cobolhacker.com

In fit of utter incompetence, one of my suppliers decided to send me hard drives packaged like this.

This box normally has 10 DVDRWs in it. A piece of shaped styrofoam identical to the one you see on the bottom covers the top and keeps the optical drives from moving. I ordered five optic drives along with five hard drives. So at face value, this looks like an innovative optimization of packaging.

The only problem is hard drives are about half the size of the DVDRWs so the foam doesn’t hold them still. You would think that anyone with the barest amount of education would be able to figure this out. A hard disk drive is a sensitive, precision mechanical device, not designed to take a lot of abuse (drop your iPod a few times on the floor if you don’t believe me). Delivery drivers don’t gently move boxes in their vans, they throw them. These drives spent the entire trip from the distributor to my shop bouncing around inside the box, hitting each other and the DVDRWs. One was DOA. I was not amused.

This isn’t the first time they’ve pulled a stunt like this on me. A few times a year I get product from this supplier inappropriately packaged. I’ve let it slide the last few times because the supplier is good to me, but now I’ve had enough.  This is complete bullshit. This is new product for sale, it’s no fucking good to me if it’s broken when it gets here.

A stern discussion was had with the sales rep about it. Hopefully their shipping department will grow some brains and this shit won’t happen again.

There are reasons why they invented it.

I get an email solicitation from someone at the local bank telling me about some new product they are offering. Whatever. It’s not a phishing attempt, it’s actually a real email from a real person who works there. They have sent the mail out to everyone in the address book, but instead of using BCC: they have put at least 50 addresses in the To: field allowing me, and everyone else who got the email, to see them. My response explains exactly why this is bad:

Hiya. Thank you for your email, but in the future, please observe good security practices when sending out solicitation.

For future email blasts, use the Blind Carbon Copy feature of your email program, as it protects the email addresses and identities of your customers. If I was a spambot virus, you would have just handed me some 50 free email addresses to add to my collection. Since it is very likely that at least one of the recipients on the list _is_ infected with a spambot virus, you have inadvertently ensured that I, and everyone else on your list, will now be burdened with even more spam.

I know this seems like a trivial thing, but it is not. This is the kind of mistake that spammers, phishers and identity thieves love to pounce on. Not only has it given me a list of names and emails to work with, it tells me that they are all business customers at my bank. Armed with this list, I could perpetrate all kinds of nastiness on the members. I could pretend to be from the bank, for example, send the recipients false information and phish for passwords. I could email them spam, porno or viruses, just for laughs. The list goes on.

All I can suggest is better user training.

I just stumbled across some wild footage of a Taco Bell that has apparently lost the battle with New York rats. Aren’t they so cute! Unsurprisingly, the locals don’t want to eat there any more.

And people wonder why I don’t like eating in fast food joints.

I’ve been experimenting with the Rutabaga (also called turnip or swede depending on where you live) to see if it is something I want to grow in my garden next year. Some may yawn at the thought of eating the much derided vegetable, but it can be tasty if prepared right and is very economical. I paid 79 cents a kilo at the grocery store when I bought my first test rutabagas.

If you’re Scottish, you probably know about the traditional dish of “Tatties and Neeps”, which is basically mashed potatoes (tatties) served alongside boiled rutabaga (neeps). Well, I’ve come up with two versions of it, one traditional and one …uhh… not so traditional, and both are tasty and easy to make. Here’s the non-traditional one.

Bob’s Neep and Tattie Salad, version 1.0

Produces about five servings.

All kinds of Scots are going to think I’m right ’round the bend with this one. This is not a traditional Scottish recipe at all, but a fun one for the summer, and mostly true to the cuninary history of the region. Like the more traditional hot versions, the starchy potato and sweeter rutabaga compliment each other nicely when cold. Honestly, give it a shot, because it was really quite good.

