Parity Violation

The press loves to write absurd stories about how Macs are a security risk, and now the Associated Press has joined the game. What hogwash. I refer everyone to this Register article, which explains how Macs are still far more secure than Windows computers.

The article scarily describes some computer user was tricked to click on some bogus link … which proceeded to do nothing. They don’t even fully describe what malware or exploit this is – they don’t reference a Secunia number or anything. They just give a scary description, call it a virus (which is not, it sounds like some kind of web exploit, I’m really not sure what it is – this article is so bad it makes no clear description of the kind of exploit it is.)

Even if this new “virus” is for real, the article continues with a bunch of FUD – that switching to Intel somehow makes Apple more vulnerable (completely and utterly false, the security “expert” that says switching processors makes a difference is full of it) that vulnerabilities are the same as viruses (they’re not.)

It just boggles my mind these stories get written. There are like 10,000 viruses and spyware and the like on Windows. I mean, Windows has Internet Explorer – that alone is a floodgate for problems. And yet one minor maybe-virus comes out for the Mac and it’s a frontpage story. Gimme a break.

The fact is companies want to sell Mac users security software they don’t need, so they run around like Chicken Little, claiming that the sky is falling and Macs are prey to attack. What’s said is that the press falls for it.

Someone over at Network World, gets it right, saying that these stories are a ludicrcous reason to pick Windows, with it’s 10,000 viruses, over a Mac with it’s maybe 5, none of which are actively spreading.

Update – You know what’s the dumbest thing about this story? The way they present their “evidence” that Macs have some kind of security problem and then the only person refuting it is an Apple spokesman. Get real! Macs are more secure than Windows – period! Why can’t the author actually write that instead of writing these dumb factoids with only a Apple shill to defend the Mac? Ugh! I can’t stand the press!

I made it just in the nick of time to Mahler’s Second last night. The Shepherd School really blew the roof off the place. It was the best performance from the Shepherd School I’ve heard … probably since they did Mahler 5 a few years ago.

The soloists both sang well, though I thought the mezzo had a slightly bigger voice. The Rice Chorale, which was sitting for 50 minutes quietly, sounded great right from their first entrance. The offstage brass also worked to great effect. Rachleff even included the 5 minute pause (maybe a bit shorter) that Mahler suggests in the score after the first movement.

Anyway, in light of this Mahler experience, here is a Mahler edition of the random 10, a day late. :)

1. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 5 in C Sharp Minor – Mahler – IV. Adagietto (Seht Langsam)- Barbirolli / New Philharmonia
2. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 4 – I. Bedächtig. Nicht eilen.- Szell/Raskin/Cleveland SO
3. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 7 Mahler – Nachtmusik: Allegro moderato- Rattle – Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
4. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 8 – Mahler – BBC Legends – “Alles Vergängliche”- Jascha Horenstein-London Symphony Orchestra
5. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 5 – Walter – Sturmisch Bewegt. Mit Grosster Vehemenz- Walter Bruno – New York Philharmonic
6. Mahler, Gustav – Kindertotenlieder – 2. Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle flammen- Baker, Barbirolli, et al.
7. Mahler, Gustav – Kindertotenlieder – 4. Oft denk’ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen- Baker, Barbirolli, et al.
8. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 3 Mahler – Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast.- Horenstein – Procter – Ambrosian Singers – London Symphony
9. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 7 Mahler – Rondo – Finale- Rattle – Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
10. Mahler, Gustav – Das Lied von de Erde – BBC Legends – Das Trinklied von Jammer der Erde- Horenstein/Mitchinson/Hodgson/BBC No. Orch.

This is not an original idea, as I see it at Anne’s blog and have heard of it elsewhere. My real innovation and contribution to the world here is that I’ve written an applescript to create the ordered list html… one simply selects 10 or more songs in iTunes first. I use the Party Shuffle playlist and can then pick from which other playlist the random songs come from that way.

The applescript uses html … I could have done it in markdown but I wanted it useful for the maximum number of people.

1. Mahler, Gustav – Symphony No. 7 Mahler – Rondo – Finale- Rattle – Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
2. Bach – Goldberg Variations, BWV 988 – Variation 17 – 24- Glenn Gould, Piano
3. Original Cast- Unworthy Of Your Love- Assassins
4. Stars Of The Lid- Mullholland- The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Stars of the Lid
5. Händel, Georg Friedrich (1685-1759) – Messiah – Handel – Thus Saith The Lord – Bass Recitative; 6. But Who May Abide – Alto Air; 7. And He Shall Purify – Chorus- Robert Shaw • Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
6. Debussy, Claude – Piano Works Volume 3, Naxos – Images I: Mouvement- François-Joël Thiollier (pf)
7. Grainger, Percy – Works For Chorus & Orchestra – I’m Seventeen Come Sunday- Hickox/Stephen/Padmore/Varcoe/Tozer/Joyful Company of Singers/City of London Sinfonia
8. Fiona Apple- Fast As You Can- When the pawn…
9. Chicago- You’re the Inspiration- Fu
10. Shostakovich, Dmitri – Ballet Suite No. 3 – V. Waltz- Jarvi/Scottish National Orchestra

So that’s my mostly random 10, I deleted some non-musical tracks that popped in there.

