Alien Ryder FlexRavings about philosophy, computing, and such.2009-06-25T20:10:00-05:00Darel Rex Finleyhttp://alienryderflex.com/DarelRex@gmail.comCopyright (c) 2009, Darel Rex FinleyFunny iPhone Party Poopers (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:063018152009-06-30T20:18:15-05:002009-06-30T20:18:15-05:00Independent analyst Joe Wilcox (June, 2009):
“What has Apple done truly innovative in [Jobs’s 6-month] absence? Not much”
“iPhone 3GS: More of the same, only better. It looks the same as iPhone 3G, and features like video and MMS are catchup. There’s no flash (for camera).
iPhone 3.0 OS: More of the same, only better. Sure, developers can now charge customers from within apps, but they’ve still got no Flash (from Adobe).”
“I don’t mean this ‘more of the same, only better’ list to be a criticism of the management team struggling along without [Jobs].”
“‘More of the same, only better,’ while good enough for most other companies, isn’t Apple. ... [T]hat dazzling ‘one more thing’ is missing. Apple needs it.”Funny iPhone Party Poopers (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:062520102009-06-25T20:10:00-05:002009-06-25T20:10:00-05:00Jon Stokes in Ars Technica (June, 2009):
“[I]f you’re like me and you felt that the iPhone, even in its post-MobileMe incarnation, never quite made sense as an Internet- and cloud-centric messaging device, then the Pre may be the answer to your prayers.”Spectacularly Well (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:062511302009-06-25T11:30:00-05:002009-06-25T11:30:00-05:00Stokes continues and expands on this same line of thought in “Ars reviews the Palm Pre, part 2: the webOS experience”:
“[T]he iPhone is a widescreen, networked media player that also does a bunch of other stuff, telephony and Internet included.
The Pre, in contrast, was introduced by Rubenstein as a cloud messaging device that also does a bunch of other stuff, media playback included.”
Then he takes it a new, much more audacious level...What Free Will Is Really Abouttag:alienryderflex.com,2009:061909302009-06-19T09:30:00-05:002009-06-19T09:30:00-05:00The standard position of free-will advocates goes like this:
1. It’s legitimate to imprison people (for engaging in wanton violence) only if they have free will.
2. Even if imprisonment is the only way for civilized human society to protect itself from mass destruction, it would still be illegitimate to imprison criminals if they don’t have free will to choose their actions.
3. But, luckily for us, criminals do have free will, so it is legitimate to imprison them, so we can save civilization from destruction.
4. A person who believes there isn’t such a thing as free will is threatening civilization, by potentially justifying the release of dangerous criminals into society — even if that same person also believes that it’s legitimate to imprison perpetrators of wanton destruction whether or not those perpetrators possess free will.
It’s one thing to disagree with someone else’s beliefs. It’s another thing entirely to refuse to recognize what those beliefs are...Spectacularly Welltag:alienryderflex.com,2009:061122452009-06-11T22:45:00-05:002009-06-11T22:45:00-05:00A couple days ago John Stokes wrote an article for Ars Technica in which he argued that the Palm Pre is a Blackberry killer, not an iPhone killer. I like this argument; he’s really on to something with that. The implication is that the Pre will be pretty successful, but at RIM’s expense, not Apple’s.
But what’s with this idea...Pointless Wrapperstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:060717402009-06-07T17:40:00-05:002009-06-07T17:40:00-05:00Remember Joel Spolsky’s withering critique of Microsoft’s Architecture Astronauts?
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and it’s slowly dawning on me what I don’t like about .NET. Besides the fact that it’s from Microsoft. Heck, now that I really think about it, I feel pretty much the same way about J2EE, Struts, Spring, Hibernate, and all that non-Microsoft stuff...PTED — The P Is Silenttag:alienryderflex.com,2009:060122102009-06-01T22:10:00-05:002009-06-01T22:10:00-05:00From the LA Times:
“You know them. I know them. And, increasingly, psychiatrists know them. People who feel they have been wronged by someone and are so bitter they can barely function other than to ruminate about their circumstances...”Out of Synctag:alienryderflex.com,2009:053009552009-05-30T09:55:00-05:002009-05-30T09:55:00-05:00When people are actually able to buy a Palm Pre, it isn’t going to play well with iTunes. Not consistently for any length of time (months or years), anyway.
