The stupidity of ignoring a gift.

Flat Rock quoted via reference Robert Green Ingersoll, the quote being:

"I do not consider it a very important question whether Christ was the son of god or not. After all, what difference does it make? If he never existed, we are under the same obligation to do what we believe is right; and believing that he was the son of god or disbelieving it, is of no earthly importance. If we are ever judged at all it will be by our actions, and not by our beliefs. If Christ was good enough to die for me, he certainly will not be bad enough to damn me for honestly failing to believe in his divinity." - Robert Green Ingersoll, (via Cynical-C where Ingersoll is a daily feature)

I wonder if I had a billion dollars, and died, placing that money, and whatever would be gained from insurance, into a trust. The trust had one function. Anyone who realized that they were poor, and could not be able to come up with (pick an arbitrarily large figure of money) would be able to receive it for the asking. The key is, they'd have to ask for it. Everybody who wants it, can get it. There are ideasets attached to the money. Stuff that may or may not be palatable to you because of your choice of actions. So, you can say that you don't believe I exist. Except the offer has been made. You can say that I lived a bad life, or incomprehensible. But the offer still stands. You could say that it's bloody awful that the money had to be available after I died.

After all this, I think I'd be stupid not to take the offer. I mean, anyone who offers a gift, and you would say, "nah, I don't need it/want it" has nobody but himself to blame for not taking the gift. It's not that Christ is bad to damn people to hell. It's just the same thing as people staying poor because they didn't ask for help (and it was offered to them). If you don't accept the gift, you get ... nothing.

Specific to this quote, though... If Christ never existed, you really aren't under any obligation to do what you believe is right. And you don't necessarily have a foundation to know what is right. If morality becomes relative to individuality, then why be moral?

VersaMail Exchange ActiveSync

Here's the deal I had the ubiquitous error for Exchange Server 2003 Exchange ActiveSync for Versamail.

I have two domains set up and I know one works. The other one just didn't work.

The difference?

Well, after all the working of the ONLY Microsoft article that mentions anything, it comes down to this:

1) I have an Exchange Server running Outlook Web Access behind a firewall that is NOT ISA
2) I am ONLY passing SSL to my Exchange Server
3) I have only one Exchange server (no front/back issues)
4) I had a problem with Sharepoint installed on the same box (doesn't appear to be the total issue).
5) I applied all the fun stuff on http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817379

What I found to fix: It seems that the internal network was trying to resolve my domain name to the IP address outside the firewall, which made no sense. I set my internal/LAN DNS server to resolve the name that was on my SSL cert to the LAN IP address of my Exchange server. This seemed to fix the communication errors of the request and added another benefit: I could now use the OWA (outlook web access) on my LAN with the same SSL cert, external registered domain name and no errors.

Fate is dispassionate

"Why is this happening to me?" Why shouldn't it be happening to you? What makes you as an individual uniquely unlikely for something to be happening to you? Whether it's your choice or the choices made by those around you, you are the recipient of the effects of those choices. Sometimes, it's not about a choice made, but then again, what are you complaining about? What are you doing with the events that have happened in your life? Does it make you worry about the next event or does it make you want to continue living for the sake of not being promised tomorrow?

It's true enough. Tomorrow was never promised to you. Today is the only day you have to make tomorrow work for you or those around you.

Make today a great day. Hug someone close to you and make good choices.

IM ON UR WEBSITE KILLIN UR MEME

CAN I HAZ A NEW MEME?

How Good *is* Vista Anyway?

To hear them tell it, Vista is the be all and end all of security. The charts are massive in size and point out some things that perhaps zealots don't view as part of their dogma.

You tell someone that Global Warming is a made-up thing, and you are deemed, essentially, a heretic. You tell someone that Vista is better than Linux, you better be right"unbiased", whatever that means.

Do I like Linux? Yes. Do I think it's rock solid stable? Yes. Do I think it's all that an OS can be? Depends. My experience with MythTV left me unimpressed. I'm reasonably comfortable in almost any PC environment that I encounter. Mac, Linux, BSD, etc. doesn't make any difference to me. Spending hours and days compiling stuff may be fun for some people, but for me, it's quickly losing its luster. I *know* I'm going to have to get Vista, if only to support it for the people who give me the money to do so. Based upon reviews, I think I'd personally think about upgrading to Vista Home Premium for the MCE.

