Platitudes?

Why do so many of us dislike platitudes? Is it the platitude or is it the person that quotes them?

The following were tossed out by the leader of our institute yesterday:

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.

Henry Ford

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

William A. Ward

The amusing thing is that rumors are swirling about him leaving for another institution. Does that make him a captain that doesn't want to go down with the ship?

Despair.com captures the true value of most platitudes in their products:




Images borrowed from despair.com. They know the truth worth of platitudes!

Facebook/Twitter Sucks

Scoble has posted another rant on Facebook: Facebook continues to suck

Some of the comments are amusing, especially this one:

Just a basic Scoble Show template…

‘Greatest Thing in World, Nothing Will Ever Be the Same’ to total ‘Evil Suckage They Refused to Listen to Me, servesthemright’…

Comment by Christopher Coulter — April 28, 2008 @ 11:59 am

Previously he had issues with Twitter: Twitter and inadequacy (er, the great friend divide)

If I had more time, I would try and find where he praised both of them in the past....

Update - April 29, 2008: Seth Godin wrote a post on the Signal to Noise ratio on the web and Twitter. He's right, just look at most of my posts --- who cares?

Update - May 1, 2008: FaceBook In Reality - Hilarious Video Well done little video by some British guys (some language, but it's reality).

APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day)

The pictures and information that are posted on APOD are truly amazing! Today's picture of The Tarantula Zone is no exception.


Explanation: The Tarantula Nebula is more than 1,000 light-years in diameter -- a giant star forming region within our neighboring galaxy the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). That cosmic arachnid lies at the upper left of this expansive mosiac covering a part of the LMC over 6,000 light-years across. Within the Tarantula (NGC 2070), intense radiation, stellar winds and supernova shocks from the central young cluster of massive stars, cataloged as R136, energize the nebular glow and shape the spidery filaments. Around the Tarantula are other violent star-forming regions with young star clusters, filaments and bubble-shaped clouds. The small but expanding remnant of supernova 1987a, the closest supernova in modern history, is located near the center of the view. The rich field is about as wide as four full moons on the sky, located in the southern constellation Dorado.

Update April 29: A video of Airplane Flight Patterns over the USA.

iPhone SDK #4

Apple keeps pushing out updates for the iPhone SDK.

Erica Sadun, of O'Reilly reports: iPhone SDK4 debuts, Panda/P2 protocol goes MIA Hmmm, hadn't heard of Panda.

More conflict with the GPL, this time it is Apple that appears to be in conflict. Slashdot post: iPhone SDK and Free Software Don't Match

Some C++ and Java Items

C++ FQA Lite: Main page

Are C and C++ Losing Ground? via Slashdot.

Dr. Dobbs has an interesting interview with Paul Jansen, the managing director of TIOBE Software, about the Programming Community Index, which measures the popularity of programming languages by monitoring their web presence. Since the TIOBE index has been published now for more than 6 years, it gives an interesting picture about trends in the usage of programming languages.

JRat the Java Runtime Analysis Toolkit is a low overhead, easy to use, open source performance profiler for the Java platform. JRat monitors an application's execution and persists performance measurements. This data can then be viewed and analyzed using the JRat Desktop, a Swing application.

Profiler4j is an open-source CPU profiler for Java.

XP, Bill Gates all Meshed up

Ballmer: Provide Demand, and We'll Extend XP's Lifecycle remarks made at a Belgium new conference (via OSNews). This quote is great:

XP will hit an end-of-life. We have announced one. If customer feedback varies we can always wake up smarter but right now we have a plan for end-of-life for new XP shipments.

When will the pronounce that Vista is on life support?

O'Reilly Net notes: Wired: Marc Andreessen: Bill Gates Ain't So Bad

“When is Bill Gates not the devil? Answer: When he’s saving the world from total technical chaos. That’s according to internet golden child Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Ning.”

Guess there's still no love for Bill from Marc....

Speaking of Bill, Slashdot: Bill Gates On the GPL — "We Disagree"

Guess we'll be seeing new legalese in the GPL (MPL forthcoming?). Insert light bulb changing joke. For those that haven't seen it:

How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb ?

None, they declare darkness to be the new standard.

Microsoft Mesh in the News is the lead story in John Dvorak's 5-minute report.

All the talk is about Microsoft Mesh. I see it as Lotus Notes, Microsoft edition. Replication awaits. I lament unfulfilled promises.

Microsoft Happenings

John Dvorak describes Vista's 11 Pillars of Failure
#2 Code size and #11 Performance are probably the leading factors. Code size makes things hard to change without breaking something else....

Another post from OSNews: Microsoft to Abandon Vista, Fast Track Windows 7?

The Download Squad takes a look at Microsoft's vision of open source future in: Bill Gates talks about open source. He's doin' it wrong.