You will need:

• 1 softball-sized rutabaga
• 3 medium-sized white potatoes
• 3 scallions (green onion)
• 1/2 cup of Miracle Whip
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1 tbsp white vinegar
• 1 tsp of American-style yellow prepared mustard, like the kind you put on hot dogs
• 1 tbsp of paprika

This is same recipe I use to make potato salad, just without the rutabaga (using five or six potatoes instead). The variations on this recipe are endless; hard boiled egg is good addition, for example. If you are into that, use two eggs and chop them up fine. Other people like adding bacon (since everything is good with bacon), though I don’t consider it essential.

For those who are confused, Miracle Whip is a brand name for a kind of sweet, tangy mayonnaise-like product sold in North America. I have no idea about its availability elsewhere. We are using it because of its tang. If you only have (or prefer) mayo to work with, you can approximate the Miracle Whip flavour by adding a few pinches of sugar, and by using less milk and more vinegar. Lemon juice might work too, though I can’t say that I’ve tried. Even straight mayo is not likely to go wrong here.

Bring 2 litres of water to a boil in a 4 litre pot. While its working its way to the boil, peel the skins off of the rutabaga and the potatoes and dice them into chunks no larger than 2 cm. When the water boils, drop in the rutabaga. Three minutes later, drop in the potatoes.

Unlike the tatties and neeps recipe below, you have to be fairly exact with the cooking and it can depend on your stove, pot, altitude, etc… We want to boil the veggies until they are cooked, tender enough to put a fork into, but not so tender that they disintegrate when you do so. The edges of the potatoes, in particular, will flake away, and the smaller ones will fall apart, but many of the larger cubes will stay intact. On my stove, this process never takes longer than 20 minutes. Keep in mind that the tatties and neeps will cook and soften a little more after they are drained, but will firm up a tad when they are cold.

While the veggies cook, chop the scallions into small rounds a few millimetres in thickness. Use only the freshest, crispest parts of the onion. When the neeps and tatties reach the desired tenderness, drain them immediately, throw in the scallions, cover the lot and put it in the fridge to cool for at least four hours.

To make the salad, mix the Miracle Whip and the mustard in a measuring cup, adding the milk and vinegar a little bit at a time until the mixture takes on the consistency of a creamy salad dressing. If it’s still too thick, add more milk. Mix together some or all of the dressing, along with the paprika, the tatties, neeps, and scallions, until all of the larger chunks are coated evenly with dressing. If you find yourself with too little dressing you can always add some more Miracle Whip and milk. Some of the smaller potatoes will fall apart during the mixing phase, but don’t worry; we want this to happen as they create part of the dressing.

Put it in the fridge for an hour or more to cool off again. Then enjoy! It is a summer dish and intended to be eaten cold. Eat it along with things like cold meats, deviled eggs and cheese, and with crispy veggies like carrots and bell peppers.

….

Okay. Now that I’ve got he non-traditional recipe out of my system, here’s the more traditional one, also very good.

Bob’s One Pot Mashed Tatties and Neeps, version 1.0

makes about 5 servings

According to the Scots, this recipe is properly called “Clapshot” but I think Tatties and Neeps sounds better. Now that I’ve tried the dish, I’m not sure if I can ever go back to straight mashed potatoes again. It is an incredibly easy dish to make and only requires one pot.

You will need:

• 1 softball-sized rutabaga
• 3 medium-sized white potatoes
• 1 tsp dehydrated onion
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground pepper
• 2 tbsp of butter

Fresh onion is OK too, but I’m too lazy to chop it fine enough to not alter the texture of the mash, hence the dehydrated onion.

Bring 2 litres or so of water to a boil in a 4 litre pot. While this is happening peel the skins off of the rutabaga and the potatoes and dice them into chunks. Diced up, they will represent around 6 cups of food. When the water boils, drop in the rutabaga. Five minutes later, drop in the potatoes. We do this because the potatoes cook faster. Boil until tender, a process that will take around 25 minutes after the potatoes go in. Don’t feel as if the timing has to be perfect. This isn’t like cooking pasta. All we want is for both the tatties and the neeps to be mashable without turning into slag.

