Archive for February, 2010
If Guns Were Treated Like Cars
Feb 26th
1. You could get a simple license from the State for a nominal fee and only
have to take a test that any idiot could pass. You’d only have to renew it
every 10 years for 40 years and maybe retake the test if you move out of state.
2. You could kill and injure people with your gun while drunk and still have
your lawyer get your gun back because you need it for work.
3. You’d have half the tax burden of the county and State dedicated to
improving the shooting ranges and facilities. The public agrees this is never
good enough to suit them and with all the gunowners from California moving in,
the range capacity will never catch up. Lines at the range are always shown on
TV with the newsies deploring the crowding.
4. You could carry in any State at any time because carry and possession of
your gun is honored nationwide and is considered a basic American civil right.
5. You would see commercials on TV pushing the newest, latest guns which you
could lease for just $25 per month subject to the fine print.
6. You could finance a fancier gun than you can really afford by taking a 5
year loan with approved credit.
7. You would have a gun safe built into every house. In the upscale houses you
would have 3 gun safes. Inexpensive houses and mobile homes would just have a
gunrack by the door.
8. You’d have gun storage lockers at the shopping mall in which to store your
rifle while shopping. This in order to free your arms for packages. The
convenience of the shopper is paramount.
9. You could buy ammunition at the 7-11. Full-service station means they’ll
reload your magazines for you.
10 The news would stop reporting gun accidents unless more than 10 children
were killed at one time. Onesy-twosey would only be notable in small towns or
if Princess Di’s bodyguard shot her while aiming at paparazzi.
11 If the price of ammunition rose 20% the Federal Government would release war
reserves of ammo to bring the price back down to the consumer’s comfort level.
Ammo would carry a 50% tax to finance public shooting ranges. The Teapot Dome
scandal would have been about a lead mine.
12 We’d teach gunsmithing in vocational-education programs.
13 Every 16 year old would be looking forward to the day when he could take the
family revolver to school. The rich kids would get a high capacity semi-auto
pistol on their 16th birthday and endanger everyone when they learn to use it
in public.
14 High schools would have large gun lockers to store student’s arms while they
attend classes. Administrators would try to charge for the service to
discourage teen-age gun carrying to school.
15 Schools would have shooter’s education classes to make sure the kids could
pass the test. They would show gory films of gunshot wounds. The squeamish
would throw up.
16 Old people who can hardly see would still be permitted to shoot in public
because to disarm them would be to damage their self-esteem. Families would
wring their hands over holes in the walls and ceiling. Occasionally an oldster
would fire into a schoolyard when they mistake the trigger for the safety.
Legislators would refrain from criticizing because of the AARP’s influence.
17 Congress would be debating alternative weapons systems for people who can’t
afford their own guns.
18 There would be such a thing as "public weapons" for the masses.
19 Congress would be subsidizing weapons for people too limited in means to
afford their own.
20 Congress would be willing to float a loan to Colt’s in order to ensure the
survival of an American company against unfair foreign competition. (Think
"Chrysler")
21 We, except for Ralph Nader, would dismiss 40,000 deaths and 500,000 injuries
per year as "the price of freedom."
22 You would have MADS. Mothers Against Drunk Shooters (instead of HCI). MADS
would conduct a campaign of public education instead of trying to use the force
of government to prohibit irresponsible drinking and shooting.
23 You could rent a gun at any airport if you are over 25 and have a credit
card.
24 You would have the fringe-greenies advocating bows and arrows because they
think gunsmoke is damaging the environment. Al Gore would write a book about
the damaging effects of gunsmoke. Al Gore would also claim to have been a
handloader before his sister died in a powder fire.
25 You’d have huge outcry in the Press and Congress over our dependence on
cheap, imported, foreign ammunition.
26 Ted Kennedy would have shot Mary Jo Kopekne instead. Ted would be a few
thousand dollars richer (bullet:$0.25 vs car:$3000) Ted would stop carrying his
own gun and instead, hire bodyguards to carry fully-automatic weapons under
their coats for him.
