So, if you need a Blu-Ray disc, but do not have the physical hardware to load one, and do not have a real ISO file on hand, then you can use this one. Feel free to download and use this for whatever you want. There is no actual video in this Blu-Ray ISO file, but it will trick any program that is requesting a Blu-Ray disc.

LINK: http://www.corusa.com/public/virtual_bd_disc.iso

Comment here if you used this, and tell me what program you used it with, or what purpose you needed it for. I am curious to know

First and foremost, if you were not alarmed half-way through the paragraph, then wake up. These suggestions are paid for, by the companies first and foremost. Secondly, if there is no paid for suggestion for a certain letter, Google then gives you results based on your location. Again, these are still not purse results, since someone in one city might get the suggestions, but someone else, halfway across the globe might never find what they need. I believe this is deceptive on Google’s part, so I went through the entire alphabet, and posted below the top 3 suggestions for each letter. Check it out…

Amazon
American Airlines
AOL
—
Bank Of america
Best Buy
Bed, Bath and Beyond
—
Craigslist
CNN
Chase
—
Dictionary
Dallas Morning News
Dillard’s
—
Ebay
ESPN
Expedia
—
Facebook
Facbook Login
Funbrain
—
Gmail
Google Maps
Google.com
—
Hotmail
Hulu
Home Depot
—
Itunes
Ikea
IMDB
—
JCPenny
Justin Beber
James Avery
—
Kohls
Kroger
Keller ISD
—
Lowes
Lady Gaga
Lost
—
Myspace
Mapquest
MSN
—
Netflix
Nordstrom
NTTA
—
Office Depot
Orbitz
Olive Garden
—
Pandora
Poptropica
Pizza Hut
—
Quotes
QVC
Quotes about life
—
Realtor.com
Reverse Phone Lookup
Rooms To Go
—
Southwest Airlines
Sams Club
Skype
—
Target
Texas Lottery
Translator
—
USPS
UPS
United Airlines
—
Verizon Wireless
Verizon
Victoria Secret
—
Walmart
Weather
Wikipedia
—
XM Radio
Xbox Live
Xbox
—
You Tube
Yahoo mail
Yahoo
—
Zappos
Zip codes
Zip codes by city

Just for kicks, I then browsed to Google.ca, and started over again with the letter “a”. My results were completely different, not even one word was the same until I got to “F”…I received “Facebook” on both the default and Canadian sites. Google was now suggesting words that it deemed Canadians would be more desiring to see, and I am sure they were as filtered down as the default domain was, perhaps even more so.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that everything in our society is already filtered so much that it is hard for us to really know what the truth is. Is Google really going to be a part of that? When you want to know the truth about something, you want the rawest, most pure data you can get, right? So that your decision is based on an accurate starting point rather than a list of assumptions and judgments already made by a corporate entity. With Google being the number one search engine that the public uses, they not only have the responsibility, but the duty to give the public information that is unfiltered. By not doing this, they are in fact giving you a polished, cleaned up, and pre-filtered list of results and suggestions that THEY deem to be important. The word important here means “someone paid Google enough to make it on the first page by buying AdWords”. Never heard of that term? Yes, “Google AdWords” is a product that companies can buy to boost their rankings, and get closer to the page one results. Most people do not go past page two when trying to get results, much less page three, so Google has created this system whereby companies can pay tons and tons of money; I am talking about millions a year to Google, to end up on the first page. I guarantee you, that every one of the big companies that are listed in those suggestions above have marketing teams that have the sole task of funding Google with enough money to keep them on top. I find this to not only be deceptive, but inaccurate.

If I were to do a history report on the Revolutionary War back in 1996, when the World Wide Web was only a few years old, then I would most likely get hard data from search engines like InfoSeek.com/Go.com and Lycos (way before Google’s time). If I were do conduct those same searches now on Google, in 2010, I guarantee you I would get some kind of sponsor or company influenced in my results which would then lead to a site, possibly owned by that company, giving me information about so called “history”. What is to prevent these companies from taking part in revisionist history practices that better fuel their company’s agenda?

