Nov 24

Libros

The book that most exceeded my expectations: The Emperor’s New Mind, by Roger Penrose.

Even though its conclusions are almost certainly dead wrong, it’s interesting and mind-expanding throughout. This book caused more deep thinking in me than any other.

The most disappointing book: Gödel, Escher, Bach, by Douglas Hofstadter.

An overlong, boring hodgepodge of ideas that I either learned and/or occurred to me independently by the time I was twelve. My reaction on finishing this book amounted to, “That was all? That was fucking all? 700 pages that seemed like 7,000 for that?”

Nov 22

50s

While the 1950s were far from ideal – especially for minorities and women – this makes them seem by comparison a bit better than I’d previously credited.

It now takes two and a half incomes to produce the same standard living that one income did in the 1950s.

It shows how much poorer relatively we’ve all gotten in relation to our so-called betters, especially when it comes to the really important things in life such as health care, education and housing, where most of the cost increases have arisen.

Nov 22

Don’t quail at the thought

We had quail today for Thanksgiving.

It’s the first time I’ve had that since I was 15 or so. This time it wasn’t hunted, but bought at the store. It tasted exactly the same, though, as quail is not all that domesticated.

It was damn fine, and a great Thanksgiving.

It is indeed fun not being dead.

Nov 20

Sword

I know it seems I’m on an anti-Windows 8 crusade, and in a way I am. The app store model is a threat to open computing, and the interface is just absolutely abysmal.

In a way, it’s more personal than that. Windows 7 is a great OS for getting work done. It’s fast, stable, and multi-tasks like a dream. Windows are resizable and if I want to – which I very, very often do –  I can see more than one thing at a time.

I don’t want to be forced in the future to use a single-tasking always-full-screen OS where I am as fucking slow as everyone else. Because I work quickly and I assimilate a lot of information at once, a real multi-tasking OS makes me so much faster than other people.

Windows 8 would Harrison Bergeron my ass right quick.

Windows 8 or any Windows 8-like OS would be the equivalent of tying two five-pound bricks to my ankles and asking me to compete in a marathon.

Uh-uh. Not. Gonna. Do it.

Nov 20

Window

Windows 8 is so very shitty.

One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product’s very name has become a misnomer. "Windows" no longer supports multiple windows on the screen. Win8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a small part of the screen, but none of our test users were able to make this work. Also, the main UI restricts users to a single window, so the product ought to be renamed "Microsoft Window."

That reads like an Onion article, but alas what is written there is true.

Windows 8 isn’t even good enough for me to use recreationally, much less for getting any work done.

Nov 18

Windows 8 phone home

Nah, this couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that most users don’t want their desktop to look and to work like a phone.

Microsoft blames the PC makers. My source cited to me the PC makers’ “inability to deliver,” a damning indictment that I think nicely explains why the firm felt it needed to start making its own PC and device hardware.

It’ll be interesting if Microsoft continues to pursue this already-failing strategy of making all PCs (even workstations) into crap phone-like single-tasking experiences.

If so, in the long run this will be good as it will utterly destroy the dominance of Windows and Office, leading to more space for competing OSes.

Nov 18

VM

Ha, I just virtualized my own PC and am now running a copy of my computer on my computer.

Virtualization is so damn cool.

Nov 18

VPN

Time to switch from using my VPN from some of the time to all of the time.

This plan of course has little to nothing to do with piracy. As one commenter pointed out, it’s all about getting people used to the idea that they can only visit ISP-approved sites – since most ISPs are content producers, the end goal is to get rid of competitors such as Netflix.

Guess where the many, many “false” positives are going to come from? Right, all those people “infringing” by visiting Netflix, and those using their connections heavily in general.

Think that sounds unlikely? Just wait. I guarantee it will happen.

If you are not using a VPN now and are at all computer savvy, why not? You say you are not doing anything wrong, but the ISP doesn’t care about that.

It’s just trying to get more money out of you.

Nov 16

Incomprehensible

I will never understand men who want to bar women deemed insufficiently geeky from the the world of geekhood.

In many cases, these men seem to want to bar all women, which makes even less sense.

Who cares – really who fucking cares? – if she just dresses up as Black Widow as she just likes the costume? Or she’s read every comic book that has an Avenger in it ever.

Looking at someone, you have no way of knowing. And anyway, someone has to get interested in things somehow. Were you born knowing everything about Star Trek or Star Wars or Alan Moore?

What’s really jacked up about it all is that if I showed up at a con in an X-Men t-shirt, no one would ever question me as I am male. Yet I have never read a single comic book of any type in my entire life, and probably never will.

My sister has read more comics than I have.

I love people dressed up in costume. I think it’s one of the most fun things a person can do, and it’s great seeing the creativity involved in it all.

So fine, you idiot geeks kick all the women out of your clubhouse so you can complain about women not liking you and being the victim of “friendzoning” and whatever other bullshit you carp about.

Me, I’ll be hanging out and having fun with the cool chicks who like to dress up and can likely out-geek me in most ways.