Today apparently is don’t-pay-for-software day. I say this because today is both Pirate Day (or Talk Like A Pirate Day) and Open Source Day (or Software Freedom Day). Both celebrate classic ways to not pay for your software.
The other alternative is taking them literally together like this:
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We might need to call this union holiday Confused-About-What-I’m-Doing-Day or You’re-Doing-It-Wrong-Day.
I’ve been answering the phone with “This is
Mr. Dijkstra, you are my hero. CS people know him because of his Narcissistic tendencies, most notably naming an algorithm after himself. I mean, who names anything after themselves?
Well, to the point, Dijkstra had the EWD manuscripts, and in one, EWD 1036, he notes something I have been wondering about myself for years…
We are hardly less primitive: why do we persist here in answering the telephone with the most unhelpful “hello” instead of our name?
Am I the only one that thinks the price of the iPhone and the shittiness that is AT&T’s make the iPhone seem pretty unappealing?
The price would be fine if you could use it on any service but me thinks the only way to get me to go back to AT&T is to give it to me plus a few hundred dollars.
Then again, I’m paying $54 a month (after taxes) for two phones, a ton of minutes, unlimited texting and unlimited internet. So pretty much every plan AT&T offers looks like a bad deal.
It’s called a new lappy. I bought a refurbished (don’t laugh, the last place I worked we bought a lot of new and refurb Dells and the refurbs had a much lower failure rate) Dell Inspiron 1720. 17″ screen, pretty good graphics card, a moderate amount of RAM that I already upgraded (cheap cheap on Newegg).
So that parts good. But then I had to buy a laptop case. You see, my laptop bag that I held my 12″ PowerBook in was not nearly big enough for the beast that is this lappy (it has a full numeric keypad!). While shopping for lappy bags, I thought to myself, “Self, this lappy is so big that if you carry it in a soft bag you will bash it into everything. Maybe you should look into a hard sided lappy case.”
Thus I purchased a Solo Attachè on Newegg. (God typing the grave mark over a vowel is way more of a pain in Windows). It’s sweet. It’s big. It’s heavy. It’s sweet.
Closed case on my stove.
Case with lappy and accessories
Case with objects to give relative size
Now, before you say “Wait sloth, that looks really bulky for a lappy. Why did you buy that?” let me point out that there is nothing light or easily portable about a 17″ laptop. I bought it for three reasons: 1) my desktop sucks by modern standards, 2) I wanted a new machine to game on, and 3) I wanted a new machine to code on. A big portable desktop that happens to have a battery included was the perfect solution. This case is basically an armored shell to make sure it survives from point A to point B. If point B happens to be on the other side of point IRAQ it had better well make it unscathed.
Also, if you ever need a large amount of money carried somewhere I have the perfect case for it. I only charge 5%.
My friends know that I’m always on the bleeding edge of technology (which is like the cutting edge only more so). So I just bought an Xbox 360. So far I like the following things:
a) it’s been out for so long games are cheap
b) it has a real gamepad which I prefer to the wiimote
c) theoretically I’ll be able to get free demos and games and stuff from the live thinga
I say theoretically because I have to get it on the tubes first. My wireless router is downstairs so I either have to a) shell out $100 for the xbox wireless, b) finagle a wire up there somehow or c) rig up some other wireless setup. Last night I played with the connection sharing in leopard and all it did was make my internet not work at all. I’m pondering putting my router in the living room and putting a wireless card in a pc in the basement.
The wii came with wireless. That’s one thing in its favor. That and Zack and Wiki. I mean, you shake your friggin monkey to beat monsters. And you are a pirate.
A monkey shaking pirate!
Today’s awesome headline:
Israelis Sue Government For Laser Cannons
Honestly, there are very few projects that we actually want the government to do that it is capable of doing. And it doesn’t.
A few years ago one of the Abodesians (or former Abodesians at least, dunno if he still reads) Drako and another friend built an automatic etch-a-sketch that took scanned images and drew them pretty well in gray scale. I have no images to prove this but I remember it being true.
Now somebody has built an etch-a-sketch clock. It clears itself and draws the time.
Now, I’d imagine you could do a really crude form of flip book style video using this technique. Like .01 fps video 
Good idea: A cute little robot vacuum that runs (well really drives) around your home picking up pet hair and lint and stuff. It even makes cute noises sometimes. Like it’s little “doo doo doo” noise that sounds like “Victory!” when it finishes cleaning.
Bad idea: A cute little robot* that freaks out and kills people with high-explosive 0.5kg 35mm cannon shells. It even makes cute noises sometimes. Like it’s little “boom boom boom” noise that sounds like “Oh Shit!” when it is blowing you apart.
*Yes, I realize that a Oerlikon 35 mm twin cannon is not actually cute and little. It is big and ugly and gets pulled around by a truck. “Cute and little” just sounds better.
The History Channel is running a “Hardcore Kinky Tech” show or something along those lines. It is entertaining. The reason I bring it up though is for one particular item.
Condoms
Yeah, they suck. But back in WWII they were funny. The one they showed was called the “Anti-Baby Condom”. As a rule I’m pro-Anti-Baby anything. I support this condom.
