Category Archives: Rants

Apple’s High Horse

Posted by on October 18, 2006 1 comment

It was revealed that a certain number of Video iPods were inadvertently shipped with a Windows virus called RavMonE.exe. Apple has put up a support page to help users affected by this problem, which is good, but in it they say:

As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.

Wait. They’re blaming Windows for this? As one of my coworkers aptly paraphrased, this is like saying:

We’re sorry that we put this fatal poison in the chocolate cupcakes we manufactured. As you can imagine, we’re upset with the human body for not being more hardy against toxic proteins.

Apple’s general holier-than-thou attitude has been getting exceedingly tiresome for me. With their “Mac vs. PC” ads, open swipes at Microsoft during WWDC 2006, and the zealotry of the community — which, to be fair, there’s only so much Apple can do about — it’s gotten to the point where I’m actively interested in not pandering to Apple’s ego or bankroll.

I’m Getting Fed Up with Apple

Posted by on August 9, 2006 1 comment

After a terribly disappointing round of announcements at WWDC, I’m giving serious reconsideration to my affiliation with Apple and the Mac OS X platform. I’ve grown weary of Apple’s constant push to upgrade – if you’re not running the latest version of Mac OS X you may as well be running DOS. I’m tired of their flirting with the server and enterprise markets – they offer some fairly decent servers in the Xserve, but they run Mac OS X Server on them, which is an excellent server operating system if you don’t mind system management practices that date back to the early Eighties and a reliance on GUI tools – almost all of which only run on a Mac OS X client, by the way – for doing things remotely. I’m not the only one leaving or considering leaving the polished white and brushed metal of the Apple camp. I agree with both Mark and Cory’s reasons, but I’ve got my own personal gripes to air.

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What’s Wrong with WoW, and More MMOG Thoughts

Posted by on February 24, 2006 1 comment

Found this interesting link in Gamasutra about how World of Warcraft is teaching and encouraging the wrong goals. I concur, so read on: World of Warcraft Teaches the Wrong Things

While I don’t necessarily agree with or subscribe to his points in their entirety, nor do I place Street Fighter on the high pedestal that the author does — quite likely because I suck at it — I do think he’s somewhat on the ball about the general “dumbing-down” of MMORPGs. In general I’ve found the “theme park” play style that WoW uses to be somewhat bland and unexciting for me long-term, which is one reason why I’m giving serious consideration to going back to EVE Online. They recently made a major hardware upgrade, and CCP continues to be one of the most responsive and active developers I’ve yet seen in the MMOG space.

I’ve also got a couple of ideas to bring to EVE, one of which is here: The EVE Documentation Project. I hope to be able to take the community’s drive for compiling information about EVE and put it in a wiki where they can do a better job of maintaining and producing it. The forums (EVE account required) are trying to fill that purpose now, but they’re really not an ideal vehicle or tool for such documentation. I’ll hopefully be making a post to said forums at some point in the near future and we’ll see how things go.

Databases

Posted by on January 19, 2005 1 comment

Lots of my friends and colleagues use various different databases for different things, as do I. One thing that I keep coming across is people using MySQL. I’ve never much liked MySQL; its transaction system is fairly new and is not enabled in the default table type, it’s really fast for read queries but slow for writes, the online documentation covers the beta version so it’s not necessarily in sync with the stable releases, and I distrust their somewhat ambiguous, non-OSI-approved license.

I’m of the opinion that if you need something small and fast, SQLite. If you need something bigger than that, PostgreSQL. If you need something really big, Oracle or DB2.

I’ve come across enough technical and philosophical problems with MySQL that I no longer endorse its use. It’s unfortunate that so many people write software that only works with it, including the software that powers this website, Textpattern. But I don’t write or maintain Textpattern’s code, nor do I maintain its database. I leave that up to the more-than-competent administrators who run this fabulous web hosting firm known as TextDrive.

Here’s a little document I came across that has a feature comparison of several top databases, and from a cursory look it appears to be pretty complete.

