Posts filed under 'Rants'
I'm just so freakin' glad to live in a free and prosperous country such as this one... In fact, Serbia is so great and righteous, that it has to remain the last on the list for all things good, and at the very top for all things bad, just for the sake of feeling important while pouring sacks of 10 day old manure on the head of every normal person that resides within.
If you haven't noticed yet, I'm pissed. Very much so.
What I tried to do today looked too good to be true (needless to say, it was) - I tried using Microsoft DreamSpark to download some free software for students (for educational purposes). The process includes a verification procedure that confirms that you are truly a valid student of any listed university. Allot of countries in Europe are supported, but not mine, nor does it look like it will be any time soon. It sucks not having an unified student filing system, like that's so hard to accomplish. Although loads more laws, decrees, important people, general democracy realizations in Serbia are on my "I will slice your spine in two" list, this made my stomack do a 360 degree spin. Thank you, oh so great country of mine...
July 4th, 2008
How's this for the definition of "unnecessary"? Almost every laptop that exists today and is less than 3-4 years old has WiFi built in (and if not - USB WiFi adapters are a steal), and yet Telenor - a mobile provider in Serbia still had a bright idea of using USB wires with only a touch of WiFi for their project of creating an "Internet enabled public park".
They crossed the limit by exposing every one of their USB 3G devices in one of their project realizations in Belgrade, Serbia to the public by placing them inside small transparent boxes on benches... Users were expected to plug in the USB cord to their device (which obviously had to be a laptop) and start enjoying the online sensation while the local city folks passed by and stared in wonder.
Needless to say, the whole park was vandalized, all devices were stolen and their plexiglass outer "shield" was smashed into pieces only a few days after the grand opening. (I mean... what were the expectations? Turning an usual junkie hangout lounge into a Internet enabled location? In Serbia? Stupid.)
Here's how an "internet enabled bench" looks today in the very same park (image courtesy - B92):
The v2.0 of the box has a nasty sticker on it - "The presented devices have no material value whatsoever and can not function outside the limits of this park."
Hint: Why bother arguing with drunk people? Does any vandal give a damn if he throws his leg at that box? Or if he shoves the USB cord inside his burger just for the fun of it? Lose the boxes, and stick to plain WiFi. It can serve 99% of most Laptops, PocketPCs and high-end mobile phones... That way, morons who don't know what to do at 3AM in the morning can vandalize the radio waves in the air as long as they want.
June 21st, 2008
Got a bluetooth dongle today... Small - black - cheap. Hooked it up to my usual USB port out back and inserted the mini CD that came bundled with it... imiddiately the autorun.ini launched setup.exe and installed all the needed drivers for my device. The software driver is called "BlueSoleil". And why the hell is this the only type of software that comes bundled with any bluetooth device?! It's slow, buggy and crashes so frequently that you have to launch the task manager while transferring a simple file accross the air! Fortunately, version 6 of BlueSoleil is allot more user friendly and integrateable with Windows Vista. Unfortunately - it costs money and imposes a 5MB limit on data transfer. Damn.
Just for the sake of it, I launched MacOSX to see if it will at least try to recognize my Bluetooth device. Needless to say - it did. And the simplicity of the built-in solution for MacOS was so astonishing that it made me cry when I went back to that piece of crap that BlueSoleil is! It creates a Bluetooth icon next to the volume section on the title bar and contains a few basic options - Send, Browse, Options + some additional features... but certainly NO functionless bloat that BlueSoleil carries!
Why can't every hardware manufacturer create a software driver for their device that does not introduce 5 links on your desktop, a background service with so much bloat that it gobbles up tens of megabytes of RAM, at least 1 system tray application to advertise it's presence and all the instability, crashes and even bluescreens that you can imagine?
May 24th, 2008
How to be cool online – a short guide
1. Make sure everybody knows you use Firefox, Safari, Opera or even Omniweb instead of IE. IE is the devil – repeat – “IE is the devil”. Get bonus points for claiming you use Lynx and by posting “IE sucks” banners on your blog/website.
