I have (finally) gotten my beloved VLC media player, which seems to play everything except possible AAC files working in FC4.
Basically, I will simply this process for all who are interested.
First prepare. Open up FFx (by now any reader should have figured out that FFx is an abbrev for Firefox) and go to the following page
http://rpm.livna.org/configuration.html
This is the configuration page for the livna repository. You have to do basically two things here, both of which amount to the same thing. You must manually (as I detailed somewhat in an earlier post) or automatically configure your system for using yum on livna.
Under the FC4 section there is a section for yum. If you click on livna-release in the dl window which pops up, choose open with. It will prompt you for the root password. It worked correctly for me to automatically set up for livna. If not dl the file, save it to a known location (and FFx tip, in the download manager if you right click on a dled file, it will ask you -at least in linux- if you want to open the dl directory) and then run it with the command line listed there.
Then go here
http://ftp.freshrpms.net/pub/freshr...shrpms-release/
download the file that ends with noarch.rpm and install that by either of the above methods.
this sets up yum for the following site
http://freshrpms.net/
then open a terminal window
su -
(note the -, that makes things a lot easier)
enter the root password
on the next line type
yum install videolan-client
follow the prompts.
7/12/2005
Playing God
Every act of the will, every choice a human being makes is in essence playing God.
Why?
First let us look for a defintion of God. This is complex but given the context of the phrase, we are talking about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity. The one predominant thread through all of three slightly divergent characterizations of God is that God is a being of will. What God wills of that which is possible, is done in Planck instant, or instantaneously, unless of course it wills that the thing should be done more slowly. If God is a being of will, then will is foundational to God's existence.
If God created man, what does that mean?
Core to this issue is a true definition of creation. For this I draw upon and expand from Nietzsche. Creation is a synonym for valuation. To truly create something is to place a value on. Whether that value is zero, some number, or incalculable, the placing of that value is what creates the thing that has the value. What is the value of rock? That depends, especially if that rock contains precious minerals, or has an asthetic appeal. But what if man (or God or some other sentient species) did not exist? To whom would those precious minerals be worth something or to whose emotions would that rock appeal? If God created man, it must be said that he placed a value upon something which was otherwise worthless clay, he found emotional satisfaction in the existence of of more like him.
If man is created in the image of God, then whatsoever is the quality that is foundational to God existence is also foundational to the human's existence. Therefore will is the foundation of true human existence, not reaction, emotion or subsistance. When a man reflects God, he exercises his will, and by definition is playing God.
Why?
First let us look for a defintion of God. This is complex but given the context of the phrase, we are talking about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity. The one predominant thread through all of three slightly divergent characterizations of God is that God is a being of will. What God wills of that which is possible, is done in Planck instant, or instantaneously, unless of course it wills that the thing should be done more slowly. If God is a being of will, then will is foundational to God's existence.
If God created man, what does that mean?
Core to this issue is a true definition of creation. For this I draw upon and expand from Nietzsche. Creation is a synonym for valuation. To truly create something is to place a value on. Whether that value is zero, some number, or incalculable, the placing of that value is what creates the thing that has the value. What is the value of rock? That depends, especially if that rock contains precious minerals, or has an asthetic appeal. But what if man (or God or some other sentient species) did not exist? To whom would those precious minerals be worth something or to whose emotions would that rock appeal? If God created man, it must be said that he placed a value upon something which was otherwise worthless clay, he found emotional satisfaction in the existence of of more like him.
If man is created in the image of God, then whatsoever is the quality that is foundational to God existence is also foundational to the human's existence. Therefore will is the foundation of true human existence, not reaction, emotion or subsistance. When a man reflects God, he exercises his will, and by definition is playing God.
Two Things to Fool Us All...
First, on Wednesday, NASA will finally launch the space shuttle again. Now despite any of their claims, the real reason that NASA does not want to fly the shuttle is that it is a waste of money. It costs in excess of 700 million to launch the damn thing. I am a proponent of manned exploration of space but the only valid reason left to launch the shuttle is the maintenance of the hubble and NASA is not planning to do that. NASA should be working intently on a space plane.
Note I recently read a decent novel, the earliest (in terms of occurance) novel in Ben Bova's grand tour sequence, Powersat. I heartily recommend this novel as a decent look into how the space program should be...private
One final note, you know that the only reason that the networks are covering this is because they want to see it blow up.
Second, who is Sen Harry Reid kidding, this is what is at stake with the new SC nominees:
Does this look like an economic drain?
Sen Reid is recently said to have stated that he won't filibuster any of President Bush's SC nominees unless there are extreme circumstances...
...You know, like the candidate is alive and breathing...
Any SC Justice who will be aggressively against the recent decision in Kelo vs. New London, will most likely be filibustered. The Democrats do not care. The liberal activist judiciary is their last chance to have some power.
Will the debate be civil read this
Note I recently read a decent novel, the earliest (in terms of occurance) novel in Ben Bova's grand tour sequence, Powersat. I heartily recommend this novel as a decent look into how the space program should be...private
One final note, you know that the only reason that the networks are covering this is because they want to see it blow up.
