Looking for stock video footage?

Dave Farquhar Video , ,

I’ve talked about archive.org before. I revisited it this evening. As usual, another hundred or so films have been added. A handful of selections from another library, owned by the University of South Carolina, have trickled in.
But most importantly, many of the films in the Prelinger collection, which currently numbers 1,255 films, now have descriptions and the ability to view with RealPlayer in streaming format. So if you need a clip showing New York City, you can do a search and view the films to see if the clip is suitable before you spend a lot of time downloading a monster MPEG-2 file.

And since the copyright on these films has long since lapsed (if ever it was copyrighted in the first place), you can use it.

Some of the films are interesting to watch in their own right. The film The Challenge of Ideas shows just how much we’ve changed in 40 years. Some of the changes are good–virtually all of the narrators held lit cigarettes in their right hand as they spoke.

But as I watched, I couldn’t help but think the ACLU would never permit this film to be made by the U.S. Government today. For one thing, it showed churches and used the now-controversial phrase “Nation under God.”

The film talked about winning to Cold War in people’s minds. But the film’s description of the Soviets sounds an awful lot like today’s United States. Meanwhile, our values infiltrated the former Soviet Union. So who really did win the Cold War?

There’s also a lot of footage that shows the flip-side of the fifties. I remember in my 20th Century U.S. History class in college, my professor drove home the thought that Happy Days was a myth–there was a darker side. The films in this archive certainly show that–the beginnings of the demolition of historic neighborhoods to build pre-fab buildings, drug addiction, oppression. And of course there was the ever-present threat of war. I don’t know that the Fabulous Fifties were actually any darker than the decades that followed it. But they don’t seem to have been much better.

This stuff almost makes me want to be a history teacher.

But I’ll probably just abuse it as stock footage instead. I don’t have to go back to school to do that.

Am I going to hell?

Dave Farquhar Christianity

I led a workshop at a retreat this weekend. It was awesome. I want to do this again. Several times a year, ideally.
I had someone in my workshop ask a question. A really good question. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “I’m divorced. If I remarry, I’m committing adultery?”

Well, a seminary student and I disagreed on that point. I have a book by a scholar who understands Jesus’ words in the original Greek a whole lot better than I ever will who says the original speaks of implied adultery. Don’t divorce for no good reason, because it makes your former spouse look like he or she’s committing adultery when she or he remarries. So he or she appears guilty but isn’t actually guilty, I argued.

He argued that if you’re divorced and remarry, you are guilty of adultery, period.

He won the argument for the same reason I’d have won the argument if the question was about computers. Though I still know I’m right. Just ask me.

What’s inarguable is that the cause of the sin lies with the one who initiates the divorce, and Jesus had pretty stern words for those who cause others to sin.

“So if I remarry, I’m going to hell? I have a hard time believing that,” she said.

As she should.

The last two years my dad was alive, he never went to church, largely because he’d spent the prior ten years hearing from church people that he was going to hell for one reason or another, whether it was because he believed the wrong thing about one doctrine or another, or because of something I did or my sister did. (I never did figure out what the things I did or my sister did had to do with Dad–you can raise your kids right and they’ll still do stupid things. If Dad went to hell because of the things I did or my sister did, then I don’t want to think about how many pastors are in hell.)

Here’s Christianity’s dirty little secret, and it seems to be a really well-kept one: Christianity, when you boil it down, is just the answer to one question: Why are we worthy to spend eternity with God? And the answer to that question is one word: Jesus.

Charlie Sebold and I don’t agree on much. We probably differ more than any other Christian I’ve ever met. But we agree on that point. Either I’m wrong about 98% of Christianity or he is. All that means is that one or the other of us could be a lot healthier on this earth than we are. But we’re going the same place, because we both know the answer to the question.

