Heh, I guess I used up all the left over luck of this year, as I just won a ~1000 euro LCD television from a website I frequent. I'll have to reconsider getting those new-years lottery tickets.

Been on an epic journey yesterday with my little brother to take my new computer to a computer service center. Battling cold and rain, we finally reached our destination. After the hardware goblins stopped tinkering around with it, the news came that the new memory I waited 2 weeks for was in fact broken.

So now I have to send it back and wait yet again for new memory. /sigh

Finally the last part of my new computer came in today. So I put everything together, turn it on, and... nothing. Can't get this scrapheap to boot up no matter what I try.

/sigh

So no new computer for me until I get this mess sorted out.

I've been cleaning up a bit, structurally I mean. I have too much stuff, and I don't use it so I'm throwing stuff out. I've been careful not to pressure myself into it because I'll just hide from the world either in bed or playing computer games.

The two main reasons why it's hard are:

- Being alone hurts, a lot, more so because I really crave companionship. And a lot of the stuff I have to go through and have to throw out is linked to my relationship with my ex-fiance. Throwing it out does bring back the memories of how nice it is to be with a person you love, but the stark void has been dulled a bit after all those years. And I have a clean room to look forward to, hanging as a prize over my head.

- A lot of the stuff I need to sort out are administrative things. I still need to sort out taxes of the last few years. And the prospect of working through this is like poking a hornets nest. You never know what shit might come out of it, and I for one am not looking forward to stirring up trouble. But still, it has to be done.

So, taking it easy, but there is progress so that's good..

*reaches for the confetti to find I'm all out*

Descartes said 'I think, therefore I am'. Well, I registered my company at the local trade bureau so therefore my company exists as of today.

*throws a handful of confetti in the air*

So now I'm the CEO of my company.. I still have to do all the work but at least I get a fancy title. :)

Note to self: Get fancy-pants business cards.

On WikiAnswers we can find the following information.

Q: Why did the Nazis tattoo Jewish prisoners?

A:
* It was permanent.
* It was cheap.
* It was degrading.
* It helped the Nazis keep tabs on prisoners.


Recently there's been a bit of a stir on official looking envelopes dropping in people's letterboxes. In them is the text that as a citizen you have to get your social security number tattooed on your left arm. The letter states it's send by "The New Government".

Our politicians are waving this off as 'tasteless' and just leave it at that. But I can't help but feel there is a grain of truth in these letters. In particular I'm upset about fingerprints being mandatory in our new passports. All of these fingerprints will be stored in a big centralized database and used by the government for whatever purposes they want.

Being a computer expert myself I know how vulnerable these kind of databases are. And the fact that they carry biometrics is even worse because if (read 'when') this data becomes compromised, I can not just change my fingerprints. And the mantra of the general populace ('If you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear') is going to bite them in the ass when they become prey to identity theft.

So what can go wrong you ask? Well, if we never introduce anything that requires a thumbprint for electronic payments then large scale identity theft will not be too much of a problem. But picture this scenario:

As a computer geek, I'm reasonably at home with technology. Recently there was some research done on how DNA can be duplicated and then used with a squirt bottle to contaminate a crime scene. So if I were to really dislike a person, I could obtain some DNA. (Which is easy btw, we leave DNA all over the place in our normal daily lives.) I could then duplicate the fingerprint (which is also easy to lift). Then all I have to do is create a crime scene (ranging from a murder to a break-in) and simply leave some fingerprints and DNA.

The fingerprint will be traced in the central database and your name will come up. A comparison of DNA left at the crime scene will easily prove that you have committed the crime. DNA is after all believed to be a 100% accurate identifying factor. And with fingerprints and DNA evidence against you, how are you ever going to be able to prove your innocence?

Going back to the tattoo. The tattoo put on Jewish prisoners in concentration camps was to keep track easily of them.Keeping this in mind, who is to say that we will never encounter a new Adolf Hitler in our future? Not too long ago we had Pim Fortuin who had a good chance of becoming the new prime minister. I'm not equating him to Adolf Hitler, but who knows how that future would've turned out if he had not been murdered? Hitler started out as a simple house painter who just happened to be charismatic and had some very extremist views. If we do happen to run into a new Fuhrer in the future, do we want to be tagged, marked and all wrapped up, ready for shipment to a work camp if we don't fit the profile of the new government?

Should we keep our privacy because we feel better when not everybody know about our sexual escapades, the fact that we voted for a politically incorrect party or some other nasty fact about us? Should we keep our privacy to have a fighting chance when the new Hitler rises to power? Should we keep our privacy because we want to be able to voice our opinions anonymously because our boss happens to have a different view on things then us?

