01 Mar 2006
Why Vista Won't Suck

Almost 12 years ago my fellow coders and I gathered in a theater in Indianapolis, rented by Microsoft, to get the inside scoop on the new OS they were coming out with. You may have heard of it: Windows 95.

It was going to be secure, much more so than DOS. Remember all those bad DOS virii? They'd be impossible in Windows 95! It would be equally impossible for an errant application to crash the whole machine, as was frequently the case in the then current Windows 3.1.

And about three years later, when Windows 95 was practically a smoking ruin, we gathered again to hear about an amazing new OS called "Windows NT 4.0" - finally, Windows would be absolutely secure and impregnable!

And so it goes ...

ExtremeTech is running an article on the new features of Windows Vista and why it is a must upgrade for all Windows users. They take apart the marketing hype and tell you what exactly to expect in Windows Vista. They specifically pick out less-hyped features like a kernel which has new Heap Management and details on SuperFetch, which is Vista's application cache

(link) [Slashdot]

00:00 /Technology | 3 comments | permanent link

Europe's chill linked to disease

Ah ha! Ancient global warming! Sure...whatever! The evidence is as flimsy for this as it is for the modern version: global warming. It's not that I doubt that we're undergoing a period of global warming, as I think the evidence is pretty clear that we are. It's the doubt I have about the human cause of it that gnaws at me. We simply do not have enough data to support the proposition that humans are a major cause of climate change - perhaps a contributory cause, but the prime mover? I don't think so.

In this case, I wonder how many volcanoes erupted in Indonesia (or other remote locales, like the NW US) around the same time frame, spewing their gases into the atmosphere? And how does this hypothesis explain the "Big Ice Age", which occurred before there were any humans in Europe, much less any agriculture anywhere?

This doesn't mean that I supported unlimited pollution by industrial operations (or factory farms). It means that I think trying to pin this tail on those particular donkeys may be counter-productive: it'll distract us from preparing for climate change while we argue about who caused it.

Europe's "Little Ice Age" may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.

(link) [BBC News | News Front Page | World Edition]

00:00 /Agriculture | 1 comment | permanent link

One in 1,000 know First Amendment

Read it and weep ...

Only one in four Americans can name more than one of the five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment (freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and petition for redress of grievances.) But more than half can name at least two members of the cartoon family, according to a survey.

(link) [Billings Gazette]

via Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

00:00 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Preservationists battle to keep gambling out of Gettysburg


mouse over the image for an idea of my thoughts on this ...

Gettysburg was the site of one of the largest battles fought on American soil, but today it is playing host to a different type of fight: Whether slot machines should come to town.

(link) [CNN.com]

00:00 /Politics | 3 comments | permanent link