Etherpunk

Not too long ago Apple attempted to push for Safari to get installed by lieing and saying it was part of its update scheme.

This has been blogged all over the web with usually a bad flavor in many peoples mouth.

Some believe that most users just click OK because of Vista's UAC... they are failing to take in to account that the users are not only not informed but the geeks tell them things along the lines of "if an update comes up, just update".

This "let's blame Vista!" attitude is getting anoying. Mostly because far too few people have legit complaints. In fact most people, who are willing to udnerstand that things in the computer world change, have no problem with it. At all. Those that DO have a problem where the EXACT same people bitching about "fisher price XP". Guess which one they love and hate now? Hypocrits. My uncle is someone who just wants it to work and refuses to learn anything different. I remember him going from Office 97 to Office 2003 and how much be bitched. 98-2k, same thing. Oh well... when the fear controls your actions.. they aren't your actions anymore.

Many people are jumping to Mac thinking their stuff Just Works (TM) and they don't have to worry about getting infected with malware. That's only true in the short term. The real problem is education. Someone uninformed isn't going to know the difference between an application needing updates asking for root privs than a trojan asking for root privs. In fact the biggest safeguard for Macs is their list of software you can install is so small it's unreal. Judging from the experience my employers are having and the complaints I've heard people say about Mac it's pretty much turned me off from a Mac -- especially about the VMWare Fusion.

I don't remember if I posted my complaints about Vista but it really only boils down to OpenGL sucks. I can't play NS anymore correctly (your evolution bar isn't shown properly).

I'll bitch more about this later.

Update: Here is some linkage.

Someone posted this under the title "If you don't use this, you are like a doctor who doesn't believe in germs." I'll agree with that to a certain extent.

Here is a link which explains unicode. I spent some time on this before and have started trying to implement a more language netural code conciously. I've done the same on my wiki's and blogs.

I still have more fighting to go.
I'm starting to wonder if /any/ CMS doesn't suck. Drupal has always given me a little greif in one way or the other but this time it was with the upgrades. Somehow it disabled the 'content' section of the menu -- which I had to hunt down and re-enable. I'm now trying to figure out how to get my tags back in to blocks but that seems to be a pain.
Sadly, Drupal seems to be the best at what I want... which either says my standards are too high or the tech /still/ sucks.
I wonder how the TaxonomyAccessControl stuff is going.. last I recall it was a gnarly hack to get things working on something you would expect to come by default.

I'm going to be updating this Drupal install and fixing a few things tonight... things may be flakey for a little bit.

I'm in the process of getting an app going under .NET 3.0 using Visual Studio 2008 to see the differences in speed between Linq, SubSonic, and using a plain SQLDataAdapter. Yes, I'm well aware using a DataReader / DataAdapter is going to be faster -- the question is: How much faster? Is it worth making the code that much more cleaner? What about if the code is only going to be used once 4 months from now and, hopefully, never touched again? My problem is I want something to be as fast as possible without making code ugly and without spending a lot of time tweaking -- so I'm taking the shotgun approach. At the moment, it seems like they are all fairly close unless you are dealing with LOTS (millions) of records -- which I am not. SubSonic has its fair share of bugs such as puking if a table doesn't have a primary key. I can understand it not understanding how to right back or do complex queries, I just want to populate a collection with a 'Select *' type statement -- so it doesn't need a care about primary keys as I'm just going to loop through item in the collection and pull data as I see fit. Also, SubSonic seems to always do a 'SELECT *' type query if I want to use the simple code such as 'Some_DB.Some_TableCollection TC = new Some_DB.Some_TableCollection().Load();'. If I want to be specific then I have to use a Query class. Even worse, it's /horrible/ at doing OR's. They really prefer you to use views or stored procedures. Neither of those are bad, but I'm not writing code for something anyone else but me should be using -- so I don't care about exploits or any safety measures. Even if I was, this engine doesn't have any direct input mechanism, so good luck with that. Linq seems overly complicated. Fucking A is it a bitch to setup. Nothing seems automatic. Code doesn't /feel/ cleaner (so far from my, admittedly, little testing). Google doesn't seem to know how to use it either. I'm finding contradicting information. So, this means I have to do a "best case scenario" speed test to get both Linq and SubSonic working, which isn't a bad idea. One of the programming styles I learned was "assume everything will work perfectly, *then* make exceptions". The alternative, which is more common, is plan for the worst then if it's the best do X. The problem with that is you are always occurring the overhead of the worst instead of doing the best first and if it fails (Which it rarely should) then go to some exception handling. This places me back at square 1. Here is my game plan:

• Have a script which will populate a database + table with random data. This way nothing can be cached and you can regen as needed. This will probably populate a 'person' table with 2 million records. This is a small amount compared to some other databases, but for our instance it should be plenty to test for speed.
• Write a GUI which has a listbox and a DataGridView. The listbox will contain different methods of getting data from a SQLServer to a DataGridView. The hope being that if I can get it from a SQLServer to a DGV then I can be fairly certain nothing got cached and everything got pulled over for data manipulation.
• Write a a few tests. These tests will probably be a simple SubSonic, Linq, and SQLDataAdapter. I will later do more complex queries and embed them to attempt to bring out slowness or resource hogs. SQDA and SubSonic will be the first two. Linq will be third, and any other complex queries will be last.
• Open source the program and release to world under BSD license.

I'm also probably going to try some of this code on other DB engines such as MySQL and SQLite.

I'm finding that Microsofts eopen website /still/ sucks after many years.
It's still just as flakey as when I used it when I worked at C&D.