Palm can show a demo in which their phone seems to work great with iTunes. But you can do anything in a demo. For example,..Stupid Stickerstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:052718502009-05-27T18:50:00-05:002009-05-27T18:50:00-05:00On the way to my son’s soccer practice, I noticed a car in front of me with a sticker on the back that said, “This car’s CO2 offset by TerraPass.” Hmm, that’s interesting, I thought. What could “TerraPass” be? Some special new device that captures CO2 before it escapes the car’s exhaust system into the outside air? Or maybe something that causes the engine to emit another gas in addition to CO2 — a gas that somehow negates the greenhouse effect that otherwise would be caused by the CO2? Hey, maybe it’s a mechanism that chills the exhaust, so that whatever small amount of global warming is caused by this car’s exhaust, is actually directly offset (temperature-wise) by using some of the engine’s energy to refrigerate the exhaust gasses?
Really curious by then, I looked it up on the internet...A Memory of Gateway (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:052120302009-05-21T20:30:00-05:002009-05-21T20:30:00-05:00iPhone market share doubled from the year-ago quarter.Security Through Normalcytag:alienryderflex.com,2009:052105302009-05-21T05:30:00-05:002009-05-21T05:30:00-05:00Network Security Podcast #144 (mckeay.net), though generally upbeat on the Mac, included a heavy dose of the “security through obscurity” argument — that the Mac doesn’t have the huge malware problem suffered by Windows users because the Mac has small market share...The Case For Corporate Bonusestag:alienryderflex.com,2009:051121202009-05-11T21:20:00-05:002009-05-11T21:20:00-05:00I’m not necessarily in favor of big executive bonuses at bailed-out corporations. But I feel compelled to point out a big flaw in the highly popular anti-bonus argument that’s making the rounds. That argument goes like this:
“These executives are saying, ‘We were promised these bonuses when we were hired here. We didn’t do anything wrong, so why should we be penalized?’ Well, if the government hadn’t bailed out your company, that company wouldn’t have been able to pay these bonuses. You wouldn’t have gotten that bonus whether they promised it to you or not, if they had gone into bankruptcy. So if the government’s bailing-out your company, that company has no business paying big executive bonuses, regardless of what was promised.”
The flaw in this argument is simple...Movie Copyrights Are Forevertag:alienryderflex.com,2009:050309302009-05-03T09:30:00-05:002009-05-03T09:30:00-05:00In theory, copyrights are supposed to end fifty years after the original copyright holder dies. But, in practice, I think, the copyrights on movies will never end...Area of A Spline Polygon (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:050214252009-05-02T14:25:00-05:002009-05-02T14:25:00-05:00Now updated with C code sample.Area of A Spline Polygontag:alienryderflex.com,2009:050210552009-05-02T10:55:00-05:002009-05-02T10:55:00-05:00On [this page] we learned how to make a polygon with spline curves. But what if you want to know the area of such a polygon? Impossibly difficult? Actually, it’s pretty easy...Permitted By Whom?tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:042520402009-04-25T20:40:00-05:002009-04-25T20:40:00-05:00A recent UD installment by Barry Arrington argues as follows:
“If [atheist naturalism is] true, nothing exists from which we can infer any moral principle. If moral principles cannot be inferred, nothing is prohibited by any moral principle and therefore all things are permitted. This leads to the conclusion that the Holocaust was permitted.
...
The nearly 300 comments [I received from materialists on this argument] boil down to indignation mixed with the childhood rejoinder — ‘Oh, yeah, same to ya.’
No one, not a single person, has attempted to rebut the conclusion. Therefore we must conclude that there is no rebuttal.”
