"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."
Open trackback post. I’m mulling over a coupla “thinkpost” assignments, so just link to this post with some good stuff of your own and track back, OK?
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The topic is:
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy is that in any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, so that those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
*heh*
Throwing a monkey wrench into Das Buros via Conservative Cat, Blue Star Chronicles(Ouch!), Basil’s Blog, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, and Is It Just Me?
Hugh asked for a response (in comments here) to some folks rhapsodizing about Macs over at Diane’s Stuff, at her rant about Internet Exploder. I can think of a lot of responses, but here’s a repeat of something I said when commenting on the Apple Imac Dual core INTEL PC,
Let me be clear: the Mac OS is fine… for Great Aunt Tilly. After all, since it is the ultimate “training wheels†OS, it does prevent people from easily messing about in its innards and doing wild things to screw it up. Which also means it is inordinately difficult to get anything done any way EXCEPT “the Mac wayâ€. Amusing—and true—story. Was once part of a small office where each of us used our own computers at work. Right. Very small office. I had a coworker—a devoted Macrophile who had run the all-Mac computer lab in college—who was constantly coming to me and asking to borrow the use of my computer to do things he was unable to do with his Mac. Yeh, largely the result of being the only Macuser in the office and needing to manipulate PC files, a task never quite as easy [on a Mac] as Apple claims. He also continually complained that my PC was too hard to use because it didn’t do things the way he was used to… on his Mac. Each time, I’d show him how to do things: “See? Just push this little button on the CDROM drive. You don’t have to drag the CD to the trash bin… †“Your CDROM drive has a button?!?!? Amazing!†etc. *sigh* Inflexible, almost unteachable. Mac user. Needed his “training wheels†OS. Never “got†it that I liked doing some things at a command line (still do). Windows ain’t all that great, but at least it’s not like using a computer while wearing a straightjacket.
And that pretty much sums up my response to the Mac vs. PC wars. With the Intel Macs now available and Apple making it easier to run Windows (NOT just Windows apps) on Macs, the PC-Mac war really has ended with the 5% market share Macs surrendering.
There’ll always be a niche market for Macs, and rightly so. But the Intel-based Macs (which folks had running Windows in no time, inspite of Apple’s attempts to prevent that at first) and Apple’s software solution allowing dualk boots, now, between Mac OSX and Windows, the recent Mac ads on TV strike me as particularly silly. Especially since the representations in those ads a that Wintel computers are crippled and Wintel users are clueless, while Mac computers “just work” and Mac users are “with it” fly in the face of the facts.
I don’t need Macs on my home network, but my Wintel and Linux compouters all coexist happily, no snags, no hassles. Wireless additions, ad hoc? As long as they have the security key, sure. Peripherals? A couple of minor examples should suffice to lay the ads’ lies to rest:
1.) No name crapola digital camera. Plugged into USB on an “old” (8-year-old mobo/CPU, etc. Nearly 6-year old Win2K) computer and it just worked. Downloaded photos in Irfanview (FREE) and away I went.
2.) Took an old (maybe 7 years) scanner down to my son’s WinXP computer and plugged it in. Manufacturer has even phased it out of “life”. WinXP recognized it and popped up asking if I wanted to scan something, with the diualog allowing a scan right then and there.
Will any of these computers automagically recognize an iPod device? We’ll never know, since I’ll never have somethiung so straightjacketed by proprietary formats as an iPod. But for just any old interface/peripheral I want to plug in, an autosearch of Microsoft’s online repository of drivers (if there isn’t a standard driver built in that’ll work) almost always results in just plugging the stuff in and going on about my business.
Can folks screw that easy process up? Sure. And I’d suggest that folks who are too dumb or lazy or technophobic to click the default prompts (if asked to) probably do need the training wheels a Mac offers. (Of course there are fairly smart, hard-working technophiles who use Macs, too, cos their area of interest or work pretty much insists they use niche software made for Macs.)
In closing… *heh* here’s a parody of an earlier round of Apple commercials (coupla years ago), filmed by a Mac user, who, well, let’s take the words of the site currently hosting the video:
Ok, a few points…
First, EVERYTHING in the parody actually happened. Second, we don’t hate Macs. And finally, Hunter [Cressall], the guy in the spot, uses a Mac professionally so he’s tired of being called a Windows apologist. Hunter would like to point out that he still owns two working Apple IIe ‘s and has used Macs in one incarnation or another since 1982. He hastens to add ‘Nyaa’.
And from the comments section on the page linked above, Hunter Cressall responds to a Macrophilliac with,
…there isn’t anyone more Mac than I am. I just don’t like their advertising campaign which claims that just because one embeds a Unix kernel under a redundant operating system that such an operating system is uncrashable. We edit HD broadcast television. You want a dead Mac? Give us twenty minutes and a deadline.
Since I haven’t yet asked about hosting the video myself, and I want to honor Hunter Cressall’s copyrights, here’s the link to view it yourself:
Oh, and crashing computers? I typically leave my Win2K comps on 24X7, absent really bad storms or a hardware install that requires opening the case. Windows/software crashes? Maybe a couple of times a year. But it does still happen.