27 You’d have businesses like "Jiffy Gun-Clean" to make life convenient. But
you’d always worry that they might not have gotten the magazine fully seated
afterwards.
28 You’d have "Classic Gun Events" with parades on public roads as everyone
with such a classic carries it for all the public to see.
29 You’d have huge eyesores where piles of guns are left to rust in the open at
"Gun Junk Yards". They would charge you outrageous prices to go out back and
pick off a hammer or sear which is probably also worn out like the one you want
to replace.
30 There would be a booming business and debate about substituting non-OEM
parts in the gun repair business.
31 You’d have TV news crews going under cover with hidden cameras to ferret out
"unscrupulous gun smiths." This story would be "old reliable" and works every
year.
32 The Japanese would be trying, and succeeding, at taking over the market for
efficient, reliable high-quality guns. The Koreans would be trying to sneak in
at the low end of the market. The Germans would be selling premium brands based
on better workmanship, longer life, and brand cachet. But their guns would
require you to take it to a gunsmith every 3 months for a complete tear-down
and dimensional inspection at outrageous labor rates. The Italians would paint
their guns flaming red and they would have a reputation for being finicky. The
State Department would be applying pressure to get Japan to allow more US-built
guns into their country. The Japanese would resist the US by saying that
Japanese shooters have extra-special safety requirements that only Japanese
manufacturers can meet.
33 You’d have an entire section of the Saturday Coloradoan devoted to ads for
new and used guns.
34 You’d have a pair of fun-loving gunsmiths on Public Radio doing a show on
gun problems. They’d be named "Tap & Rack"
35 There would have been a terrible TV show back in the black & white days
named "My Mother – The Gun". It starred Jerry Van Dyke and ran just one season.
36 Dean Jones would have made a series of stupid movies starring Herbie the
Love-Gun. Herbie was an adorable anthropomorphized cheap German Saturday Night
Special. Dean Jones would never show his face in public again after these
movies.
37 Competition would be carried on TV all day on Saturdays. The Daytona 500
would be round-count instead of miles. There would be speed contests, endurance
contests, and off-range marksmanship events. NASGUN would create big heroes in
the South and extravagant marketing opportunities.
38 High-schools would paint up a gun in the colors of the opposition and charge
$.25 for you to swing a sledge hammer at that gun during pep rallys.
39 John Elway would own half the gunstores in the Denver Metro area.
40 Wellington Webb’s wife would be carrying the finest English Double shotgun
money can buy while Wellington has body guards to carry his semi-auto pistols
41 Back in the 1970′s during the ammo crisis, Congress would have set a maximum
cyclic rate for autos and semi autos in order to conserve ammo.
42 After Iraq was pushed out of Kuwait, the national cyclic rate was raised to
something all semi-autos can be comfortable with.
43 The Coloradoan would be publishing the locations of range repair work every
week to be sure no one would be inconvenienced.
44 The Beach Boys would have released some songs about guns: "Spring little
Cobray gettin’ ready to strike….. Spring little Cobray with all your
might….." "She’s real fine my Wonder Nine, she’s real fine my Won-der Nine."
"Fun, fun, fun ’til Daddy takes her Kel-Tec away……"
45 Letters to editors would be written decrying that all those Soccer Moms are
lugging .50 cal machine guns around town, wasting ammo and getting in
everybody’s way.
46 Letters to editors would be written responding that putting one’s beginning
driver son or daughter behind a .50 cal would mean that the writer’s offspring
would survive any conflict with lesser armed individuals.
47 Al Gore would claim he invented the .50cal cartridge and say he was sorry.
48 Cities would be experimenting with electric guns but would be surprised to
find that people would step in front of them at the range because they were too
quiet so no one knew the electric gun was there.
49 President Clinton would demand that electric gun manufacturers put a cowbell
on each one to prevent senseless accidents.
50 The National Rifle Association would be reduced to selling travel insurance
for your guns because the rest of society will have seen to it that there would
be no chance that firearms would ever be banned.