For example, Wikipedia was created and owned by a guy named Jimmy Wales, who claims to be an “Objectivist” (his own made up word); but how objective can one person be? In fact, it has been the complaint many times that Wikipedia is a front to fuel the liberal agenda.

(Source: http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia)

And here I am giving you a man-made site as a source, to refute another man-made site as being bias and filtered…you decide for yourself what the truth is. My point, in this blog, is that in the same way Wikipedia cannot be trusted as a source of fact, neither can Google. Through million dollar contracts with major heavyweights in the corporate world, influencing search results on every topic, Google can no longer be an empirical form of truth and knowledge. It is sad that a company parades around as a virtuous white knight, doing no evil, and providing everything for free, when at its core, it values profit much more than knowledge. Don’t get me wrong, capitalism is good, but you don’t go around pretending to be a humanitarian when your bottom line is all that matters to you in the end.

Google is just like all the rest; don’t go falling in love with them just because they “appear” on the surface to be do-gooders. If anything they are doing more harm in how they filter and taint results, since the results found by users are what fuel what is considered “popular”. If those results are based on spoofed and cherry-picked data, then the results mean nothing.

This is where my story turns into a review.  Here are the Pros and Cons of the Netflix “experience”.

PRO: You can stream movies, CON: You can only stream a few movies, and usually B-movies or knock offs with the exception of a few that might be good, but never saw a single oscar nomination, much less an award.

PRO: You can setup multiple profiles/logins restricted to specific MPAA ratings. Once for me and the wife, and possibly one for kids when they get old enough. CON: No instant streaming allowed on sub-profiles, this the only reason for a profile is to have your own DVD rental queue…whoopie. Oh, and another thing – once you create a profile you cannot delete it, even from the main administrator account.  Huh? What is the purpose for this “Feature” (dare I call it a feature).  If you can add something to your database, you should be able to remove it. Very lame.

PRO: You can now stream to the Wii! Yay.  We have a Wii, and the interface is cool, but wait…CON: You have to have the Wii Netflix Disc in every single time you want to watch a movie…Seriously? Why was this not made a channel downloadable from the Wii Store?  Was this not common sense.  Speaking of lack of common sense…

PRO: (no more PROs, just CONS), CON: You cannot limit or link the Wii to a specific profile/rating, like “G “for your kids only.  The Wii does not allow for user login, meaning it hard-links your device to your account.  It also uses the default account, no profile control or limitation, meaning that your kids get to see all the history/activity of movies that maybe you and your spouse have watched.  Do I really want my kid coming to me and asking if he can watch “A Few Good Men”? No thank you, thus I have to keep the Netflix disc out of the Wii and locked away whenever I am not there. Thanks Netflix! Stellar job.

CON: No ability to clear your history/cache of “Recently Watched Items”.  Again, as stated earlier, on the Wii you can see everything you have ever watched for the last 100 movies or so.  When I want to let my kid pick out a movie, do I really want him just one keystroke away from being able to see all the mature movies mommy and daddy have watched? (By “mature”, I do not mean “adult”, I mean PG, PG-13, and possibly R rated movies that are no appropriate for children). Thanks again Netflix…there another reason I have to keep the Wii disc locked away. Much appreciated.

CON: No way to assign a profile to a Netflix enabled device, thus no parental control available on the Wii.  Huh??!  Netflix does realize this is a CHILD’S TOY right?! No parental control available in the Netflix Wii client. Solid work Nintendo and Netflix. Now my kids can play Super Mario Brothers, and if squashing goombas does not satisfy their killer instincts, they can always click a button and watch Stallone shoot bodies in half with a 50-caliber gun at point blank in Rambo! Alright!

CON: Technical support is incompetent.  I called them up and asked them to make some of these things work on their end, like limiting the Wii to only playing G movies, and they said they cannot do that.  So I asked them to delete the test profile I created that I no longer needed (since I cannot use profiles for streaming anyway), and they said that they could not delete it from their end.  Huh? You have a DB back-end that you cannot edit at headquarters? Again, congratulations on a fine programming job.