Drain the water but reserve about a cup of it. Throw in the butter, the salt, the pepper and the onion. Don’t worry about melting the butter or anything — waste of time. The heat of the tatties and the neeps melts it in less than a minute anyway. Now mash the heck of of it with a potato masher, stirring in some of the water you saved until the desired creaminess is reached. Also be sure to stir the mix with a spoon or fork, just to make sure everything mixes up nicely. Keep it covered before serving so it doesn’t dry out.

And that’s it, mashed tatties and neeps. It’s like mashed potatoes, only better. Serve it as you would mashed potatoes alongside your favourite meat or, if you are feeling traditional, haggis with a dram of whisky.

refer to the original comment here

My interest in climate change came about one hot summer day when I was looking at downtown Toronto from a hotel window. One thing that struck me was just how bad the air pollution was — this yellowish haze — and I found myself thinking, “That can’t be normal.” Not normal in the sense of a normal summer in Toronto, but normal in the sense of the history of the Earth. For billions of years, up to the Industrial Revolution, the Earth has never had the kinds or amounts of inputs humans pump into it today. Over a geological blink of an eye, the Earth has gone from primitive animals living off the land, to billions of humans consuming and burning everything they can lay their paws on. How does the biosphere adapt to this?

As ironic as it is to say this, my not so subtle post was apparently too subtle for some. When I say “kill the planet” I’m really saying “kill the planet for us”. Every person with half a brain knows that the climate on the Earth changes on its own and various species have come and gone over its history. The worry is that humans are consuming so much and polluting so much that our actions are altering the planet in some unknown way, changing the climate and making it do things it might not otherwise do over a fairly short period, threatening human life prematurely. I’m sure the cockroaches are going to come out of it okay; it’s future human life I care about.

As an input, humans remain pathetically small.

I don’t think so. In Canada, for example, the amount of carbon from forest fires is on average one fifth that of the energy sector.

Our species has the power to alter the planet, the evidence is all around us. We have this capacity because there are so many of us with the technology, organisation and willpower to do it. Has there ever been a time when there were six billion larger mammals of one species living in so many places on the planet? We’re big as mammals go, over 50kg usually, so we need to take a lot from the planet for our survival.

Pull out Google maps and have a look at the satellite images for Southwestern Ontario where I live, or any heavily settled area. The grid-like patterns aren’t a natural thing. Humans have cultivated and settled — altered — practically every square kilometre of these areas. We build paved roads thousands of kilometres long, monoculture farms hundreds of square kilometres in size, vast settlements out of billions tonnes of brick and concrete and our dams create artificial bodies of water thousands of hectares in size. No other animal on the planet does this kind of thing on this kind of scale. You can see the changes we make to the planet from orbit.

We also have the power to completely deplete an area of resources. There was a time when 30 percent of Iceland was covered in birch trees. Now that number is 1 percent. There are practically no cod left on the Grand Banks because humans caught them all. There are few bison on the Great Plains because we ate them and turned their gazing lands into wheat fields. We managed these seemingly impossible feats in only a few hundred years. Let’s not even dwell on incredible amounts of non-renewable biomass we have to burn up producing the energy required to fuel our civilization. When someone says, “Who cares? We have 400 years of coal and oil.” I sincerely hope that someone other than me has also asked the question, “What do we do in 401 years?”

In addition to depleting the planet of resources, we also generate astounding amounts of waste, which in most areas of the world, is not treated. If the planet were hollow, this would be a non-issue for a very long time, but it’s not. The biosphere of the Earth not that big compared to the rest of the planet. It’s a realtively narrow band of living stuff, maybe 10km thick on a ball of rock 40,000km in circumference. It is not an unlimited amount of space with unlimited resources with an unlimited capacity to process waste. This is why you get things like dead lakes, eutrophic rivers, superfund sites and streams which catch fire.

The notion that the oceans are a limitless source of waste disposal or the atmosphere can absorb an infinite amount of air pollution can’t be right. The planet is finite in size and there is only so much it can take before something changes.

I stand by this statement. This isn’t a scientific statement, just one that should be bloody obvious.

Governments rarely, if ever, relinquish power voluntarily. The economic consequences of the government regimentation the Left says is necessary to address global warming, are as nothing compared to the political consequences of destroyed liberty.