Windows 7 has a “God Mode”
Feb 20th
Did you know Windows 7 has a God mode?
It sounds cooler than it is in reality – you’re not invulnerable to BSODs, and the system doesn’t play One of Us when it starts up.
That said, it’s not completely useless either – it gives you a shortcut to all the options in Control Panel and allows you to easily get to usually buried controls.
To enable God Mode, you must first grow a big white beard. Then:
Create a new folder, and call it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
The folder will then change into a shortcut with the Control Panel icon. Double click it, and you’ll get a huge list of easily accessible tweakable options.
On computers running 64-bit Windows 7, God mode reveals 270 options. God Mode also works on Vista, but apparently only the 32-bit version – it will crash the 64-bit one.
Source: http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2010/01/08/how-to-enable-windows-7-god-mode
Gateway LT2104u Netbook and Windows 7 Starter Edition – A Review by Apoc
Feb 17th
It’s not often I find myself writing reviews for products, but every now and then, something comes along that just screams for my attention.
This Valentines day, I was fortunate enough to have a loving gift of a netbook bestowed upon me by my beloved fiancee. In fact, I was even able to pick out my own, along with a RAM upgrade. Sweet deal!
My first impressions over the first couple of days were mixed. I never had to deal with it being really bad on speed because when we picked out our netbooks from Best Buy, we were smart enough to pick up 2GB of ram each, which was installed the second I opened this thing.
I picked this one out of the bunch at the store, because after spending an hour tinkering around with all the netbooks on display, this one was determined to have the best Windows Experience Index, which strangely enough, did not improve after doubling the ram. Oh well, yet I digress.
The speed is acceptable for a netbook, and works just fine most of the time. It tends to run cool most of the time, and the battery life is more than acceptable. It comes with 802.11n wifi, which makes surfing the net quite a pleasant experience, as should be expected from a NETbook. I only had one real gripe from the beginning… the complete lack of Windows XP.
Instead, all the new netbooks at Best Buy now come with Windows 7 Starter preinstalled. This is why I am writing this review. I must warn the general public, and speak my outrage. Listen carefully now.
Windows 7 starter SUCKS.
It is horrible. I can’t even call it an operating system. Seriously, Microsoft, fuck you.
Why on Gods green earth would you make it a limitation on Windows 7 starter that you CAN NOT change the wallpaper of all things? What the FUCK? Seriously? If I could give a grade lower than F for an operating system, this one would win it. I’m serious. It is that bad.
Unfortunately, things get worse from there. After spending roughly 14 hours trying to figure out how to get a Windows XP install onto a usb thumb drive and making it boot, I finally got Windows XP pro on this thing. Only problem was, it was missing the drivers for video and sound. That kind of tends to be a big deal, so I logged into the support site for Gateway computers to download new drivers, and what do you think I found? They only provided drivers for Windows 7. For a laptop that I knew for a fact ran XP up until about a month or so ago.
I contacted Gateway customer support via email, and 6 hours later, the only response I had was a support representative asking me where I acquired my windows xp disk from.
I was pretty upset at this point (no, fuck upset, I was raging) and responded to the rep that my source of windows xp was completely irrelevant to them sending me a link to download some drivers for the laptop I JUST bought from them. A couple hours later I heard back and they basically refused to provide me with drivers, even after I told them if I didn’t get them I was going to return the netbook for a refund.
I will not be buying from Gateway again. The worst part of the experience? The preinstalled recovery partition is corrupt and doesn’t work, so I’m pretty much on my own there.
I don’t recommend purchasing this netbook for anyone who isn’t very tech savvy, and very patient. It will drive them nuts. But I suppose if someone is willing to just accept the limitations of windows 7 starter, and just use it as-is, it’s a fine product.
Read between the lines: The hardware is good, but the operating system and the customer support are horrible.