Now, with all this said, I of course realize it is 100% the parents’ responsibility to watch you own kids.  Of course my child would never have access to this, but my point is, shouldn’t I be able to give them access to this, in a limited fashion? I cannot even do that now? the program should be made in a way to allow the parent to give full or no access, depending on each family’s situation and needs.  Until Netflix releases a 2.0 with the above issues fixed, then no Wii access for my kid(s) and frankly we’re thinking about ditching it altogether due to some of these common sense items not being in the initial release. They have a lot of things that should have been caught and revisited by the developers in the QA process, but were not.

Try again Netflix and Nintendo.  Good attempt, but it is just that, and attempt, and definitely not ready for prime time.

Now, with that knowledge, sometimes we have to reply to an email that we have already moved from the primary email Inbox over to the backup email’s Inbox.  So, when I select the option to “Reply” or “Reply All” (usually), to an email that I have already backed up, the new message window shows that the email will be coming from “conn...@domain.com”.  I have the manually change the drop-down selection to my main account every single time I reply to an already backed-up email.  This would normally be a minor inconvenience, but my primary email account has a signature image/text attachment, so when I select that email account from the drop down, it auto adds that signature to my reply, and it always puts it at the top, so I have to cut/paste it below my message.  Well, I have found a way around this annoyance in Thunderbird.

Go into your email account settings, and on the top-level properties of the backup/secondary account that you move everything to, set the Email address to the primary email “con...@domain.com” (for this example, in my case).  Just underneath the top-level properties, you are still using the correct password and username (which is most likely the backup email address, or at least the part before the “@” symbol, depending on how your server dictates login).  In any case, this will allow you to automatically make Replies from the backup account automatically use the primary account when sending the Reply.  Also if you use a signature, be sure to add that option to the backup email settings as well.  Now you can type Replies from your backup account just like you do from your primary account.

Windows 7 has the look and feel of Vista, which some users may hate, or never got used to, but honestly I prefer it now to XP, and I was a die-hard XP fanboy long after everyone else had switched. In fact, at work I went straight from Windows XP to Windows 7, just a month ago, because XP was so stable…why change? Well, the reason I went with Windows 7 was not only the glowing reviews I had heard from the same people who said “Vista is horrible,” but also the fact that Windows XP will stop being supported in summer of 2010…that leaves only 5 more months (max) from the time of writing this, to get Windows Updates for XP. I also do not like to wait until the last minute to switch because you and I both know that Microsoft always focuses on their new product more, and will be making it more secure, while not focusing as much on XP since it is a dying product. It makes no sens, business-wise for Microsoft to invest any more major funding or efforts to support XP when after summer of 2010 it will be extinct!

If you are like me, then for the longest time you have hung on to Windows XP, because let’s face it…it was the best operating system that Microsoft ever released (once SP1 came out that is). I believe that Windows 7 has replaced this position by leaps and bounds.

Windows 7 still has the UAC feature, but you do not get popups every two seconds anymore. This was also fixed in SP2 for Windows Vista, so you may not have noticed it for a while. Also, file-copying is much faster when copying around the local harddrive, or to/from other Windows 7 based drives due to the Ext4 file-system being used. I will not go into the details of how this allows for faster throughput, because honestly I do not understand it fully myself, but the basic concept lies around less verification (but still secure) and more streams pushing the data…(in layman’s terms obviously).

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that Windows 7 has the looks of Vista, but the functionality of XP. Like XP it is stable, fast, and just gets things done; while at the same time (even on low-end hardare) giving you the look and environment of Vista – which honestly does not take long to get used to if you give it more than a day of usage.

Let me know what you all think of Windows 7. If you are using the ‘Home’ or versions other than “Ultimate”, then I cannot guarantee your experience will be as rewarding as mine. The ultimate version of Windows 7 (just like “Professional” with XP), is the only version of Windows worth installing in my opinion. Comments?!!

