Katie Begley Passes Her NJ Drivers Exam

The Begley Family congratulates Katie on her achievement and will be issuing a formal warning to drivers and law enforcement agencies in the tri-state area (including NJ, PA, and DE).

The US Government has not released a formal acknowledgement of this event and the United States government's national thread level remains at Elevated, or Chartreuse.  There has also been no reaction from US financial markets .

Katie excels at parallel parking and she invites small children and pets to return to the Virginia Lane Park and Parallel Parking Test Zone in Mount Laurel starting this afternoon.

Geico will be notified this evening, and our umbrella coverage will be increased accordingly.

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - Movie - Review - The New York Times

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed - Movie - Review - The New York Times

One of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry.

 

I haven't read a movie review in the NYT that was quite this direct. Although I admire Ben Stein as a writer and his business sense, I feel he has either been led astray, or lost his mind. His participation in, and support for "Expelled" is a public disservice and humiliation.

My one observation and request for anyone who backs (un)Intelligent Design, or Creationism, is to ask them to submit a scientific paper supporting thier view for peer review and publication. That's it. To date, no one has published any paper supporting ID. I have only read statements to the effect that it is futile because the scientific community is out to get them.

That is crap, and there are lots of examples of papers published that initially were scoffed at, but after peer review, found to be credible. One example was a scientist, Barry Marshall, who believed that some ulcers were the result of bacteria in the stomach and they could be cured through the use of antibiotics. The researcher infected himself, documented the process, and found that antibiotics cured the self-inflicted ulcer. This was sometime around 1984.  In the early 90's, one of my co-workers at the time had the same treatment (which was experimental} and she had to shop around for a doctor who would treat her.

Update to my original post.  I added Barry Marshall's name, the date of his original research, and a link to Expelled Exposed.

Drivers and Downloads

Drivers and Downloads

Dell D630 BIOS update. I applied because I have been having off and on issues with my Wireless 1390 subsystem, particularly when it goes in and out of sleep mode.

Fixes/Enhancements
------------------
1. Improve compatibility with Dell Wireless 1390 & 1490 Dell WLAN.
2. Improve setup and HD password operation.
3. Fixed: System Hangs on Resume from S3 with Driver Verifier enabled.

Amit Pawar - Infrastructure blog : Windows Server 2008 and Exchange 2007

Amit Pawar - Infrastructure blog : Windows Server 2008 and Exchange 2007

I was drafting a virtual lab configuration and found Amit Pawar's Infrastructure blog and article about using Windows 2008 with Exchange 2007.

Awesome article that points out several performance and configuration options that are only available when you install Exchange 2007 onto Windows 2008.

- Multi-subnet failover clusters
- Faster log file shipping (SMB version 2 support in Win2008)-
- Self-healing NTFS = fewer file corruption problems
- Easier deployment - fewer hotfixes and OS pre-requisite updates like .Net Framework 2.0
- IPv6 Support
- Scalability - Windows 2008 doesn't limit the server to an RPC connection limit of 64K connections. This is HUGE when you try to throw thousands of users on a single server. Windows 2008 now supports 64K RPC connections per IP address.

Amit includes reference links for the various features.

The difference between RAID 0 and RAID 1

QDB: Quote #854608

This is too perfect to not post.

sterano: Whats the difference between Raid_0 and Raid_1?
Steve: In Raid_0 the zero stands for how many files you are going to get
back if something goes wrong.

June Fabrics PDA Technology Group

June Fabrics PDA Technology Group

This is a post to plug PDA Net. Sprint and Verizon want you to purchase a monthly subscription to use your cell phone as a modem. I object to this fee because I'm already paying for a data service and this is a built-in feature of most modern smart phones.

Well, with PDA Net and data service from your provider, you don't need the monthly add-on service. Tether your cell phone to your laptop, enable the connection, and you have Internet access from any place you can get a cell signal.

I was getting 1-2Mbps from Verizon using my Moto-Q phone. With my Mogul (with the latest ROM upgrade) and Sprint, I should get 3G speeds.

Evolution of religious bigotry - Los Angeles Times

Evolution of religious bigotry - Los Angeles Times

Jonah - What planet are you living on? A 'Darwin Fish' is religious bigotry? How about freedom of speech?

I am a Christian.
I attend church on a weekly basis, and I volunteer at my church, and my community.
I am also a scientist and engineer.

As an engineer, I am offended by your bigoted op ed piece in the LA Times. You obviously don't understand the scientific community.

The Darwin fish is a reaction by all sorts of people (including  scientists and engineers) to the religious community's attempts to interject religious opinion into scientific curriculum in our schools. Despite the fact that there have been 0 (zero, nada, none) papers submitted for peer review to support Creationism (aka (un)Intelligent Design).  

It's as simple at that. Religious groups can't have it both ways. If you want to meddle with separation of church and state, you have to suffer the consequences. The "Darwin Fish" is not religious bigotry, it's a response to religious incursion on scientific education.

If you don't like it, move to Turkey.

I don't have a Darwin Fish on my car, but I'm ordering one today. I'll mail you a picture. It will go right under my Darwin Has a Posse sticker on the back of my car.

The first April Fool's Day spoof

Gmail: Google's approach to email

GMail Custom Time - you have the option of sending mail using a custom time and date, for up to ten messages of your choice.

Pretty good, but it's still early in the day. Who will have the best April Fool's Day send up?

Introducing Gmail Custom Time^TM

Be on time. Every time.^*

How do I use it?

Just click "Set custom time" from the Compose view. Any email you send to the past appears in the proper chronological order in your recipient's inbox. You can opt for it to show up read or unread by selecting the appropriate option.

Is there a limit to how far back I can send email?

Yes. You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born -- crazy talk.

How does it work?

Gmail utilizes an e-flux capacitor to resolve issues of causality (see Grandfather Paradox).

How come I only get ten?

Our researchers have concluded that allowing each person more than ten pre-dated emails per year would cause people to lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless.

Their findings:

N = Total emails sent
P = Probability that user believes the time stamp
φ = The Golden Ratio
L = Average life expectancy