I have no idea how the hell this previous statement is supposed to relate to my post or climate change in general. * Sounds like libertarian jawjackin’ to me. I don’t seem to recall asking for the War Measures Act to be invoked or the government to start impounding all the SUVs. I was actually thinking of the Western governments funding more scientific study so we can determine which of our consumption or pollution patterns needs to be changed. More money for greenbelt protection and reforestation would be nice, as would more funding for renewable electricity generation projects. Tax breaks for people and firms who put out the capital for things like efficient geothermal furnaces might be an idea, too.

If nothing else, the current hysteria over climate change is waking people up to the fact that humans, especially humans in developed countries, consume and pollute a hell of a lot, and maybe that’s not optimal. Perhaps people just didn’t bother to think about where the energy comes from or where the waste goes. When a hardliner environmentalist like Al Gore tries to convince me of climate change, at least I know his agenda is honest, even if it’s not fully scientifically realised. When scientists in the employ of big companies try to convince me that it’s all a big hoax, I become suspicious. Why is it so important that the hippies be wrong? What’s so bad about recycling, using fluorescent lights, keeping the heat at 21, or driving a small engine sedan? What is so bad about using less? Or is it that when you consume less, you spend less money, and then someone doesn’t make as much profit…

I would hate to find out that we damaged our planet just so a few of us could make a buck.

* Western governments voluntarily relinquish power all the time, by the way — it’s called an election. Sometimes they even give back sweeping powers of their own volition. In 1970, during the October Crisis, the Government of Canada essentially declared martial law in Quebec. When the crisis was over, the government put things back to normal. Hardly a permanent power grab.

I knew that the book industry was messed up, but I didn’t realize how bad it was until I read this blatant extortion letter an Australian book selling chain sent to it’s smaller publishers. What they didn’t count on was one of the publishers making the letter public so everyone could marvel at the unbridled greed and arrogance of the chain’s asshat manager. The sly ‘fuck you’ response from the publisher is included.

This kind of business to business bullshit happens in the computer industry too. Some of the petty shit suppliers have tried to pull on me over the years is unreal.

I once called up a supplier only to have them tell me that I hadn’t ordered anything from them in four months. Naturally I said, “So what?” They told me I would have to pay a $75 fee to re-apply for an account (this was a COD account, no less). I told them to piss off. Incredibly, a number of months later they called back and asked if I wanted to reopen my account. I told this new sales rep that no, I didn’t need an account there, I could get every thing I needed elsewhere. That supplier was Supercom. Twits.

Sometimes distributors put the screws to you without thinking. When EMJ got purchased by Synnex, they required all the vendors to re-apply including us. I thought, “Fine. Annoying, but I’ll do it.” There was no fee, so what’s the harm? That lasted right up until I realized I had to give up a lot of sensitive personal information on this new application. I called the sales rep and asked, “WTF? Why do you care where I live and what my personal social insurance number is?”

“We need it for credit reasons.”

“I have a COD account. Hell, I normally pay with a credit card.”

“Uhh… I think we still need it.”

“No you don’t. Ask your manager.”

“Umm… okay… let me get back to you.”

They never did get back to me, and I haven’t ordered anything from them since. Idiots.

Sometimes the suppliers seemingly work very hard to lose business. Large suppliers like Ingram Micro make you pay a fee just for the privilege of being a customer. When FCP signed up with them around some 10 years back we had to pay 200 bucks (a fair bit of money for us back then) but we felt it was worth it because their catalog was so big. When their OEM offerings began to dwindle, I purchased less and less from them choosing instead to purchase from dedicated OEM vendors like ASI and Daiwa. Ingram’s response was to take my sales rep away. Without a rep to upsell me on products I didn’t know were on sale, I continued to purchase less and less. Ingram’s response was to institute a $1500 minimum order. Predictably, this made me purchase less frequently because I wanted to get above the $1500. These days I think I call them up maybe five times a year. A textbook example on how to convert a $100,000 account to a $10,000 dollar account. Fuckwits.

