29 Feb 2008
A Nation of Dunces

I can add nothing to this excellent essay...

Americans are in serious intellectual trouble -- in danger of losing their hard-won cultural capital to a virulent mixture of anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism and low expectations.

(link) [Pittsburgh Tribune-Review]

05:50 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Swedes demand return of heraldic lion's todger

If Europeans wonder why they're sometimes seen as way over the line in political correctness, they need look no further than this emasculated lion as symbol of military prowess.

Disgruntled Swedish heraldists are demanding the Nordic Battlegroup reconsider a decision to emasculate their crest's lion which has seen the rampant beast relieved of his todger.

(link) [The Register]

05:37 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Microsoft Internal Emails Show Dismay With Vista

Un-freaking believable! They might as well try to settle this new suit now, as opposed to waiting for trial and getting shredded. This has got me wondering how many of the higher-ups at M$ actually run the AKAV (Abomination Known as Vista) on their personal desktops.

Microsoft is currently facing a class-action suit over its designation of allegedly under-powered hardware as being 'Vista Capable.' The discovery process of that lawsuit has now compelled Microsoft to produce some internal emails discussing those issues. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has published extracts of some of those emails, along with a link to a a PDF file containing a more extensive email exchange. The emails reflect a lot of frustration among senior Microsoft personnel about Vista's performance problems and hardware incompatibilities. They also appear to indicate that Microsoft lowered the hardware requirements for 'Vista Capable' in order to include certain lower-end Intel chipsets, apparently as a favor to Intel: 'In the end, we lowered the requirement to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with 915 graphics embedded.' Read the whole PDF; it is informative, interesting, and at times (unintentionally) funny.

(link) [Slashdot]

05:17 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link