There isn’t? Let’s see...A Memory of Gateway (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:042321452009-04-23T21:45:00-05:002009-04-23T21:45:00-05:00iPhone’s web traffic, worldwide, now surpasses all Symbian phones, putting iPhone in first place.Malware Isn’t About Total Control (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:041918202009-04-19T18:20:00-05:002009-04-19T18:20:00-05:00OK, just heard that a Mac botnet has been discovered. That’s a point in Miller’s favor. But — the same report said that these Macs became infected when their owners downloaded pirated software from BitTorrent and other such sites, and that illicit software was infected with a trojan horse. No word that this malware can’t be easily avoided simply by not acquiring software that way.Quantum Cognition and Other Hogwashtag:alienryderflex.com,2009:041820002009-04-18T20:00:00-05:002009-04-18T20:00:00-05:00Apparently, William Dembski and like-minded IDists aren’t the only ones infatuated with the idea that human decision must be something “more” than the neural algorithms in our brains, as coded in our DNA. PhysOrg.com has a new article “Quantum Theory May Explain Wishful Thinking”...Howard = Second Coming? (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:041210002009-04-12T10:00:00-05:002009-04-12T10:00:00-05:00Oh, and did I forget to mention what the German word for “star” is?
Happy Easter!The Problem With Message Theorytag:alienryderflex.com,2009:040921252009-04-09T21:25:00-05:002009-04-09T21:25:00-05:00Walter Remine, a man I admire (in particular for his resurrection of Haldane’s Dilemma), recently made a three-part post to Uncommon Descent in which he described his Message Theory, which is essentially the idea that the creator(s) of this universe purposely made the kind of world that would communicate the existence of those creator(s) to us. In Remine’s words:
“Life was reasonably designed to meet three simultaneous goals:
1. Survival
2. To look like the product of one designer (or unified design team acting together as one), and unlike the product of multiple designers acting independently.
3. To resist all other explanations of origin.”
This, he thinks, is how our creator(s) communicate the message to us that they created us.
But I have a problem with this idea...Funny iPhone Party-Poopers (update)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:040410252009-04-04T10:25:00-05:002009-04-04T10:25:00-05:00Anssi Vankoji of Nokia (April 2009):
“We [at Nokia] don’t think the world is so simple that you just make one device for everybody. We know more about the consumers in the world than any other consumer goods company in the world because we have so many customers. We know they have different tastes and uses and so you have to offer a whole line.”
“I don’t think the world will unite on one platform. There are several that will succeed. Our platform, Symbian, is an open platform and will make a major impact in the industry.”Bell’s Boring Inequality and the Insanity of the Gapstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:040119552009-04-01T19:55:00-05:002009-04-01T19:55:00-05:00Uncommon Descent’s Denyse O’Leary’s recent ID Report post asks the question: Is Bell’s Inequality the most profound fact ever discovered?
Answer: No. Not even.
I’m not sure how much of her post is a quote of Malcolm Chisholm and how much is O’Leary’s original writing, but in any case she doesn’t even suggest that Bell’s Inequality might not be profound at all, much less the most profound thing ever...Malware Isn’t About Total Control (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:032800452009-03-28T00:45:00-05:002009-03-28T00:45:00-05:00Charlie Miller says:
“Any security expert knows that Mac OS X is less secure than Windows. The question is which is SAFER. Because Mac OS X is still relatively rare, it is actually a little safer...” Paying the Rent At the 6 Park Avenue Apartments tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:032318402009-03-23T18:40:00-05:002009-03-23T18:40:00-05:00Imagine you live in a city in which most everyone resides in fairly average-looking apartment complexes. You do too. Your apartment is OK, but not great. There’s just something kind-of shabby about it. It’s a little bit cramped. A little bit run-down looking. Blandly landscaped. Under-maintained.
But there’s this one complex in town, the 6 Park Avenue Apartments, that’s way better...Primary + Reviewer — An Alternative IT Plan For Corporationstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:031822052009-03-18T22:05:00-05:002009-03-18T22:05:00-05:00Most corporate IT departments seem to follow this philosophy: Hire a fairly large group of developers (four or more), none of them particularly high-talent. Then have them develop in a really big, multi-layered...Humans Are Complexity, Not Choice (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:031419152009-03-14T19:15:00-05:002009-03-14T19:15:00-05:00On Uncommon Descent, it’s become popular to refer to Darwinists by the derogatory “Darwinbots.” Q: If Darwinism makes us robots, does it make only Darwinists robots? Did Darwinists evolve, and everybody else was designed? Who believes that? Q: If you define “robot” expansively enough to include the best and brightest humans who have ever lived, then haven’t you defined it so that it’s no longer an insult? No longer something we shouldn’t want to be? Q: How is the desire to be “more than a robot” relevant to finding out how humans came to be?Yes Yes Yestag:alienryderflex.com,2009:031119302009-03-11T19:30:00-05:002009-03-11T19:30:00-05:00I try to avoid using a new posting here to basically just link to a news story, but in this case I’ll make an exception.