Second, who is Sen Harry Reid kidding, this is what is at stake with the new SC nominees:
Does this look like an economic drain?
Sen Reid is recently said to have stated that he won't filibuster any of President Bush's SC nominees unless there are extreme circumstances...
...You know, like the candidate is alive and breathing...
Any SC Justice who will be aggressively against the recent decision in Kelo vs. New London, will most likely be filibustered. The Democrats do not care. The liberal activist judiciary is their last chance to have some power.
Will the debate be civil read this
7/08/2005
Conspiracy Theorists are like Addicts
Conspiracy theorists are like addicts...
A recent glance through of a post over on Richard Hoagland's blog has led me to the notion that for many, once you start to "believe" in vast conspiracies, you become addicted. The post that inspired me to write this...
http://www.enterprisemission.com/weblog/2005/07/war-of-words.html
Now I actually like Mr Hoagland, although I have never met him. I think some of the points about certain things like Iapetus and the "face" on Mars deserve serious inquiry although I do not hold to his more grand interpretations. I happen to bookmark a bunch of sites that I group under a heading called weird stuff. I find some of this interesting at least from an entertainment pov.
But what I find annoying are these constant attempts to fit historical things with fairly straight forward explanations like the Kennedy assasination, 9/11 or the Columbia explosion into the grand conspiracy.
Take the Kennedy assasination for example, looked at with respect to possible conspiracies
Human beings are primates, and if you don't accept that where did that primate tailbone come from? Primates, especially the higher order ones, tend towards exclusive organizations. This tendency predominated and aided in driving evolution for millions of years, producing and refining a species which is capable of paranoia.
The average member of homosapiens, possible individuation aside, needs instinctually to associate in groups. Not only that, or as an out growth, these members tend to feel that others are in groups and a thought process arises from those unexplored primordial urges which rapidly takes the derivative of 2+2 but does not come out with zero.
So the fact that most people cannot shoot someone with pinpoint accuracy at several hundred to several thousands yards, makes them uninclined to accept the fact that a miitary trained sniper can. This of course makes spurious leaps of logic possible, in a certain famous assasination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Ha...9s_marksmanship
People not only believe in big false conspiracies but in little ones. Santa and his helpers, parents deliberately trying to embarass their children, etc. It is a natural by porduct of our species evolution. It is in part what makes us such wonderful skeptics, as one actions also tends to produce the delevopement of compensatory mechanisms.
As to "real conspiracies" like communism or secret military missions, of course these events occur, and if we as a species did not possess the means to ferret these things out, we would have no need of intelligence classifications or the NSA.
The funny thing is that when a particular theory either does not come true, the explanations become, rarely, "it was thwarted" or, more commonly, "they were on to us knowing so they changed their nefarious plans". I was listenting to coasttocoastam last night, Thursday.
www.coasttocoastam.com
The show had on some guy named Sean David Morton who claims to be an expert in remote viewing, which is purported to be a psychic ability that lets one perceive eventss without actually being there. He also seems to be a radical leftist and is one of those with a visceral hatred of President Bush. He claimed that President Bush and his cadre will be attempting to turn the U.S. it a fascist dictatorship.
What is the explanation when neither occurs? Well as I have said, either we thwarted them or they changed their nefarious plans.
In science, for a theory to be true it must not only be demonstrable but have those demonstations be reproducable by others, and it must make successful predictions. Einstein's Relativity is not only constantly validated through reporducable experiments, reused machinery (the GPS system for instance) but several of its predictions have been proved true. But these facts that are validated are not themselves truths. The truth proved is that the facts are real and recorded as such or more specifically that the people involved in origin were honest and correct.
In one were to hold any conspiracy theory to these same standards, most if not all would fail the test. A serious of predictions which have a magical caveat like, "we thwarted them" is not a theory but an outlandish collection of unsubstantiated claims.
A recent glance through of a post over on Richard Hoagland's blog has led me to the notion that for many, once you start to "believe" in vast conspiracies, you become addicted. The post that inspired me to write this...
http://www.enterprisemission.com/weblog/2005/07/war-of-words.html
Now I actually like Mr Hoagland, although I have never met him. I think some of the points about certain things like Iapetus and the "face" on Mars deserve serious inquiry although I do not hold to his more grand interpretations. I happen to bookmark a bunch of sites that I group under a heading called weird stuff. I find some of this interesting at least from an entertainment pov.
But what I find annoying are these constant attempts to fit historical things with fairly straight forward explanations like the Kennedy assasination, 9/11 or the Columbia explosion into the grand conspiracy.
Take the Kennedy assasination for example, looked at with respect to possible conspiracies
Human beings are primates, and if you don't accept that where did that primate tailbone come from? Primates, especially the higher order ones, tend towards exclusive organizations. This tendency predominated and aided in driving evolution for millions of years, producing and refining a species which is capable of paranoia.
The average member of homosapiens, possible individuation aside, needs instinctually to associate in groups. Not only that, or as an out growth, these members tend to feel that others are in groups and a thought process arises from those unexplored primordial urges which rapidly takes the derivative of 2+2 but does not come out with zero.
