She also stated that being gay was a choice! Now she knows her editor/stylist is gay and partnered. But she still spouts the bigoted shit.

I told him that next time he should ask her when she chose to be straight. That ought to set the record right. And then mention the fact that our parents were STRAIGHT. There are idiots out there who think only gay people breed gay people. Instead if they’d kept up with the data coming in as to why there are gay people, they might find it’s a genetic strategy. Imagine that.

I’m making everything here anonymous but the fact that someone still defers to the Biblical bullshit pisses me off to no end.

But I understand it – these people have NEVER read the entirety of the texts in the Bible. Had they done so they would have noticed the inconsistencies, the copy error, translation error, and editorializing by scribes prior to the spread of Gutenberg’s printing press. Instead they’ve listened to their pastors spout this bullshit.

I know this because even my own family was susceptible to that idiocy. I recall a conversation with my father about how black and white people shouldn’t be together and being told by dad that it was in the Bible. Funny, I never saw that in there when I read the entire book. Instead I tracked it down – it’s white supremacist bovine effluent. Nice crowd dad fell in with there. Note the dripping sarcasm.

It breaks down as follows:

4 is read

2 is write

1 is excute

So chmod 551 says User can read and execute, group can read and execute, and other only gets to execute.

You just add up the values to get the permissions for each. All privs come up to chmod 777, that’s read, write and execute for EVERYONE.

But you can understand why it’s called Octal – only 8 possible values for each position.

Now I’ve related before that I once did a program review at a public high school in Rhode Island. We got to evaluate two classes at each school.

I happened to get the class where they were teaching the kids the MS Office suite, and that day they were doing a payroll spreadsheet in Excel. The teacher had given them all cheat sheets for the tax calculation.

So I asked the teacher – why not do a formula to CALCULATE the tax. You can do it in any cell by entered =({cellID}*3.1415)*.02499, or you can say =VLOOKUP(item,source). Or you could have a Visual BASIC routine that calculates the tax in column D.

The teachers answer was that it was computer programming to to that, and to program a computer you need a lot of math.

I thanked the teacher. But what I wrote in my report was that the most math you need to program a computer is MAYBE the first few weeks of Algebra I. But more to the point, you need to understand different numbering systems. There’s binary of course, either 1 or 0 and none more.

Then there’s octal – 0 through 7 it’s base 8. So how would you write 9 in octal? It’s 11 or 1 in the 8′s column, plus  1.  Let’s do 0 through 10:

Decimal    Octal

0               0

1               1

2               2

3               3

4               4

5               5

6               6

7               7

8               10

9               11

10             12

You see where it’s going, right? Instead of the maximum being 10, the maximum is 8 per column. And the columns go 1, 8, 16, 32… 

This leads us to hexadecimal. This is base 16. Symbols run 0 through 9, plus A through F, where A is 10, B is 11, C is 12, D is 13, E is 14 and F is 15.

For this example I’m going to go form 1 to 20 in decimal and show the hex (short form) value.

Decimal     Hexadecimal

0               0

1               1

2               2

3               3 

4               4

5               5

6               6

7               7

8               8

9               9

10             A

11             B

12            C

13            D

14            E

15            F

16           10

17           11

18           12

19           13

20           14

And so on.

It’s really quite easy. So let’s teach the kids how to program. You do not need advanced math for that.

But when it gets dark outside – after about 9PM I note Netflix and Silverlight start consuming CPU. So this leads me to believe network latency affects the Silverlight player. It probably doesn’t buffer well. Typical Microsoft shit application.

That said, I’m going to rant. For a night-time parade, LIGHT is a prerequisite. I really need to get involved and teach these folks about things like super-bright LED’s, EL-Wire, etc. It’s all low voltage – hell you can tap the 13.8V feed off the vehicle and power these things, you could use an LM series chip to regulate it down to 5V since the bed of a flatbed is a HUGE heat sink.  I really should introduce the geek community to PRIDE RI. We’re a bunch that knows:

A) Quite a bit about InfoSec

B) How to build electronic devices. We’re pretty handy with soldering irons.

C) We have ideas. Awhile back I had posted a photo of the suggestion board for projects.

Anyhow without further ado my award to the group that understands the term ‘illuminated’:

And of course the YMCA actually had marchers – blasting the song by the Village People of the same name. They get the award for the sound system.

And here’s the actual start of RI Pride 2013 – note the two PRIME groups and no light. Big old What the fuck there.

Now in other posts I’ve said that about 29 to 30% of the population is the core of the Republican Party. They’re so ignorant that it’s astounding. And the tea baggers fall into the same category.

Anyhow here’s the map:

Now I direct your attention to the 2008 Presidential Election map:

Notice anything? Yep, the deep south is a net blackout zone.

And just for giggles here’s the 2012 Presidential Election map:

I’m paying for the net connection therefore I get to decide what can be seen and what will not be seen.

But the other thing about ads is this, particularly in the video space: If for example you watch a 40 minute program on the likes of Hulu, there are on average FIVE ad blocks counting 2 to 3 minutes each. So in essence taking the larger number in a 40 minute program you have 15 minutes of ads shoved at you. I’d prefer black screen over that.

That’s the thing about advertising, they have to push their message ad infinitum or else people might forget about their brand or product. So we need be constantly reminded.

There was a guy named Edward Bernays who started the whole thing. Smart guy but I sort of despise him for what he did. I’d much prefer we had a system like in the UK where you pay a tax or fee for TV viewing each year and that money funds the BBC.

Sure they have ads too but I bet they’re less egregious than the bland pablum that advertising has become as late.

So it appears Microsoft is starting to flag a bit. Good, for all the shit they’ve done to use over the years they deserve it.

Sports also fall into the no attention category. It’s like watching paint dry.

And of course my Facebook feed is full of posts about the Tony Awards. It’s making me seriously consider pruning my friends list. And I really don’t care that Neil Patrick Harris hosted it again, I couldn’t watch the clip on YouTube for more than a few second without wanting to hurl.

What used to be insightful analysis has now turned into a vapid sports-a-palooza and click through links.

It’s a shame what happened to it.