President Obama has just proposed revolutionary earmark reforms. Abso-f...Feelingstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:030919402009-03-09T19:40:00-05:002009-03-09T19:40:00-05:00What is happening in your mind when you try to remember something? You think, “What’s the name of that actor who co-starred with Schwarzenegger in Predator? I can picture his face, but I just can’t remember his name.” Nothing happens for several seconds. Then, suddenly...Funny iPhone Party-Poopers (updates)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:030623252009-03-06T23:25:00-05:002009-03-06T23:25:00-05:00Roger McNamee of Elevation Partners, investors in Palm (March 2009):
“June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people [whose 2-year service contracts expire] will still be using an iPhone a month later.”
“I’m on a 10-year plan, here. They are going to run out of gas way before we are.”
Ray Maguire of Sony (March 2009):
“The iPhone has the advantage of being a single device and is growing a reasonable installed base, but it doesn’t have the production power that a PSP has. As a specific games machine, the PSP is always going to win out.”
“We’re in a great position to take on the interest in these snacking games and produce them at better quality, lower prices, with lower cost of development”Hey Hey Whine Whinetag:alienryderflex.com,2009:030419202009-03-04T19:20:00-05:002009-03-04T19:20:00-05:00“Hey hey my my, rock and roll can never die ...
My my hey hey, rock and roll is here to stay” —Neil Young
Whiny victimology dirges, on the other hand, mercifully have gone out of style.
Will someone please play Seether’s “Gasoline” at high volume? Thank you.Avoiding Conflict At All Costs (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:030319302009-03-03T19:30:00-05:002009-03-03T19:30:00-05:00Just listened to Dowd on “Point of Inquiry with D.J. Grothe.” It was virtually identical to his appearance on “Dobbs” — just one brief mention of ID, lumped together with young-Earth creationism, and no engagement of ID arguments at all...MustWinForSure (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:030318452009-03-03T18:45:00-05:002009-03-03T18:45:00-05:00Here’s Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer trying to promote Beattie’s 2005 logic today:
“[A]ll the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android.”
In other words, it isn’t how many consumers are buying the product, but rather how many companies are signing up to sell it. Having “consumer market mojo” (i.e. the best-selling system) isn’t real market momentum — that’s to be found only in having a product that’s licensed by fifty companies, irrespective of how weak their combined sales.
It didn’t make sense in 2005, and it doesn’t make sense today.A Memory of Gateway (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2009:030219252009-03-02T19:25:00-05:002009-03-02T19:25:00-05:00Ages 12, 9, and 6, the children of Bill Gates are prohibited from owning an iPod or iPhone.Microsoft About Microsoft Visual Microsoft Studio Microsofttag:alienryderflex.com,2009:022621152009-02-26T21:15:00-05:002009-02-26T21:15:00-05:00How many times does the word “Microsoft” appear in the Visual Studio about-box?...Funny iPhone Party-Pooperstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:022520002009-02-25T20:00:00-05:002009-02-25T20:00:00-05:00Update:
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft (February 2009):
“[A]ll the consumer market mojo is with Apple and to a lesser extent BlackBerry. And yet, the real market momentum with operators and the real market momentum with device manufacturers seems to primarily be with Windows Mobile and Android.”Hidden Purple Tigertag:alienryderflex.com,2009:022115352009-02-21T15:35:00-05:002009-02-21T15:35:00-05:00A few articles ago I faulted Einstein et al for jumping to the conclusion that if you can’t currently contrive a way to observe X, then X must not exist. Instead, I said, the correct scientific declaration is that we don’t currently know whether or not X exists.