The big news is that Microsoft has launched something new and big---Live Mesh.
Slashdot: First Looks at Microsoft's New 'Live Mesh' Platform
OSNews: Ten Things To Know About Microsoft's Live Mesh

Update April 25, 2008:

Microsoft is killing off its nerd watch, according to this Slashdot post:
Goodbye To the SPOT WatchGoodbye To the SPOT Watch You do remember SPOT, don't you?

Microsoft Quality?

Office 2007 Fails OOXML Test With 122,000 Errors That's inspiring, given all their recent support for openness and XML!

On the bright side:

Windows XP SP3 Released to Manufacturing, seven years after the initial release of XP!

Ah, Vista!

A post on OSNews: Ballmer: 'Vista Is a Work in Progress' Gee, why are we not surprised? This quote is great:

Certainly, you never want to let five years go between releases.

Very true. How about the time between updates?

Another post on OSNews: Are You Stealing Vista? Maybe if Vista was priced more in line with what it's worth, people wouldn't steal it?

On the topic of updates, a post on Slashdot reports Windows Update Can Hurt Security. This could affect other systems that are not updated very often.

Terry Fator - Live!

We went to see Terry Fator, the winner of America's Got Talent, recently. He was really good! If you haven't seen him on TV, you should watch at least the first of these videos.

• Emma Taylor performs, At Last (Etta James) (first appearance on America's Got Talent)
• Johnny Vegas performs That's Amore (Dean Martin) and I Left My Heart in San Francisco (Tony Bennett)
• Walter T. Airedale performs Friends In Low Places (Garth Brooks)
• Emma performs a duet with Terry of Unforgettable (Nat King Cole)

One of the interesting things about the show was that he said it was OK for people to take pictures/video. I've never seen an artist encourage the audience to do so before.

Art Elitism At Yale

Update: Yale Student's 'Abortion Art' Claim a Scam It may be a scam, but it's still sick! If we say something is a hoax, does that make it go away?

A senior in Art(?), at Yale, will be unveiling her work(?) next Tuesday.

For senior, abortion a medium for art, political discourse

Art major Aliza Shvarts '08 wants to make a statement.

Beginning next Tuesday, Shvarts will be displaying her senior art project, a documentation of a nine-month process during which she artificially inseminated herself "as often as possible" while periodically taking abortifacient drugs to induce miscarriages. Her exhibition will feature video recordings of these forced miscarriages as well as preserved collections of the blood from the process.

....

Read the rest if you want to be sick/totally disgusted. Guess they don't know the difference between an abortion and a miscarriage.

Truly sick! Way to go Yale!

Google Earth 4.3 Released

Some posts on the release of Google Earth 4.3:

• Google Releasing Google Earth 4.3 Today
• Google Earth 4.3 First Impressions and Screenshots
• Google Earth 4.3 - First Look - How to Download
• Video Demo of Google Earth 4.3
• More Thoughts on Google Earth 4.3 (beta)

Yet another shiny object to play with....

Windows Updates?

Stupid Internal Microsoft Vista SP1 Video from this post on Download Squad The internal Microsoft sales video you wish you hadn't seen.

Windows XP SP3 set for April 29 (Dvorak Uncensored)

Microsoft Charts Its Road Map for Windows Embedded a post from OSnews: The Embedded roadmap outlines the "renaming of its family of products and plans for new solutions in key device categories".

Some older items:
Do You Hate Windows Vista As Much As These Guys? The video (some strong language---from a post on Dvorak Uncensored about two months ago.)

30,000 petition MS to "save Windows XP" Guess this has succeeded to some extent. Underpowered machines will have this option, regardless of manufacture date.

Shell History Meme

I've seen this on a number of Advogato blogs recently.

history | awk '{a[$2]++ } END {for(i in a){print a[i] " " i}}' | sort -rn | head

Office
98 vi
69 cd
58 ls
57 c++
48 ./a.out
33 mpost
31 ./ren*.sh
23 chmod
21 echo
15 rm

What does it tell you? I edit files, move around between directories, compile some, run the resulting executable. Some things get deleted.

network (another office machine)
111 ls
90 vi
90 cd
48 g++
45 exit
19 mutt
13 chmod
12 rm
11 mv
10 ./a.out

What does it tell you? I list files, edit files, move around between directories, compile some, logout, read email, delete/rename some files, and run a few executables.

Home
116 cd
74 ./ren*.sh
68 ls
53 vi
53 chmod
48 echo
36 rm
10 exit
10 c++
10 ./up*.sh

What does it tell you? I move around directories, rename stuff, edit and delete files, and some compiling.

Windows is Broken

Hmm, someone else noticed the obvious....