Or, should we give up privacy entirely to maximize our governments abilities to fight terrorism? Should we all get RFID chips implanted so that everybody can be tracked at all times so nobody can steal our bike anymore without the police tracking them down?

In the end, terrorism won't be completely preventable, the 9/11 hijackers came into the country with legitimate passports. And all the closed circuit camera's in Great Britain have already shown that people don't refrain from crime even when somebody is able to see them do it.

It's not that I mind people choosing to relinquish their privacy, it's just that I loathe that people do it without seeing all the consequences. If they make an informed and well thought out decision then I'm all for it, whatever they choose to do. It's easy to give up rights, it's almost impossible to get them back once you change your mind.

The waiting game has started. This weekend my computer cut out on me. Restarting it filled the room with the smell of solder so a conclusion was quickly drawn. It was borked. This leads me to replacing my computer.

While I'm looking forward to updating my hardware only the timing is a little unfortunate. Oh well, I'm sure I'll survive. :)

Currently waiting for my: Intel I7 920, Shuttle SX58H7 and 12GB of triple channel DDR3.

With all the misery around us, greed, hate and indifference, it's inspiring to find something bigger then all of us. Something bigger then all our little fights and worries, something we can believe in, and strive for.

Here's a love song to Science. The wonderment of the complexity, the hugeness of it all. How we are but little flecks of a bigger picture and are still 100% part of it.



For downloads and another song, see http://www.symphonyofscience.com/.

I've got work.. apparently. I've just been told by somebody in the flat that some woman will call me soon because she has problems with her computer. She's elderly, works in a school and I've been told I don't have to do it for free, whatever that 'it' might be.

Are IT people the only people who run into this problem? Do masons get tapped on the shoulder when walking through their neighborhood that some person will call them for him to put up a brick wall in a house belonging to some lady? And that he doesn't have to do it for free?

What do people think? Do they think we IT people need the money or do they think that IT stuff is simple and thus not worth much? Like asking a person if he can spare a nickle?

Maybe people are convinced that IT stuff is a matter of two minutes work. Like you can back up personal data, re-install Windows, find drivers, re-install applications and restore personal data in a matter of minutes.

And it's not only strangers who do it. My mother had a hand in volunteering my services to whomever would take them. "Oh let have look at it, he knows all this stuff!". Regardless of what problem, computer or circumstance.

Does that _ever_ happen to anybody with another profession?

Adult entertainer's mom: "Oh let her suck your dick, she's great at it. Oh you don't have to pay, she loves the attention."

Funeral director's mom: "Oh let him cremate your cat, he's got a cremation tomorrow anyway. Oh you don't have to pay, he loves doing it."

Commander of the Red October's mom: "Oh let him pick up some DVD's from the USA. Don't worry, he's going that way anyway so it's not trouble."

It's not that I mind helping people. It's just that its extremely rude in my view to volunteer somebody else's services without asking them first. And I usually get paid over a 100 euro's an hour for IT stuff professionally. I never ask regular people for any monetary compensation but maybe I should. Perhaps then people would stop doing this.

So I've been trying out Windows 7. And if you skipped Vista as any sane person, then you'll be hit twice by the fact that Microsoft likes to change everything on every release. If they didn't, they'd have nobody to buy the worthless papers again also known as MCSE and it's many variants.

Things I like so far:

* It's able to keep a sustained datarate with my external USB drive.
* Seems to be a bit more intelligent about file caching
* Finally able to run 64-bit native

Things I hate so far:

* It ask for permission for _everything_ even if you turn off UAC.

I tried to rename a file in /Program Files/somewhere. First it asks me if I'm sure if I want to change the extension of the file, then it asks me for Administrator permission. Please note that it only asked me about the extension when I tried to rename a file back from ".dll1" to ".dll". Renaming ".dll" to "dll1" in the first place was just fine! Jesus!

Same BS with my external drive. Apparently you now need to take 'ownership' of all your external media. Otherwise it will ask you for Administrator permission for every copy, rename, delete and move action. ALL THE TIME!

I like a program called 'Process Explorer'. It's a taskmanager that shows you all the programs that are running and how much CPU and memory they take up. It shows more then Windows default offering. Now keep in mind that this program is from 'Sysinternals'. It was a company that was bought up by Microsoft ages ago, so it's basically an internal Microsoft department now.