I’m going to keep adding stuff to this entry as I feel and find it, so I’ll have somewhere to which I can refer people when they say, “Why don’t you like MySQL.” Keep your eyes peeled.

Update: Jan 19, 2005

A friend of mine pointed me to this list of MySQL gotchas that’s pretty telling, too. Although I’m not as staunchly anti-MySQL as I used to be; I’ve been using it for a couple of projects where it was the default and I didn’t feel the need to invest the time in a better solution and it’s not as bad as it used to be. And it is pretty fast, despite its other glaring flaws. I still don’t consider it to be an enterprise-class RDBMS, though.

Wal-Mart

Posted by on November 17, 2004 1 comment

Those of you who know me are probably aware of my long-standing boycott on Wal-Mart. I’ve never liked the retail juggernaut’s business practices, their stance towards unions, their purchasing methods, or their major role in homogenizing the American landscape. I just think they’re a bunch of assholes, basically, and I do not shop there.

A report on the company was run recently on PBS’s show Frontline. They’ve got a bunch of stuff up already on the site for Tuesday night’s show and will have the full show online on Friday. Check it out.

Web Lousing

Posted by on August 26, 2004 1 comment

There are several aspects of Mac OS X, both from a system level and an application level, that handily make it the best system for web browsing and development on the market today.

First and foremost is the plethora of web browsers available for it:

All of these browsers are significantly better at rendering standards-compliant HTML and CSS; they’re fast and easy to use; and, with notable exceptions, are available free of charge. A few of them are also Open Source applications meaning anyone can download, look at, or even modify the source code from which the applications are built, and can potentially return their contributions to the world by having them added to the project.

You may have noticed that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was missing from that list; I didn’t forget about it but, boy, am I trying to. Internet Explorer is a relic from a long-dead era in the Mac’s history. It was brought forward from Mac OS 8 and 9 to Mac OS X and it really hasn’t changed much in several years. Basically, it suffered from the same fate as it did on the Windows side – everyone was using it anyway, so why bother advancing the state of the art? Heck, shortly after Apple released Safari, Microsoft declared Internet Explorer a dead-end product line and released one last version. Internet Explorer is the single worst web browser available for the Mac and should be avoided at all costs.

The other two major aspects of Mac OS X that make it the best web platform on the market are similar enough that I can group them here. Mac OS X has a centralized plug-ins location, /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/, and any plug-ins which you install to that location are available for all Mac OS X browsers. You don’t have to manage and maintain two (or more) sets of plug-ins, which saves time, effort, and disk space. It also has a centralized password share, so usernames and passwords that you elect to save for a site to make future logging-in easier in one browser are available to all other browsers. You need do nothing extra. You have full freedom to switch browsers at will or as needed. Windows can do this, but it does not. I have no idea why; it’s not like the Internet and web browsers were new concepts when Windows XP was released.

The freedom to do the work I want and need to do using the tools I prefer easily makes Mac OS X the platform of choice for web-related work, hands down.

Common Courtesy

Posted by on August 23, 2004 1 comment

So in my apartment complex there are apparently a sizable number of Duke undergrads. This isn’t a problem, per se, except that they’re extraordinarily loud and completely inconsiderate of others living in the complex.

Last night, shortly after 2:00 AM, I had to go out into the hallway to ask the 20 or so people out there to keep the noise down, “for fuck’s sake.” They were just sorta casually having a party in the hallway. Hallways reverberate well, and my front door is thin, so it sounded like I had a bunch of drunk, ignorant kids standing right outside my door. Actually, at one point I did — I opened the door to tell some guys to be more quiet and they were literally standing right outside my door. One had even decided to use my door mat as a coaster for his presumably shitty beer.

Now, last night was a weekend, so I’m not as hung up on being quiet at night, but tonight’s a weeknight, and there are more dipshits making too much God-damned noise. It never ceases to amaze me how self-centered, crass, and rude some people are. These kids’ parents have not done a very good job, but that’s hardly unique or odd in our country today.