So this one gets a big middle finger to both Microsoft (especially them) and Gateway. Learn the lesson. Don’t put such hefty restrictions on an already expensive product, and if somebody asks you for help with the $300+ product you just bought 2 days ago, GIVE IT TO THEM.
Fortunately for me, I am tech savvy, and I did have the patience, and I finally did manage to track down windows xp drivers from, of all places, the hardware manufacturer’s web sites, Gateway, how hard would it have been to just send me there?
Note: I will be posting another article later explaining just HOW to get Windows XP on a thumb drive, get it installed on your netbook, and will provide the drivers needed for this one on my web site, just so all of you don’t have to spend hours hunting it all down too. Unfortunately, tools like PeToUSB did not work for me, and I expect many others to encounter the same problems.
UPDATE! Tutorial for installing Windows XP on this laptop
Ok, so this turned out to be a rather popular article, if the page hits and comments are any indication! Now for me to make good on my word and provide a step-by-step for everyone else to follow.
Step 1
You need a copy of Windows XP, and I recommend searching torrent sites for a Windows XP Black Edition release, since they are well put together and clean, and is what I used for this netbook. They are basically an n-Lite version prepackaged with some good freeware utilities.
Step 2
There is no need to mount the .iso using Daemon Tools or any other program. Simply use WinRar or any other compatible archiving program to extract the contents of the disc on to your drive.
Step 3
Download WinSetupFromUSB and install it.
Step 4
Run WinSetupFromUSB, and it should look like this:
Step 5
Under Windows 2000/XP/2003 Source, select the folder that your windows install cd (i386, etc) is located in. (The folder you extracted the .iso to)
Step 6
Select the target USB thumb drive. I picked up a PNY 4GB thumb drive from Wal-Mart for about $12, but anything with 2GB or better will work fine. Note: It may or may not be necessary to format the thumb drive as FAT using Windows prior to this. Usually, the RMPrepUSB button will format the thumb drive just fine.
Step 7
Click GO! This process can take a while, depending on your hardware. Do not interrupt it or remove the drive at any time during this process.
Step 8
Enter the BIOS of the netbook, and be sure it is set to boot from USB. Mine was already automatically set to this, so odds are good yours will be too.
Step 9
Insert the thumb drive into your netbook with it powered off, and turned it on. You should see a “press any key to boot from CD” option or something similar.
Step 10
Proceed as normal with XP installation. In some cases, you may not be able to install to the C:\ drive. This is OK and will not impact anything. Sometimes the default restore partition will insist on being the C:\ drive, just create a new partition, and format as NTFS, then install to the new partition.
Step 11
The first part of the XP install will finish, and the computer will reboot. There is no need to press any key on boot this time, but DO NOT REMOVE the thumb drive yet. If you do, you can cause serious problems. Instead you will be presented with a special menu provided by WinSetupFromUSB, providing about 5 or 6 options to pick from. Start at the top option, and press enter. These options are presented because of the variable “accidents” that can happen from this sort of hack. If the first one does not work, reboot again, and select the second, and so forth. The 3rd option worked great for me.
Step 12
Let XP finish it’s install, and then you just need to track down the drivers. Gateway, unfortunately, is no help at all in this department. Simply open device manager, and go to the vendor web sites for the hardware, and download the updates yourself. Windows update might be able to grab some for you too. I recommend grabbing the Intel On-board Video drivers first, since it will make things easier.
DON’T PANIC
Assuming you use this method on the Gateway LT2104u, using the Windows XP Black install, you will have wireless and LAN drivers, and pretty much all the stuff you will need to be able to get the other drivers off the internet. If I can track down where I backed mine up, I will zip them up and post them here for download later.
Step 13
Enjoy Windows XP on your new netbook! It runs much better than Windows 7 Starter does, and can probably run more apps.
Notes: This tutorial is not entirely specific to the Gateway LT2104u, and should work on most computers, as well as desktops. If this is too much for you, your other option is to buy a usb cd drive (I got a cd-r/w drive on ebay for $20 with shipping) and proceed to install Windows as normal.
I hope this helps!


