Yahoo and Microsoft: working together

Everyone that I know and their mother uses AOL instant messenger to chat on the internet, but some may find this interesting:

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=3303

So Yahoo messenger users windows live messenger users will be able to chat with one-another without resorting to non-standard clients! (for instance, I use Trillian to talk to users with other clients than AIM... that and I dislike the new AIM client.)

Maybe Google scared these two software giants into "teaming up."  Either way, I think this is a cool step.  Yay Yahoo and Microsoft for this one.

Currently Listening The College Dropout By Kanye West 8, Never Let Me Down see related

Comments on that whole Muslim Cartoon Deal

(EDIT: I found more jucies for the conspiracy theory)

When left to my own devices, I troll around Slashdot.  I found this particular gem in the forums:

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All I know is that when I heard about the reaction to the cartoons, I thought, hmm. Sheep. Then I thought maybe I should put together a few cartoons featuring Jesus, you know, snorting coke off a hooker's tits or eating out President Bush's asshole. Then I realized that you have a lot of people who are way ignorant out there who wouldn't get it. Then I realized that there are probably about a billion muslims in the world who are just as, if not more ignorant than some of the retarded people I see in this country who are obsessed with Jesus more than logic. Then I realized that the leaders of these Muslim people have spun this cartoon story out to be some type of hate crime against Islam rather than the edgy melarky it was. Then I realized that it's the same sort of spin that our own leaders used to get us into the war we're in now. Then I realized that leaders use things like hate and religion and other mass motivating communications to get what they want done. Then I realized that we the poor commoners of our respective countries have more in common with each other than we do with our leaders.

That's right, we flag and ribbon wearing, Jesus loving, George Bush electing Americans have more in common with those Flag Burning, Mohammed loving, Hamas electing Muslims than we have with George Bush and the upper echelons of our government. That's what I always try to remember before I start hating. We need to love one another and try to work stuff out. How can we do that, though, if everyone remains ignorant and only listens to their leaders for direction, rather than trying to find the Truth for themselves? How can we find the Truth for ourselves when our leaders try to keep us ignorant?

It's interesting. That's why I'm staying to the sidelines. I turn my back on this whole war/hate thing. I won't even grace it with any more discussion than I already have. Why should I worry about the world when I have bills to pay, family to support, car payment, retirement in about 35 years, etc?

Conversely, I do think that people need to realize that their habits of buying expensive gas guzzling cars, bottled water, convenience items, etc. are directly leading us to a world war situation. There is no solution to the energy crisis that will affect us. The cost in energy for every human in the world to live like an American, or European or Japanese even (known for their efficiency) is higher than the available energy.

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(Here is the link to the comment and discussion: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176824&cid=14680155)

I don't know about the second part of his comment, but the first half was scarily insightful:

The Islam leaders whip their masses into a frenzy the same way our administration pumps us up for war in Iraq.  It goes both ways, huh?  Also, this said comic was published late september, AND it was published (october 5th I want to say?) in Egyptian newspapers.  Hey, I'm just glad it takes them 4 months to get organized and decide to burns things in retaliation.

(conspiracy theory section)

Britain and America are really buddying up now.  Both countries "found" an excuse to dive into Iraq, now they just need an excuse for Iran.  Maybe "find some evidence" that the Egyptian boat that burned in the ocean was caused by Iranians, maybe post some comics to get the Iranians riled up and make a attack so that "the good guys at NATO" can come and mop up that country as well.  Sure, Iraq was a start, but you win Iraq, you lose Palastine to the Hamas, so more must be done!  Iran is the next logical target.  Also, the comic was in a Danish newspaper.  So there is a lot of backlash against that country from the Muslims.  Hey!  Look at that, the Danes will be heading the UN security council soon?  what a coincidence....

(end conspiracy theory)

So we have a cultural war going on.  The middle east wants respect for Islam (well the muslim people there, that is), and the west wants its freedom of speech.  Whatever, the far east is where the power is going to be this century, India and China will have HUGE economies with MANY more people participating in them in 20 years.  The western world will slowly be replaced as the powerful ones by the east, same way the eastern world fell behind 500 years ago.  This is the ebb and flow of power (yin and yang, however you want to look at it :) )  So all I am saying is that the middle east gets all of this attention, but it is not in power now, nor will it be in power anytime soon, perhaps its just angry and trying to attract attention to itself?  Who knows, all I know is that businesses in our country need to start learning a lot more Mandarin pretty darn quick if they want some powerful partners in the coming years.