One of the standard counterarguments to my logic goes something like this: “Is there a hidden purple tiger in this room with us?” By posing such a question, the speaker hopes to generate a win-win situation where...Forest Fair Mall and the Second Lamborghinitag:alienryderflex.com,2009:021620352009-02-16T20:35:00-05:002009-02-16T20:35:00-05:00DeadMalls.com tells the tale of developer George Herscu who, around 1985, developed the upscale Forest Fair mall between two blue-collar areas of peripheral Cincinnati, to widespread claims that his mall couldn’t possibly succeed. And it didn’t...A Memory of Gatewaytag:alienryderflex.com,2009:021020502009-02-10T20:50:00-05:002009-02-10T20:50:00-05:00Update — Microsoft shareholders enraged at billions and billions of dollars of R&D with nothing much to show for it.Intelligent Design — The Straight Dopetag:alienryderflex.com,2009:020721252009-02-07T21:25:00-05:002009-02-07T21:25:00-05:00A markerboard-style essay on the current state of the Intelligent Design movement.Maxwell’s Demon — Two Real-World Examplestag:alienryderflex.com,2009:020318202009-02-03T18:20:00-05:002009-02-03T18:20:00-05:00“Maxwell’s Demon” was an imaginary, quasi-intelligent entity thought up by James Clerk Maxwell. The demon would sit by a tiny door between two rooms and watch as molecules of air approached the door...Perspective Photo Distortion Explainedtag:alienryderflex.com,2009:013111102009-01-31T11:10:00-05:002009-01-31T11:10:00-05:00If you take a lot of pictures, you’ve probably noticed this effect. If an object is in the middle of the picture, it is relatively small and undistorted. But if it is near the edge of the picture — especially if it’s in the corner of the picture — the object is relatively large, and kind-of stretched looking...Zealotstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:012821202009-01-28T21:20:00-05:002009-01-28T21:20:00-05:00I’ve been an Apple user ever since I bought my first computer, an Apple II+, when I was a teenager. Apple was more-or-less on top then, but very soon after was eclipsed by first the IBM (MS-DOS) PC, then later by the Windows PC.
Throughout the 1980s and ’90s, I privately thought that reasonable, impartial people bought Windows PCs...Unicode, UTF-8, and Mac Roman — C Code Sample Conversion Functionstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:012619102009-01-26T19:10:00-05:002009-01-26T19:10:00-05:00Public-domain functions for dealing with Unicode, UTF-8, and Mac Roman strings, as used in SWTSG (alienryderflex.com/crawl)...Entitlement BStag:alienryderflex.com,2009:012322052009-01-23T22:05:00-05:002009-01-23T22:05:00-05:00It’s been very popular, for a long time now, for psychologists to say that if you want to be rich and privileged, and you’re not, and you’re angry about it, then you have a “sense of entitlement.”
I’m calling bullshit....Instantaneous File-System Snapshots — How They Worktag:alienryderflex.com,2009:012021052009-01-20T21:05:00-05:002009-01-20T21:05:00-05:00A file-system snapshot is a sort of window into the past, whereby you can see exactly what files and folders were in a volume (presumably a hard drive) at some time in the past — the time when the snapshot was taken. You can see everything in those files: their full, actual content at the time the snapshot was taken. And this can be done without massively replicating everything on the volume. Even better: When you ask the system to create a new snapshot, it happens virtually instantly, no matter how huge and complicated your set of files and folders. How can a snapshot like that be created in an instant?
In the following two diagrams, we will explore...Agenderletag:alienryderflex.com,2009:011814302009-01-18T14:30:00-05:002009-01-18T14:30:00-05:00Here’s Rob Enderle of The Enderle Group:
[photo]
And here are some revealing quotes from him...Funny iPhone Party-Pooperstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:011420052009-01-14T20:05:00-05:002009-01-14T20:05:00-05:00Updated:
John Cox in NetworkWorld (January 2009):
“From what I can see, [Pre’s cloud integration is] a step ahead of the iPhone, which has more narrowly focused this kind of integration around a proprietary, Apple-based service infrastructure.”
“Apple’s corporate ethos is ‘we’re cool and you’re not, use the product and bask in the coolness.’ Palm has the opportunity to crystallize a new corporate ethos more suited to the Web’s democratic openness ...”Funny iPhone Party-Pooperstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:011219402009-01-12T19:40:00-05:002009-01-12T19:40:00-05:00Updated:
Priya Ganapati in Wired (January 2009):
“The Palm Pre has it all, making the iPhone look almost like — dare we say it — a version 1.0 device.”Mutationstag:alienryderflex.com,2009:011111002009-01-11T11:00:00-05:002009-01-11T11:00:00-05:00Eden
In the beginning, the first human pair had no deleterious mutations (or none, at least, not shared by all humans today). The project of writing human DNA, by whatever engineering team wrote it, was finished, and the genome contained the code as intended to optimally function.
