Scott Adams has used fan input to “design the DUH”:http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/duh/index.html – Dilbert’s Ultimate House. Some cool ideas in there; if I could ever in my life afford to build my “dream house” then Adams’ DUH would be a source of inspiration (even though I’d never, ever settle down in California).
If you go out with someone and subsequently disappear for, say, eight months without so much as a phone call, *don’t* make a surprise visit on a Saturday at 8:30 in the morning and *don’t* ring the door bell for 15 minutes.
> “You went away and left me long time ago
> And now you’re knocking on my door
> I hear you knocking
> But you can’t come in
> I hear you knocking
> Go back where you’ve been”
>
– Dave Edmunds
[I hear you knockin'](http://www.lyricsvault.net/songs/2857.html)
“Unique12345″. Heh.
Seti@home has [found a very odd signal](http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996341). While I am of course not holding my breath that this is an actual alien civilization, it’s good to see that seti@home is finding, well, _something_.
_Update:_ It’s a [fake](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3621608.stm).
Not the signal, but according to seti@home there’s nothing unusual about it. Too bad.
Ah, whatever. Maybe next time.
So it finally happened, I am officially an old man. The tens digit
switched from 2 to 3. Sigh….
I’m the clumsiest person I know. This time I managed to snap the key of my apartment door in its lock. _After_ I onlocked the door. Of course the good side is that I was able to enter my apartment – and could look up some locksmith service on the ‘net.
The woman on the phone handled it like an emergency. Eh. I guess that’s because I’ll have to pay extra that way. Oh well whatever, I am getting used to getting screwed over.
At least she was nice and friendly about it. Let’s see how their service is.
Updated both my PC (Windows XP Service Pack 2) and iBook (10.3.5+security updates). Both broke…. in subtle and really annoying ways.
_Mac OS X 10.3.5_ seems to break “Internet Sharing”. Sure, no problem, so I set up a quick nat with ipfw and natd. Look ma! It’s a UNIX, I don’t have to use the GUI.
_Windows XP Service Pack 2_ has several annoying bugs (big surprise there). First of all the loss of performance (memory leak?) I was experiencing before has not vanished. So at least they fixed the annoying bug that it would not detect / activate my firewire networking after a boot (before SP2 I always had to unplug, then replug, the Firewire cable after a reboot). Instead, it already once happened that windows decided to stop sending packets via the firewire network in the middle of high traffic. Basically had to replug the cable. What an improvement…
The worst part, however, is that they seem to have changed around some settings that are even hidden from the casual user. I could not access some websites like nwvault for my Neverwinter Nights fix, or the windows update website. Most other sites I tried worked. What happened was that they set their MTU to some maxed-out value (1509 or so) which would result in the IP packets getting fragmented when they got wrapped up by my NAT.
Had to go into the registry with regedit and not only change the value, but actually add the entry for it in the right place….
But, hey, it’s a trivial matter, afterall who in their right minds wants to patch windows… and what casual home user will be using NAT. And registry-editing is trivial anyway, every baby can do it.
That’s sarcasm in case you didn’t notice. I mean, really. The setup of having one ADSL router for a family is not uncommon. And the casual user’d get a heartattack if he had to fiddle in the registry. Or he’d just cause major breakage.
I have no idea what hag has ridden the Billyboys from Redmond, but then again this ain’t exactly news.
Went to the cinema last Saturday and watched [I, Robot](/2004/08/09/i-robot/) – my first visit in a cinema in quite a while. And I sort of regret it. The experience left a lot to desire. In fact, I would go so far that I feel cheated, scammed out of my money.
The cinema was not the best, with a relatively small screen. I have seen people who can create a better movie-watching experience at home… but that is only a minor problem.
Already when we arrived, I was very tempted to turn around and just spit at their doorstep and leave again. Big posters at the registers proclaimed that “illegal copying is theft” and can be “punished by 5 years in prison”. Gee, really great way to enhance a relaxed atmosphere of an evening’s worth of fun.
The price was quite exaerrated as well. We paid 7 Euros per person. This is about twice what I remember paying years ago when we went to see movies in Hamburg.
Finally, we were inside and the lights were dimmed. Will the movie start? Oh no, we were treated to almost _30 minutes of advertisements_ before we could watch I, Robot. Among those commercials were a spot for the [GEZ](http://gez.pandemonium.de) – the corporation that you have to pay a monthly tax to if you own a TV or radio – which was repeated once, but at least it was very short. Don’t own a TV or radio anyway.
Then there was a TV spot that “copying movie” is a “crime”, and so on. Great, movie corporations, you really make me very welcome as a customer.
I mean, really, if you view all your customers as criminals – and you do, otherwise you would not feel the need to post all those propaganda pieces – then why don’t you just take your money and cease operations? I mean, that way, nobody can “steal” from you anyway.
Let us not forget – the only reason why we have the tough copyright laws we do is because the music and movie industries raped the democracies of the western world, bribed elected officials, and did everything in their power to criminalize what was once a fundamental right.
I won’t be going again to a cinema anytime soon. Not unless this sort of nonsense stops. If I am going out, I pay you – the movie company – for entertainment and fun. I do not pay you to accuse me, to annoy me, and to fuck over my democratic rights.
So next time you decide on your policies, maybe you should think about people like me, middle class people who happen to dislike being treated like crap, who instead expect to be treated like a customer who is paying for a service, and certainly not like some criminal.
Saw the movie last weekend – the German dubbing, unfortunately. I haven’t read the book yet (shame on me), so I will have to judge the movie standalone.
I, Robot tells the story of a police detective, Spooner, played by Will Smith, who is technophobic and hates robots in a world where robots are omnipresent. Spooner gets called to the scene of the apparant suicide of one of the founders of US Robotics (hahaha nice one, really). He quickly comes to suspect that an unusual robot of the company’s new series is responsible for the death of the old man.
During Spooners investigation, he becomes the target of numerous assassination attempts, until finally the plot unfolds itself – the robots stage a revolution.
The movie was neither really good, nor really bad (ignoring the lousy German dubbing). The animations of the NS-5 (the new robot series) is pretty nice, but in this day and age the CGI is not exceptional in any way. Sometimes – especially the chase scene in the tunnel – the CGI of these robots looks downright fake. The most beautiful scenes, in my eyes, are those of Chicago of 2035, especially the USR tower. Really nice.
Otherwise, the movie is really standard fare. There are no plot twists, there’s nothing too exciting. At the same time it isn’t too boring either. If you will see one movie this month, don’t see “I, Robot”. But if you happen to end up in a screening, you won’t have to fear death by boredom either.
The BBC is reporting that the number of northern white rhino has been radically [lowered by poachers](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3542060.stm).
Douglas Adams is turning over in his grave.