Currently Playing The Massacre By 50 Cent ( yes I bought this album, you can laugh at me) see related

Note: this entry has nothing to do with politics and is mostly an editorial on the current state of computer technology.

The world of computer technology is at an interesting point today.  The companies that were big names in the early nineties are still around, a LOT of smaller companies have been gobbled up by the big guys, so the playing field is dominated by the big guys right now, let's see how well they are competing against one another:

Today, we discuss the biggest fight of them all PC vs. Mac

Back in the day, this was a WAR.  This was when PC's were locked down by the holy IT trinity of IBM (which made the BIOS), Intel (which made the processor) and Microsoft (which made the operating system).  Heck, back then IBM was such a player that a PC would be referred to as an IBM.  Today, I hear old timers use that IBM term and get a lot of confused looks.  Anyway, the PC was pushed by a conglomerate of businesses, and then there was Apple.  Apple computers were built mostly in house.  The hardware & the operating system were put together by Apple.  They also used a much different processor architecture that Intel's.  Apple processors are made by Motorola, and are RISC (reduced integer set coding) processors.  This means the processors are less powerful, but they are a lot easier to code for than the X86 processors.  So Apple computers became the user friendly computer.  They had such things as a graphical user interface (GUI), a mouse and this really swell bus called SCSI.  At this time, the IBM PC's had DOS.  I grew up with the PC's (and Apples as well, my elementary school was full of them because Apples are what we would be using in the workforce!!!  Oh wait, no that's not right at all, GO SCHOOL!)  and I liked PC's better because they were much more technical.  Even though Apple had these nice things to make computers easier to use, there was a problem.  Recently, it has been shown that the best way for someone to learn about using a computer who has zero experience is to start them with a command prompt.  A GUI is more advanced and easier to use, but only after one understands computers well.  GUI's are the natural progression from command prompts.

Anyway.  DOS was command prompt only.  When I was first learning DOS (when I was 7 by pretty much watching my dad work) I quickly started understanding what made these things tick and the level of control necessary in them.  That was another annoying thing about PC's at the time.  You had to control EVERYTHING.  You had to load drivers, you had to worry about memory allocation, loading HIMEM.sys, editing CONFIG.sys so that you had enough buffers and files, flipping DIP switches on ISA cards to get them installed, making sure IRQ and IO and other bullshit resources didn't conflict.  PC's were a nightmare to work with.  BUT it REALLY tought me very fast about how to manage a PC well.  Oh yeah, so if PC's were so bad, how come apple didn't win the fight back then?  Because Apples tried to control that stuff for you, AND THEY SUCKED AT IT.  Old Macs constantly ran out of memory, and when you tried to run shit, you'd sometimes get the dreaded "this program is busy, lost or in use" error, i mean, which one is it?  The operating system doesn't even know WTF is going on.  At least DOS acted like a computer, it would do exactly what you told it to (so if you didn't know what to tell it you were fucked).  Anyway, my point is that back then, PC's were better to learn from and offered better control for someone who knew what they were doing.  Not that Apples did not have a place, they had more advanced hardware and software at the time, so I can easily see how some people would have preferred to use them.

Ok, so market I was describing there was roughly the late eighties.  I remember the first computer my family had then was a 286 with a new state of the art device called a hard drive.  It had 50 megabytes, more than we could ever fill back then.  It also had a whopping megabyte of RAM.  And it ran DOS 4.0 (thankfully, DOS 3.0 and earlier are SO FUCKING HARD TO USE).  It also could display 4-bit color (16 colors).  Anyway, the market changed very quickly.  So IBM had lost their edge because their BIOS got reverse engineered, and many PC "clones" came out.  In fact, I think we had a PC clone.  It saved us some cash cause you knew, we bought generic (an America Megatrends Incorporated (AMI) BIOS, that's funny that they were off brand back then)   instead of the name brand (but the above system still cost like 2-3k !!! glad prices have come down).  So IBM was losing quickly, so it got started on the new operating system, OS/2.  Everyone knew that this was going to be the next big thing.  Even Microsoft was banking on this.  But Microsoft didn't expect that they would come out with the next killer OS. 

