Things I am interested in…

1.       I think that maintaining the computers, game systems and home network is just as important, if not MORE important than doing dishes or cleaning the bathrooms.

2.       She never knows when she’ll walk into the dining room to find the table covered with a computer broken down into all its component parts.

3.       I’m a packrat, keeping every spare cable, screw and or slightly damaged electronic part for a future project.

4.       I am thinking of removing the TV, cancelling Sky, and replacing everything with a large screen computer because all the good shows can be streamed on the Internet.

5.       I spend a lot of time maintaining my personal blog(s).

6.       I have considered installing stilts under the legs of our bed so my comic book boxes can fit underneath.

7.       Our kid’s college fund consists of boxes of first issues of my favourite comic books.

8.       I would like to sit down with the kid and read through the first issues (when he or she is old enough to treat them with respect), college fund be damned. (Well, maybe not Preacher #1.)

9.       Every computer in the house has its chassis half open…and is still running.

10.    I may pause any movie at any time to make sure that the colour temperature and brightness are set just right.

11.    I think nothing of having the laptop on the dining room table to share funny stories and pictures I’ve found with the family.

12.    Our house is colourful, and not because of paint, but because of toys, models, and my collection of videos and comics.

13.    I have dissected a new appliance just to see how it works…

14.    At times I have debated  the relativity of fictional characters and or logical outcomes to movies and television shows.

15.    A Periodic Table placemat for our child would be neat (and instructional!).

16.    I am more than happy to attempt explanations of obscure scientific answers to “why?” questions.

17.    It pains me to limit the kid’s computer time.

18.    She’s not sure if the new Lego sets are really for the kids or for me.

19.    I want to build my own robot.

20.    I spend lots of time “helping” the kid play videogames.

Posted via email from attobrute’s posterous

These are my links for January 5th:

• Psychiatric Formulation –
• Home | Eastern Hi-Fi, the home entertainment specialists –
• Main Page – New Zealand Connections –
• ispmap.co.nz :: isp topology & speedtest :: New Zealand Broadband speed test :: helpdesk information – new zealand isp’s :: nzadsl speedtest :: nz ISP –
• Firewall Test, Web Tools and Free Internet Security Audit –
• Virtual lab for biologists –
• The Free Statistics Calculators Website – Home –
• The Ridiculant | Stuff we found down the back of the internet –
• Old Car Removal –
• Sniper Central – Mel’s Sniper Page –

Just the other day a friend of mine made a comment in an email about how his computer was not running all that well under Windows Vista, to which I replied:

“Windows Vista is the spawn of the devil!”

He responded by asking me what I had “against” Vista.  He had only had a few minor problems with it (italics mine), such as several items of software not working, including video drivers I would imagine.  He is a keen audiophile, and mentioned that for him the most annoying thing was the time when iTunes would not function.

Here is my reply to his question (which I believe he had already answered in part):

I don’t like Vista because it is built on the premise that everyone who uses it is a potential thief (whether they are or not). There are parts of Vista that the person who has bought the computer hardware, and has also bought the computer software (including Vista), has no control over – Microsoft does.

In the future you, and everyone else using Vista, may find yourself locked out of your own computer because Microsoft find something you are doing objectionable (most likely because you haven’t paid them enough to do it, on a repeating basis).  Or another scenario is that the overzealous and oversensitive “protection” system ( e.g., “tilt bits”) produces a false positive and shuts you down even though you are doing something totally legitimate.

For an interesting (and controversial) analysis of this see the article referred to in my April blog post – http://turbott.net/blog/2007/04/22/the-longest-corporate-suicide-note-in-history/ .

Copy protection doesn’t work – it merely makes things harder and more cumbersome for the average honest user.  Pirates have been able to hack past every single copy protection system yet devised, including that for BluRay, HDDVD, and the protection on the iPhone.  The average time that passes between a piece of (DRM protected) music appearing on iTunes, and the same piece of music appearing stripped of copy protection on some peer to peer site is around five minutes.  Once an item has been hacked, anyone with access to the internet and a search engine is able to find a copy (hassle free, that will run on any computer system with ease – except Vista) by entering “{item x} torrent” into the search engine…

I will never deliberately purchase Windows Vista until such time as I have no choice.  This will only be when the majority of games I am interested in playing will not run on anything else.  Even then, I will probably keep a seperate games’ machine, tainted with Vista.  The rest of my network will continue using operating systems that I have legitimately purchased, and therefore can expect to retain control over, instead of Microsoft or any other third party…

Here endeth the rant!

Here are a couple of interesting articles about Windows Vista, or “Windows Me II” as some irreverant wags are calling it:

• Dell brings back XP
  
• Another article, with some comment on Vista sales thrown in

Here is the original Peter Gutmann article talking about the problems with Vista…

I’m not planning to install any version of Vista anytime in the near future!