Now, I know in the United States, everyone thinks the unforgivable sin is committing adultery. Or something resembling adultery. I think some people think if you’ve ever seen a copy of Penthouse you’re going to hell. I’m sure if you told those same people that you’ve actually bought a copy, they’ll tell you God will find a way to send you to hell twice. That Puritanical belief is a lie from hell. (So are a lot of their other beliefs, but we won’t get into that. They knew the answer to the question too, so a lot of them are in heaven even though they spread a lot of lies.)

The only unforgivable sin is unbelief. The thief on the cross did nothing worthwhile with his life, that we know of. He knew that. That was why he was crucified. But in his final hours of life, he realized there was something to this Jesus who was dying next to him. For all we know, he broke all 10 commandments every day in his life. But in the end he believed. And Jesus told him explicitly he’d be in heaven. If He ever told any of the 11 surviving disciples that explicitly that they’d be in heaven, His four biographers didn’t see fit to record it. (John did see fit to tell you and me that explicitly though: Check out 1 John 5:13.)

Aside from unbelief, sin is sin. Some sins hurt more people than others or lead to more sins than others. But some sins lie along the path of most resistance. Being divorced and remarrying can prevent future sins. It can improve your life. So if you go into it asking God to help you get it right this time and sin against this person just as little as possible, no, God won’t send you to hell for it.

So while we need to consider our actions and ask whether they hurt God and others, we also need to consider what lies down the alternate road.

And we need to realize that in the case of believers, hell rarely lies down the alternate road.

And for pity’s sake, never, ever tell another believer he or she is going to hell. I’ll hit you with a broom if you do. Unless you’re a girl. In which case I’ll get another girl to hit you with a broom.

Pretentious Pontifications: Finally, a respectable entry-level system

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , , ,

David is still messing around with that ancient 500-MHz Compaq Proliant server, so I am filling in for him today. I threw all of my Pentium III-based systems out for the swine to trample months ago and I suggested David do the same. But, as usual, David refuses to listen to reason.
I see the peasants over at Ars Technica have finally started to show signs of coming to their senses. They have finally designed a personal computer that would be good enough to put in my bathroom. You can read about it there, if you must.

You can tell the people at Ars Technica are peasants, since people with special relationships with Intel (or people who know people with special relatonships with Intel have been running 3.6 GHz Pentium IV systems for weeks. Like I said, the entry-level PC described at Ars Technica is suitable for use in my bathroom. I feel sorry for those who have to putt-putt along on slower equipment in their main PCs. As I have said many times in the past (I am not a revisionist unlike some people), it is incredibly hard to get any serious work done at less than 3.5 GHz.

However, I must salute Ars Technica for getting it correct by using Rambus memory. Rambus memory is demonstrably superior in all regards to the DDR memory used by tyros. Any simple-minded twit can come to that conclusion simply by reading the benchmarks of trustworthy Web sites and looking at the price tag. One does not have to have insider sources like I do to know that.

Unfortunately, I must take issue with their use of IBM hard drives. IBM hard drives are demonstrably inferior to Seagate and Maxtor drives. Everybody knows you cannot power on an IBM hard drive for more than 8 hours a day. Why hundreds of thousands of people use IBM drives in their mission-critical servers is beyond me.

I’m back.

Dave Farquhar General ,

My DSL was down for about 36 hours, possibly longer. Southwestern Bell evidently was able to fix it during the night.
I’ve got to get in to work to babysit a server and call Compaq and scream bloody murder for not dispatching a technician when they said they would. I’ll be back in a while.

How to get started in the IT industry

Dave Farquhar General ,

Someone asked me today what I do.
“You know those computers the size of a dorm fridge? I work on those,” I said. And yes, sometimes that means crawling around and sticking my head inside one, I added.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll break something?”

“Oh, I break stuff all the time,” I said. “Then I fix it.”

And that reminded me of a story.