Microsoft if really good at doing one thing: taking good ideas other guys use, then putting them all together for their program.  So Microsoft's programmers took a lot of cues from Apple.  They designed a GUI, they wrote drivers for more colorful graphics (8 bit, 256 colors) they designed an automatic memory management system that shattered the 1MB barrier and did away with the archaic "extended memory" crap (DOS could only see 640K of RAM, so many hoops had to be jumped through to get it to work with more).  Virtual memory was invented; a swap file was implemented (using the hard drive to store information when RAM is full).  Finally, drivers were simplified.  For instance installing a printer become much less of a pain when using windows.  And this stuff was developed by genius dudes at Microsoft pretty much for fun.  Anyway, the higher ups at Microsoft saw this stuff, and Windows 3.0 was born.

So fast forward a couple of years, my family got a new computer.  It was a 386SX with 2 MEGs of RAM and DOS 5.0.  DOS 5.0 had a utility called DOSSHELL which made it easier to use programs (made it kind of like windows, but not really).  I remember when my dad bought windows 3.1 (last OS from Microsoft that we purchased legit ... hehehe)  we loaded that sucker up, bought a mouse and BOOM.  Suddenly 2 of apples winning point were also on the PC. A GUI and a mouse.  Oh, and the PC mouse had 2 buttons (I HATE 1 BUTTONED MICE).  And about this time, CD-ROM's were getting cool, so we bought a SoundBlaster 16, and hooked up a CD-ROM.  It was pimp.  Of course, back at the apple camp, this stuff existed as well, but they were locked down, apple provided everything, you couldn't upgrade easily.  The upside was that everything was more stable, the problem was less competition of parts led to higher prices.  And even though Microsoft had their cool windows thing, it still ran on top of a DOS backbone, so it wasn't really native, and that led to a lot of problems.  Apples had a native OS, so they were ahead in that area still.  So the war waged on.

1995.  The year apples were dealt a crushing blow.  Apples had been 32-bit for sometime, but even though Intel made 32-bit processors (386dx, 486) there was no consumer grade OS that was 32-bit (windows 3.1 ran on the DOS backbone, so still 16 bit).  Anyway, IBM lost their edge completely on PC's so we can call them the Wintel market if you'd like, and wintel fired a one-two punch that devastated Apple.  First, Intel was starting to deal with competition from AMD and to a lesser degree, Cyrix.  So Intel made a processor that was much much better than its predecessors.  The Pentium processor made its debut.  This bad boy could run at a blistering 60MHz, had 2 fully capable 32-bit ALU's (arithmetic logic units) and could process 4 instructions per clock cycle.  Problem was, it was overkill for windows 3.1.  I remember a Pentium would load 3.1 INSTANTLY.  IT WAS SCARY.  So to take advantage of this new power, Microsoft released Windows 95.  I was old enough to remember exactly how cool this was.  Now, graphics were increased to 16-bit (65536 colors), we could have filenames longer than 8 characters files could be associated with programs so that they'd "just work" resources were handled automatically, drivers were much simpler to load, the memory management was out of control for the time.  I remember Doom couldn't even run in windows 3.1, then I saw a demo where they had Doom and Doom 2 running at the same time on a windows 95 machine.  Windows 95 was the shit.  In my opinion, from that point on, Apple was screwed because Microsoft took what their computers did, but put them on a cheaper platform (PC).  And I do think Windows 95 was a huge transition point.  I knew families that were die hard Mac fans that bought a PC for Windows 95 and became PC people since then.

So the years wore on, Apple retreated to a niche market, where they flourished.  In the area of music composing, video editing and actually pretty much everything audio visual, Macs had the edge because the software was easier to write, and hence the superior software resided on their platform.  Microsoft continued to upgrade their product, windows 98 came out with a quicker file system (that took up less space, too!) called Fat32, increased the support for plug and play devices (put em in, windows will automatically load the drivers and shit) and featured a memory manager capable of looking at more than 32Megs of RAM.  Windows ME came out, it broke off a lot of that legacy DOS crap (making it more stable) supported DVD's, had Windows media player, internet explorer and a lot of other goodies right out of the box.

At this point, I'd say the competition between Microsoft and Apple heated back up again (I don't say Intel anymore, because they lost their edge too, AMD started making their own processor that competed directly with Intel's, one less huge corporation controlling the market, lower prices).  Microsoft released Windows XP.  A truly scary operating system.  When you installed it, IT JUST WORKED.  Fucking amazing.  It combined the NT kernel with the windows 9x user philosophy to create windows 5.0 (xp), one operating system to take over the world.  However, there was a problem.  When this OS came out, it was slow because it was such a resource hog!!  It came out 4 years ago, and only NOW would I consider installing it becuase only now do I believe hardware has caught up ( i prefer to use older software with newer hardware so that my stuff loads really fast.  I usually take speed over functionality [compsci joke: and I'm not even a C programmer]).

