Code-bloat is the root of all evil.

Quoted from farkeruk from fark.com:
Note: fark.com censorship removed.

I still run a fucking old Winamp despite having numerous big bastard media players (which are only used because each has it's own fucking proprietary shit that some cunts still use - yes, I'm pointing at you RealfuckingNetworks), because when I click an MP3, I want it to play. I don't want an update message. I don't want to know about some new fucking newsletter or "community". I don't want it to sit there occupying as much memory as fucking Skynet. MP3. Fast. Now.

Listen to the Vista twats. "Hey, it's got larger icons with shadows that zoom in as you put your mouse over it, and right click to hear the name of the program in fucking elvish". Even the Ubuntu folk have got into this with fucking Beryl. "Look how cool this is. You can move your mouse to a corner of the screen and pull it down and it animates like fucking bullet time to the next screen".

Listen, assholes, this shit like fucking clippy and Windows 95 themes is cool for 10 fucking minutes and then just gets in the fucking way and costs me CPU, memory and hard drive. Give me an OS that treats me like a fucking grown up who wants to use his computer to get shit done, even if that shit is playing fucking Wolfenstein. It's an OS. It's there to launch programmes, configure internet and printer shit, organise files and run tasks.
--

Okay, THIS right here is my main gripe with everything these days.

Everything has become proprietary, code-bloated and utterly unwieldy. Vista is so choked with security, DRM and shiny-crappy that I'm surprised that Microsoft managed to shoehorn an OS into what is otherwise an over-glorified version of Norton System Works.

I mentioned proprietary - let me touch on that for a moment. When did it become a circus to rip music as an .mp3? Not .wma, .ra, or any other media-program-specific file format, but a fucking MIKE-PAPA-FUCKING-THREE.

And if there were another, more efficient way to copy music, keep it under an average of 3.0Mb per song, and NOT reduce quality to about that of an analogue cassette, I'd like to see the .mp3 die off, too (.xm format, anyone?).

Yeah. To Hell with Media Player. I'm using WinAmp.

While I'm at it, I'd like a pony...

A wicked idea just hit me, though it'll never happen.

I'd like to see a collaboration between Gibson and Gaiman. If we take one of Gaimans' signature 'everyman' characters (e.g. Shadow, or Richard Mayhew), and plunk him smack in the grit of Gibson's signature cybernetic dystopia (As ColtCCO aptly put it), and if the chemistry between the authors and the synergy of the setting was fluid, you could have one Hell of a story.

Sadly, the odds of this occurring are about as high as an ant with broken legs, but I can dream, can't I?

One more gripe, and I'm done.

In response to a thread titled "Top five things Microsoft should do to get an edge" on Fark...

Of course, there are so many responses that simply say, "stop with the suck" while being conveniently nondescript.

How about remove the DRM and seven-layer permission when you farking sneeze?

[user] *cla-click*
[Vista] Are you sure?
[user] *clicks Yes*
[Vista] Are you certain?
[user] *clicks Yes*
[Vista] Are you sure that you're certain?
[user] *grabs a bat and smashes his tower in disgust*

At least, this would be my reaction. Most of the sheeple I deal with respond, "oh, I love the security".

/me vomits

Why I hate Vista.

Just as with XP, Vista MAY be worth something after a service pack or two. Right now, it's Betaware. Micro$haft is just charging for it. You never buy an Operating System out of the gate. Period. Look at Windows Me.

For the record, I don't hate Vista because "it's cool to hate Vista". Any accusations of such will be summarily ignored.

I hate it because it's a 14+GB install of a shiny, crappy version of XP.

I hate Vista because of its ridiculous requirements. Code-bloat has been part of Windows since at least 98, but a min req. of 1024Mb (1.0Gb) RAM? XP had a min req. of 256MB, and Vista doesn't have anything to show for it.

I hate Vista because for the price you pay for the "cheap" versions, you might as well upgrade your current PC with more RAM, a new graphics card, and a few other add-ons; for the more expensive variants, you may as well buy a new PC with XP on it. Oh yea, and every version of Vista is a truncated version. For the "full" version, you have to shell out even more hard earned money.

I hate Vista because it has quite possibly the most convoluted filing system I've seen to date.

At least NTFS was kind enough to separate different users into sub-folders. As far as Vista goes, it took that to an illogical conclusion. Here's a comparison:

Windows 95/98 (FAT32): C:\Progra~1\($program)

Windows XP (NTFS): C:\Documents and Settings\($user)\Program Files\

Windows Vista: C:\($user)\(supercalifragilisticexpialidouchebag)\Program Files (x86)\

I hate distibutors, because they NEVER release a PC to Joe PEBKAC with even enough RAM to meet Minimum Requirements. Nearly every lusers' PC I deal with has roughly half the memory for the OS installed, and to exacerbate things, they use an ONBOARD graphics chip?! If I see another fucking DirectX Diagnostic scan that reads out like this, I'm going to scream:

Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista űberpsychoexpensive Edition
Processor: Intel Celeron Crap Processing Unit, 2.8Ghz.
Memory: 512Mb RAM
Graphics Chip: Intel G945 Chipset, 256Mb RAM

Tell me what's wrong with this picture.
Come on, it's not difficult.

Okay, I'll tell you: This PC is trying to run Vista on 256Mb RAM. ONE FUCKING QUARTER what the OS requires to work properly. I'm damned suprised that Windows manages to post half the damned time.

And of course, these bargain boxes have somewhere around 50 startup items.

Add in DRM as well as the fact that Vista requires seven layers of permission for you to fucking sneeze, and Vista is just another example of the corporation assfucking the consumer.