This human pair multiplied rapidly into the human race. Inbreeding was not an issue in the first several generations, due to the lack of harmful mutations that make inbreeding an issue...Funny iPhone Party-Pooperstag:alienryderflex.com,2008:113013102009-01-08T19:45:00-05:002009-01-08T19:45:00-05:00Updated:
Dan Lyons of Newsweek (January 2009):
“[T]he Pre represents only a first shot. Rubinstein and his engineers are already preparing a family of devices that will run on the Palm Web OS. Could it be that Apple has staked out an early lead with a breakthrough product only to be passed by others? It’s happened before.”
Ed Colligan of Palm (January 2009):
“Why would we [sell the Pre for less than the iPhone] when we have a significantly better product?”Smallest Polygon That Encloses A Set of Points — With C Code Sampletag:alienryderflex.com,2009:010317502009-01-03T17:50:00-05:002009-01-03T17:50:00-05:00This C code sample takes a set of 2D points and obtains the smallest enclosing polygon; that is, the smallest polygon that encloses all of the points...Einstein’s Error — The Confusion of Laws With Their Effectstag:alienryderflex.com,2008:123118302008-12-31T18:30:00-05:002008-12-31T18:30:00-05:00Question: What would happen if some causal agent outside the universe planted a brand new electron in the air six inches in front of your face? This event would be, of course, in complete contradiction to the law of conservation of matter-energy. Would the universe come to an abrupt end? Would a logical contradiction be created that means no such electron creation can, even hypothetically, occur? Or would the universe be thrown into a state of imbalance and careen out of control, wrecking all matter and energy as we know them?
I have another idea: Nothing special would happen...The Museum Is the Arttag:alienryderflex.com,2008:123012252008-12-30T12:25:00-05:002008-12-30T12:25:00-05:00Many years ago, “60 Minutes” did a segment on aburd modern art, that I reconstruct here from memory. One of the pieces was a huge pile of individually wrapped hard candies filling the corner of one of the museum’s rooms. “So you don’t eat them, right?” asked the reporter...Polly Sooth the Air Rage (Updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2008:123012102008-12-30T12:10:00-05:002008-12-30T12:10:00-05:00Our bags were delivered on our third day in Portland. And on the return trip, they charged us $45.00 to check one non-overweight bag each. (What were we going to do, say no?!) Fool me once, shame on United. Fool me twice, shame on me. Next time I’m flying Southwest.
Oh, and did I mention that they wanted $18.00 for us to each to have one snack box, which doesn’t contain even a tiny sandwich? United is starting to look more and more like SkyBus. Say...how’s SkyBus been doing lately?Polly Sooth the Air Ragetag:alienryderflex.com,2008:122514302008-12-25T14:30:00-05:002008-12-25T14:30:00-05:00After waiting over five hours for an available flight to Chicago, we took off and landed less than an hour later at O’Hare. Unfortunately, due to the -3°F weather turning fuel to jelly, freezing human waste solid, and such as the like, we sat for I think an hour and half in our plane before it was able to taxi a very long distance to a gate. Then, to get from one B gate to another B gate, it was an amazingly long walk with our dazed, just awoken six-year-old to our connecting flight. We got there just in time for boarding...The Truthtag:alienryderflex.com,2008:121921202008-12-19T21:20:00-05:002008-12-19T21:20:00-05:00An unsolicited religious pamphlet recently appeared at my doorstep. It posed a set of questions:
“Would you like to know the truth?
Does God really care about us?
Will war and suffering ever end?
What happens to us when we die?
Is there any hope for the dead?
How can I pray and be heard by God?
How can I find happiness in life?”
To me, this pretty much sums up what organized religion is about, and to whom it appeals...Not A Bluff (updated)tag:alienryderflex.com,2008:121717502008-12-17T17:50:00-05:002008-12-17T17:50:00-05:00Updated:
Just a few weeks before IDG’s Macworld Expo, Apple announced that Jobs won’t be delivering the keynote, and Apple won’t be attending any more Macworld Expos, to boot!
