January 2010
Monthly Archive
Mencken up the place
| Posted by Chill on 30 Jan 2010 |
Why HL Mencken is one of my favorite intellectuals, essayists and surly bastards of all time. Of all time!
Paddled
| Posted by Chill on 30 Jan 2010 |
But why I also hate the iPad. It is the death knell of general purpose computing.
As I commented on another site:
It’s inevitable that they go away — large corporations will demand it, essentially — but I am really, really going to miss general-purpose computers.
It’s only an anomaly that they exist at all, and now they are doomed, and much freedom and culture will be lost that way, and very little gained in return.
I’m quoting myself. That’s like talking to myself, except the whole world can listen.
Sopping it up
| Posted by Chill on 30 Jan 2010 |
Pretty much what I think about the iPad, too.
As I said before, if geeks hate it, there’s a good chance consumers will love it — especially in the case of Apple.
Just because some neckbeard who runs open source on his toaster thinks it’s crap doesn’t matter, because a product like that really isn’t aimed at him.
The iPod, the iPhone, and the switch to Intel chips by Apple were all predicted to be failures, and they were spectacular successes.
Lesson: shorting Steve Jobs is a way to lose big.
Wire me in and wireless me in
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
Here’s how you get an Asus PCE-N13 (and likely many other) wireless adapter working in Linux — at least in Karmic Koala — with a split network and a minimum of fucking around with text files:
First, install wicd. Gnome network manager might work, but I could only get it to work with WEP, which is terrible. I got wicd to work with WPA2 with AES with no problem.
Second, configure your /etc/network/interfaces file however you need it to be, but if you have a split wired/wireless network, you must do this step unless you want it all in that text file and the wpa supplicant file (personally, I’d rather have the wireless managed by wicd where I can see what’s going on).
My /etc/network/interfaces looks like this:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 172.16.1.1
network 172.16.0.0
netmask 255.255.0.0
Doesn’t need a gateway because this is not the connection that’ll be going out to the internet.
Once all that’s done, go into wicd and delete the wired interface and also delete eth0 in the options. This allows ifupdown to manage it — which is what you want. It’s why we created that purdy text file up yonder.
Then, connect to your wireless using wicd. You may need to do a sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart (your command may vary), or even a reboot for it to all take hold.
Wicd doesn’t support split networks (gnome network manager does), but in this case, with the card we have, the gnome tool doesn’t work with anything but WEP, which is sub-standard, so it has to be wicd if you want a decent GUI management tool and monitor for your wireless.
I also omitted a lot of “obvious” steps, but I figure if you’re going to try some shit like this, you should be able to figure them out.
Now you should be connected to your wired and wireless networks at the same time, just like my cool-ass self.
Doing things
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
Great quote from Peter Drucker, from the article I linked below: “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”
Because, as many companies currently do, you’re just getting the stupid done faster.
Cylons
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
Another reason to smash the system as it stands.
And what this means, or so I fear, is that we are about to transform books into documentary films. The legal structure that we now contemplate for the accessing of books is even more complex than the legal structure that we have in place for the accessing of films. Or more simply still: we are about to make every access to our culture a legally regulated event, rich in its demand for lawyers and licenses, certain to burden even relatively popular work. Or again: we are about to make a catastrophic cultural mistake.
That really will be completely devastating to our culture.
The corporations giveth, and the corporations taketh away. Mostly taketh away.
Not an A plus decision
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
Australia thinks normal women are gross.
It’d now be illegal in Australia to look at almost all the photos here, as most of those 20-plus-year-old women have A or small B cups, which is typical for the Pirelli calendar.
Internet censorship and censorship in general is why I have discarded any thoughts of making Australia my next home.
Huge breasts do nothing for me. Don’t really understand the attraction to them, but to each his (or her) own….
Miramin
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
I had no idea that Miramax was on its way out.
Out of any studio, they released some of the most culture-defining films of the past two decades.
I do got some satisfaction
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
Though we aren’t married, this is good news for our relationship!
She’s got the brains and the beauty, and I have a GTO. Hey, works for me!
Population
| Posted by Chill on 29 Jan 2010 |
I’ve forgotten more spells
| Posted by Chill on 28 Jan 2010 |
When I first started in the IT world after I got out of the Army, I was amazed by the arcane and eldritch knowledge and abilities many salty old network admins possessed.
Just today, after I pulled up some obscure little fact buried in my head since 1997 to fix a rare and nearly un-diagnosable problem, I realized that I have actually become one of those salty old admins who makes others wonder if I’ve got a direct line to the gods of computers and OSes.
It may be perceived as bragging, but it doesn’t feel that way to me. I still feel like the same naïf I was over 10 years ago.
Supermax
| Posted by Chill on 28 Jan 2010 |
Best line I’ve read all day:
In my opinion, until Blankfein, Summers and Co are getting their bonus in the form of an extra TV hour in high-security prison, these “fees” are not nearly enough. It’s not the bailout we hate, it’s those disgusting criminals who are still at large robbing us blind.
From this post.
Chaste and caught
| Posted by Chill on 28 Jan 2010 |
Yep, even dear old gramma had pre-marital sex.
And that 95% was before widely-available birth control.
Really makes you realize how much of what is “known” is an urban legend or just outright lies.