Dako

Lets get something straight: if you own a vehicle with an automatic transmission, you ain’t shit. Automatics are for people who can’t drive. If you own an automatic … what can I say? Sucks to be you.

Now get off the goddam road!

I got sick.  On someone’s suggestion, I tried Cold F/X.  It didn’t do anything for me.   Apparently Cold F/X is some special extract of ginseng + herbs??  I guess that the placebo effect doesn’t work on me.

After reading posts like this one I wanted to buy some CFLs to replace the incandescent in my house so I could reap the power savings they provide. I headed over to the local hardware store and picked up a box of 8 23W-ers and put them in my basket. Yup, I’m going to save a tree and all that! I glanced over at the ugly old incandescent section and sneered at the minimalistic cardboard sleeves that protected the ancient technology inside. A small tungsten filament, a metal base, and a glass globe filled with argon/nitrogen. No wonder incandescent sucked so much (power) — they were just too simple.

My gaze returned to my basket and started undressing the new light bulbs. Instead of a simple globe there was a long beautiful spiral of glass. A plastic base extended out from the bulb where the metal base screwed into the receptacle with some kind of circuit board inside. Technology baby! And to top it off, these bulbs came in a sturdy looking plastic suitcase. Wait a minute … spiral of glass … circuit board … plastic base … suitcase??! How is this supposed to be better for the environment?

The incandescent light bulb is the pinnacle of simplicity. The product has been refined such that it is nothing more than a glass globe filled with argon/nitrogen, a filament and a metal base for mounting and electrical conductivity. It ships in a plain cardboard sleeve. All these pieces are easily recyclable.

Contrast the CFL which starts with a shaped (usually spiral) glass tube and a metal screw base, similar to an incandescent. There is also a plastic base which houses a circuit board. The circuit board contains several components. Inside the glass tube is mercury vapor (a heavy metal which is a serious contaminant). Due to the mercury in the tube, and the fact that the tube is less robust than a globe, CFLs need stronger, more robust packaging than incandescent, hence the plastic suitcase they come in.

Plastics do not recycle as well as metal, glass and paper. Circuit boards do not recycle well. If a CFL breaks, there is a localized mercury contamination. Due to the mercury, CFLs need special recycling.

I can’t find any data on the relative lifetime costs between CFL and incandescent. Maybe that is because there isn’t any benefit.

Finally there is aesthetics. Incandescent light is a point source light. CFL is diffused light. Incandescent make things look sharp and provide good contrast. Edges of shadows are well defined. CFL makes things look dull, provide poorer contrast, and shadow edges are fuzzy. The light coming from CFL is fugly. It’s not ugly, it’s fugly. There, I’ve said it. CFL light is fugly.

I hope everybody who is pushing CFL on us dies of Mercury poisoning. It would be a fitting end.

The word “virii” defines a category of software that consists of viruses, worms and trojans. The general usage of the word is to describe a collection of software. Virii is a new English language word.

The word originated with the computer cracker culture, and due to its origins it is unpopular with some people. The reasons for this can be guessed at: the cracker culture can be both mischievous and destructive, and acknowledging their new word might send the wrong message.

A small but vocal group of people has taken up the torch to try to eliminate the word virii from the English language. Their motivation is to fight the cracker culture in a legitimate forum.
One of the best known articles against the word virii is “The definitive treatise on the plural of “Virus”” which centers around the single argument that virii isn’t the plural of virus. Unfortunately the author of this “treatise” didn’t investigate virii enough to understand that the word doesn’t and never did refer to the plural of virus. The paper destroys a straw man: that virii is meant to be the plural of virus.

Recently another new word has entered the English language that also describes a class of computer software very similar to virii. That word is “malware“. Malware and virii are not the same though, malware is software that has bad intent. Virii can be software the does nothing more than replicate itself, with no ill side effects.

The fact that the same people that took up the torch against virii aren’t doing anything about malware shows that their intentions were not honorable. While they picked a legitimate forum to battle the cracker culture, their methods and arguments were not. One can only hope that they will re-direct their energies to something more useful.
This “thesis and dissertation” is actually an editorial on the word virii.

This blog is giving the Vancouver SkyTrain an award! Its the prestegious “World’s Worst Design” trophy for engineering!

The #1 factor that won SkyTrain this award is the complete lack of future scability. No though was given to future expansion for SkyTrain. Each line is already at maximum capacity, and can never grow. No though was given to “express trains”. Express trains being the ones that pick up riders in the suburbs, and then proceed downtown without stopping at the stations close to downtown. Unfortunately, every SkyTrain car stops at every SkyTrain station. This makes SkyTrain a very slow transportation service.

SkyTrain: designed by id10ts!

While I was away from my computer, someone decided that they needed to do some IM and installed Yahoo! Messenger. Okayyyyy …

Yahoo! Messenger comes with some extra junkware, namely Yahoo! Toolbar. What a piece of crap! I don’t need junkware on my computer so I shutdown FF, went to Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel, and much to my delight there was an entry to remove the toolbar. I hit remove and my web browsing was back to normal. Or so I thought.

No, Yahoo! Toolbar wasn’t removed. There it was, even after a reboot. Oh boy! And then I noticed that Yahoo! Messenger had already started running. What the hell? I do not want an IM client starting when I login. Goddam there is more Yahoo! mess to cleanup.

I figured out how to uninstall Yahoo! Toolbar. There is a nice menu item that asks for some feedback before removing the junkware from your computer. I entered some choice feedback and hoped for the best. After restarting FF, the toolbar looks to be gone. Yahoo.

However the Yahoo! Messenger is a much more insidious piece of work. Its from the generation of crapware that wont allow you to change any preferences without being logged in. Guess what? I don’t have a Yahoo! account. How the hell am I supposed to configure this thing?

Their ploy worked. I had to sign up for an account to change the preferences to stop it from running on startup. How annoying. All this to keep the damn thing installed so someone else can occasionally use the thing.
Yahoo is the new Bonzai Buddy!