Aug

19

The IOC is completely ruining the Olympics.  Although I don’t mind the recent commercialization of the Olympics because it has brought and kept higher quality athletes, the IOC has gotten too obsesed with making money on the Olympics. 

Here is my prediction: Greco-Roman (and possibly Freestyle) Wrestling’s last Olympics will be in 2020.  That’s right, I think the oldest and one of the most traditional of Olympic sports will be dropped from the modern Olympics after the 2020 games.

First, some background.  Unless you have wrestled or have been part of a wrestling family, you probably won’t find wrestling entertaining to watch.  It’s a simple fact of life that wrestling can not be a spectator’s sport short of turning into WWF….oops….WWE.

The basic rules have been in place forever: three rounds of wrestling, score points for moves, if there is no fall during the match then the wrestler with the highest score wins.  The IOC felt that there wasn’t enough ACTION and SCORING in the sport so they insisted that FILA change the rules.  Now, you win rounds and instead of just wrestling each round you split up the round into three parts.  First minute of a round you wrestle.  Then 30 seconds of mat wrestling with a random wrestler chosen to decide his position.  Final 30 seconds of mat wrestling where the other wrestler has his choice of position.  Tie round goes to the last wrestler to score.

Not only are these rules terrible but they do exactly the opposite of what the IOC wants; they decrease scoring and action.  Only having a minute of standing wrestling is usually not enough time for greco wrestlers to setup and perform moves. 

Most of the greco matches I saw had no action in the first minute of the rounds.  Just a bunch of hand slapping.  That means that the round was decided through random chance and low scoring mat wrestling.  It gets worse.  Some scoring for escape moves was removed, which decreases the motivation for one of the wrestlers to even try a move during mat wrestling.  Finally, since the last one to score wins then wrestlers who felt they could win in the last part of the round would basically stall (i.e. try not to make any moves) so that they could score in the last round, get the tie and win for being the last one to score.

Finally, these rule changes made/make it very easy for the best wrestler to lose.  This happened in a match beween a Chinese wrestler and an American wrestler.  Chinese wrestler score 6 points in the first round with some great moves.  Round goes to he Chinese wrestler. Second round the American scores last in a boring 1-1 tie and wins the round.  Third round the American wrestler scores last in another boring 1-1 tie.  The Chinese Wrestler kicked the American’s butt by out scoring him 8-2 AND LOST THE MATCH!!  Many favored wrestlers were beat in the qualifying round of wrestling and had no chance for a medal.

I think the IOC decided that wrestling wasn’t bringing in enough money, force rule changes they knew would mess up the sport and the next step they will take is to remove the sport since it is so messed up now.

Oh yeah……there have been some weird things going on in Women’s Gymnastics, too.

Jun

3

It has come to this.  Revision3, a new media company with it’s own shows and distributes them using new technology (P2P) is attacked by the “old media”.  Revision3 has its own shows, which I doubt the “old media” sees any “action” (i.e. money) from.  They use P2P technology to distribute their shows.  They made a technical mistake in that the way they used P2P also allowed non-Revision3 employees to “seed” P2P network with illegal files.  Once they found their mistake they, like good net citizens, locked it down.  “Old media”’s response?  DoS attack a legal ligitimate company.

If you or I were to DoS attack a company we would have the feds knocking at our door and probably be arrested.  MediaDefender (who’s media are they defending?) does it. . .  no big deal.  The way I see it since the “old media” saw Revision3 was making money on it’s shows without the “old media” getting it’s cut of the action, they decided to take them down.  Kinda like the guy who comes by your store and insists that you pay “insurance” for nothing “unfortunate” happening to your store.  Funny thing is, THAT is illegal.  However, RIAA or MPAA taking you out since they aren’t getting their cut of your “media”, that’s all well and good.

I’ve seen it pointed out that Revision3 was not “innocent” since they had a technical flaw in their system that allowed illegal seeding.  Isn’t that kind of saying “well, since you left your car door unlocked it’s partially your fault your car was stolen.”  Even if I make the mistake of leaving my car door unlocked, which IS stupid, it’s not less of a crime to steal my car.  I know techheads aren’t really into Christian philosophy but hey “he who has not sined cast the first stone”.  Or in this case “he who has not made a technical mistake defend MediaDefender’s DoS attack.”

P2P is great technology that has the potential to revolutionize data sharing on the intenet in the same scope that the “Web” revolutionized the use of the internet.  However, much like the horse buggy makers weren’t happy with the invention of the automobile, “old media” is not happy about P2P potential.  Unlike the invention of the automobile, world governments are slowly making use of the new technology illegal and empowering the modern equivilant of the buggy makers to be above the law.  Fighting this new technology only sets our modern advancement back.  But hey…..a lot of people want to put us back in the dark ages right now.