To me, this smells like another NBC-iTunes situation. Perhaps IDG was still mentally living in the late ’80s when Apple badly needed to be at that show. Today, Apple can (and does) put on a keynote-publicity-level event any time it wants to. Maybe Apple said it would pull out of Macworld if IDG didn’t make certain concessions, and IDG called Apple’s bluff.
And it wasn’t a bluff.Area of a Circle — Simple Geometric Derivationtag:alienryderflex.com,2008:121522502008-12-15T22:50:00-05:002008-12-15T22:50:00-05:00Here’s a circle, of radius r. What is its area?...The Darknesstag:alienryderflex.com,2008:121510102008-12-15T10:10:00-05:002008-12-15T10:10:00-05:00It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. But if you do light a candle, it’ll still be way fuckin’ dark. And those “better to light a single candle” people still won’t like your cursing.SWTSG 1.2.0tag:alienryderflex.com,2008:121020002008-12-10T20:00:00-05:002008-12-10T20:00:00-05:00* Fixed bug that caused newly opened user files to have the incorrect setting of the custom-starfield file chooser (enabled vs. disabled).Morality = STDs?tag:alienryderflex.com,2008:121006202008-12-10T06:20:00-05:002008-12-10T06:20:00-05:00Theory:
Sexual morality is based entirely on the existence of STDs (sexually transmitted diseases). Fifty or a hundred years from now, when such diseases have been conquered, sexual morality will take a nosedive, and be believed by only a small subset of the population.
Two-parent families will still be the norm, and jealousy will still be alive-and-well for most of those couples, but a substantial percentage of them will be concerned not about their spouse sometimes having sex with others, but rather about their spouse leaving them for someone else, or socializing too much with another partner, or failing to shield their kids from their adult sexual activities.
What we describe today as an “open marriage” will be the rule, not the exception.Fulfilling the Moral Duty To Disdaintag:alienryderflex.com,2008:120519052008-12-05T19:05:00-05:002008-12-05T19:05:00-05:00In ars technica’s “Overturning Copernicus, eliminating dark energy,” Matt Ford describes an about-to-be-published paper by three Oxford astrophysicists, Timothy Clifton, Pedro G. Ferreira, and Kate Land, that has as one of its direct implications that our planet is located at or very near the center of the universe.
Twice in his article, Ford reminds us why the Cosmological Principle (that Earth must not be in any special place in the universe, such as its center) is so important...Funny iPhone Party-Pooperstag:alienryderflex.com,2008:113013102008-11-30T13:10:00-05:002008-11-30T13:10:00-05:00Updated:
Don Reisinger on CNet (November 2008):
“Apple is scared. And it should be.”
“[L]et’s face it: the number of shortcomings in the iPhone 3G far outweigh those found in the [BlackBerry] Storm.
Although [Apple] will never admit it ... you can bet that company executives are running scared Friday. Even though Apple created this category and revolutionized the market, RIM just one-upped the founders, and Apple knows that.”
“The iPhone was cool, up until yesterday.”MustWinForSuretag:alienryderflex.com,2008:113012552008-11-30T12:55:00-05:002008-11-30T12:55:00-05:00About four years ago it was very popular to think that Microsoft was going to take over Apple’s iPod and iTunes Store businesses the same (supposed) way that it took the GUI OS away from Apple twenty years prior: by licensing its system to many different companies, and thus isolating Apple into a niche status.
Typical of this thinking...SWTSG 1.1.9tag:alienryderflex.com,2008:112114402008-11-21T14:40:00-05:002008-11-21T14:40:00-05:00* Minor bug fixed in frame BMP-creation code; individual frame files now can be opened in Preview, Pixelmator, and other apps that previously refused to open these files.Choicetag:alienryderflex.com,2008:112112252008-11-21T12:25:00-05:002008-11-21T12:25:00-05:00Suppose a new corporation came out tomorrow called, I don’t know, Messiah Co. or something else. And they just started cranking out products in almost every field, you know, washing machines, computers, phones, cars, houses, lawnmowers — everything. And everything they made was radically better than what anybody else was making, but sold for about the same price, or only a little bit more. Or maybe sometimes even less...SWTSG 1.1.8tag:alienryderflex.com,2008:111613402008-11-16T13:40:00-05:002008-11-16T13:40:00-05:00* Option created to allow user to select a custom starfield image.
* Fixed bug that caused some alert messages to fail to display.