Apple did not sit still, they released OS X.  I thought it was a lot like XP.  It was SOOOOO bloated compared to OS 9, and I hated it.  However, a curious thing happened.  Windows XP has been out for 4 years, and there have been 2 service packs released for it.  OS X has been out for 4 years, and they have had 4 kernel overhauls and now they are on OS X 10.4.  With each new release, OS X becomes more functional and FASTER.  The newest one 10.4, is more stable than XP, prettier than XP, comes with more stuff out of the box than XP, and in my opinion, a lot better than windows XP.  So as Microsoft has been NOT releasing new Operating systems and XP rusts, OS X continues to improve and slowly steal windows users.  That and the whole IPOD thing didn't hurt Steve Jobs, either.

However, I still will not buy a Mac because they are a closed system.  Macs are still made all by Apple.  Even upgrading the memory is expensive.  Where as a PC, everything is open.  Let me explain: I can buy a motherboard made by lots of manufacturers that uses a chipset made by lots of manufacturers, plug in a video card whose chipset is made by Ati or NVIDEA (who are currently in cut-throat competition) and who was  assembled by a variety of manufacturers, I can put in a hard drive made by several companies, I can do the same for RAM, other drives, case and power supply.  I can choose from Intel or AMD for the processor.  The only area where I get screwed is the operating system.  Windows still has a monopoly, and they add a lot of money to the price of the computer.  All that competition really brings down the price of hardware so that it is much cheaper than Macs.  So today Macs are better, but you have to pay a lot for that advantage.

So right now some people are moving away from windows to Macs, some are moving from windows to a free operating system (like Linux / BSD).  And the longer it takes Microsoft to come out with a new OS, the more time Apple has to improve their OS and steal more users.  The battle is heating up once again.

Currently Playing Kill Em All By Metallica Track 7, The Phantom Lord, my Favorite Metallica song! (this is also my favorite Metallica album,and it was recorded about a month before I was born, crazy). see related

That crazy Election process for 2004!!

     There were many hard feelings last year (and high hopes) about Bush.  There was a lot of anger about his policies ( I, of course, am part of that crowd, I never voted for Bush EVER), his handling of Iraq, his failure to capture Osama, his poor economic track record ( steel tariffs, economy tanking during his office) and how effectively he brought the US's image down in the eyes of foreigners.  I'd have to say he did a pretty good job of that last one.  Anyway, many people were of the opinion "anyone but Bush back in the White House."  I did not share this exact sentiment (more on that below), but like I said, I didn't want to see him get a second term.

    So the Democratic primaries start up, and it looks like everyone throws their hat in: Dick Gephart, John Kerry, Al Sharpton... etc.  And I remember how much of a circus it was!!  Months before the primaries, people would ask me, "Who would you like to see as the Democratic contender?"  and I honestly couldn't answer, because there were way too many people to choose from!!  I usually think that the Democratic Party is rather unorganized, and this just drove the point home for me.  Fortunately, the dust settled slightly right before the primaries, and we were left with several people to choose from.  I will list them here in my order of preference (my favorites are at the top):

Wesley Clark- The main reason I liked this guy, is that if anyone knew how to take command of the situation in Iraq, it was this guy.  You don't get to be the commander of NATO just because.  That and he wasn't really about the politics, he wasn't "deep" in the Democratic Party, and he was not a career politician.  In my mind, this made him perfect for president.  Also, he was pretty moderate; I felt if he could appeal to me (the crazy libertarian) he could appeal to the entire country.  But he got hit hard in the polls because he didn't have the political connections and credit and stuff.

Howard Dean - Reminded me of a rabid Mr. Rogers, with his tirades and his turtle necks.  Still, this is a smart man.  He got his MD at John Hopkins and whenever I heard him speak, he had a great deal of charisma, and his ideas were pretty sound too.  Like his national healthcare plan.  He argued that right now it's inefficient for so many drug companies and doctors groups to negotiate with so many HMO's and insurance companies.  He also noted that as these companies consolidate, the common man tended to lose.  He argued that we should just make the federal government the only insurer, so companies only had to deal with it, making everything much smoother.  Even though I'm all for free markets, his idea is probably better than what we got now, so he's cool in my book.  I was glad that he started off with so much momentum when the primaries started.  He used bogging as a powerful tool to spread his message and gain support.  But when bad times hit and he went off the hook, he pretty much killed his chances at the White House.