OSNews: Gartner Explains Why Windows Is Broken

"In a session at the Gartner Emerging Trends conference today, analysts Neil MacDonald and Michael Silver identified many reasons that Windows (and thus Microsoft) are in trouble. Microsoft's operating system development times are too long and they deliver limited innovation; their OSs provide an inconsistent experience between platforms, with significant compatibility issues; and other vendors are out-innovating Microsoft. That gives enterprises unpredictable releases with limited value, management costs that are too high, and new releases that break too many applications and take too long to test and adopt. With end users bringing their own software solutions into the office... Well, it's just a heck of a sad story for Microsoft."

Guess Windows 7 may have some shortcomings also. It sounds better than the monstrous monolith that Vista is though....

OSNews: Why Modular Windows Will Suck for Microsoft and for You

Ars analyses the concept of a modular Windows, and concludes: "Modularization - and the discriminatory pricing it permits - might appeal to accountants and economists. But it is bad for consumers, bad for Windows, and ultimately, bad for Microsoft. A modularized Windows, or worse still, a modularized subscription-based Windows, undermines the purpose and value of the Windows OS. If it comes to pass it will surely sound the death knell of the entire Windows platform."

RIP: Ashley Morris

My friend Ashley Morris passed away a couple of days ago. It's been hard to grok that I will never see Ashley again. He was one of the most fun people I have ever met and would do anything for you. I pray the best for his wife, Hana, and their children.

The original post by Hana: This is the last post.

Some recent posts about his passing:

• Daily Kos: There's one less angry, funny man in New Orleans There's a nice little video of Ashley and his family.
  
• Later, homey. Not goodbye. See ya later. I promise.
  

Maybe he and Dale Earnhardt will get to see Junior win the championship this year!

Update

• Funeral is this Friday at 1 pm
  
• Ashley's memorial fund

Lacey

The most recent granddaughter (she's about a month old in this picture). She's a bit more fussy than her big sister Sara (who turned two a week ago), but not as fussy as some babies.

More Snow!

We got a bit more snow last night to add to the total---second/third highest ever!
It snowed last weekend also.

I got tired of the snow long ago. This year has been the worst I've seen. Even the old-timers were forced to admit that this year was bad as the weather service reported the news.

The good news is that any additional snow that falls should melt in a day or so, since it should start getting warmer---almost up to 50 the other day! Of course, we should see a fair amount of rain for the next two months or so if this is like past years.

This kind of weather may become more frequent, given that the BBC reports: Global temperatures 'to decrease'. Just a few months ago, the BBC was on the Global Warming bandwagon. Guess they've looked at things and have decided it's not the way Al Gore says....

Update

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SPOKANE WA
814 AM PST SUN APR 6 2008

...WINTER OF 2007-2008 MOVES TO NUMBER 2 SNOWIEST ON RECORD FOR
SPOKANE...

AS OF 1 AM SUNDAY APRIL 6TH...THE WINTER SNOWFALL TOTAL FOR SPOKANE
WAS 89.4 INCHES. THIS TOTAL IS THE SECOND SNOWIEST ON RECORD.
RECORDS HAVE BEEN KEPT FOR SPOKANE SINCE 1893.

THE TOP TEN WINTER SNOW TOTALS ARE LISTED BELOW...

1. 93.5 INCHES 1949-1950
2. 89.4 INCHES 2007-2008**
3. 89.0 INCHES 1974-1975
4. 87.3 INCHES 1992-1993
5. 83.2 INCHES 1955-1956
6. 81.7 INCHES 1964-1965
7. 80.5 INCHES 1996-1997
8. 79.6 INCHES 1951-1952
9. 77.5 INCHES 1968-1969
10. 73.5 INCHES 1931-1932

**2007-2008 SEASON NOT YET COMPLETE. MORE SNOW IS POSSIBLE.

XP, Vista, and Windows 7

The Death of XP

OSnews Microsoft Windows XP Dies June 30, As Planned.

Downloadsquad reports that Microsoft will support Windows XP until 2010 -- on low power laptops only. Slashdot has a similar story Microsoft Extends XP For Low-Cost Laptops

Vista

Rumors about Vista not being all that it was to be shouldn't make a story like this too much of a surprise, since the Product Manager is the one that catches the flak when things go wrong....
Microsoft's Vista Blogger Quits. Why "Vista" Nick White Left Microsoft.

Windows 7

Is it the future? Reports of early versions have been floating about the web for a few months.

How Microsoft Plans To Get Its Groove Back With Win7 from Slashdot.

OSNews links to Gates: Microsoft Windows 7 Sometime Next Year

Dvorak Uncensored suggests Let’s go straight from XP to 7

Bill Gates says he expects the new version of Windows operating software, code-named Windows 7, to be released “sometime in the next year or so.

Looks like the time between major OS releases is going to shorten substantially!