I’ve owned a lot of different computers over the years.   I’ve owned Apples. Amigas, and what we used to call IBM Clones, or just a PC today.  I’ve always enjoyed the process of learning new stuff and expanding my skills.  The old Apple could only type in upper case.  So one of the first “hardware hacks” I did was replacing some chips on the motherboard and then running some extra wires between other chips to give the Apple the ability to type in lower case.  I think that came in a kit that I ordered through an ad in a magazine.  Later I learned how to add memory to my Amiga and install a hard drive on my IBM clone.  Before long I was building computers from parts.

People who are not computer pros are sometimes impressed with my level of knowledge and skill.  But that ‘s only because they don’t see the 35 years of trial and error and all the failures that have taught me what I know today.

I was lucky to be able to afford that first computer when it came out because that is what got me started.  But not everyone has that happy circumstance.  That’s why I’m excited about the Raspberry Pi project.

Raspberry Pi is a startup company putting out a really small (think a deck of playing cards)$25 computer.  This computer has 128 megs of memory, connects to your TV for a monitor and will use a SD card (like your camera uses to store images) for its hard drive.  It will run one of the free versions of Linux for its operating system.  The upgraded version is $35 and comes with a network plug and 256 megs of memory. 

Just compare that for a minute with the Apple II from 35 years ago.  It costs 1/100^th of what I paid for my first computer and has 500 times the memory.  If you bought a modest 8 Gig SD card for it for $8, you would have 4,000 times more storage than I had on my two old floppy drives.  On the website, the Raspberry Pi is shown playing Doom and running video playback, so it is much more capable than my old Apple.

The Raspberry Pi Company hopes to make enough money to stay in business of course.  But its real goal is to keep these bare bones computers a cheap as possible.  They hope that schools will be able to afford them so that a school can set up a computer learning center to teach computer literacy and programming without spending a ton of money.   They hope that people without a lot of resources can get one of these, hook up a cheap keyboard and hook it to their TV to play around with programming.  They hope it is a gateway  and a starting point for people to who are interested, but can’t afford to go down to Wal-Mart and plunk down $400 for a computer.

Even though the basic price does not include everything you need, it is still an incredible deal.  If you bought the basic unit for $25, you could have it up and running on your TV for less than another $25.  Especially if you got the keyboard and other stuff from Goodwill.  A school could get a whole computer with a new monitor, keyboard and everything for less than $200 a station if they wanted to go all out on it.

I’m excited to see a company providing a low dollar pathway to learning more about technology.  And I’m excited to get my hands on one of these and see what kind of project I can build.  I think it may take over for the computer I built to update the weather web page.  I’ll bet the Raspberry Pi could do the same job with a lot less power use and I would learn some new stuff doing it that way.

This story from USA Today goes on to explain that the Bishops are upset about the growing acceptance of same sex unions, and about the possibility that the Catholic Church’s insurance program will be forced to provide birth control as part of the new national health insurance standards.

I don’t see either of those issues as reducing religious freedom.  What it does is reduce their authority to tell other people what to do.  No one is forcing Catholics into same sex relationships.  No one is forcing the Church to marry same sex couples.  No one is forcing Catholics to take birth control.

Catholic adoption agencies that receive state funds have protested over not being able to exclude gay couples from adopting kids.  They believe that a same sex relationship is intrinsically evil.  They are wrong, but it’s not against the law to be wrong.  They can exclude people as long as they don’t take federal money.  But they want to be able to take federal money AND be able to discriminate.

You can’t do both.  Some of the state money comes from taxes paid by gay couples.  You can’t take money from those couples and then tell them they can’t use the service.  Once you take that money, you become just like any other utility or service that tax dollars pay for.  The city can’t take your tax dollars and then refuse to pave your street or pick up your trash just because they disagree with something you are doing.  Same thing for tax supported adoption.

The Catholic Church is not having its religious freedoms curtailed by being made to follow the law.  What the church wants is special treatment.  They want to be able to tell others outside the church that they have to follow the rules and customs that the church as laid down for its own members.  That is the opposite of religious freedom.  That is telling me that I can’t follow my beliefs if they differ from what the Pope has decreed is right.

It’s not just the Catholic church that has tried to play the poor persecuted victim when they have been made to follow public policy.  It’s not even just christian churches.  But separation of church and state means that no church is above the laws that the state has put in place.  Allowing any church or religion to ignore a law because of religious belief is a special privilege accorded to that faith and is a violation of the Constitution because it gives preferential treatment to one group.  To paraphrase Captain Kirk, the Constitution (and by extension the laws passed under that constitution) applies to everyone, or it is meaningless.

So the “grave threat” from “radical secularism” just means the Church has to follow the laws of the land, just like everyone else, and can’t do what ever it wants to do like it could back in the good old days of medieval Europe.  I think that is a good thing.  Because it insures that we all have religious freedom.

From:  Friendly Atheist

Another site re-design.  This time with a WordPress.  I have been toying with a blog for a while and this seems easier to do with the WordPress package than it was in Joomla.

The weather site is up and can be reached by the menu at the top.

I’m thinking of maybe doing a blog and maybe a forum for the people I play World of Warcraft with.

Right now there is no advantage to signing up as a member on the website.  It does not give you an e-mail address or anything else.  Yet

E-Mail Info

Most people just use the site for e-mail.  So all the e-mail information is below.

The pop server is
pop.nevid.net, the outgoing server is smpt.nevid.net.

If you are using Outlook or any other mail program you have to use your full e-mail address as the username.

( username@nevid.net).

Web Mail

Web mail is here:  http://webmail.nevid.net

You will have to enter the whole e-mail address in user name slot and then your password.

Ok just clieck the e-mail menu item right under the image.