Month: September 2001

Politicized Gun Research

John Lott wrote an op-ed column for the Los Angeles Times ripping a National Academy of Sciences panel that is going to study the effects of gun control laws. The short version is that the panel is stacked with pro-gun control folks.

Lott isn’t the only one to note the panel’s interesting timetable: it is scheduled to release its report right before the 2004 election. The implication Lott and others draw is that the panel will rubber stamp pro-gun control arguments and give a gift to Democratic candidates.

But regardless of whether or not the NAS has politicized the issue, if anything the release of such a report would likely harm the prospects of Democrats. After all, there’s a reason why Al Gore avoided talking about his position on guns, and went so far as to try to reassure gun owners that he was a good ol’ boy from the South who wouldn’t dream of taking away their rifles.

Pro-gun folks tend to be tenacious single issue voters and can tip the scales of an election in many rural districts. Except in heavily urban areas where gun control arguments are most popular, Democrats benefit from a certain level of amibiguity in their party’s position. If the NAS report comes out before the 2004 election and forces Democrats further to the Left on gun control issues, I’m not sure how that helps them very much.

Computer Support Hell, Chapter 3

In the last installment of my ongoing support nightmare, I had picked up a computer from Best Buy technicians which they thought was fixed after they replaced the hard drive. The OS was wiped out within 15 minutes of using it, however, so I took it back. Again, I mentioned that given the variety of different problems, it was almost certainly a problem with either the motherboard, the power supply, or the RAM.

Again, though, they completely ignored my suggestion even though their own problems with the machine just added more evidence that it was likely one of these problems. I picked the machine up yesterday from Best Buy, and it’s already completely unusable. It crashed about every 10 minutes, even if I restricted myself ot simple tasks like web browsing. Finally, one of the crashes fried the Windows ME registry and other files, and it won’t boot properly.

The interesting thing is that they saw two additional problems that should have tipped them off. First, when they turned it on, the machine claimed the processor fan was not functioning properly, but could find nothing wrong with the fan.

Second, they pulled out a Soundblaster 512 card I had installed with a little note that it was incompatible with Windows ME. Not quite. The manufacturer claims that the 512 is compatible with ME, but from discussions I found from search engines on the topic, getting the card to actually work in Windows ME is like pulling teeth.

But the interesting thing is that the card is completely incompatible with this machine (or more likely, there’s something wrong with the PCI bus). With the card installed, the computer literally would not boot up at all. Take it out, and it would boot up, but then crash repeatedly. Just to make sure there was nothing wrong with the card, I put it in a couple of other machines I have, and it performed flawlessly in those.

So I’ve pretty much had it with Best Buy and called HP tonight to give them an earful about the alleged service provided there. Fortunately the guy I reached was as incredulous as I was that, given the problems I’ve experienced, they hadn’t replaced the motherboard (which he thought was the likely source of the problem). He gave me the phone number of a different authorized technician here as well as some tips on dealing with them to get the motherboard seriously looked at and/or replaced.