Archive for January, 2005
The children are our future, and we’re boned
News flash: students are morons and don’t understand basic freedom. Now, I hated history and civics type classes just as much as the next kid, but I paid a little bit of attention. I know I get to own a gun, say what I want, etc. But 1/3 of kids thought that the 1st ammendment goes too far in guaranteeing free speech? Come on. In the post 9/11 (lordy, I wish we could come up with another name for that) it is essential that we know our rights and cling to them. There are people out there that are hoping we’ll give up rights for security. It’s not worth it.
Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security, will not have, nor do they deserve, either one. – Benjamin Franklin
To Steam:
Yesterday I wasted a bunch of my day *trying* to play Half-Life 2. However, the Steam network client wouldn’t connect. I couldn’t authenticate, thus my software sat there on my machine. Locked. Waiting. Unusable. I spent hours in support FAQ’s and trying to traverse the non-sensical horror that is their public forums. I submitted a support request which they promised to answer the next business day. Awesome, that comes after the weekend. You know, those two consecutive days where I have “free time” to play “games”?
Two key things bother me enough to mention:
- I find the lack of fallback functionality in the Steam client to be a major design flaw. Shouldn’t the fact that I’ve authed into the network in the last month be enough to prove I own it? They *must* balance the needs of the consumer (and simple fairness) with their need to protect your IP. Draconian policies like this are difficult to enforce, and only serve to alienate people when enforcement takes precedence over enjoyment.
- The lack of communication with the community was detestable. I think much of Steam is a good thing. But when it breaks, it is very bad. I spent hours reconfiguring my computer (changing myriad firewall settings, patching the OS) in attempt to make it work. They have both a “News” and “Status” page, and failed use them! Had I been informed that there was a server-side problem that you were working on, I would have done something else with my day. Instead, needlessly wasted my time on something I couldn’t fix.
Thowin’ up the horns
As much as I respect (and to a degree, observe) Christian tradition, it’s great to see it being mocked. The ability to laugh at that you hold precious is to me a sign that you are secure about it. So, I’d like to point out that the introduction of Metal Jesus (along with an early appearance and his latest cameo) is a thing of beauty. Kudos, fellas.
Granted, I really don’t think anything is funnier than Claw Shrimp.
Also, go Gabe! He’s a fellow former-Spokanite and his artwork keeps getting better over the years.
Hooray for Sage
Hooray for the existance of the very cool Sage RSS reader for Mozilla/Firefox, the best browser platform in the universe. Finally I can read all my news in brief and then click through to the stories all in one stable, open platform. I had been using SharpReader, based on evil-IE, but I’m happy to say that Sage takes its place. Now I don’t need IE for really anything at all.
Flapping in the wind
Today I rode my motorcycle into work (after some prompting from mitchn). It’s pretty fun to be able to do that in January. Beyond that, I also learned that my current beard (born partially of boredom and standard winter-geekdom) is long enough to catch the wind rushing beneath my helmet and flap around. I’m officially hairy!
All in order
I swear I have rare moments of clarity. I was really happy when I finally realized how a non-recursive in-order binary tree traversal would work. It’s a piece of CS trivia that I continually forget. I’m also pleased to realize how easy it is to write in python as an iterator class. 16 lines, with comments and some white space.
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