"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Probably not.
The Wasteland of Detroit is mulling a new “no-knock list” ordinance to cut down on door-to-door solicitations or whatever.
As though that would make a difference, at least here in America’s Third World County. I figure if Mormon “missionaries,” Jehovah’s Witnesses and door-to-door salesmen don’t take the hints of the “Go Away” mat at my front door and the used target silhouette on a lawn poster, a “no-knock” ordinance wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference.
From The Puppy Blender:
How to Do Everything Kindle Fire, by Jason Rich, is not available in Kindle format.
Good one, dumbasses.
What the average Windows user will experience with Win8:
I will NOT install Win8 on my dad’s computer! 🙂 He’s a pretty smart guy, but like Chris Pirillo’s dad, he’d waste more time figuring it out than using it.
Catch the tag. The answer to the question Chris’s dad asks is, “From all appearances, yes.”
You know the ones I mean: generally well-acted, pretty darned good (as in superior to most cable fare on US TV) production values, great music and sound, scenery and settings to die for, interesting faces and voices, etc. OTOH, pretty predictable plots, lots of evidence why Britain used to be “GREAT Britain” (with tons of pointers for those who want to emasculate the US as well *sigh* ) and far too much use of “classic” whodunit camera techniques. And what’s with the stupid four-episode “seasons”? That’s pretty crappy, guys. Just sayin’.
So many good things hampered by a few glaring faults. Better than what I can find on cable TV, though.
Still… Positives include Inspector Lewis, the spinoff from the long success of the Inspector Morse books and the series. Sometimes I want to say, “Take Inspector Lewis, PLEASE,” but usually it’s really quite good on the whole. An example: the theme music. Just wonderful stuff, but I could swear one motif in the theme is outright “borrowing” of a Beethoven motif. That in itself is only to the good, of course (heck, I’ve “borrowed” a motif here and there for development into something else, myself), if I am correct (just noticed it–yeh, I’m kinda slow *heh*–and haven’t replayed the section I’m thinking of in my mind’s ear, but it seems so at first thought), but, regardless, that it even evokes such a thought is an indication of the quality of the music.
And that reminds me: it’s probably time for my quarterly refreshment of Beethoven’s oeuvre in my mind’s ear (it used to need refreshment less often for memory replay, but my mind’s ear just ain’t what it used ta be, ya know? :-)). Fortunately, just about every recording of every Beethoven work I’ve been able to lay my hands on is now stored on my Amazon Cloud Drive (as well as available to load en masse onto a pocket-sized mp3 player) and accessible to listen to almost anywhere on multiple devices.
So, thanks to the prod from Inspector Lewis, I’ll be “seeing” the aural landscapes of Beethoven’s mind’s ear a bit more directly over the next couple of weeks’ time. Thanks, Robbie.
Too many feathers; not enough tar.
(Now, that’s just bad planning.)
Actually, the post title could be an existential cry of pain. “Why, WHY, WHY did the %$#@!% politician survive the fire?!?!?” (Where “%$#@!%” is a statement of a theological probability *heh*)
…being disgusted by M$’s “No, You may NOT easily turn off the Metro interface in Windows 8 and MUST use your desktop/notebook as though it were a kiddie tablet,” approach, I decided to (finally) get around to in stalling ReactOS in a VM.
Pretty nice. From the page linked above,
ReactOS® is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows® XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows-NT® architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.
The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which is binary compatible with Windows. This will allow your Windows applications and drivers to run as they would on your Windows system. Additionally, the look and feel of the Windows operating system is used, such that people accustomed to the familiar user interface of Windows® would find using ReactOS straightforward. The ultimate goal of ReactOS is to allow you to remove Windows® and install ReactOS without the end user noticing the change.
It pretty much works as advertised in that lil blurb, even in its Alpha development stage. Oh, installing sound drivers, etc., is a bit of a pain, but no more so than in many previous versions of Windows and less so than in most. Sharing folders bi-directionally in the Host-Client relationship of the VirtualBox setup of ReactOS doesn’t work well, but for most things I have plenty of workarounds for that.
It’s pretty nice; an experience that’s kind of halfway between Win2K Pro (the best desktop Windows pre Win7, IMO) and XP (the second-worst desktop Windows pre-Vista, IMO *heh*). Now, let’s just see how Vistart works (or doesn’t) in ReactOS… 🙂
Whenever I see a Dodge Ram in my rearview mirror (usually tailgating, it seems), I think, “Well, thanks for the warning… ”
Dodge! Ram!
OK, so my experience with the Windows 8 Beta last Fall wasn’t all that positive. Heck, I was offended by the crappy Metro interface and disgusted by the steps backward into less usability in the “Desktop” interface. But, glutton for punishment that I am, I downloaded and installed a copy of the Windows 8 “Consumer Preview” (just another beta).
*ack!* The Metro interface is still just as annoying in a desktop/notebook environment and the “Desktop” interface? Worse. Less usable than the Developer Preview last Fall! Heck, I couldn’t even (as easily) get the hack to turn the Metro piece of crap off to work in this version… Not that it makes such a difference since the “Desktop” interface is less capable and user-friendly than the Win7 GUI. Heck, it’s even worse than the recent Ubuntu Unity GUI, and that takes some real effort to accomplish, as at least that GUI is usable!
Is M$ trying to lose the desktop and notebook market?