And I can have as many mouse buttons as I want.
🙂
Romeocat has a coupla great timewasters posted. Go on over to Cathouse Chat and check out Diet Coke and Mentos
Go on, gitcherself over there!
Only scifi readers will catch the meme in the post title. Maybe this would be better:
Kaboom? There was one! Said to have comparable explosive power to the Hiroshima bomb.
As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.
Peter Bruvold witnessed the meteorite streaking across the night sky.
The map shows the meteorite’s direction of fall (the arrow) and the possible impact area over Troms and Finnmark counties.
At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky.
“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”
“This is simply exceptional. I cannot imagine that we have had such a powerful meteorite impact in Norway in modern times. If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb,” Røed Ødegaard said.
The astronomer believes the meteorite was a giant rock and probably the largest known to have struck Norway.
“The record was the Alta meteorite that landed in 1904. That one was 90 kilos (198 lbs) but we think the meteorite that landed Wednesday was considerably larger,” Røed Ødegaard said, and urged members of the public who saw the object or may have found remnants to contact the Institute of Astrophysics.
Yeh… “exceptional” is the word I’d use. Nah. I’ll stick with the Chicken Little quote.
h.t. to a Chaos Manor Musings reader… and a tip o’ the tam to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven for the “Lucifer’s Hammer” meme.
Practicing “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!” at TMH’s Bacon Bits.
Although stats are a concern running way toward the back of the pack, my “once-in-a-while” check of TTLB earlier this week has turned into a once-a-day thing because of the weird discrepancies displayed on its pages relating to twc. Since this is definitely not a general interest topic for readers of these pages (after all, most of y’all care deeply about google page rankings, TTLB and Technorati rankings and such… as deeply as I do, which is not much at all :-)), so if you’re at all interested… Continue reading “Blogeeky Stuff—more on “the silly stats game””
This is an Open Trackback Alliance post. All weekend long, link to this post in one of your own and then track back. more below the “diet”.
This guy must have been on the same wavelength as Jerry Pournelle, who tried this diet for one day a week many years ago as a grad student…
” I know a diet on which you can eat all you want as often as you want, so long as you eat only the one thing: Purina Monkey Chow.”—Jerry Pournelle
As I said, this is an open trackback post open all weekend long. Link to this post and then track back. If you want to host your own linkfests, check out
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Absolutely. He was the self proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was acknowledged as such by Osama Bin Ladin and Zawahiri. If instead Al Qaeda had successfully killed our President, or even a top general in Iraq like General Casey it would be a major coup for them and a serious blow to us. So the same is true when we successfully kill their general in the theatre and one of his top lieutenants. Not to mention the 17 other safe houses coalition forces raided successfully today. Just imagine 17 separate Al Qaeda attacks in one day. 17 US soldiers captured in different parts of Iraq on one day.
Make no mistake this is a major blow.
Some are already saying others will rise to take his place. No doubt they will. Until our enemy realizes the fight is hopeless they will continue but for now they are shaken.
More than anything I know this was a major blow to Al Qaeda and a major victory for the Iraqi people, the new Iraqi government, the United States, and coalition forces because of a post my friend at Treasure of Baghdad just put up titled The Thousand-Miles Road Starts with One Step: Continue reading “Does Zarqawis Death Matter?”
I’ve avoided writing about the Haditha situation (Marines accused–mostly by the far left–of “atrocities” in Haditha last November in an incident that was under active investigation by the military long before any Mass Media Podpeople whistles blew). I’ve done so because others are doing a fine job of handling the situation. Michael Yon, though, has outdone the best of the blogosphere and responsible traditional media with Hijacking Haditha.
You might also read Rick’s post at The Real Ugly American pointing to and commenting on an American Thinker Piece. Given the facts presented there, one might almost think Dan Rather’s behind the Haditha massacre story… I’ll not link directly to the American Thinker piece, cos I’d rather you licked up the link from Rick and read his comments as well.
Weeelll, playing around with Puppy Linux. Yeh, you heard me. I was over at The Florida Masochist reading a post about assault with a dead chihuahua, and I thought, “Hmmm… I’d better check that “Chihuahuas were bred for food” memory I had float to the surface. A quick Google search later, I had verification from several sources and… a link to someone talking about their experience with Puppy Linux, a Live CD distro (that can also be installed on a hard drive) that’s a mere 70 MB download (for the ISO image), and which can run in memory (apps n all) on most modern computers.
There are smaller footprint versions of Puppy Linux, but I chose the one that includes Opera 9 (beta 2) web browser. Slick. A really short config of video, mouse, ethernet–all using easy wizard-based configuration tools where i simply accepted the default all the way through, in order to see if it’d work as well for someone—the proverbial “Aunt Tilly” *heh*—who has no technical expertise as for a techie-oriented guy.
Works just fine.
I was planning on putting together a new Linux box to play around with the new “Dapper Dan” Ubuntu 6, but I may just slap a couple together and put Puppy Linux on another, as well. This is a slick, fast, capable lil OS, from what I’ve seen so far. Nice.