Does Microsoft even have any idea how much this will hurt their business?

I’ve done a lot of server roll-outs in my time and evaluation of new products. 90% of the time if it was a Microsoft product, the evaluation occurred due to a handy TechNet subscription.

In many cases I never would’ve even bothered to consider a Microsoft product if it weren’t literally at my fingertips to evaluate.

And that then lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars of software purchases.

Very smart – avoid $1 of piracy so you can “avoid” a million dollars in revenue. Sounds like a winner to me.

And this means that anyone who absolutely has to test something or learn it will now pirate it.

What the hell is wrong with Microsoft?

The new 140ppi Asus desktop monitor is available for pre-order now.

$3,500.

Due to a project we’ll be engaged in soon, I won’t really be in the market for it for a year-and-a-half.

By then, it should be $2,400 or so and I’ll be all over that.

A lot of well-intentioned people every election attempt to “get out the vote” and the like. I used to agree with them, even as recently as five years ago.

Now it’s clear that voting no longer matters. Probably hasn’t for twenty years or so, and probably won’t matter again without some drastic (likely violent, alas) change.

The extent of entwinement of Capital in our governance is now so tight and the wealth and power disparities among us so gaping that I no longer think any of the traditional routes of change, using civilized and orderly processes, will do anything to influence our course. Even social issues like marriage equality are probably not shifting for the reasons we think. As we enter into more and farther reaching global trade agreements, it will become progressively less important for Capital to worry about keeping us pacified, and the disconnection of our votes from policy will become more apparent.

The rest of the post doesn’t really concern me. Change via voting is about as likely as an elephant dying from an ant bite.

Oh sure, some things – even a few important things that Capital doesn’t care about – might change on the margins. But that’s it.

One of the best things about having a nearly-non-existent circadian rhythm is that I never experience jet lag.

Never had it, never will.

One of the worst things is that I can’t keep any sort of sleep schedule at all, and thus it is difficult to fit into normal earth life.

I’ve seen a lot of discussion of American football injuries lately.

Just wanted to point out that any sport played at an elite level is damaging to someone’s body who does it for many years.

Why?

Think about it like this. Elite athletes are nearly always operating at 100% capacity. Imagine if you did this to your car. Always flooring the accelerator and the brake, never failing to take corners as quickly as possible. Even jumping curbs at speed if that were more expedient and you could get away with it.

How long do you think your car would last?

It’s just the same for a human body. While some sports are worse than others, and the most utterly boring sports like baseball are probably the least damaging, in any sport where the only way to compete is to perform at an elite level broken bodies will be common and unavoidable.