May

6

A new movie out by Ben Stein called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” has been released and been discussed a bit. Around the same time the movie came out (in limited release) a counter web-site debuted call “Expelled Exposed“. I have been surprised at some of the discussion at blogs I visit. You would think from a lot of media coverage that only backwoods, ignorant inbreeds still believe in Creationism or have doubts about Evolution. Despite what people like Bill Maher say, there are some very intelligent scientist who still believe in Creationism. I studied in college under respected particle physicists who, even if they may not have believe in creationism, definitely believed in God and participated in organized non-denominational Christian churches.

All this, however, is really just smoke above the fire. The true problem, which even with some of it’s possible flaws, that I think the movie “Expelled” points out is the lack of truth when evolution is discussed in our schools. To be clear, I’m not quite sure that creationism, per se, should be taught in science classes. However, there is no doubt in my mind that problems with the theory of evolution are simply ignored in both basic secondary school classes and by leading biological scientist. At this point the cultist followers of evolution, many of them very intelligent scientist, will have conniption fits at my statement about “problems” with evolution.

Fact: There are scientific (including mathematical) problems with the theory of Evolution.

Fact: Until the scientific community both teaches and studies these problems, biological sciences will not advance.

I apologize for my link to such an obviously biased website above. However, as Ben Stein’s movie points out, the scientific community simply isn’t discussing these problems.

For evidence of my second fact I state above lets look at the science of Physics. There are two theories in physics right now which have a lot of “problems” with each other. That is the Theory of Relativity and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics. I remember these from college. I’m no physicists and I can barely understand it. However, what I do remember a quote from Einstein about Quantum Mechanics that says that “[God] does not throw the dice.” and a quote from Steven Hawkins that “Not only does God play dice, but… he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.”

The basics, as I far as my limited understanding goes, is that these two theories seem at odds with each other. However, experimental data provides evidence for each of them to be true. What do physicist do about this? Well, they teach them both, examine them both to try and find a theory that reconciles the differences. The fact is experiments show that facets of each theory hold to be true. The fact is facets of each theory (at least seem to) conflict with each other. There is some reason behind this and a scientific reason for this: a truth. Physicists are simply searching for the “truth”….the answer that explains it. Neither one of these theories is ignored. All aspects of both are taught to students. Eventually, some bright physicist, will come up with a theory that will explain both and science will be one step closer to a unified theory. Science will be advanced.

Let’s come back to the theory of evolution. As I mentioned and pointed out, there are problems with it. The people who have pointed out these problems are not ignorant, backwoods baboons. Nor are they pointing out the problems just because they can’t let go of their religious beliefs. These are scientific (especially the mathematical ones) problems with the theory. Unlike physicists, instead of teaching these problems to young biologist, instead of holding these problems up as counter examples to be examined, these “problems” are being completely and utterly ignored.

I’m not going to venture a guess as to why this is being done. Plenty of other people will postulate the motivation of leading biologist to ignore these problems. Quite frankly, I don’t care as to the motivation. The simple fact is, if these problems aren’t closely examined (and they can’t be without being taught) they will never be reconciled and the science of biology will be stagnant.

New and better science is not developed from constantly seeking to re-enforce current theory. Sure, some evidence and experiments need to be done to prove current theories but the biggest advancements in science are done from examining the current problems with theories. It is only by examining these problems that newer, better theories can be developed and science advance. Devoid of creationism and whether or not it should be taught in science class, it’s time for biological science to start looking at the problems with their current theories instead of constantly looking at evidence to re-enforce current theories. Only then can great strides be made in the science.

Jan

8

I have discussed previously that if keeping Mark McGwire out of the MLB Hall of Fame meant that we could keep Bary Bonds out of the Hall of Fame then it was a sacrafice I was willing to make.  My basic premise was two-fold.  1) We shouldn’t let steroid users into the Hall of Fame.  2) I think Bary Bonds is a jerk so I don’t want him in the Hall of Fame.

I am here to state today a complete reversal of my position.  I made this decision a couple of weeks ago and decided to sleep on it a while.  I have slept on it and decided that it’s the right way of thinking.  My primary motiviation isn’t to find a way to allow Mark McGwire into the Hall of Fame because I think he is a nice guy.  I’m not sure that even if he didn’t use steroids he belongs in the HoF.  My primary motiviation is to find a reasonable way to judge this era in baseball.

