More adventures of the freetard in commercial desktop computing land. I’m updating OS X for some security patches and I think, hey I’ll update iTunes too. but it wants me to agree to the license. After reading it over I decide that I can’t agree to it. So I click the “disagree” button. Now the Software Update manager is stuck and there’s a process named “iTunes” using 100% of my CPU, despite iTunes not appearing in the open applications list.
My guess is some one at Apple never even considered that someone would disagree with iTunes license, and thus didn’t program an exception for that button.
Being a freetard, I don’t use Windows that often. Usually, it’s only to test a website I may be working on, or perhaps a specific application that someone I’m working with uses and I have to be compatible with them. I don’t really have many opinions about Windows anymore (I did years back) since I don’t use it.
That said, I really respect Windows as a consumer product. Windows is easy to use. It’s a framework for personal computer use. If what I wish to do fits into that framework, Windows will allow me to do it. If it does not, Windows will forbid me from doing it and that’s that. I have found that as an operating system, it really doesn’t do much at all. It facilitates application use and drives the hardware it runs on. I’m no longer as niave as when I was young. If I’m not able to acomplish a task using Windows, I stop tying.
So. How is Vista different in my mind, as someone who is an advanced user of Linux and OS X but a total n00b to Windows? Vista is verbose. It’s spectacularly concerned with my privacy and obtaining my permission to operate. For example, upon booting this window was the first message I saw after initially configuring the system to my liking.
Vista is concerned about my computer’s risk level even when it’s not connected a network and has only been run once. I can’t imagine what’s going on at the Lenovo factory that has Vista so worried, or maybe it’s concerned that I made a user error when configuring the OS and it’s trying to protect me from myself. Honestly, I don’t know but I chose to ignore that warning.
The next thing I did was browse some of Lenovo’s “abosolute essentials” because, well, I can’t miss out on anything essential. Why didn’t they put it in the box in the first place? Dunno. Maybe I can find out. Turns out it’s nothing special, just some hardware accessories that admitidley look quite cool.
After I closed that window, I noticed that Vista notified me that the “absolute essentials” window couldn’t operate properly because the Flash plugin has been removed from Vista. Finally! I’m glad Windows has finally got the picture about my privacy and that Flash can be used to invade it.
Now the big test. Using the World Wide Web with Internet Explorer 7. Upon opening IE, I’m notified that using this application requires me to authorize it to use the network connection, which I have since enabled after the “absolute essentials” shopping experience. I agree that I do, in fact wish for my web browser to access the Internet. I’m then prompted to install Norton Internet Security, which is included as a free 90 day trial with the laptop. Nice! Vista prompts me that the program used to install this program uses a priviledged command that requires my authorization. Okay, I tell it, I would like this program to install a program. It finishes and opens Internet Explorer.
Wow! IE sure is concerned about my privacy and security. There are multiple warnings all over the UI informing me that I’m in the “internet zone” and it’s operating in “protected mode”. At the top Norton Security has informed me that “fraud monitoring is on”. Wow! I just turned the computer on, browsed some online shopping from the manufacturer of the laptop, installed some security software and viewed a web page and already there’s a threat of an unknown party performing fraud on me.
Computers are scary. I don’t really feel good about using them any more. I’ll see you in real life, where fraud is performed through elaborately orchestrated games of confidence and acting, not stupid computer programs.
But in the end, thank you Microsoft. The UI for Vista is quite nice, while remaining familliar to previous versions. I’m glad your new OS respects my privacy so much. Though I recommend you view this Monty Python skit on how to really irritate people
Nicholas Carr asks if “Google is making us stupid“. Interesting read, though he looses it here when he tries to make a judgment of how the brain works
[the google founders] easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.
Mr. Carr clearly doesn’t understand that this mysterious “contemplation” he speaks of is also composed of “a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized”. Each individual has their own sequence of steps that will come together as a pattern. Artificial Intelligence systems will be no different. Each one will be unique.
For the record, it is possible to use a 32 hole hub laced to a 36 hole rim. It is by no means recommended, though it will be a wheel and it will roll. The secret lies in skipping 1 hole for every 8 on the trailing spokes and lining up the leading spokes normally, so they are one hole away from the trailing on the same side of the flange. I followed this pattern and was still able to use Sheldon Brown’s wheel building page as an accurate reference, despite the mismatch.