(All of that, and I have to deal with PEBKACs on a daily basis who went out and bought a shiny new Vista PC and expect EVERYTHING to run on it.)

So I apologize that I won't buy the hype. I'm sorry that your shiny new OS is a piece of shit. I'm sorry that I don't want my current PC or my next one to get bogged down by its own Operating System. I'm sticking with XP for as long as I can, or until I can find a versatile OS that isn't so bloated that I have to buy a fucking supercomputer to run it on.

Rant off.

Welcome to... The Twilight Zone.

As someone who has worked as a tech support agent for a DSL ISP, I can safely say that this almost NEVER happens.

This has got to be the most bizarre workday that an inbound agent can ever have.

Scary revelation.

What if...

And I know this is scary, but...

What if Vista just runs piggy-backed off of XP, much like Win98 did with DOS?

It's the best explanation I can think of to explain a 15Gb installation for a bad Operating System.

That's it.

I'm going to write a book.

My target demographic will be People Who Bought Vista.

The title will be: "So, You Paid To Be A Beta-Tester".

Reality: Glocks and KTW bullets

This is excerpted from my little version of the Blackhand's Weapons Guide for the cyberpunk-genre Roleplaying system that I've written up.

You see, it actually annoyed me that most RPG publishers don't seem to know a damned thing about firearms when they write a game (The 2nd Edition Players Guide for Vampire: The Masquerade stated that the B.A.R. is a popular hunting rifle. Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot-Hotel?), and this results in some head-scratching among gamers who actually know something about guns.

Anyway, to the article:

There are several misconceptions – most of which were created and perpetuated by the media – about firearms and ammunition; many role-playing games don’t bother with realism in regards to these things, and especially firearms.

The whole idea that a Glock pistol can be passed through an x-ray and metal-detector was an assumption by a journalist that, because the outer casing of the gun was comprised of plastic polymer, then the feed mechanism, barrel and chamber must have also been made of the stuff. Since this journalist made this folly speculation in a time where anti-gun opinions were at a peak, many peoples’ “personal safety” alarms went off, and the rest is media history.

The real story behind “cop killer” Teflon coated bullets: “In 1966, the coroner of Lorain County, Ohio, Dr. Paul Kopsch, Sgt. Daniel Turcus, Jr., of the Lorain Police Dept., and Dr. Kopsch's special investigator, Donald Ward, decided that armor-piercing handgun cartridges could be sold to those police departments or officers that either lacked rifles or might be interested in testing special-purpose handgun ammunition. Major factories had produced such ammunition for the police for years, but interest was minimal, accounting for low sales and little attempt at improvement. Kopsch, Turcus and Ward easily succeeded in making a round that out-penetrated the tame old factory offerings.

Their original KTW bullet centered around a case-hardened steel core. Even at standard velocities, this core would obviously hold its shape and drill through automobiles, cinder blocks and other materials likely to defeat conventional police handgun loads. This was literally the core of the solution, but presented difficulties. The hard core would not take rifling and would ruin the bore. A gliding-metal jacket with full teflon coating took care of this. The round gave good penetration but poor accuracy at long range.” – Excerpt from The American Rifleman, February 1989

Anyway, the ammunition was strictly only for sale to police departments and security agencies, and it was highly unlikely that criminals could get their hands on the stuff. The entire purpose for the Teflon was only to protect the rifling; nothing more. What’s more, not many people knew the ammo even existed.
It was the media that dreamed up the idea that the Teflon acted as an armor-piercing agent (apparently ignoring the fact that the polymer is wrapped around a steel projectile).

“Then, in January 1982, a dramatic change occurred. KTW got national, prime-time television coverage in NBC's "Cop Killer Bullets." Law enforcement officials had pled with NBC to drop the sensational coverage of the virtually unknown bullets lest they come to the attention of criminals. NBC not only refused, but rebroadcast the show six months later. Then the print media joined in.”

This caused all sorts of mass-hysteria, ridiculously vague “anti-copkiller bullet” legislation, and the myth that survives to this day.
--

This should clear things up for the ill-informed that still believe these two sad fallacies, and if I missed something, feel free to leave a comment.

Why I'm glad I no longer work for an ISP.

For those of you who don't know, Indiana seems to be having some trouble with their connectivity.

I feel for you, RiffRaff.

I actually have a profile now.

There, I actually filled in the blanks on my profile. 'Kay, ya happy now?

Oh, for the love of...

As this thread proves, a simple act by one disturbed twit brings out the worst in the great Intarwebs' ID10Ts.

Gentlemen! Behold!

Greetings. In the world where myriad pointless websites posted by John Q. PEBKAC about his lovely family and their dog have given way to even more pages where random people yammer about their day-to-day lives, I have hereby decided that it would be fun to contribute to the problem.

I'll be using this as a place to go on about my various gaming exploits, and occasional technical frustrations (or any tech humor that I encounter while I'm at work).

Also, I'll be posting any interesting information about my various gaming projects. Yes, I've been writing games since I knew how to roll a die and, in truth, this trend isn't likely to die anytime soon.


My genre interests are primarily Cyberpunk and fantasy (and I do in fact play Shadowrun from time to time), with a few of my projects straying into other areas to break the monotony.

I have a tactical starship board game that I've written, somewhat akin to Star Fleet Battles - meets - the tactical play simulation of Master Of Orion II. I've kept the game deliberately generic, for an atmosphere somewhat like Full Thrust by Ground Zero Games.

If anything that I ramble about seems to pique your interest, please feel free to leave a comment.

Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.