Do I want to roll Vista out in my office environment? Not if I can help it. I was on Windows 2000 Professional across the board even until 2005. You want to know why the uptake was so slow for XP? Simply the same as XP->Vista. WHY? Now, I'm on XP and I don't want to go back, to be sure, but I tell you, Windows 2000 Professional *was* perhaps the best OS of its time.

Back to the ZDnet article. The comments are telling, and as much as I don't want to admit, very persuasive on Microsoft's behalf: If Microsoft is claiming so little vulnerabilities in its first 6 months for the shipped package it ships (15GB OS???? FIFTEEN GIGABYTES?) versus hundreds of vulnerabilities that, say, RedHat ships, -- even if not installed, even if not used -- it does beg the question, "How much junk/buggy/vulnerable software is worth including in a package?" I'm coming to a saner conclusion. Stop distributing distros with buggy software. Leave it to the end user to put their own software on their system. At the very least, it appears that a Linux distribution should come with appropriate drivers and xorg and an appropriate package manager/install utility and basically nothing else.

Come to think of it, that PC vs Mac Bloat seems all the more apropos if you take it into consideration of what Linux "provides" you with on the install CD. Or maybe Microsoft Vista vs Linux is the eternal feud that cannot die.

Nonetheless, keep it coming. I long to read about the next volley.

MythTV vs Windows MCE?

After using the same hardware for both and the utter lack of support for my ATI Radeon 9250 on MythTV, I went to Windows MCE. I'm sorry, but YGWYPF is relevant here. Just to assuage the haters: I learned that I should have gone with nVidia because of lack of ATI Support. However, I'm just going to have to say that if I want to use a piece of software and it doesn't support my hardware (and a reasonable request to support a reasonable HW), I don't care how cool it is.

Also, if you ask around, MythTV (even KnoppMyth) isn't always just plug and play. There's tweaking and tweaking.

I am running Windows MCE 2005 with a Hauppauge PVR 150 with the remote/no FM tuner.

Some thoughts.

I used Bart's way to create a bootable XP MCE CD. After creating one coaster regarding "Please Insert Service Pack 2" I learned/figured out that all you need to do is have an appropriate win51ic.sp2 or win51ip.sp2 file in the files directory. Don't have an sp2 file? copy the win51ip.sp1 to win51ip.sp2. Yes, it's that simple.

Installing XP MCE requires information under the CMPNENTS folder, so if you're making a bootable install CD from an OEM installed PC with no OS CDs that came with, that's all that's really necessary: the i386 folder and the CMPNENTS folder. I hear tell, that it's likely that may be bigger than one CD can hold, but you can make a bootable DVD with it.

Get the Hauppauge Remote to Work with Windows MCE 2005: You might want to have a decent irremote.ini file for the Hauppauge remote that you might have gotten with the x50 package to work in MCE. It's rather slick.

I'm using my Radio Shack 15-2116 remote with AUX redirected to an alternate TV 0054. Others have used VCR 0081, which doesn't seem to work for me for the numbers. Since the 15-2116 is a learning remote, I simply learned the navigation and VCR functions from the Hauppauge remote. Trust me, this will increase your Wife Acceptance Factor if you get it right.

Now I'm attempting to fill my hard drive with appropriate media for family. If all goes well, the transition to a large screen TV for the bedroom won't be too horrible.

ETA: Actually, I never got all my codes stored in the 15-2116 remote. I might try the JP1 route, but I might just buy another clicker.

Get the IRBlaster driver to work: Also, if you are getting an IRBlaster error HW Not Found use the Beta 4 driver of the IRBlaster s/w.

How bad *is* Vista, anyway?

As a "what the heck", I added myself as a Zolved.com guru, thinking I might be able to help one thing or another. I get notified of one to five questions per day posted.

The questions vary, but can be summed up thusly:

I just installed/upgraded Vista. I can't get __X__ to work.

Mostly, X is Mail from Yahoo and/or Earthlink or X is Sound. SOUND?

Well, to be fair, (or not), the Sound issue is likely either driver incompatibility or it's because Microsoft Vista *starts* with digital output, and there is a configuration change necessary to make the audio-out be analog.

I am not running Vista myself, but I may have to do so in order to support the legions of people who have done-it (in?) themselves. XP works, people. If you want Vista eyecandy on XP, there are ways to do it.