John Kerry - A career politician and Vietnam Vet.  This guy had the most political credit of the bunch BY FAR.  This, in my mind, was the reason he won the nomination.  People were so obsessed with "just kill Bush," they wanted to pick the most delectable person, not necessarily the bet candidate.  Kerry seems to be a really good politician, though (if that's a good thing.... ).  In his early years, he attacked American atrocities in Vietnam, but he soon learned not to rock the boat, and he slowly just did what he thought everyone wanted him to do.  Not exactly the guy I want running my country, but as you can see below, there is far worse.

John Edwards - Oh right, that's what I want in the White House, a malpractice trial lawyer.  And I thought the Democratic Party was concerned about rising health care costs, well this guy was probably part of the problem.  Not that I'm saying he falsely represented people to squeeze extra cash out of insurance companies, but he is a trial lawyer, I WOULD NOT put it was him.  The legal system of the country is borked up right now (too many lawyers getting money and abusing a common recourse, the courts) and Edwards was part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Dennis Kucinich - What the hell.  I actually saw people supporting this loser.  I mean, come on.  When he was mayor of Cleveland, he let the bonds there expire pretty much for fun (he could have taken care of them, but he chose not to for no discernable reason) and ruined there credit status, causing great financial harm to the city for years to come.  If he can't take care of Cleveland, what made anyone think he could take care of the country???  Also, my dad quipped in that he probably doesn't give a damn about anyone west of the Mississippi or south of the Mason - Dixon Line.  Still, this guy got support, and that just proves to me how ignorant many Americans are.  (If you disagree with me, just think who we elected president this year).

Minor parties: (my favs)

The major parties were all about increasing the government's power and keeping marijuana illegal, but all 3 of the (somewhat meaningful) minor candidates saw the sham for what it is, and ran against marijuana prohibition.

Short run down:

Green Party: David  Cobb, for weird political and procedural reasons, he got the green party ticket, and not Nader.  But his ideas were pretty much what you would expect of the Green Party, very Anti- Bush because of Bush's disinterest in the environment.

Independent: Ralph Nader.  He should have been running as a progressive, because that is what he was.  He's not even that green, he attacks nuclear power as evil.  What do you want more coal power which pollutes like hell and is 1/8th as efficient?  You are dumb, and you don't get votes.  That and you support a minimum wage of $10.00.  Go do yourself a favor and get a better glass eye and learn econ.

Libertarian Michael Badnarick - I voted for this guy.  His ideas were like my own.  Bring down the government's power over us.  Our founding fathers didn't pay a terrible price in blood to give us this great country of rights only to have them slowly eaten away by a big- bad federal government.  This is what Badnarick stood for, more freedoms, less government and less war.  George Washington said we should not get too involved in international junk,WHY CAN'T OUR PRESIDENT'S GET A CLUE FROM THE FATHER OF OUR COUNTRY?  Badnarick wanted out of Iraq.  He was also all for opening up our borders to trade, and to LEGAL immigration.  America is still a wealthy place with good jobs, if people want to come here, let's share!! AS LONG AS THEY DO IT THE LEGAL WAY.  So Badnarick wanted to pull our troops back and use them to defend our borders better to watch for illegal immigrants and terrorists.  He also realized that by keeping drugs illegal, we just created a black market for them, and that means money for gangsters and terrorists.  Some people criticized me for voting for Badnarick.  Some said that Badnarick wanted to create fortress America and we would be isolated.  I think it's better than being team America world police and constantly getting the rest of the world pissed at us.  Other people told me that I was throwing my vote away.  What, voting for a candidate that really gets what America is about and a candidate that I believe in is throwing my vote away???  I knew it was a lost cause, but you won't catch me voting for Bush or Kerry.

EDIT: I saw Sin City last week.  A very sick movie, in more than one sense of the word.  Also, Hitchhiker's Guide is coming out.  It looks well done, but I hope it stays true to the "spirit" of the book.  By that I mean the book was really humorous, and I hope the movie does not lose sight of that.  Finally, my Mom's Father turns 89 on Tuesday and he works full time still.  I guess I'm lucky to have the ripe-old-age genes in my family line. 

EDIT 2: My dad just sent me this quote from Bush:

"We look forward to analyzing and working with legislation that will
make-it would hope-put a free press's mind at ease that you're not being
denied information you shouldn't see." -Washington, D.C., April 14, 2005

I can't seem to wrap my brain around this one.  Then again, I don't have a degree from Yale ( ).