The company I work for makes security software; and I don’t mean antivirus or spyware protection.  I am talking about access control software, facility controls software.  Our software can work with a variety of hardware, like intercom systems, entry detection and access card systems, perimeter detection systems, cctv audio/video systems, OPC/BMS management systems.  That last one is for building management, knowing what irrigation pipe just exploded or which UPS battery is ab0ut to fail, etc…So our software is the front-end that integrates all these things into one Workstation screen for the end user.  If they want to ope/control doors from this computer, they can.  they can also send alarms to certain phones through the intercom system, or change card access and who can get into which parts of the building, monitor cctv IP cameras; and do all of this through one piece of software, our software.
That is the shortest nutshell explanation I can think of for what we do.  So, in order for our software to work, we must have functioning hardware.  Well the panels that control each door were mostly functioning but there were 5 or 6 that were offline and needed to be reset or worked on.  Well, the people at the building, who hired our client to bring me over and fix this stuff, did not allow me to work on it until 2:30pm (that is when all the employees leave).  Well, great, ok, so we will work on them from 2:30 to 6pm or 7pm right? Nope.  They would kick us out each day at 5pm, and even if we had that 2.5hours to work, the people we needed keys from to GET to the actual panels in the first place had already left.  Also, the most simple of request had a chain of command, had to be in writing, and required 14 signatures.  I needed the IT contractor to come out and check cabling in the garage, where they use RFID readers.  I requested this on Friday, and they came out Thursday the NEXT week (6 days later).  Hmm, when you hire someone to come over for only 2 and a half weeks, don’t you think you would want a faster response time that that? It’s like they thought I had all year to wait for action, and that I lived there, rather than being on a business trip.  So, this “2:30pm” business got in the way quit a bit, as well as the delay in the response time for simple requests.  A good example of the unnecessary chain of command was seen when I asked for a key to a certain room that had a panel in it that I needed to inspect.  I requested the jey in the morning around 9am, and we got it around 2:10.  The guy brought the key to the room, fiddled around a little with it, then realized it was the wrong key.  Instead of going back to get the right key, he turns to me and says, “Ah, I guess this will have to wait until tomorrow,” to which I immediately replied, “It’s ok, I will wait if you want to go back and get the right one.”  He then looked at me like I didn’t understand the first thing about security protocol, then said, “I have to request it again.”  So to me, the word “request” means, “Hey can I have the key…thanks” and that’s it.  Not in Kuwait.  He had to draft up more paperwork, and get more signatures from the president of the building as well as the security commander before he could remove a key from a room 10 feet away from where we were standing to come and open a door.

This was the mentality the entire time.  The word “driven” was definitely not part of their work ethic.  If 2:30 came around or something required multiple signatures, they would basically just give up or say “We will try later.”  *Sigh*  This is now just a venting blog post rather than an informative one.  I apologize, but when you know exactly what you need to do, and paperwork is standing in the way along with multiple signatures, you just sit there wondering why you are even talking to this person.  To make it worse, the majority of the people that had to sign the paperwork had no idea what I was even doing or how to use the system, etc…Why are they necessary to approve this request if they don’t even know what it is for?

Ok, done venting.  Even with all that, it was a sucessful trip.  I got our software up and running, enabled redundancy for the server and the drivers for all the hardware.  In plain engligh that means if one server or one computer running the hardware goes down, then another one immediately takes over so there is no downtime in the system more than 30-45 seconds.

