March 2009
Monthly Archive
Why I want nukes
| Posted by Chill on 30 Mar 2009 |
Amanda writes about the corruption that pervades our system.
She is completely right to ascribe the same motivations that lead to the should-have-been canceled cell phone bill mysteriously re-appearing with the financial calamity that we are experiencing now. Both are due to wanton greed and unabashed rapacity, just at different scales.
Some more symptoms are Gotcha Capitalism and how the system is rigged to keep you in debt.
These things are not accidents; Amanda is completely right about that. At what point will the system become so inimical to the interests of those it nominally serves that they overturn it?
The most
| Posted by Chill on 30 Mar 2009 |
The most interesting thing I’ve read today.
I think about AI a lot because I’m guessing that most of the major advances in the field will occur in my lifetime, as it breaks out of academia and young Wozniak-like minds start building on earlier research.
And, like the personal computer and the internet changed everything, AI will do the same thing all over again.
Couldn’t you just….
| Posted by Chill on 27 Mar 2009 |
One of the perils of working in the IT world is the “Couldn’t you just….”
I understand to a layman there is little difference between adding a user account to active directory (easy) and figuring out a Heisenbug and then fixing it (nearly impossible).
I’m under no illusion that any non-IT person should know how to do anything computer-related that’s not directly involved in their job. But it is somewhat bothersome that many people, because they’ve touched a computer before, assume that everything is equally easy and that IT people are familiar with every software application in history.
No, I can’t fix a bug in Microsoft’s software. Sorry, I don’t access to the source code and even if I did, I am not a programmer and I wouldn’t know where start. Getting angry at me won’t help in any way to fix it.
No, I can’t convert your data from an old off-brand spreadsheet last sold in 1983 into Excel format in 5 minutes. Even if it’s possible at all (unlikely), it’ll take at least several hours or days of research.
No, I can’t and don’t know how to use the specialized software you use every day to do your job better than you do. I am not an accountant. I am not a project manager. I am not an administrative assistant. I am not an insurance adjuster. I am not a loan officer. I do not know how to enter a case file into your special lawyer software. Isn’t that your job? Why would I know that? I wouldn’t expect you to know how to set up an Exchange 2007 cluster, so why would you expect me to have magically gotten a law degree in all my spare time?
It’s that “Couldn’t you just…” that is so odd. I’d never walk up to a doctor and say, “Couldn’t you just do my brain surgery during lunch?”
Ah well. There are benefits and drawbacks to working in any field, but the “Couldn’t you just…” is a very odd one.
Inappropriate ad placement fail
| Posted by Chill on 26 Mar 2009 |
Strange, because I usually don’t see ads, but this one made it through (lower right, click for larger) — in a story about homeless tent cities. Good job, NYT.
What I learned today
| Posted by Chill on 26 Mar 2009 |
Tree rats
| Posted by Chill on 25 Mar 2009 |
A problem we have where we live now: squirrels.
They are fun to watch, but there at least four or five who live in our yard, and the squirrels here seem to know that tomatoes are yummy and such, which the squirrels in Seattle did not (they left our plants almost completely alone).
So I’m already thinking about how to repel them. Any other tips, besides flamethrowers and handguns?
Word
| Posted by Chill on 25 Mar 2009 |
I’ve gotten so used to seeing some words consistently misspelled on the internet that even when they are spelled correctly, I still often read them as their misspelled variants.
“Dual” and “duel” is one such pair. People just can’t keep those straight.
And there appears to be a minor vowel shift occurring in words such as “indefensible” and “consistent” to variants like “indefensable” and “consistant,” for some reason.
I am no spelling stickler, but it does bother me when people use the wrong word, like the “dual/duel” example above — and the main reason is that I read very quickly, and it causes me to have to pause to try to figure out what someone really meant. It’s like a speed bump in the way of intelligibility.
No shield
| Posted by Chill on 24 Mar 2009 |
Another new Firefox “feature” I will be sure to turn off as quickly and violently as I possibly can when I am forced to use it.
Craigslist is full of optimists
| Posted by Chill on 23 Mar 2009 |
Most people really misperceive the value of their old junk when they price it on Craigslist.
Whether it be electronics or furniture, just because you bought that Pentium 3 500Mhz machine 10 years ago for $2,500 doesn’t mean you can charge $1,800 for it now. (And I’m only exagerrating a little.) I could buy four computers with monitors these days for $1,000 — why would I buy your smelly, roach-infested ancient Dell machine for nearly twice that?
