m-audio suckage

So, I bought a used m-audio FireWire 1814 off ebay. It's a super cool little box that's supposed to just plug in and give you awesome audio in/out stuff for recording and other stuff. Sounds great and it works pretty darn well when I bootcamp my Mac into Windows. Except that unlike every other firewire device I've ever worked with, this one expects you to reboot before connecting or disconnecting things. Well, isn't that lame? And I'm not supposed to use my wifi or bluetooth at the same time? WTF?! Better still it doesn't appear to work at all with my Mac. This post marks the fourth interaction I've made with their tech support guys. While they seem to want to help me, they sure don't have much to offer. Toggle the sync method? What the hell? Who wrote these drivers?! Update: apparently the Mac upgrades stomp on things somewhat, so you need to run the Apple disk repair thing which goes around and fixes permissions. Ugh. Generally I love Apple, but this is kinda lame.

Bruce Scheneir, you rock my world.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the majority of security experts out there are as stupid as you'd expect someone who got a 2 week "diploma" and then worked his way up through the ranks by dozing off in a parking garage. I mean, what the fuck does a "yellow alert" mean? I presume they simply want us to all be a little less scared than the almost status-quo "orange alert". God forbid we ever have to deal with a "fuscia alert" because clearly then we'll be attacked by well dressed young men of disturbingly ambivilant sexuality. And then I read Bruce Schenier and regain all my respect for the security industry. Well, not really, I still think they're a bunch of useless, self important morons who derive their entire self-worth from wearing a uniform, but at least I dig Bruce. "The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act. " Way to knock it home. Now if only it weren't in the self-interest of the American Oligarchy... er... I mean, "government" to keep the public so distracted that they don't quite get around to impeaching those who so clearly deserve it. But wait... Bruce is still on his A game. "Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership."

Hyping it up

The Hype Machine has butt-ugly web-design, but it's content is stunning. I've had a hard time trying to keep myself dialed into music since moving from Toronto out here, but at least with the hype machine I get the odd tidbit from interesting bands. I wonder when they'll go all web 2.0 and start offering me recommendations from people with "similar" tastes. And more interestingly, I wonder when/if those recommendations will be better than the recommendations that iTunes spits out at me. Hmmmm...