So the fact that most people cannot shoot someone with pinpoint accuracy at several hundred to several thousands yards, makes them uninclined to accept the fact that a miitary trained sniper can. This of course makes spurious leaps of logic possible, in a certain famous assasination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Ha...9s_marksmanship
People not only believe in big false conspiracies but in little ones. Santa and his helpers, parents deliberately trying to embarass their children, etc. It is a natural by porduct of our species evolution. It is in part what makes us such wonderful skeptics, as one actions also tends to produce the delevopement of compensatory mechanisms.
As to "real conspiracies" like communism or secret military missions, of course these events occur, and if we as a species did not possess the means to ferret these things out, we would have no need of intelligence classifications or the NSA.
The funny thing is that when a particular theory either does not come true, the explanations become, rarely, "it was thwarted" or, more commonly, "they were on to us knowing so they changed their nefarious plans". I was listenting to coasttocoastam last night, Thursday.
www.coasttocoastam.com
The show had on some guy named Sean David Morton who claims to be an expert in remote viewing, which is purported to be a psychic ability that lets one perceive eventss without actually being there. He also seems to be a radical leftist and is one of those with a visceral hatred of President Bush. He claimed that President Bush and his cadre will be attempting to turn the U.S. it a fascist dictatorship.
What is the explanation when neither occurs? Well as I have said, either we thwarted them or they changed their nefarious plans.
In science, for a theory to be true it must not only be demonstrable but have those demonstations be reproducable by others, and it must make successful predictions. Einstein's Relativity is not only constantly validated through reporducable experiments, reused machinery (the GPS system for instance) but several of its predictions have been proved true. But these facts that are validated are not themselves truths. The truth proved is that the facts are real and recorded as such or more specifically that the people involved in origin were honest and correct.
In one were to hold any conspiracy theory to these same standards, most if not all would fail the test. A serious of predictions which have a magical caveat like, "we thwarted them" is not a theory but an outlandish collection of unsubstantiated claims.
A Little Bit About This Blog
Well my first post on my first ever blog, concerned the events of 7/7/05. But politics and war are not the only things that I will talk about, hopefully if any one ever reads this blog what I post will be of interest or at least give you a good laugh, either with me or at me.
My interests run through many areas and you may or may not see evidence of that here.
What am I reading now?
"Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces" by Tom Clancy and Gen Carl Steiner (Ret).
So far so good.
Back to 7/7/05 for a minute, so far the response has been encouraging if not overwhelming. I am not a warmonger (and I have never served in the military) but I remember history. My Roman ancestors did not take shit from anyone. If you messed with them, your civilization died. Maybe its time that another one of these terrorist hot spots died, maybe Syria now? What if in response to every terrorist act, we destroyed via bombing the military and industrial assets of a nation, no need for a land invasion, just raise the cost of doing business.
I do know if I will have multiple small entries in the future or just some long (hopefully) well segmented entries. Probably both.
On the PC side, I am currently transistioning to Linux, I've tried Debian but was too new to get the gui to load. I then moved on to FC4 but getting DVDs to play has proved impossible so now I am going to try UBuntu. Let's see if this one works or if Linux is really a pipe dream.
My interests run through many areas and you may or may not see evidence of that here.
What am I reading now?
"Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces" by Tom Clancy and Gen Carl Steiner (Ret).
So far so good.
Back to 7/7/05 for a minute, so far the response has been encouraging if not overwhelming. I am not a warmonger (and I have never served in the military) but I remember history. My Roman ancestors did not take shit from anyone. If you messed with them, your civilization died. Maybe its time that another one of these terrorist hot spots died, maybe Syria now? What if in response to every terrorist act, we destroyed via bombing the military and industrial assets of a nation, no need for a land invasion, just raise the cost of doing business.
I do know if I will have multiple small entries in the future or just some long (hopefully) well segmented entries. Probably both.
On the PC side, I am currently transistioning to Linux, I've tried Debian but was too new to get the gui to load. I then moved on to FC4 but getting DVDs to play has proved impossible so now I am going to try UBuntu. Let's see if this one works or if Linux is really a pipe dream.
7/07/2005
We Will Never Surrender...
To the people of London, of the UK, my best wishes go out to you. You have survived through far worse, you will survive and grow stronger.
And now for some violent thoughts.
Perhaps we have not killed enough terrorists. Maybe its time to move on to the next source of terror, Iran, Syria, the IRA. It is sickening how much we, the tolerant of the world are supposed to take before we respond in kind and that is not a good thing. Sooner or later these murderers are going to strike against the wrong people, tick off the wrong rich person or accidently hit some drug cartel lord's family and then when that level of bloodshed begins to sicken us, we will act to clean up the mess.
And now for some violent thoughts.
Perhaps we have not killed enough terrorists. Maybe its time to move on to the next source of terror, Iran, Syria, the IRA. It is sickening how much we, the tolerant of the world are supposed to take before we respond in kind and that is not a good thing. Sooner or later these murderers are going to strike against the wrong people, tick off the wrong rich person or accidently hit some drug cartel lord's family and then when that level of bloodshed begins to sicken us, we will act to clean up the mess.
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