is because we don't really know until it happens.  Even those of us who have experienced "near death" may not necessarily have accurate stories of what happens to us immediately after we die.  

But to have such a rabid, inflexible grip on your own system of beliefs that anyone who believes otherwise is not only wrong, but an idiot, or worse - evil; this is the stuff wars are based on.  You would think that by now we would have learned the lessons taught to us by Nazi Germany during World War II, but apparently that just isn't the case.  Come on people - just because you see things a certain way doesn't mean you are right, and it doesn't necessarily mean you are wrong either.  There is no reason why we cannot coexist with our own beliefs to help us through this bizarre set of trials called "Life".

Tolerance would go a long way toward making "Life" a lot easier for all of us.