What I find surprising is that some businesses put up with this shit and that others think they can get away with it.

thx Boing Boing

This is the back of a modern DVDRW drive from LG. Notice something odd? That’s right, no ugly PATA connector or Molex connector. You don’t know the kind of joy I feel to have finally banished those ugly, flat parallel ATA cables from my systems once and for all. No matter how you dressed them up, PATA cables were ugly, annoying to work with and basically impossible to cable gracefully. They are a thing of the past in FCP computer systems from now on.

Unless you are one of those sickos who wants a floppy drive installed in your new computer…

So sweet! A hardware reviewer making his girl build her own box. I think more people should do these kinds of things. Not just to know your computer better, but to know yourself as well :)

Physically building a computer out of parts is actually fairly easy once you get over the *wow* idea that your are creating a 1000-plus dollar appliance for daily use. With a few tips from an expert, anyone with any skill with a screwdriver can do it. It’s also easier than, say, building a car — the only tool you really need to build a computer is a Phillips screwdriver (though it’s helpful to have a number of other common tools).

One of the things I used to do at the shop, which I loved and should probably do again, is to help enthusiastic customers build their own computers. DIY is not the cheapest way to get a compy, but is the most satisfying.

As an aside, after having reviewed the accompanying slide show for the above post, I must say that electrical screwdrivers are not optimal for clone computer construction — way too clunky!

Do you suppose the BitTorrent company’s decision to close it’s source has to do with the almighty buck…? That couldn’t be, could it? NOT THE ALMIGHTY BUCK!?

Funny move for a company that despite its pretentious ideas, really only exists to distribute an open client and a long open de facto protocol which is largely used for media liberation (some call it piracy… bah!) If they actually did anything worthwhile beyond this, I might understand, but closing off the source seems like some petty afterthought from a company with nothing to sell (honestly, who pays to download DRM crippled TV shows?)

Most bittorrent users don’t even know about the BitTorrent company or that its founder invented the protocol. This fact alone might also have served as an indication to the board of directors that there is no market in the codebase or protocol beyond the cred that comes from being the centre of its development (which, now that I think of it, makes good money for the Mozilla Foundation). I say these things with all seriousness because my brain is not all clouded up by the mystical, hopeful, shit idea of the just-around-the-corner-after-a-few-years-of-venture-captial ALMIGHTY BUCK.

As a poster on /. said, “open and then close = fork and die.” The source is out there. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Companies with a business plan smarter than “bury it quick!” will inherit whatever market eventually evolves around bittorrent. Indeed, there are people making money on the .torrent game already who have no particular control over the clients, the trackers or the source code.

My prediction: after burning through the venture capital, the BitTorrent company will be dead by 2010.

Here is an great site: The Importance of Philosophy. The first half of this website is excellent, a fantastic summary of basic philosophical thinking. There are more people than I care to mention that need to really ask themselves the kinds of questions summed up there.

Unfortunately, the work soon degenerates into politicized snippets of objectivism. Sure, it’s alluring at first and some of it has merit, but after a while it gets quite ridiculous:

The second sub-fallacy to zero-sum wealth is that because there are limited natural resources, and those are all owned, then those without resources have no way to generate wealth. The problem with this is that it’s wrong on two accounts. First there is no limit to natural resources, unless you consider that limit to be the entire mass of the universe. The ultimate resource is human labor. (See The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon) Which leads into the second problem which is that those without resources have no way to generate wealth. With human labor as the ultimate resource, and each man the owner of his own labor, each man has the potential to gain anything he wants – depending on his productivity.

One of the core ideas in Randian thinking is that human capital is the ultimate resource. Ultimately this is probably true, but won’t be true for you in your lifetime, your children’s lifetime or their childrens’ lifetime, for thousands of years or at least until we get replicators, like in Star Trek. You can spend all day plotting about wealth from the vast resources of our Universe, in a time where every man is valued for his own worth, but in the meantime, before you die of old age, you’ll still be faced with the problem of making enough wealth to survive on the Earth of today.

More people need to ask themselves the questions, but at the same time, they need to accept certain realities of our world. Remember the movie The Matrix? Like Morpheus said, “Some rules can be bent. Others can be broken.” The order of the world is the same way.