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Gates v. Jobs (With a C64 thrown in for good measure) February 14, 2007

Posted by truthspew in Apple Computer, computers, G4, Linksys, WAP54G.
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Funny video – Steve Jobs and Bill Gates go at it. You’ve probably recently read my rant about OS-X 10.2.8 not being able to play nicely with a Wirless G router. And I’ve caught all sorts of flak for my comment about Microsoft just fucking you once, while Apple rapes you repeatedly, or that XP pre-SP1 could connect to G networks. One moron actually had the nerve to say that “Well, you’re playing with a 2 year old OS-X.” I’m sorry but I have the t-shirt with the XP launch date on it, and that was SIX years ago. SIX!

Anyway this video is a good send up of the fight. Look, at this point there’s very little difference both hardware and software wise between a generic PC and a Macintosh, particularly since both Macs and PC’s use Core-Duo chipsets made by Intel and both will run OS-X, Windows XP, Vista, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. And the Commodore 64 showing up and talking about all the porn on the net is priceless.

Watching Kinsey and some tangential thoughts February 11, 2007

Posted by truthspew in computers, Kinsey, sex education.
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I’ve heard around the way that Dr. Kinsey was known to sample all the delights from the full range of human sexuality. But I just caught the movie and have some thoughts.

The objection to homosexuality really does run through the ages doesn’t it. But it appears to be changing. The other day I ran across a graph in USA Today of all places that showed rates of acceptance of homosexuality are rising from about my generation on up. In many cases it’s way above 50%.

The laugh out loud moment in the movie was the whores vs. horse part. Truly funny but then I’ve noticed over time that humanity is funny. You can choose to cry about it or laugh about it. I have chosen to laugh at the absolute absurdity of the things we do.

Kinsey did humanity a great service. History is very inconsistent in its treatment of the man. But think about it, he went places and did things that we today take as common knowledge. I do wish someone would repeat his study with a wider sample. I bet we’d find that the results might be a bit more surprising.

Another interesting thing about Kinsey. He could not have done such a study without the aid of technology. I loved the little flash to the 80 column cards. I remember my first go around at the college thing. First we had a course in BASIC of all things but it was on interactive DEC VT100 terminals attached to a DEC PDP-11/44 running RSTS/E. All well and good since as a 17 year old (A birthday in late November meant that I was almost always the youngest in class!) I had access to all the documentation for said system and I read it with gusto.

Then came the PL/I course. All batch – which meant those damned 80 column cards and the IBM Type 25 card punch machine. It also meant days between submitting your batch and getting your output. Needless to say that presented a problem and I still had access to the PDP-11/44. I think I talked about that elsewhere but it ended badly. Lets just say that the old saw about a little knowledge being a dangerous thing is definitely true.