I was happy with the work, the direct team of engineers I was working with was also happy.  The politicians in the mix who want to feel important just hearing themselves talk, are fine, and will learn the system, but if you happen to be one of this business men who overlooks technical projects, but you yourself are not technical…please, give the techies some credit, trust them initially right off the bat, and I prokmise you will get much more solid and consistent work out of them on projects.  Going into a project in a standoff-ish mode and mentality makes your engineers feel completely unmotivated to make your facility work.  Sure, be precautionary at first, and lay down the rules, and demand progress reports daily or weekly, but constant questioning everyday as to their skill and ridiculing them in front of the end client…not going to get you anywhere.  Take a “wait and see” mentality when working with new engineers, at least for a couple weeks.  I guarantee if you treat your engineers and on-site help good right off the bat, they will not just do a good job with the hardware/software, but they will be proud of their work.  I know this sounds cheesy and really geeky, but each connection made to/from the hardware and the server is seen as an accomplishment, and a success, and this is what engineers live for.  Yes, that definitely sounds cheesy, but seeing the fruits of their labor in action in a working system is all the congratulations they will need, so again, if you are a business man, or the end client funding a project; please do go ahead and keep tabs and check up, but let the techies be the techies, and for crying out loud…if they are there for a limited time from another country on a expense paid business trip, please bypass the normal security rules.  They obviously did not get paid to fly 24 hours across the globe to come and mess up the system.  They are already there because the system is messed up, so open the doors for them.  Literally and Figuratively.  I’m talking to you Fluor! (British division), and all you Kuwaitis.

[SAVED AS DRAFT on April 27, 2009]

…Wow, It is January 26, 2010, and I just found this draft stuck in the saved folder, and it was never completed.  Well I wish I had completed it, I have myself on the edge of my seat and could not agree more with what was written so far, but I guess my point was that America was and is being duped into this new regime by the Obama administration.  To date he still has not done anything of note, except spend more money on his failed stimulus bill than George W Bush spent in his whole 8 years on the war…where is the outcry from the liberals now about pork barrel spending? Hmm, double standard – typical.

Well, I do honestly wish I had finished this post back in April, but to be totally honest now…I have neither the energy or patience to complete it now.  There is WAY too much to type about the Obama administration’s errors and screwups, and people like Michael Savage and Glenn Beck are already pointing them out, so if liberals across the nation are going to ignore news celebrities like that, then what chance do I have.  Don’t get me wrong…I am not throwing up my hands, but I am just not going to try and convince the world of something that should be common sense about this new socialist regime.

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For those who do not know, in a nutshell, James is a great book for those Christians who think they have heard everything the Bible has to say, and are just coasting along on auto-pilot through life.  In my opinion, James contains the most challenging verses in the Bible.  These “challenging” verses are ones that call for accountability, on our part as Christians.  James is basically like the Advanced guide, once you know and understand all the basics, on how to live for Christ.  This book does not hold back, and even says in many places what makes up a true believer.  James is definitely not a book I would throw at someone who is unfamiliar with the Gospel, or much less has not even accepted Jesus Christ as his/her personal Savior yet.  It is a book that really is most effective for those who have completely understood the basics and have a good grasp of their relationship with Christ.  I find that is is most effective for those of us who have been a Christian for our whole lives and think we have it all figured out, and that the Bible contains nothing new for us.  Well, take a look in James; read 30 verses a day, see what it has to offer you.

Now, without further ado, the most powerful verse in the Bible.  The reason this verse is so powerful in my opinion is that it does not say “Christians, do this…” or “Follower of Christ would do this or that…”, but rather, this is a verse that applies to everyone, Christian or non-Christian.  There will of course be some non-Christians who even after hearing this verse, will come up with some excuse why it does not apply to them, which goes back to the whole M.O. of being a non-Christian.  It is much easier to walk your own path, and ‘do your own thing’ without accountability, than to accept the responsibility that comes with being a Christian; which by the way, is the hardest part.  I could spend another paragraph on this easily, and perhaps it should be a separate post, so on to the verse.

“So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.” – James 4:17 (ESV)

Wow.  The verse states no conditions, if’s, and’s or but’s about it.  It is straightforward and to the point (another good feature of the book of James).  That fact, combined with using the ESV (English Standard Version), which is the most literal translation of the original Hebrew, makes this verse all the more powerful.  Nobody in their right mind could debate the meaning of this verse, or try to interpret its meaning into anything other than what it clearly states in black and white.  This basically says, in more practical words, ‘When you know what is right and wrong, and still do the wrong thing, you have sinned’.  It does not say, …”except if this is the case…” at the end does it? James does not give conditions or places in life where we can use conditional ethics.  Right and wrong are black and right.  My sociology teacher in college would have had me convinced otherwise, but that’s the world for you; always trying to convince you that in some situations, wrong things can be “OK”.  Sorry, no thanks, not for me.  You are either doing the right thing or the wrong thing, and followers of Christ know the difference; and guess what?…it does not change from day to day.