One day when I was about 17, my Dad came home one afternoon and found me in the basement, with our computer disassembled–completely–and sprawled out across his table. His eyes got really big. “You gonna be able to put that thing back together?” he asked, without much hope in his voice. “Sure!” I said. He watched me pry a ROM chip out with a screwdriver, pop in a new one, then reinstall all the drives, the power supply, and the expansion cards and replace the cover. I didn’t have any pieces left over, which I think he took as a good sign, and then he watched me plug it into the keyboard and monitor. I fired it up, and it worked perfectly.

I still had an awful lot to learn though. At work, you’re supposed to have pieces left over. What, you think employers actually buy their techs those great PCs on their desks? Ha! And a tip for you beginners: After the new system performs like swamp sump because you just swapped out all the good parts with parts from the old clunker on your desk, just blame the disappointing performance on Microsoft bloatware. Works every time.

(And when your boss starts asking how all these parts with Micron stickers on them ended up inside a Compaq server, just say, “Dan must have done it.” Who’s Dan? Who cares! He’s not you!)

Nobody knew that I knew how to do that. Every once in a while when I was the only one home, I’d take the computer apart. That afternoon, I just happened to get caught.

You are looking at a genu-ine inventor

Dave Farquhar General , ,

In yesterday’s comments, I suggested you take the David Crowder Band’s CD, Can You Hear Us?, and put it in your CD player and glue it shut because you won’t want to change it anyway. (I really ought to write up a proper review. I’ve managed to graduate to their other disc. It’s good. Not glue-worthy though. Unless you’ve got a changer.)
Well, I should have patented the technique. Maybe I could still file. A method of protecting intellectual property, I’ll call it. Why?

Because Sony’s in the habit of sending out review CDs in Discmans that have been glued shut to prevent unauthorized bootlegging. They also permanently attach the headphones–no copying out the headphone jack, naughty naughty.

I guess they didn’t count on a journalist being handy with snips and a soldering iron, did they? Oh, wait. I’m not exactly a practicing journalist anymore. Well, not professionally, anyway.

I smell a way to make some money and stick it to an RIAA member, don’t you?

The best band you’ve never heard of

Dave Farquhar Christianity , , ,

I went to a Bebo Norman concert last night. Bebo Norman is a Christian singer/songwriter. I saw him open for Third Day a few months ago, and as good as Third Day was, Bebo kind of stole the show.
What goes around comes around. One of Bebo’s opening acts was the David Crowder Band. All I knew about them going in was they were from Waco, Texas. I didn’t expect much. But they blew me away.

David Crowder has an unusual voice. Sometimes it reminds me some of the lead singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket, if you remember them. And sometimes it reminds me of Elvis Costello. But I find I’m really reaching. It’s different enough to grab you, but not so different as to make you uncomfortable. There, how’s that?

He has an appearance that’ll grab you and might make you uncomfortable. He has really wild hair, thick eyebrows and a goatee that’s a good three inches long. He wears glasses with the thick black frames, similar to the standard military-issue glasses. Normally I’d call them unstylish, but they look fine on him.

The band is loud. Really loud. And in addition to the expected electric and acoustic guitars (lots of ’em), bass, and drum, they frequently mix in synthesizers, samples, and violin. It’s been a long time since a band has floored me with its sound, but these guys did. All of their songs could have been about motor oil and I would have bought all their records. Since I was pretty sure I heard them mention God a few times (it was hard to tell over all that double-time clapping) I had double excuse to buy all their records. So I went to their booth at intermission and bought all their records.

The current one is called “Can You Hear Us?” It’s loud. I don’t think David Crowder’s favorite Psalm is “Be still and know I am God.” But you know how a lot of bands are an angry loud, or at least an angst-y loud? DCB is a happy loud.

It starts off fairly slow and easy and segues into loud and fast. The album roughly alternates fast and slow numbers for the duration. I think there needs to be a radio station that does nothing but play it over and over. So I guess I like it, but I can’t nail down exactly why. It’s loud and quirky and uses a lot of instruments. But just as Butt-Head knew it takes more than bears to make a video cool (even though Beavis didn’t), it takes more than volume and quirks and lots of instruments to make a record cool. I don’t know what that is but they’ve got it.