2. Advocate Linux. No matter if your Linux experience is limited to booting an Ubuntu DVD and then hitting the reset button because you panicked when you saw the command line interface - Linux rules, or better yet – “Linux r00Lz0r!!!11 one”. Make sure everybody knows that Linux is stable, easy to use and perfect in every way by engaging in YouTube comment flame wars or any other flame wars such as the ones on Digg, online communities, or blogs.
3. Hate Microsoft. As much as IE is the devil, Windows and just about any other Microsoft product comes with a 666 sticker on it. “Closed source sucks”, “proprietary software deserves to die”, “enjoy your blue screens lolz”, “windows is teh suxx0r” and just about any other blurb you post online about the eternal corporate damnation that Microsoft has thrown upon us is a great contribution. Bonus points: if you do all of the above and still use Windows.
4. “Testing, testing, 123”? It’s the new thing, it’s “hip”! It’s the beta button! Hey, if Google can use it, why can’t you, right? Stick a “BETA” sticker on your website/blog and enjoy the visitors thinking that you are a developer that, for some reason, has a beta sticker on his/hers website for years while using online blogging services such as Blogger that you can’t even customize properly. Want bonus points? Hell yeah! Place a “web 2.0” banner next to the beta one!
5. Use massive signatures. Make sure everybody sees your forum signature, along with about 300 userbars (bonus points for: “Toilet user”) and the lyrics for your favorite song. If you really want to go extreme, use a glitter generated sig. Remember – if it’s not the same size as the screen height of a 20” monitor, it’s no good!
6. Post comments on YouTube for every video you view with the following contents “This is so scary don’t read this your mother will die if you don’t post this comment on 20 youtube videos oh my god omfg…J*(@!”. Get unlimited points for actually believing in that.
7. Use a Mac like a pro – be smug about it. You DID spend a grand of two of $ for it, so why not show it around like it’s a Rolex? Be sure to let everybody know you use the great apple, and that, obviously, any other product that does not come from Apple is blasphemy.
8. Intel vs AMD? Advocate the one you use, not the one that has better benchmark scores. (and let’s face it… both are pretty equal in the end, but who cares when you can claim that you are better than somebody just for owning a piece of silicon!)
9. Make sure your blog tagline contains one of the following words: “Scribbles, Ramblings, Thoughts” (check! 
)
10. There is no number ten, otherwise, this would be just another top 10 blurb. Sorry.
April 23rd, 2008
Although I was a regular with PCWorld (marketed and translated as "Mikro - PC World" in Serbia), I stopped reading it after the overall quality of it's contents degraded below my personal threshold. To be more specific, I'm talking about 4 full page marathons dedicated towards projector reviews, almost every issue, 8 page Windows "never before seen" tips that usually tell you how to defragment your hard disk and turn off window animations (alltogether - boring, beginner class mouthwash - repeating itself yearly), and the lack of fresh news that you would usually find on digg. Now, that may be the localized version that I am reading, but I'm sure that the situation is quite similar over in the USA.
Nowadays, I mostly read the online version a few times per month, only to be dissapointed by some oh-not-so-wonderful articles that have an, I must admit, tempting title - "top xx at xxx" (replace missing areas accordingly). I have no clue why titles that number and compair similar products/events like "Top 10 April Fools' Day Joke Web Sites" and "Google's Top 17 Easter Eggs, Gags, and Hoaxes" attract so much attention, but their contents are generally not so fresh or exciting as one might think. Compiled web finds with a few dashes of author's opinion are not so hot anymore, and linking them to the MTV top charts is not helping either... I miss the old days when authors actually gave opinions about products, instead of following the current "trends"and fabricating their articles to the public's liking. One example: Windows XP was first reviewed as a major release that would shake the world, bring new features to PCs and brighten the overall outdated Windows gray screen... The activation feature was said to be "not bad at all", and the speed was far greater than w2k and w98x builds. What happened later? New users complained about w9x software refusing to work with the XP's NT backend, driver nightmares, visual bloat etc... PCWorld was quick to follow, labelling the activation feature as a nag, XP as slow (thus offering the, ever so great and useful, "speed up tips") and advocated that Windows 98 was still a very good choice for todays computing. XP vs Vista today? Very similar... It won't be long after another previous Windows version vs. current Windows version showdown takes place.