It seems that 1/5 of the time I get a 'Service Unavailable', another 1/5 of the time it simply redirects my login back to the orginal page without actually logging me in, another 1/5 of the time is spent waiting... for 10+ seconds for a page to respond (with a random chance as to what error message, if any, I'll get or not), and the other 2/5's of the time it works.

I don't think I've /ever/ found a website that was this unreliable. Wow.

New workstation

So -- my Sager NP 5750 is going flakey. This isn't an OS issue. Occasionally Windows will just turn off or reboot. I will also find that, usually after this reboot, the bios locks when I have USB devices plugged in. I will havce to unplug these, turn it off, unplug the power, and let it sit for a few minutes. So... I'm going to look for a replacement. I now have no need for a laptop so I'm probably going to go for a Desktop. Since I can't afford it with cash, and I've been waiting until I could (for probably over 2 months now) however this has made me go "well fuck...", I'll have to use credit. So at the moment I'm looking at a Dell. More specifically the Inspiron 530. The slim versions seem to cost a little more and I don't care about case size. I'm not fully trusting of 64-bit Windows yet, so I have to go with the Intel Core2 Duo route and Vista still acts like shit when it comes to gaming, so I'm getting XP -- or at least an XP capable machine (meaning the damn thing needs to have drivers for XP at the very least). I'm going to stick with just 2GB of memory since 1GB served me just fine, except when I tried to program / run HL2 in Vista (which worked, just loading sucked). So I still think 2GB is fine and I can always upgrade later -- assuming they don't fuck me on slots. I'm worried about Dell support though.. they seem to still be lacking in their area. In fact, it seems that unless you get the insane warranties -- they treat you like shit. Which is enough to make me consider going to HP instead.. but I would suspect they are roughly the same in attitude in tech support. I have no reason to believe they are different.

Mice

I'm going to be going to a wired mouse as well. While the MX 1000 was probably the BEST mouse I will /ever/ own, the MX Revolution just was too flakey for me. The LED's aren't working anymore. It never tells me when it needs a charge anymore. It will occassionally just stop working until I unplug, re-seat, and do some voodoo. So, I'm probably going to get a Dell "Premium" mouse since they offer another G7/MX Revolution (I know they aren't the same but for my purposes they are). When I was using a laptop to travel / do things -- wireless fucking ROCKED. Now that I have no need for that, it has no value to me anymore aside from now having wires and consuming batteries or needing to be re-charged. Backups My 160GB backups aren't sufficient anymore and my single 300GB drive just isn't cutting it. I need more space. So I'm also going to order three 500GB WesterDigital MyBooks. One will /always/ be plugged in and on. The other two will serve as backups to this one, with one being swapped out and stored in a closet. I'm more concerned about a surge destroying one than I am a fire -- thus the reason on why I want it unplugged and out of the way. Hopefully this extra 200GB will help.

Conclusion

All in all, I'm probably going to spend about $1,700 -- if I want a new monitor. I'm thinking on getting a 19" capable of doing 1600x1200, but I may go up to a 22" -- I dunno.

I found an article (located here) about an IT shortage.

The reason it two fold (and this is in a serious nutshell -- RTFA):
* You don't give people a chance. HR sucks at choosing people and look for buzzwords. Seriously, do you *really* want someone who knows how to manipulate the system rather than do their job?
* You treat them like shit.

My father used to work at a company who used to rock. Then things went to shit over time. He left. Out of 8 people, only 3 remain to this day. Within a span of a year or so, a serious chunk of the department (25+ years of experience) left. This is a place where it takes *years* before you can actually rely on someone to be self sufficient. So they lost A LOT of really good experience and people. They were treated like shit. To this day all of us still, when we find ourselves together, will gossip about it and think "It's soooo nice to be out of *that* place." STILL. 2+ years LATER! It's very interesting the habits we've had to get over. The sweet is never as sweet without the sour... and wow.. was that place sour.

The current place I'm working at, which I'm on a contract-to-hire, is probably the best place to work (attitude/atmosphere wise). People/Management actually listen (funny how that works, huh?). While it's still uncertain if I'll get hired, I'll rank it as the best place I've worked thus far. If it doesn't work out.. I'll probably move in to X-Ray tech.. they make good money and have fairly reliable jobs and I'm told you can get certified/whatever fairly quick. The problem? I'm told it's boring as shit. I honestly don't know if I can handle that. I'm a problem solver.. I don't sit still.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anhedonia

Their is a movie called "The Golden Compass" which has some anti-christian themes, supposedly.

Many Christians are outraged by this and are going to attempt a boycott (due not, they aren't going for a ban but a boycott -- their is a significant difference).

I honestly believe many (but not where near all) are so insecure of their religion that they will attack other religions. I genuinely believe it's because they have no faith in their religion and believe that their religion *may* fail when put under scrutiny.

I have found the BEST comment that I want to say "this" (fark cliche):
Digg Comment by Androfire

The end result of someone being insecure of their religion they have to bash other religions or call another religion an enemy is much the same as me trying to shove Linux (or Microsoft, in some very rare situations -- I'm talking to you Gerall [in reference to getting you to try WinXP]! :-P) down my throat *cough*Daniel*cough*.

I will also admit I don't understand much of the Christian religion (in general). If you were to ask me what the difference between a Catholic and a Southern Baptist then I would probably just stare at you blankly going "fuck, I wish I had Wikipedia to answer this...". Same thing about Buddhism and such.

Although I have been learning a lot about Taiosm merely by proxies of my environment and such. I also have a book about it... but it drove me to boredom WAY too quickly. Maybe I wasn't ready. Or the writer sucked. I dunno. I like Wikipedia's better anywho. I like reading more on the philosophical ideas than anything else. So don't expect me to be able to name the deities without referring to Wikipedia.