Anything that lasts a hundred years won’t stay the same over that time.  Baseball is no exception.  One of the problems of comparing players of vastly different time periods is that the game was different and was played different in those time periods.  When looking at who belongs in the HoF and who doesn’t we don’t try to equate the periods.  We decide whether the specific player was a HoF player during his era.

Right or wrong, good or bad, pretty or ugly, the recent era in baseball will be known as the “Steroid Era”.  There is simply no going back.  This era in baseball is marked with the knowledge that some players had an unfair advantage over others because they used performance enhancing drugs.  They’re not all clean but I doubt they are all dirty either.  That is the simple fact of the era.  So, given what happened during the era we have to decide “who was best and deserves HoF status?”

The fact is Mark McGwire (might have been) one of the best of the “Steroid Era”.  Barry Bonds is one of the best of the “Steroid Era”.  They deserve consideration for the HoF independent of whether they used steroids or not because they were some of the best of their “era”.  Does that mean that some will not be considered because they chose to play by the rules?  Yes.  Could they have been considered if everyone was clean?  Yes.  Is that unfair to them?  Yes. When deciding who is the best of an era we simply cannot play “what ifs”.  We don’t have the ability to go back in time and re-calculate performances based on “what ifs”. It would all be speculation with a wide margin for error.

So, we look at what really happened and judge it from there.  It’s all we can do. 

You don’t know how much it pains me to come to this conclusion because it pretty much, in my mind, puts Barry Bonds in the HoF.  But I think it is the only reasonable way of judging people of the era available to us.  We’ll never know the whole story of who did and who didn’t.  The only reasonable options are to drop steroid use from consideration or not to let anyone in from the era.  I think the second choice is a lot more unreasonable than the first choice.

So, there we have it.

Jan

3

So, it seems that the “real” media has actually covered the latest lawsuit by the RIAA that I already discussed after coverage from the Washington Post.  A lot of coverage is saying “no, no, no, the RIAA did NOT say ripping CDs is illegal”.  However, what they are missing is that it is in fact the RIAAs stance that ripping CDs IS illegal.  You want to parse words?  Let’s parse words.  From the RIAAs website:

Copying CDs

  • It’s okay to copy music onto an analog cassette, but not for commercial purposes.
  • It’s also okay to copy music onto special Audio CD-R’s, mini-discs, and digital tapes (because royalties have been paid on them) – but, again, not for commercial purposes.
  • Beyond that, there’s no legal “right” to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R. However, burning a copy of CD onto a CD-R, or transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won’t usually raise concerns so long as:
    • The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
    • The copy is just for your personal use. It’s not a personal use – in fact, it’s illegal – to give away the copy or lend it to others for copying.
  • The owners of copyrighted music have the right to use protection technology to allow or prevent copying.
  • Remember, it’s never okay to sell or make commercial use of a copy that you make.

THAT is what the RIAA says about copying to your computer.  Notice the bold and especially underlined parts.  They don’t say it’s legal.  They say “it won’t raise concerns”.  In other words they are reserving the right to say it’s illegal should they so chose in the future.  Another way of putting it is to say “We promise not to try and sue you or this as long as you follow our little rules we have set up. 

I want to emphasis this the RIAA itself does not say that copying a CD for personal use is legal!!!!!!!!  What hey say is that it usually won’t raise concerns.  That means there are circumstances in which you follow their little guidelines and it can raise concerns.  I personally would like to know what my liability is.  Right now I don’t.  I know that I will “usually” be ok as long as I follow their guidelines.  I have no idea when I wont be ok even if I do follow their guidelines.

In other words they hold the keys to the kingdom.  The U.S. government has relequished control over copyright enforcement to the RIAA.  Don’t get me wrong; they should be able to do some enforcement of their copyright.  But should they be the ones to decide what is fair use and legal and what is not?  From all appearances and practical purposes, right now they are. 

 

Dec

26

First, let’s review my predictions from the first Sports Extravaganza and how close I was:

  1. Joe Torre out, Joe Girardi in. Book it

Correct

  • Cubs won’t be bought by Mark Cuban. They will be bought by an investment group

    • Has this been resolved yet?

  • Tony Romo is an average to above average QB (not another Bret Fare or Hall of Famer) surrounded by good players with a phenom offensive coordinator, Jason Garret.

    • The jury is still out on this one. But he is looking better now to me than he used to. I’ll still reserve judgement.

  • Jason Garret is a phenom offensve coordinator being groomed to be a head coach by Jerry Jones

    • I still think this is gonna happen.

  • La Russa is out. I don’t know who is in but here is a wild pick. . . . . Ozzie Smith

    • I cannot express my joy that I was wrong about this one. I am very happy that La Russa is still the manager.