Every time I started up the program (with UAC on the default 'medium' setting), it would ask me every single time for Administrator permission with no way to turn it off or whitelist this program. How on earth is anyone going to leave UAC on?

* The File Explorer has a ton of little things that worked ok in XP, and are now messed up in 7. I can't see the amount of drive space left in the status bar. If I select a couple of files, I don't get to see how many MB's it's worth in the status bar. My brother says he can see it, but I have no idea on how to turn that on or where to configure it.

Talking about the File Explorer; it's a total circus. With 'Favorites', 'Libraries', 'Homegroups' and a ton of other shit taking up my screen. I don't _want_ that on my screen as I never use it. But Bill knows best so you are not allowed to turn that shit off. Talking about arrogance, you still can't remove that fucking trashcan from your desktop without having to fiddle around with registry settings. Goddamn it.

* Denies access to your own harddisk

Now I can understand that you'd want to lock out Grandma from deleting system files. But I'm the goddamn admin! Let me into my own 'Documents' directory so I copy a flash player cookie. I know what the fuck I'm doing! Sure you can work around it by accessing the security tab, and removing the lock out but the admin account shouldn't have to do this to begin with!

* Windows File Sharing fucked up even more

Windows 98 had the right idea. (Never believed I would actually say this.) But it had a simple mechanism to share files. Choose your directory, give people read-only or read/write access. XP messed this up somewhat by making this harder then necessary but it usually still worked. Of course XP messed up file permissions so that files copied into the share wouldn't actually be accessible, which would require a total reset of all file permissions via the security tab. But hey.. it usually worked somewhat.

Now 7 makes it 100% unlikely that anybody will every access your files again. Good for security perhaps, but gone is even the 'Simple File Sharing' option that made it still somewhat "Win98"-ish.

* Where is my search option? I right-click a drive and there is no search. I believe 7 has an auto-indexing program so that when you type something in you'll get your results quickly, but there is not obvious Search option to actually force a search when the automatic thing doesn't give you any results. *sigh*

* Everything is different, nothing can be found.

Maybe I should've started with this. People say Linux is 'hard', because 'nothing is where I'm used to'. However I dare say it's easier to move from XP->Ubuntu then it is from XP->Seven. And why? Was XP really so unworkable that the entire user interface had to change? Was the fact that people didn't want to switch from XP to Vista an indication that people that that XP was working OK-ish most of the time?

Yes, under the hood XP needed a huge upgrade which is fine, but why do the controls have to change? If a new car is produced, you still expect the gas and break pedal in the same order even if the engine is changed from diesel to electric!

I understand the reasons for change and some are our own fault:

- Marketing

If you're going to buy a new OS, you want it to be shiny and sparkly and newer then everything you've ever used before. The MS marketing department doesn't want to sell an XP look-a-like interface because that's not 'new'. However, the market this time was saying "I want to keep my XP!". If MS had usability in mind, then this would've been the time to keep what was tried and tested.

- Selling useless certifications

Your XP MCSE just became useless. Of course it wasn't worth the paper it was printed on before, but yeah, you're going to have to pay MS again for a new one. I've been to a training center for my Red Hat Certified Engineers (RHCE) certification and I've seen people get Microsoft certificates every other day. Not because they were amazing geniuses, but simple because they could remember the multiple choice answers of the 250 questions that could be asked on that exam. You tell me what worth that has...

- Arrogance

Bill knows best! If Bill's (or Ballmer nowadays, although I think it's not like Bill has nothing to say anymore) tastes change, then so does Windows. Prepare for a Windows completely in mauve and with windows hanging limply from branches while headless horses drag notifications through your screen.

- No real vision

This ties in with "Bill knows best". You'd think that if Windows had gotten some parts right, then those parts would survive from one version to the next. With some many departments and responsibilities shifting around inside of Microsoft it's no wonder that they're going with the flavor of that days consumer marketing research rapport. There's no vision of what Windows should become in the future or what it should be today. One MS executive once said that if a GUI components style was different in Windows or in Office, then Office would trump.

People, an operating system should be nothing more then a way for people to start applications, and provide the applications with support to interact with the hardware. It should do that job as good as it can possibly can. Otherwise it should be as unobtrusive and take the least amount of resources it possibly can.

An operating system should not be a layer around a text editor.


Please note the following. I've been using 7 for about 2 days now. I expect that some of the problems I encounter can probably be solved if I just knew how. However I expect the stack of 'things that suck and are just the way 7 was made' to grow a lot faster then the stack of problems I can actually do something about.

