Even Jeff Minter thinks it’s stupid. What more can anyone say?
Monthly Archive for April, 2006
First, let me say that I love Nintendo’s games. I have both a GameCube and a Nintendo DS, and I love both. I wouldn’t trade my ‘Cube for an Xbox 360, unless I could sell it, then buy a new ‘Cube and half a dozen games with the rest of the money. 
I think that the DS is the only place (including other consoles and the PC) where there is still any innovation in gaming, sometimes making me feel like I’m in the early 80s, with 8-bit computers when almost every game started a new genre, and it felt “magical” (OK, I was quite younger then, too), instead of being yet another sequel, or fitting right into the accepted parameters of an established genre (FPS, RTS, etc.).
And I was quite excited about the Revolution, too. Unlike the other two console makers, whose idea of innovation seems to be “better graphics”, the Revo actually promised something new. A lot of older gamers, who’ve had a ZX Spectrum or a C64, like myself, were enthusiastic about the Revolution, too.
But now, Nintendo have announced the Revo’s final name: Wii. Pronounced like “we”… or “wee”.
Really, what were they thinking? This actually makes me angry - they had everything to succeed this time: a sleek, small, beautiful console, selling for half the price of the competition, with a radical yet accessible new controller, and able to play games from all of Nintendo’s previous consoles.
And they ruin it with the dumbest, most idiotic name I’ve ever seen.
Are they aware that, in English, “wee” is slang for “small”, “urine” or “urinating”, and “penis”? Do they realize that the “I’m going to play with my Wii” jokes will never end? Do they actually imagine anyone going to a store and asking for a “Wii”?
Really, I hope someone gets fired for this. Hard. And I also hope they realize their error, and call it what it should always have been called: Revolution. Otherwise, it’s corporate suicide. (Not really, the DS is selling like hot cakes, but nobody will take them seriously in relation to non-handheld consoles again.)
Sometimes, using AdBlock in Firefox may be too restrictive; by default, it blocks all ads, and you may just want to block the annoying ones: popups.
Firefox blocks them quite well, but it’s not perfect; some ad services have found ways to get around the blocker.
In this particular situation, I found that denying, in my Squid proxy server, the ad services which bypass the popup blocker, works very well.
This has the advantage of blocking them for a complete network, instead of just one PC, too. And it’s independent of browsers.
Popups are already annoying enough; to make them work around a popup blocker (which means that the user really doesn’t want to see them) is evil. So, the fact that these companies’ ads are blocked even before they get to the PCs is a nice bonus.
Here’s my current list, which I block using dstdomain in squid.conf:
.zedo.com
.paypopunder.com
.t2t2.com
.profredirect.com
.dellonlinedirectly.com
.farssearch.net
.searchs123.com
.freefa.net
.clicksor.com
.paypopup.com
.adserver.com
.yieldmanager.com
.fastclick.net
.tribalfusion.com
Whenever I see a popup ad, I just add its domain to the list. As you can see, it’s not huge - Firefox works quite well.
Enjoy.
EDIT: I’m not included popups which Firefox 1.5.x does block, or any other kind of ads. I can live with those - if not, I’d be using AdBlock.
EDIT 2: I’ll be updating this post whenever I find new ones. I’ve already added 2 domains since I wrote this post.
Things mostly went well, though it certainly took much longer than I expected.
The OpenBSD 3.9 installation, itself, went quickly and perfectly. Copying configs from the old HD, and adapting them, took a bit longer.
One of the initial problems was that, while OpenBSD 3.7 had no problem using Ultra DMA 5 on my VIA VT82C571 controller, 3.9 “downgraded” it to non-Ultra DMA mode 2. Copying stuff between drives was noticeably slower. A quick Googling found the workaround, and everything was fine (and faster) afterwards.
MySQL 5.x (and 4.x) still has the bug where the client utilities link to -l../.libs/libmysqlclient.so.15.0 instead of -L../.libs -lmysqlclient. It has been reported often, but the MySQL guys, apparently, can’t seem to be bothered to fix it - it seems that, to them, free Unixes mean just Linux. It compiled fine (after working around that bug), but then Apache couldn’t start with PHP (which was compiled to use MySQL) enabled. This had happened to me before, so I knew MySQL was the problem; I looked around in ports (which maybe I should have done from the beginning, but I didn’t expect the MySQL port to be so up to date), and there it was, a working MySQL 5 + PHP + Apache.
eaccelerator stopped working, however, It compiles and installs, but the httpd children began to segfault all the time. Since PHP is the same as before, I’m guessing it’s Apache - OpenBSD still uses a heavily patched version of 1.3.29, the last one before the licence changes. I’ll have to look into it later. Still, the server is certainly quick enough :).