    Now on to Baseball and Steroids.  As for the Mitchell Report I think it was fine and I don’t have a problem with it.  The biggest complaint I have heard was that there was nothing someone who was accused in the report could do to refute the charges.  I’m sorry but that is simply not true.  The fact is each of them were invited to speak to Mitchell about the accusations BEFORE the report was released.  That was their time to refute any charges in the report.  I know most, if not all, declined to speak to Mitchell.  I’m sorry but that’s their fault.  They had their chance and they “declined”.  Maybe they shouldn’t have followed the advice of he Union on that one.

    The second issue I have heard is that the report does nothing to help solve the problem.  I also disagree with this this assertion.  The fact is it offers up possible solutions and ways to improve the situation even more than the steps taken by baseball the last couple of years.  It provides political capitol to the Comissioner and owners over the union to actually implement these solutions.  I understand the position of the union to protect the players and their privacy but that protection does no good if at best it brings into question the integrity of the sport and at worse make Congress step in to do something about it.

    Speaking of Congress: I have seen comments about “what business does Congress have looking into baseball and steroids?”  The fact is MLB is exempt from anti-trust laws.  They have a legalized monopoly.  Whenever you are “allowed” to do something by the government they can at any time chose to not “allow” you to do it anymore. From that perspective anything that Congress doesn’t like about MLB they can use their legal leverage to change it.  I’m not saying they should or that it’s right, I’m just pointing out the conditions of the situation.

    Finally, the people name in the Mitchell Report:  Basically, the report layed out any information they could legally get their hands on.  They did not have the legal power of supena or search warrants.  The information they got mostly centered around New York teams and people connected to them. That’s because the primary source they had was based out of the New York area.  If they had access to more sources then more people in more areas would have been named.  I have no problem with them being named.  I lays all information that MLB has access to out on he table.  Now you can’t blame MLB for glossing over the problem. 

    Many have brought up the “innocent util proven guilty” phrase and the idea that revealing names does no good.  I disagree.  The fact of the matter is if they hadn’t released the names to the public then we would know that baseball was hiding something.  By releasing the names and the condition of which they aquired those names we know how good or bad the evidence against the named players are and judge it for ourselves.  There is not “guilt” or “innocence” associated the players named in the report.  The report is simply he evidence and it is up to each person to decide how valid the evidence is.  If you assume some player is guilty due to some list you read on the internet then YOU are guilty of ignorance and I (and anyone else for that matter) can’t do anything to stop you from being ignorant.

    I don’t think any official “penalty” needs to occur to the players named.  The evidence of what thay may or may not have done is in the report for people to judge on their own.  There is currently a testing program in place for them to either pass or fail.  Possible improvements suggested in the report may be implemented and they will be under those test improvements.  From here forward when they are considered for the Hall of Fame or any other position then the evidence of their past deeds are known and the individual who has to make that judgement can consider them and weight the accordingly.

    Dec

    21

     025jacksondm_468x561.jpgklytus.jpg

    Recent picture of Micheal Jackson (Top)
    Klytus from the movie Flash Gordon - 1980 (Bottom)

    Dec

    12

    From arstechnica: RIAA: Those CD rips of yours are still “unauthorized”.

    So, you buy a Sony MP3 player and use the Sony software that comes with it to RIP a Sony CD to your Sony computer and copy it to your Sony MP3 player.  Sony then pays the RIAA to sue you for copying the Sony CD to the Sony MP3 player with the Sony software.

    Can anyone else see what’s wrong with this picture?

    Dec

    12

    So I guess there are some people questioning Falcon’s owner, Arthur Blank, comment that

    There’s a lot of roadblocks to Michael coming back and even playing in the National Football League, Tony. Let’s assume he’s out for three seasons, 07, 08 and 09. If he doesn’t watch himself and eats a lot of fried chicken and fries in prison, comes out 215 pounds he’s not going to be the same athlete he was.

    The charge is that it was a racial remark.  Well, I’m not football expert but I recall hearing that Blank and Vick were pretty good buddies.  So, I wondered “Did Blank use the term ‘fried chicken’ because he knew that Vick actually, well, liked fried chicken?”  I did a simple good search “Michael Vick favorite food”.  I found this from http://www.nflplayers.com/.

     vickprofile.png

    Grant it, it doesn’t say “fried” chicken breast…….but is possible, just possible that Vick had told Blank that he really liked fried chicken?

    Dec

    4

    And now an oldie but goodie with updates from yours truely:

    Real Programmers…

    - Author Unknown


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