But that’s just my opinion.

Free PR advice. I see the Taliban hunted down and assassinated four journalists. Well, OK, it’s not proven that they did it, but it looks like that’s what happened. Now, I know journalists are pretty low on the slimeball scale. I have a journalism degree from the oldest school of journalism in the world, after all. But terrorists and third-world dictators are such a completely different league of low that even a journalist-turned-lawyer-turned-politican who put himself through college selling used cars wouldn’t begin to approach it.
Bad move, guys. There’s anti-war sentiment brewing in Europe, but killing four unarmed civilians will do very little to fuel that. Reminding the people that the enemy they face is irrational and unrelentless and unmerciful isn’t a good way to end wars. You lose points in the court of public opinion, and it doesn’t put you in a good negotiating position either.

But even beyond all that, you should never kill that which you can manipulate–unless you’ve lost so much belief in your cause that you’re no longer confident of being able to put the right spin on things to convince anyone else that you’re right.

So we have further evidence that our enemy is mind-numbingly stupid. We have indication that their belief in themselves, or at least in their ability to escape from this alive, is wavering–instead of feeding information to journalists they’ve resorted to suppressing information by killing them. And we have indication of growing desperation. See above.

This is no time for protesting. This is exactly the time to start squeezing harder. Much harder.

I want to believe this. I mean I really, really want to believe…

Incidentally, if Gator isn’t uninstalling for you, Ad-Aware seems to do a nice job of eradicating it.

New toys. My 10,000 RPM Quantum/Maxtor Atlas 10K3 arrived yesterday. It takes the drive a while to initialize (upwards of 30 seconds) but once it gets rolling, it’s incredible. A completely unacceptable 37 seconds passes between the time Windows 2000’s “Starting Windows” screen appears and the time the login prompt appears. The thing’s amazing. Just to be obnoxious, I defragmented the drive while other things were running. They didn’t interfere with each other much–that’s the magic of SCSI command reordering.

I installed MS Office 2000 just to see how that would run. Word launches from a dead stop in three seconds. Kill the Office Assistant and it loads in less than two.

I know SCSI drives don’t benchmark much faster than high-end IDE drives, but the difference I see between a high-end SCSI drive like this one and a fast IDE drive is significant. Everything that ever has to touch the disk runs faster. This includes Web browsers pulling data out of the local cache.

Users who don’t do much multitasking probably won’t see much difference, but for a multitasking freak like me–I’ve only got 8 windows open on this machine as I type this, and I’m wondering what’s wrong with me–it’s unbelievable. I haven’t been this overwhelmed since my days playing with an Amiga (which, come to think of it, had a SCSI drive in it).

Witness the birth of a SCSI bigot.

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4 thoughts on “But that’s just my opinion.

  • November 20, 2001 at 3:14 am
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    Dave, can you do me a favor and explain a bit the differences between IDE and SCSI? For example Given similar spec’s hard drives and using a SCSI card and IDE card, which is faster and why? Thanks.

    ……….Curtis

  • November 20, 2001 at 3:50 am
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    I got a question on the sound and heat. Is your SCSI drive loud and how warm does it get?

    /Dave T.

  • November 20, 2001 at 12:51 pm
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    Lord Farquhar,

    Actually I’ve been thinking about journalists throughout this war campaign. Some are ashamed to wear a flag lapel thinking that the symbol displays their un-objectiveness through patriotism. These same fools also think they have to criticize the government as part of that objective ideal despite idiotic reasoning which shows their political bias instead.

    It’s sad to say this, but those journalists that were injured and killed, may have had it coming if they were in harm’s way unless they were verifiably hunted down. Too many journalists today believe they live with a press card that shields them from danger as if they were from the Swiss Red Cross distributing food and health supplies or retrieving the dead and injured from the battlefields. In reality this is a war. I don’t recall any American or European journalists reporting from Berlin during WWII. Even Dan Rather reported from the American side during the Vietnam era. Nowadays CNN sends reporters to Baghdad or Serbia to give the most up-to-date reporting as if they are indifferent as to who they expect or want to win. Remember seeing the shots awhile back of the marines landing on a beach with the network news waiting to interview them. The soldiers were camouflaged trying to be undercover during the night, while suited journalists walked up to them with their spotlights on their cameras. It’d be hard to blame the soldiers for arresting them or firing upon them for safety of their own lives.

    I know the truth needs to get out, but when the reporter becomes the story instead of reporting the story, there obviously is a problem. After all, it is a war!

    Now, I’m off the soapbox. Point/Counterpoint. (It was an old tv show) 🙂

  • November 20, 2001 at 3:41 pm
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    Dave,

    Welcome to the converted! I love my SCSI systems and have since the days of my first 250 MB Seagate. Yes Virginia, there is a difference!

    When I get back from India I plan on building a newer system from scratch using the new Barracudas and the ADPT Ultra160 I bought earlier this year.

    Now to choose between Win2k and NT40 Sp6a….

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