RANT: Force is never acceptable

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070928/ts_afp/irelandsmokingpubsmusicoffbeat_070928145420

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Interesting…they should try it in Vegas!

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Vegas has the smoking Nazis already.

It’s not complete, but it’s getting there.

It is the INITIATION OF FORCE. They are using gooferment to inflict their values on us. It’s OK because you agree with this one. What if it is one of your vices? Like golf? It very wasteful of time, energy, and attention citizen. Further, people get hurt at golf and miss work and can’t maximize their tax payments to the state. And, think of the ecology. What about all the poor animals displaced for your “golf course”. That money and land could have been given to the “poor”.

How does that fit for size? Little tight.

If some one can use gooferment to force YOU or ME or ANYONE to do ONE thing, then we are slaves and they can makes us do anything. Citizen, it unhealthy for you to go to Church, wear clothes, eat at mickeyd’s.

Look it from a freedom side. Does anyone FORCE those musicians to take their equipment to the smoke filled pubs? No, they can say “I only play at smoke free venues”. But, then they have to bear the COSTS of that action. And, who owns the pubs. Obviously, the gooferment since they call the shots. Is anyone forced to patronize the pubs? Yes, the gooferment “regulates” them.

Without the gooferment, there’s be MORE CHOICES. The marketplace would create smoke free Irish pubs.

See in a free market, no one is compelled to do squat. Everyone would get to make choices. When you spend your certificates of appreciation give by your fellow workers for something you’ve done that they like, then it’s like having a mini election. AND, everyone is allowed to decide. Sort of like democracy without the force of mob rule.

See no one can be “wealthy” without serving their fellow man. The free market is essentially a coordination mechanism that allows us to cooperate. Socialism is enforced slavery; free markets are a very complex calculus that allows everyone to be satisfied with what’s available to the maximum extent possible.

Socialism’s mantra “from each, according to ability; to each, according to need. The Free Markets mantra is “serve your fellow man and be rewarded to the extent of your contribution”.

See first, you have to dig the well, and then you get to drink. Catch 10 fish and the market can equate that to 2 loaves of bread. If you catch 10 fish and I catch 5, you get two loaves and I get a lesson in motivation and ability.

It’s a complex mechanism, since if fishing is bad and you only catch 5 and I get 1, then the price of fish will rise. If the baker doesn’t lower his price of bread, he winds up with stale bread. So magically, there will be fish for the baker and bread for us.

It’s when force aka gets involved that the mechanism breaks down.

Argh!

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Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Developer Builds Around Woman’s Home

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8S1FESO0&show_article=1

Developer Builds Around Woman’s Home
Oct 2 09:57 PM US/Eastern

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SEATTLE (AP) – When 86-year-old Edith Macefield refused a $1 million offer to move from her Seattle home, a developer started building a five-story project around it.

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SO much for zoning. Health codes. And, all those politicians promising to protect the old folks.

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: How to win at roulette

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

I thought that title would get your ‘attention’. This is my second post to John’s blog, he gave me authorship privileges to write ‘one’ article a couple of weeks ago, and now here I am putting another post on his blog! (I may lose my ‘interim’ author privileges, eh?) Well here goes…my late father wrote some memoirs before he died, and in those he wrote a piece about how he won on the roulette tables. Not always win he said, but more often than not. He looked at the roulette wheel as a circle, with various ‘arcs’ within it. I believe he had memorized the position of the numbers on the wheel, or maybe he carried a picture like the one below with him.

His ‘process’ was to look at the previous numbers that had ‘hit’ on a wheel (all casinos display them as a list…probably about the last 20 spins I believe). He would look for ‘patterns’ in the hits, ie, an abundance of numbers hitting that fell into a particular ‘arc’ of the wheel. In other words, take the picture below and assume the roulette wheel is a clock. Divide the clock into four sections, e.g., 12 – 3 o’clock, 3 – 6 o’clock, 6 – 9, and 9 -12. He would look at the list of the previous displayed hits on the wheel, and on some roulette tables he noticed that the most frequent numbers that hit fell into one of these four arcs, at least more times than the other arcs of the wheel. So on that roulette table, he would then place his bets on the nine or ten numbers (1/4 of the possible 38 numbers) that are located in that arc. For example, let’s say most of the numbers that had been hitting were numbers in the ‘6 – 9 o’clock’ section of the wheel. Looking in the sample wheel below, those numbers would be: 6, 10, 31, 19, 8, 12, 29, 25, 10, and 27.