Everything else seems to be fine, and it’s great to have more than 100 gigs of free disk space (I also added a new drive), too.
This server will be down tomorrow, for about an hour or so. I’m going to add a new hard drive and some more RAM, and will upgrade OpenBSD 3.7 to 3.9.
It’s not that the server actually needs need more power right now, as it’s more than enough for what it does (blogs, mini-sites, proxy, email gateway, firewall/router, and some other stuff). But I have a few plans…
This essay, Working at Microsoft, from a guy who’s been working there since 1999, is, IMO, quite intriguing.
The guy (who at the beginning says he’s mostly a Mac guy, though he never “hated” MS) says mostly positive things about them, except about middle managers, who, according to him, are mostly techs who were promoted and have no management skills at all.
Another interesting bit:
It’s hard for people who don’t work at Microsoft’s main campus to understand just how unreal the experience of working there can become. Some employees forget that most of the world doesn’t have broadband wireless networking, high-end consumer electronics, luxury vehicles, and enough money that they don’t need to live on a budget. Some employees spend so much time using Microsoft products, that they forget about the competition and/or lose touch with typical customers’ needs.
The last mini-site was quite successful, and I’ve seen many places linking to it in the last couple of days. I’ve also been reading some opinions and discussions about it.
Some people thought it was funny; some didn’t. So far, so good. Many said that they know people exactly like this - in many cases, “mom” or “dad”. But I also saw some comments accusing not only me, but computer techs in general, of being “elitist”, of not understanding that to most people computers are just a tool, not a way of life, and that not understanding computers in depth isn’t a sign of lack of intelligence.
I have to agree with those comments, of course, but there’s another truth that people are simply incapable of accepting: that most people simply refuse, stubbornly, to learn even the most basic things. It’s as if it would be “beneath” them. They actually get offended because they’re expected to remember a password they chose a week ago, or to read prompts before clicking on “OK” or “Yes”.
What does remembering a password have to do with “computers”? You have to remember stuff lots of times in your life. Even if you have a really bad memory, there are ways around that - and I don’t mean a post-it on the monitor.
Someone on Reddit used the usual metaphor: that just because you drive a car, you’re not required to be a mechanic. That’s true; however, it’s the wrong comparison. The correct one would be as if you refused to learn to drive, even to learn which pedal did what, how to turn, and so on, but still demanded to be allowed to drive, even though you were likely to crash into a building each time you did so.
Would most people put up with these “I don’t want to learn how to drive, I just want to go places in my car” characters? Of course not. But, yet, it’s how most people behave about computers. They don’t want to learn, they feel offended if one suggests that they learn anything.
Computers, and operating systems, aren’t still as easy to use as they could be, but, these days, basic usage (again, I’m not talking about programming, or systems administration) is simpler than what most people do in their jobs. You don’t have to be a genius, or an “expert”, to use a computer. But you have to learn the basics, which even a child can do… unless you do what almost everyone does: loudly demand your right to ignorance.
Much like all irrationality is apparently excused, as long as it’s got to do with religion, it seems that all deliberate ignorance, and resistance against learning even the most basic aspects of something you have been doing for years, is fine, as long as it’s got to do with computers.
Elitists? Some of us are, sure. But most are simply baffled at how irrationally stubborn most people are. Many act as if they made a vow: “I will not learn anything about computers; to do so would diminish me.” At least, it’s what it looks like.
From the mini-site linked in the post below:
The browser’s address bar is never used. For instance, to go to Playboy’s site, you don’t type “www.playboy.com”; instead, in the “search field” in your start page (probably MSN search), you type “Playboy”. You do that every time you go there.
Some time ago, I read some article which mentioned, among other things, that the top (non-sex) search terms in search engines were stuff like “yahoo” or “ebay”. At the time, it came as a surprise, because I had never really thought about it.
It’s one thing to search for “auctions” and get Ebay as a result. It’s quite another thing to actually search for the name of the site, and click on the first result, instead of simply typing “www.ebay.com”. And to think that most people do it… it was a bit of a shock. Continue reading ‘Browsers and search engines’
Yes, it’s a new mini-site! This time, with a bit of humor to it (reminds me of the “Customerese-Portuguese” dictionary I wrote when I worked at IP Global).
So, here it is: Computers and the Internet according to “normal” users.
To give you a taste…
Computers get slower and slower with time; this is perfectly normal, and the only thing to do is to go to the store, and get them to format and reinstall everything (which isn’t a problem, because other than Windows, Office, all those cool toolbars and that nice purple ape buddy, there isn’t anything installed).
Computers ask “Are you sure?”, and similar questions, all the time, because they’re made for idiots. Since you’re an intelligent and educated person, you know that you can always simply click on “Yes”, without reading. It certainly saves time.
RSS feed
Recent Comments