One of my favorite bands of all time is The Cars, and I think part of what I liked about them was how they mixed quirkiness with really good musicianship. I wouldn’t say DCB sounds like The Cars. But they take that formula another direction.

David Crowder got his start by recruiting college students for worship services, which led to him co-founding a church called University Baptist Church in Waco, and eventually he started writing his own songs. I don’t know about using some of the songs for a church service, at least not in Mehlville and Oakville, Missouri, but I’ll listen to it when I’m not in church, that’s for certain.

And if I’m ever in Waco, I’ll check out his church to see how they make those songs work in that setting.

Patch your Linux distros

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , ,

There’s a nasty vulnerability in recent SSL libraries that an Apache-based worm is currently exploiting. The patch is obviously the most critical on machines that are running secure Apache sites. But if you don’t like vulnerabilities, and you shouldn’t, go get your distribution’s latest updates.
This is why I like Debian; a simple apt-get update && apt-get upgrade brings me right up to speed.

CERT pointed out that Apache installations that contain the ServerTokens ProductOnly directive in their httpd.conf file aren’t affected. (I added it under the ServerName directive in my file–it’s not present at all in Debian by default.) This will hurt Linux’s standings in Netcraft, but are you more interested in security or advocacy? Increasingly, I’m more interested in security. No point in bragging that you’re more secure than Windows. Someone might make you prove it. I’d rather let someone else prove it.

While you’re making Apache volunteer as little information as possible, you might as well make the rest of your OS as quiet as possible too. You can find some information on that in an earlier post here.

Wait on buying a high-end AMD CPU

Dave Farquhar Hardware

Good morning, or what’s left of it.
If you’re in the market for a high-end AMD CPU, right now is a good time to wait. AMD delayed the Barton core today, mostly to avoid creating an inventory glut at the end of the year. The new chips will offer a couple of significant improvements over current models, namely a 333 MHz FSB and twice the L2 cache, at 512KB.

Sounds like a fantastic time to make due with a $35 Duron if you’re building a new system and absolutely have to have buy now rather than waiting until January. Make sure the board you buy supports the faster FSB and is likely to still be in production then though, as AMD’s new cores traditionally need a BIOS update. And what to do with the Duron come January? Pick up a $35 closeout Socket A motherboard and use it and the Duron to upgrade some older system. If you don’t need a second system, some local church or school will love you for the donation.

Personally, I’d love to see how a Barton-core Athlon with DDR333 or DDR400 memory would do for video editing.

So what do we do now?

Dave Farquhar Society

The somber first anniversary of the invasion has come and gone.
I tried not to think about it but I failed; there was a mood at work that indicated without words that everyone was aware of it. One of my friends basically watched TV with her boss all day at work. One of my favorite radio stations seemed to be completely off the air during the morning drive.

I visited a couple of Web sites. Questions. Lots of questions. What do we do with the site? Charlie pointed out that turning the former WTC site into a park is like making a scar that will never heal. As much as anything, the WTC represented the American way of life. That’s why bin Laden and his thugs wanted it down.

There needs to be a memorial, yes. Rebuild the WTC. Put a plaque on the outside. That’s the memorial. A defiant demonstration of the American way of life. Inside, put plaques in appropriate places telling stories of acts of bravery that happened on that site.

But when we remember this act of cowardice, we need to remember even more loudly the act of bravery that a handful of people on board Flight 93 committed. The largest Sept. 11 memorial needs to be in the field in Shanksville, Penn., where Flight 93 crashed after the passengers and crew took the plane back from the hands of the hijackers. President Bush made the painful decision to take lives in the air to preserve lives on the ground, but the passengers made those orders unnecessary.

They need to be remembered with something along the lines of the Iwo Jima memorial.

And we need to start wrapping things up. Every time we take away more freedoms in the name of safety, we help bin Laden to erode our way of life, which is exactly what he wanted to do in the first place.