So I got hit in the nose... by none other then myself when I was trying to turn over in my sleep last night. Well, I'm known to do stupid things at times.

Two more weeks to go until I'm done working. I'm really looking forward to it. It will give me the chance to prove myself for myself. I don't pride myself on things that are easy to do, and there have been only a few hard things I have done in my life, so this will be the break I needed to really dig into the hard stuff.

But besides work, there are several other personal goals I want to achieve. So even if my own company doesn't pan out as I hope then there should still be plenty of other things that should work out just fine.

The only snag so far is a ton of work being dumped on me in my last two weeks. I was hoping of keeping a low profile but to no avail. Oh well, I guess I can put in a sprint at the end.

I did it, I'm starting my own company.

:) I could steal some more but I’m also nervous and excited. To be without a regular paycheck is scary as shit, but I feel good about being able to work for myself. I hope I can scrape out a living at least, and with a lot of effort I might actually make something of myself yet.

Grats to Pasje as well on enrolling as a student. ;)

Do you like cats? You might change your mind after seeing this..

http://nedroid.com/2009/05/party-cat-full-series/

More and more I am pondering the meaning of life and what I should make of it. I always get jealous of people telling their adventures of going off to France and living 'off the land' to sort of speak by juggling and acting and god knows what else.

I mean I don't particularly want to run off to a foreign nation, but what can I tell about my own life? I know I did some thing which could be considered semi-interesting, maybe enough to stave off a yawn or two, but nothing that makes me says "Wow, I did _that_".

I want something to be proud of, to be interesting with, to point at as my legacy to this world maybe.

I've been thinking of giving up my day job and starting up my own company. I mean it's a stupid idea and beyond crazy and dumb and etcetera, but by god it might actually make me happy.

I've lived long enough to know that most achievements are 99% perspiration, and I think I've got the %1 inspiration. And hey, even if it's not something that I can make a living out of, I would have fun I think. Is a life of guarantees actually worth living? Should I avoid all risks? Shouldn't I just do what makes me happy, come hell or high water? (I think I butchered an English saying there, ha!)

I don't need the stress that comes from working at faceless companies. If I'm going to be stressed by something I'd rather it be for something that I can stand behind. Something that I believe in. Not maintaining the bureaucratic mess behind corperate facades. (I love building pretty sentences).

True, I need self-discipline if I start for myself. But somehow I expect this will be easier to maintain if there is something I can believe in.

I think I need to take on hand, and grab hold of my balls and the other hand to call my employer and tell them to find a replacement for me. Happiness may be just around the corner, all it might take is the courage to actually turn it.

My scales at home have been out of commission for a while, so I took the opportunity to weigh myself at my Mom's house. It's been a long time since I did that last, but the number that popped up was kind of a shock. So starting today I'm dieting again. I hope it will lead to good results.

Ahhh science is the most fun when applied to fields that are deemed inappropriate. This is how Mythbusters comes to exist. So, for a laugh read:

A Harvard Psychiatrist Explains Zombie Neurobiology

A little taste:

In the movies, zombies are always hungry, no matter how many supporting actors they consume. The most likely explanation is that zombies don't have a properly functioning ventromedial hypothalamus: the region of the brain that lets you know whether you've eaten enough. The result is hyperphagia. Zombies will eat and eat and eat, but never feel satiated.

That raises a slightly awkward question: If zombies are constantly eating, then how come they never poop?

Schlozman doesn't know for sure, but he has at least one promising theory: Maybe the living dead are constipated.

Now we know why zombies are always moaning.

:)

So I was eating some fries in snackbar when the guy next to me was talking to some of his friends. He had just read an article in the paper about some judge who was drunk and cussed out police officers.

So he said to his friends "Those are the kind of people that get to judge over us!"

And it struck me that him and me have very different dispositions about these things. I mean the paper article could state that everybody in court get summarily shot, and I still wouldn't care personally about it. Simply because I don't expect to ever be in a court in the first place.

And yes, this person was one of our multi-cultural citizens.

So I was thinking. This person, does he really have a reason to be concerned about such things? Does he often frequent courts? And if not, why would he care? Would it mean this person takes everything personal?

I'm tempted sometimes to just ask people questions like this.

At any rate, it doesn't seem to be a very useful attitude to have.

If they want to protect the sanctity of marriage, instead opposing gay marriage, why not outlaw divorce and adultery?

Hey peeps,

On May 30th, (next Saturday), I'm holding a BBQ party at my place.

If you want to come, let me know!