And furniture. Fuck. I found a great rant about that on Craigslist that I can’t find any longer, but you’ll have to settle for my own take.
Like this listing, for example. A bedroom set for $1,350. Wonderful. I can go down the road a little and buy a brand-damn-new bedroom set for $1,000 that your cat hasn’t pissed on and doesn’t look like it was designed in a McDonald’s.
Yeah, yeah, I know you probably think your precious rubbish is worth its weight in palladium, but when I can find shit left out on the curb that’s just as nice for fucking free, $1,350 seems a little insane.
Has anyone heard of this little thing called depreciation? Most furniture, especially butt-ugly late ’90s, early aughts furniture, does not appreciate. Most of it would appreciate more by being thrown into an incinerator and used for power. And computers? Computers depreciate if you look at them wrong. The minute you get your shiny new Dell, it’s worth hundreds less than when you clicked the “Buy” button a week ago.
When we were leaving Seattle, everything I tried to sell on Craigslist sold. Want to know why? It’s because I didn’t ask $75 for a TV stand I bought from Target three years ago for $60. No, I asked $25, like any sane person would. And if that didn’t work, I would’ve re-listed it for $10.
Where do people get this idea that their old-ass crap is worth so much?
Proverbs and amateur verbs
| Posted by Chill on 22 Mar 2009 |
Most insightful sentence I’ve read today:
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
Even though it’s an old proverb, it hints at the difference between data and information. Data is nearly useless until you turn it into information, and true human wisdom is the process of turning data into information.
From here.
Blowing bubbles
| Posted by Chill on 22 Mar 2009 |
I want to slap with a trout the dipshits saying that not allowing failed executives to receive their exorbitant bonuses is “class warfare.”
Of course it is class warfare, in a meager retaliation to 20+ years of fusillades by the rich against the middle class and the poor. It is, I hope, the first return fire in a war that we, the non-bonused, are likely to lose but that it is worth it to fight regardless.
The rich and large corporations have been effectively doing battle on middle America ever since Reagan, but in the last dozen years or so it has reached a fever pitch. The only thing preserving the illusion of wealth for most Americans was the successive dotcom and then housing bubbles.
So, fuck yeah, it’s class warfare to attempt to stop the insane bonuses given to clueless executives at moribund companies only still breathing due to governmental life support.
It is a mystery to me how Tyler Cowen and co-tards think that AIG execs deserve bonuses for the near-destruction of the entire world economy. That’s an alternate world that I hope to never travel to.
The tumbrels are back in town
| Posted by Chill on 21 Mar 2009 |
Everyone should read this Matt Taibbi piece on the meltdown, bailout and profligate idiocy of AIG.
People are pissed off about this financial crisis, and about this bailout, but they’re not pissed off enough. The reality is that the worldwide economic meltdown and the bailout that followed were together a kind of revolution, a coup d’état. They cemented and formalized a political trend that has been snowballing for decades: the gradual takeover of the government by a small class of connected insiders, who used money to control elections, buy influence and systematically weaken financial regulations.
Who knows where we’ll end up after all this is done? I doubt the stories economists are telling of a fourth-quarter economic recovery.
Frickin’ lasers
| Posted by Chill on 19 Mar 2009 |
If any of ya’ll are looking for a printer, I’ve had a good experience with a Lexmark e260dn. It — amazingly enough — includes Linux drivers, worked perfectly right out of the box with Linux, and seems as solidly built as the now-ancient HP Laserjet 4s and 5s (the new HPs are quite crappy and aren’t built like tanks anymore). It includes a 10/100 NIC, which is nearly unheard-of for a $150 printer.
It’s also really fast, and seems just perfect for what we need. Toner cartridges are roughly the same as every other printer (expensive), but other than that, a damn good find for that price. I bought it at Staples because I needed a printer today, but it’s the same price at Newegg, so I didn’t really lose any money by buying it locally.
So far, highly recommended.
A new tabernacle
| Posted by Chill on 18 Mar 2009 |
Much of what we humans do with mass media seems to amplify our prejudices, our fears and our worst tendencies.
Even the internet has divided itself into factions that often have very little discussion with one another. Much of this is understandable. What do I really have to say to someone who thinks that Jesus is responsible for every aspect of her life and being? Basically nothing.
It’s much stranger, though, when there are sites (like Pandagon) that have large user populations who get verklempt and all banny when you merely don’t agree with them strongly enough, or agree with them 99% but not on that other one percent.
This I don’t think I will ever understand, but it seems increasingly common.
Is my post below an example of that? Maybe.