David’s Ramblings

All of this time I’ve been fighting the truth, but I just can’t fight it any more. Windows XP is better than Mac OSX any day of the week. You haters out there may try to come up with a good argument, but there’s just no fighting it. Mac OSX pales in comparison to anything Windows.

Just take a look at it. First, you’ve got all the software for Windows. Almost every good computer game on the planet was made for Windows. Then you’ve got all those little other proprietary programs (that of course you didn’t pirate). Let’s not forget the viruses, worms, and spyware written specifically for Windows. I love that compatibility… that’s the compatibility only Microsoft can provide. OSX can’t even infect my machine without asking for a password. How inconvenient is that?

Second, you’ve got the comfort of Windows security. Whereas there’s like, 5 virus scanners for Mac, there’s like 500 for Windows. This means 100 times the security, obviously. And the virus scanners on Mac actually do more virus scanning to check for Windows viruses. Windows is so good, it has other Operating Systems watching its back.

Finally, the most obvious reason to pick Windows over Mac is that Windows is a machine for the power user. All of the editing registries and using the DOS command line, it’s so cool and confusing. Macs, they cater to the dummies who like their operating system to make logical sense. The dummies on Macs even enjoy not having to expect the occasional Blue Screen to pop up every now and then because they’re “afraid of losing their work”. Pansies.

Obviously, it’s time for me to go back to Windows. There’s just no other option. Anyone want to buy a used Powerbook?

I almost neglected to make a post today, which would have been a horrible shame. I got sucked into a video game. Video games consume a lot of my time… probably far too much.

It’s really hard too, when you’ve got like, 3 video game systems plus the computer all loaded up and ready to play. Just on the computer there’s Starcraft, Diablo II, and Warcraft. Those three [Blizzard] titles alone make it worth owning a computer with them installed. Add into that the fact that the computer has a TV-in card to play N64 (Super Smash Brothers and Perfect Dark), Super Nintendo (Super Mario World, of course) and Xbox (Halo 2… I need to buy more games for this thing), and you have countless hours of entertainment… and that’s without even counting the fact that our school provides over 100 channels of cable free.

So where’s all my time going? Yeah. I’d like to say studying for my next Calc II test (Lord knows I need it), programming all sorts of cool stuff in Java, or reading my English assignment, but that’s just not the case. I’m an expert at putting things off, and homework certainly tops the list. And studying? Yeah, I really have no conception of what that word means. I’d better learn before I get into the harder classes, but in high school looking at the cover of the book was what I did to study (maybe I would have broken that habit if it wasn’t so effective).

When I’m not playing video games I do try to make time for the homework though… after I spending several pointless hours chatting Ð no wait Ð babbling online. I don’t mind talking to my friends and stuff online (obviously), but the sad thing is that often times the conversations I spend hours with online have no real worth, not even as conversation. “Hi. How are you? Bye.” Take that out of my time instant messaging, and I’d have enough time left over to cure cancer.

So here’s to another hour of wasting time, my blog, and the countless hours I’ll spend playing Diablo II this weekend instead of writing my final English paper.

Well, it’s official. Atlanta’s starting to get cold. I might have to put a coat on sometime soon. I know, I know, all you friends / family members back home hate me because in Utah you’re freezing to death and I still haven’t put on a coat. Let me take a moment to rub it in your face – ha ha!

However, now it’s time for me to ready myself for the harsh Atlanta winter to come. The winter that might, if I’m lucky, go below freezing, and if I’m really lucky, the winter that just might produce a light sprinkling of snow. Ah, who am I kidding? Atlanta’s “winter” is bound to be a joke compared to Utah, unless something freakishly weird happens (a blizzard).

I don’t know, I guess I might miss having snow on the ground. I don’t know if I’ll miss trudging through it on my way from one side of the campus to the other though. Snow is cool, but not that cool. Besides, I’ll have a chance to see some of it when I take time off for Christmas break.

Speaking of Christmas break, it’s coming up soon. That means that the end of the semester is too. Woohoo! I hope… It depends on how my grades turn out. I think they’ll turn out pretty good. Next semester I get to take some of the more interesting classes (though they’re just the beginning – the really interesting classes like “Intro to Machine Learning” come when I’m a junior).

Movie Review

Score: 3.6¹ out of 900¼, unless you understand the words “open source”, then 4.0¹

I’ll take it easy today – a review of Antitrust. Antitrust is a movie for the nerds out there. I’m sure non-nerds can enjoy it, but it helps to harbor a hatred of Microsoft, which is pretty much equivalent to nerd status.

The basic plot is this genius programmer named Milo and his friends have just finished school and are going out into the real world. Where most of his friends join together to form a startup of their very own, he decides to take a lucrative offer to work at NURV (which is, for all intents and purposes, Microsoft). Milo is put on the most important part of the latest NURV project, but soon finds out that he’s getting help from other programmers… without their knowledge. NURV is basically stealing everything anyone else comes up with and putting it into their own project before those people finish theirs. There’s even a conspiracy, which goes further, but that can’t be given away without ruining some of the fun.

All in all, I really liked this movie. Though I wouldn’t accuse Bill Gates of killing programmers for code, this movie sort of rings true to all of us OSS fanatics who believe code should be free to the world, not exploited by some company. If you like computers, especially programming, you should certainly give this movie a shot. If not, it’s worth a look anyway.

My blog has pretty much faded away in recent months. Is it because I’m too busy with schoolwork? Hell no. We all know I leave that stuff til the last minute anyway. It’s much more that I’ve just stopped caring, and this makes me sad.

In response to my lack of creativity and diligence, I issue myself a challenge hopefully to revive what was becoming somewhat decent writing (nothing fabulous, but decent): I’m going to try to blog every day until Christmas, neglecting perhaps the weekend of Thanksgiving wherein I will be stuck with only dialup internet access. Let’s get started.

First, some decent music available for free: www.steadmanband.com (“freeloads” section). This band has a great sound and is releasing everything they’ve done free (150 or so mp3′s). I recommend you give them a shot and see if they belong in your music collection… unless you’re on dialup, in which case I feel your pain. I was one of your kind for a very long time, I know that pain.

And where did I hear about this music? This Week in Tech, of course. TWiT is certainly one of my favorite podcasts. For those of you visiting my website that may not be in the know, podcasting is one of those new crazes sweeping the the Tech industry. Seems there’s one every year, doesn’t it? This is one specific fad I particularly enjoy though.

Basically, the idea is radio shows on demand. TWiT is a weekly show about the week’s technology news that you can download for free and listen to on any device that happens to play mp3′s (or, I suppose you could burn it to CD). This way you can catch your favorite shows on whatever device you have, whenever you want it.

Now that I’ve plugged TWiT, I think I’ll talk about podcasting more in general. I personally know, when I was a child, I dreamt of how cool it’d be to be a DJ for some radio station. Podcasting puts that ability in the hands of anyone that wants it. (Unfortunately, licensing is still a bit of a troublesome area if you want to be DJ’ing some music.) All you need is a computer and a very small amount of skill. It also helps if you can actually talk about something interesting, but there’s two knitting podcasts for crying out loud.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today. I’ll start working up the willpower to make a post tomorrow. Go try a podcast or two, if you’re new to it.