Diversions
Sites ( in no particular order ) to visit while waiting for code to compile:
My Kingdom for a Desktop OS
I don’t have a kingdom. But neither do I have an operating system for my laptop that works.
Vista
I’m writing this after Vista Ultimate has just crashed after I gave it the arduous task of listing the files on a DVD.
I first started using Vista when my work gave me a brand new Dell Studio with it installed. I’d heard a lot of bad things, but as an IT professional, I thought I should at least try it out for myself so that I could be sure.
The user interface is terrible, everything is buried under far more layers of menus than is needed.
Vista is a resource hog.
Vista often crashes when performing file operations.
Vista often failed to connect to my wireless router on startup.
This is not an acceptable set of faults, so I installed Ubuntu 8.
( Windows 7 was not released at the time, but even now that it is, I will not buy it. I am not paying NZD $500 for a Windows 7 upgrade. )
Ubuntu
Ubuntu was great when I first installed it. Fast. Stable. Connected to my wireless router without any issues.
Now, after a year and a half of updates and patches. Its an unstable mess.
Ubuntu 9.10 no longer connects to my hidden wireless network. I have to turn on SSID broadcast for Ubuntu to work.
Ubuntu 9.10 often closes all running programs and exits to the login screen when I press the enter key.
Ubuntu 9.10 causes my laptop to heat up to unacceptable levels.
These are all common faults, not peculiar to my laptop, they are all reported multiple times in the Ubuntu bug tracker.
When Concorde stopped flying, the human race went backwards in air travel.
When Vista was released and Ubuntu released multiple patches which broke existing functionality, the human race went backwards in desktop computing.
New Zealand National Party Nanny State Censors Internet
John Key’s National government of New Zealand have decided that they should be able to control which websites the New Zealand people can access.
John Key and the National government campaigned against the ‘nanny state’ of the previous Labour government, but surely deciding what information grown adults may access is the greatest nanny state action of all.
The stated intention of the NZ governments internet filter is to protect children, however, everyone with any technical abilities knows that the filter will completely fail to do this.
It goes against principles of privacy and freedom from search, it is ineffective for its purpose, and it sets a worrying precedent that a government department can arbitrarily decide to block internet traffic of its choosing.
Slingshot ( an ISP ) chief executive Mark Callander
The potential for abuse of this filter is massive. Will we, as New Zealand citizens, allow our government to have the same power to filter the information available to us on the internet as the Chinese government?
You [should] not examine legislation in the light
of the benefits it will convey if properly administered,
but in the light of the wrongs it would do and
the harm it would cause if improperly administered.
Lyndon B. Johnson
(1908-1973) 37th US President (1963-1969)
I will vote for, and encourage everyone I know to vote for, any politician who values freedom of information enough to remove this filter.
Unless every ISP in New Zealand signs up to this, my money will always go to an ISP which does not co-operate with government censorship of the internet. If every ISP in New Zealand signs up to this, I may seriously consider packing up my wife and children and moving to a country which values freedom.
Sources:
TheRegister.co.uk
Stuff.co.nz
TechLiberty.org
NZHerald.co.nz