Stuart's class on Roman Catholics and Evangelicals had only 4 members in 2002. However, they were very appreciative; most were repeating the class. On September 20, 2002, we tried a different topic with the book Intelligent Design by William A. Dembski. Stuart also enjoys a local Apologetics Club.
Check out Jonathan's Web Page, and now Jim's Web Page as well as A Musical Offering and Mindi's Web Page! The girls won't give me any more of their writing, but Elissa, Julie, Laura, Daddy have Xangas which they occasionally update.
Literary EffortsRunaway Horses! (Vignettes)EssaysReportsBook ReviewsStoriesStories by Older ChildrenStories by Very Young ChildrenStories by AdultsPoems |
Musical, Culinary, and Other EffortsA Musical Offering, by Stuart GathmanRecipesPhotosProgrammingMicrosoft and Treacherous Computing WarningWhile previous versions of Microsoft Windows have had some advantages to offset the problems, the new licensing and Digital Restrictions Management (called Digital "Rights" Management by some) features in Windows XP and Vista make it truly a force for evil. Microsoft calls their new DRM "Trusted Computing", but it is actually Treacherous Computing. Microsoft applications with DRM (currently only Windows Media Player in XP), among other things, delete banned documents on demand. Microsoft Word is next to get the DRM treatment, and I hope you can understand the implications enough to shudder. One reason why Vista is so much slower than XP is the additional work done by the OS to enforce new and stricter DRM.The whole point of DRM is to prevent you viewing or playing Music, Video, or documents that you are not allowed to (by encrypting the data), even when you have bought the media. When you "buy" DRMed media, you haven't really bought it. You are only renting the privilege of viewing it - which the owner can take away at any time. For example, when suckers bought DRMed NFL video, they were able to watch it for a few months. Then NFL decided to change their DRM keys. No more views (unless you "buy" it again). If you have Windows applications that you can't replace, stay with earlier versions of Windows if you possibly can (of course, this will mean you can't read documents produced by later versions). Better, don't use Windows. A very popular Linux distrubution is Ubuntu. I myself use Fedora Linux. Both run on the same hardware as Windows (except for some WinModems and other hardware with secret interfaces - another Microsoft Evil). One of my coworkers uses an Apple PowerMac. MacOS uses more expensive (but superior) hardware. It also has DRM, but not as bad as Windows. |
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