Join the fun
Why do people so agressively self-censor when writing on the internet? I just read a blog entry which said “…and it is starting to really kick arse.” Now, what possible reason can there be to not say “kick ass”, which is what is obviosly meant? It’s not like writing “pr0n”, which has attained jargon status…
Okay, the pr0n thing also has a good reason: newsgroup (and mail) filters tend to filter on the word “porn”, so your message may be lost. I don’t know of any filters that will stop a message because of “ass”, and I don’t know anyone in any of my online communties who would be horribly upset by the phrase “kick ass”. And, this is a blog, which can’t be filtered anyway. I mean, come on! If someone is offended, they can bloody well stop reading the blog! Show some spine, and say what you mean, not some watered-down, wussified, RC (Religiously Correct) version of it.
If people did that, it would kick ass.
Well, it finally happened. Google has filed for IPO. This doesn’t surprise anyone, as they would have had to make SEC filings starting in the beginning of May anyway. However, this is likely to spark a new tech mini-bubble, with many companies IPOing now, rather than waiting until they’re actually ready. Mabye now would be a good time to buy some tech stock… assuming I could actually predict when the bubble pops.
On a side note, we need to start investing for Morgan’s college. Should be interesting. I’ve never really dealt with investments before, other than the 401(k) I get through work, which involved picking 5 funds and a percentage of my pay to take out. I wonder if we should schedule an appointment with a financial advisor?
I hate it when the internet goes down at home, even when I’m at work. It means I can’t get my comics or my email. It’s amazing how often I check my email…
It never occured to me before, but pend can be used as a transative verb. As in
“Syncronized updates: pend updates until the client drawing [is] done.”
Cool beans.
The Real Loser ™ in this whole virus game is Mail Failure Notifications; not the people catching the viruses, I couldn’t give a shit about them. I get anywhere from 30 to 100 of them a day, all from well-meaning MTAs informing me that the email address the virus was being delivered to didn’t exist. Of course, I don’t have the virus, because I run Linux, so I can’t get it, but someone with me in their addres book (and I’ve sent mail to many email lists with many thousands of people on them, so I’m in lots of address books) does have it.
In the mean time, I’ve had to train my junk filters to mark failure notices as junk. This means that, if mail I did send fails, I’ll never know. And, there have to be millions of people like me. So much for reliable mail transport on the internet…
What’s up with the ESPN announcers? Do they hate the Red Wings? I mean, during the first period, the Red Wings completely dominated. They came out in the second, did really well, and scored. Then, the game bogged down and became pretty even. The announcers, however, are acting like Calgery is dominating just because Detroit isn’t. Are they even watching the same game I am?
Finally, someone has pointed out something that has been vaguely bothering me for a while. See, there’s all this Longhorn hype out right now, and the technology is really exciting (or scaring) a lot of developers I know. But, when I try to explain things to end users (say Janette), they all just say “Huh? How is that different from what we have now? How will that make it easier for me to use my computer?”
This has been somewhat of an epiphany for me. I care about the technology, and how cool it is; the overwhelming number of computer users not only don’t care, they don’t even know. All they care is what they see and use, not how it’s done.
They don’t care that Project Utopia will revolutionize how hardware is configured and used in Gnome by making all notifications asyncronous and responsive. They don’t care if it polls or not. All they care about is that it works. When you plug a camera into Windows, your camera software pops up. When you plug your camera into Gnome, nothing happens. That’s the bottom line. And, they won’t care that, post Utopia, Gnome will have a better camera handling setup than Windows, all they care is that it will work.
Ultimately, end users care about usability, not technology. Hense the name: End Users.
So, what kind of moron calls into the Screen Savers and asks how to do something illegal? I mean, if you can’t google for hacking tips or for Kazaa lite, how do you think you are smart enough or skilled enough to actually succeed in your hacking? All the Screen Savers do is to google for the answer anyway…
Suddenly, after a long time, D is getting some love. I’ve known about it for a long time now, almost from the beginning, when it was just a draft spec and a newsgroup, and there wasn’t even a reference compiler. Recently, I went to go look for it, and digitalmars wasn’t resolving. I was afraid something had happened, and D was a goner. However, everything is fine, and suddenly it’s prominent again. Here’s hoping the compilers get finished up soon (and faster because of the publicity) so that I can do some actual work in D. That would be nice.