You can download the applescript here

To use, gunzip the applescript file and place it ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/. It should then appear in the little script icon menu in iTunes.

I have installed the wpg2 plug-in which allows my gallery 2 photos to easily be embedded in my wordpress blog. This probably portends the end of the drupal home page as I think I can use wordpress for just about everything. Probably won’t have time to mess much more with it any time soon though.

For now, take a look at this note the Easter Bunny left my niece Bela. Odd she didn’t seem to believe it…

You can also log into the “real” photo gallery with your blog username/password and not have to deal with the squished margins of the blog … at some point I’ll find a new theme and try to improve the appearance.

Astros slugger and first baseman Lance Berkman has an interview at Sports Illustrated which is pretty good. My favorite part however is what he says about his current hitting drills:

I still hit off the tee a ton. It’s a great way to groove your swing. You don’t have to worry about the ball moving, so you can concentrate on your mechanics. Baseball’s such a reaction sport that the more times you can repeat your swing, the better chance you’re going to have. You don’t want to even be thinking about [your swing] when you’re up there.

So to those who have questioned my idea that learning and practicing proper hitting off a tee, perhaps Lance will lend my position some additional credibility. Granted, slow pitch softball isn’t a “reaction sport” the way baseball is, but still – a tee helps you groove your mechanics and that’s important.

TV really isn’t bad for you. I mean, not necessarily. Violence on TV, bad news reporting, Fox News, they may be bad. But not the screen itself.

Yet there are some who think that any form of screen-watching is manifestly bad. Kathryn pointed me towards an article in today’s NY Times about a series of new DVDs aimed at very young children, from the good folks at Sesame street.

The author starts out using the very harsh language of the TV-is-awful movement, sort of in jest, but indeed – TV and DVDs can be good for children. Oh maybe not the 10 minutes of ads for toys, but the content itself can be ok. It just takes a responsible parent to separate the good from the bad.

The next line of the Metro light rail system is supposed to start construction I think sometime next year. The line is going to run from UH through the Wheeler Station on the Main street line, and then to somewhere around the Galleria/uptown area. The leg of the line labelled on the ballot “Westpark” is where all the controversy lies.

The line says Wheeler station to Hilcroft transit center. Westpark of course stops at Kirby. So how can anyone think this line was going to be on Westpark the entire way? That’s impossible. So the street that makes sense is Richmond. And certain people are rather unhappy about that.

Some appear to be genuinely concerned about their business or home during construction. Some seem to mistakenly believe that cars and buses are more efficient than rail. Some seem to think trains will “ruin” their neighborhood. I don’t really see how a quite, emission free train, replacing some 100 noisy smoggy cars makes a neighborhood worse, but that’s just me.

The Richmond line of course would go by the University of St. Thomas, the Menil, the Montrose area, ideally it would push west and hit the Greenway plaza. Clearly this is where the ridership is. Between downtown and Kirby the line would have to otherwise run along 59, and that makes no sense.

Much has been made of the Westpark designation on the ballot. If anyone would bother to look at the ballot, you can see that Westpark is a title or description. Among the other six analogous titles were Inner Katy, Uptown / West Loop, and Southeast. Also the ballot said clearly Wheeler to Hilcroft Transit Center. So, that whole route can’t possibly go on Westpark.

Light rail isn’t about moving people from point A to point B. It’s about everything in between. Avoiding the high density corridor of Richmond, both in terms of where people live and work, just doesn’t make much sense.

If you register on this site, and I know who you are, you’re likely to be able to read more posts than the general public. I have the option of making some posts private. So, if you’re a friend or family, by all means use the auto-registration system. Pick a name and/or user name that I’ll recognize so I can promote your access level.

If I don’t know who you are, well, there’s really no point in registering and frankly, I’ll probably delete you. :)

Well, this is probably a sign of my desire to procrastinate, but the things are slowly coming together here at ParityViolation.org. I have finally a decent content manager for my home page in Droopal, that should be easier than editing static HTML pages. Similarly, Wordpress is a very nice blog.

I have a lot to say about this whole rail on Richmond thing… I’m totally for it, and aghast at this obsession with the Westpark ballot language. I’ll post more on that later. This is really a test of Markdown which you may remember reading about a while back.

You may not know this, but you can download a nightly build of Safari/WebKit. The entire Safari and Webkit projects are open source, so you can also contribute to fixing bugs, etc. Eventually, these changes get rolled into OS X and Safari but if you want to see if some annoying Safari bug has already been fixed, you can try it out.

I find that it’s much more stable on some problematic sites than Safari in 10.4.6, so it’s worth a look.