Heck, everyone knows the difference, Christian or not.  Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, giving us awareness and discernment to all mankind.  That is my point…you do not have to be a Christian, like it or not, for this verse to apply to you.  All humans have discernment between right and wrong.  Between the morally correct choice versus the more self-advantageous choice.  Which one are you going to choose? Are you going to ignore this verse out of convenience, and do what you want to do anyway? Hoping that God will just let is slip by since there are other people out there doing much worse things? A sin, is a sin, is a sin. There are many Christians out there today, myself included, that sometimes will think ‘God could not possibly care if I do this, just for a little bit, then move on to do other things’, even though I know it is something I should not do.  Well, you are who you are when nobody is looking.  Let the record show, that phrase is actually a secular phrase, that is not stated in the Bible.  This verse carries with it a universal foundation.  It is Biblical, and it is worldly that if you know the right thing to do and chose not to do it, you have in fact sinned. No two ways about it, which is why I believe this to be the most powerful verse.

Please feel free to comment, share, discuss…I will be checking the comments and replying to them myself.  Unfortunately because Satan is hard at work everyday in peoples lives, I have to approve comments, due to those who just want to swear, call names, and post other non-constructive comments.  Do not let that keep you from posting though…I will check this regularly to keep the discussion going.

- Standard NTSC SD Resolutions = 480i, 480p

- Standard NTSC SD Framerates = 60i, 60p, 30p

- Standard NTSC HD Resolutions = 720p, 1080i, 1080p

- Standard NTSC HD Framerates = 60i, 30p

Now, you notice that I did not list 24p above, even though it is an option on pretty much every HD consumer and professional camera out there.  Well, I hate to break it to you, especially those of you who used it as a deciding-factor in buying the model camera you did…”24p” is just a marketing gimmick.  Unless you are going to transfer your footage to film, for theatrical release or inclusion in a professionally done hollywood film or BluRay production line, then 24p is useless.  In addition to not gaining anything by doing this, you actually are loosing quality, since you have 6 frames per second that you are sacrificing, and could have, but are discarding at the shoot, so you can never go back and get that footage.  There is no way to make 24p file look like it was filmed in 30p, so stop shooting in 24p.  No, you are most likely NOT a film-maker, otherwise you wouldn’t need to have read this.

Before I get to deep/personal, let me cover the semantics for those who don’t know the basics.  The movie, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, is based on the book of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  You have heard of The Great Gatsby, correct?  Well, this is the of the same mind, and I have to say that although I have not read the book, I cannot imagine it being any better than the movie, albeit the original source.

The movie stars Cate Blanchett (who I have really tried to avoid in movies until now) alongside Brad Pitt.  Brad Pitt is typically your run-of-the-mill actor.  You go to the movies to be entertained, but you do not really expect to be wowed or awed.  However, in this movie Mr. Pitt is outstanding.  Usually when I watch a movie, I think of things along the way that they could have changed to make it better, or things that would have improved the character’s development or the overall storyline, but the entire time, I found myself more than satisfied with how each scene turned out.  In fact, never before have I only gotten 10 minutes into a movie, and known without a doubt that I would like this movie.  It seemed that right off the bat I found myself totally engrossed in the storyline, yet it had only been a few minutes which means the character and plot development were not only well done, but evident from the beginning.

I could go on and on about this movie, but it is really something that you must see for yourself.  Every movie review ever written will be lacking in one thing; experience.  It is that “experience” that you must have for yourself.  Rent this movie, watch it, and come back and comment on this blog post.  Please, I would love to know how other people feel about this movie.