Now if you follow his logic, it would imply that certain roulette tables have wheels that are slightly off-level, or for some reason have a tendency for numbers to land in a particular arc of the wheel. They are probably manufactured such that this is supposed to be an impossibility, but who knows….I know it worked for my dad, maybe it was the humidity of the room and its affect on those wheels, or some other phenomena like that…or maybe it was because this was over 15 years ago and they didn’t have the technology to make wheels like they do today. I also must confess I haven’t tried this yet, but I will on my next trip to a casino, and then I will let you know!

roulette1.gif

Image above compliments of: http://www.ds.unifi.it/VL/VL_EN/games/games5.html

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Posted by frenchync

TECHNOLOGY: We should all use ZULU time!

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Once again, this whole nonsense about time zones and daylight savings times aggravated me.

(I got up an hour earlier than I had to for my morning call.)

As a globe, we should all be on GMT.

Who cares if you work 9-5 in eat or 1400-2200 Zulu?

If you talk to someone in another time zone, the conversation has one variable extracted.

And, maybe Microsoft Outlook would work correctly.

Argh!

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: SKYPE and VWBBie

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

FYI, to anyone who is interested or cares, I participated in a conference call from the Denver Tech Center Marriott using SKYPE from my personal NOTEBOOK over the Verizon Wireless Broad Band. And it all worked.

Call was FREE, VWBB ain’t, and quality was acceptable.

So in essence I have turned a very expensive notebook into a free semi-mobile phone.

A sort of large cell phone? A funny phone booth?

Demos available at a modest fee.

Love it when stuff works.

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Posted by reinkefj

PRODUCTIVITY: Thoughts about “dumb” questions

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

If I can help you in any way please don’t hesitate to ask. Some times the Universe can be bewildering. So if you just want to ask what you think is the dumbest question imaginable, then feel free to bounce it off me. If I can’t answer it, I’ll ask the appropriate people. They already think I’m a “character, so “dumb” will just be confirming their beliefs.

I personally believe that there are literally no “dumb” questions.

Those supposedly “dumb” questions are: (1) not so “dumb” because probably some one else has the same question but is too “embarrassed” to ask something so “dumb”; AND (2) even if it is “dumb”, all those “smart” people should have made the question unnecessary (i.e., FAQ, documentation, help files, wiki). So as you can see, I never fault anyone who asks “dumb” questions. Or, even think less of them.

And, I’ve learned over my career is that I can learn quite a bit from “dumb” questions. Best is when children ask them because they see things completely differently.

So, if I can help, please just ask.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECH SERVICE: NOTE2EMAIL (My rating 5 *’s)

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

http://www.note2email.com/write

NOTE2EMAIL

***Begin Quote***

Send quick notes to your email address in one easy step.
No need for passwords or usernames.
Note it down and send it , as simple as that !

***End Quote***

Very neat. Very clean. Very … elegant.

Love it. Am quickly integrating it into my SOE.

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UPDATE: One “curve” if you send one to someone else, then you have to tell them not to reply to it. Replies appear to go to the bit bucket. Great service; needs improvement. Definitely a keeper.

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UPDATE: The developer responds. How kool is that?

From: Andrei Aldescu
Sent: Monday, October 01, 2007 1:40 PM
To: Reinke’s Catch All Email
Subject: Re: What happens to replies?

Hello,

We are sorry but the notes are sent from a generic email address note@note2email.com) therefore, displaying the replay to the sender is not available right now. Basically if someone replies to a note that was sent via note2email.com, that reply will only get in the note2email.com inbox  and will not be redirected in any way to the sender.

We are currently working on a mechanism that shows the status of a note and displays the content of any replies.

Thank you for using our service ,
We will keep you posted.

Andrei

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[Of course, I have to have the last word!]

As you can see from my blog, I like it. It would seem “easy” (Easy for me, cause I don’t have to do anything.) to allow the inputter to supply a reply to address. That would make it the cat’s meow. :-) fjohn

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I’m sure he will be anxious to impress a blogger with 7 readers. :-)  W, MI, SS, F, MF, JF, GC … … and you thought I was kidding. :-)

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Posted by reinkefj