As soon as PCWorld starts writing quality stuff again, I'll be ready to read paper again like in the ol' days... Until then, I'll "enjoy" the articles they have now, and the videos that are embedded in their, sad to say, crappy video player.
March 28th, 2008
I really don't believe that any hardware developers working in major mobile phone companies knew the evil they were creating when they introduced the speakerphone feature on todays mobile phones... First, it was used to amplify the party you are speaking to, but later on, it became an annoyance of great proportions. On Serbia's streets (I'm currently talking about Subotica, but the situation may be, and probably is, very similar), people of all ages are using their mobile phones as mp3 players, which is nice (seeing that buying separate mp3 devices is not compatible with their budget)... except one thing - no headphones. That's right, the "yellers" crank the volume up to the max, create a short playlist, and start their 1km long journey with their cranked up mobile phone playing their favorite tune, creeping along, annoying everybody around them, emitting noise that really isn't music, but simply the static and distortions that the poor magnet emmits in it's creaks of pain and overload... Here's a hint, ya retards: HEADPHONES! That's right, I don't want to listen to YOUR songs, and there's a big bonus for that "no" if you are listening to local folk songs! If your speakerphone is producing any kind of noice, whether it's music or video sound, keep the acoustics inside the privacy of your own home/bathroom/watering hole. While an mp3 file is playing, don't hold the phone in your hand, don't put it in your pocket, don't hang it around your neck - get a freakin' pair of headphones and enjoy your music! (otherwise, you'll just piss people off and gather unwanted attention)
March 19th, 2008
I got a Pentium 4 Dual Core based PC from a friend who needed it fixed up and brought on it's feet. It was a custom built PC - therefore - no OS. Obviously, the BIOS was not so much fun to use, so I proceeded with installing Vista... After a successful boot-up from the installation DVD, I quickly reached the end of the quick "next, next, next" based wizard, and was all set to watch my washing machine do it's thing while Windows was installing.
However, I wouldn't be writing this if something didn't go wrong... It did. Windows setup reported that it couldn't make the partition bootable, so setup was canceled. That was the first time I actually saw that kind of error message... strange... Luckily, a quick reach towards my trusty GParted live CD solved the problem by letting me flag the only partition available as "Boot" (why was it not flagged after I used the built in partitioner in the first place!?). At least I thought the missery was over, but when Windows went on to boot for the first time, it died on me. A black screen - basically nothing there to inform me about what happened. Next step: safe mode - didn't help - the boot process froze when loading crcdisk.sys (hm... a clue? See title...)
To make the long story short, I booted the Vista installation DVD again and used the command prompt to start "chkdsk"... Needless to say, hundreds and hundreds of bad sectors popped up. Oh, goody... How typical is this? I could have saved about 4-5 hours by just using a disk check routeine to diagnose the problem! But, wait, aren't hard disks supposed to be reliable these days? How about S.M.A.R.T.? Nope - no reports about a dying disk. So, while I'm typing this, the LOW level formatting bar is at 95%. Very slowly, it will reach 100% (I hope, gulp), and I won't have to horse around with making Vista work. But, the main rule is - if a hard disk gets any bad sectors, the situation will eventually get worse - allot worse, posing a threat to every piece of data on it, and putting me in jeopardy of having to fix the mess a few months later! The funny thing is, I am now actually hoping to see a few bad sectors so that I can return it as broken... Although, I'm not laughing. Actually, I'm hoping to see some god damn SSDs soon! Why oh why must we have such fragile rapid moving parts inside storage devices...? Oh, and, here's one for Microsoft: I know it's not your fault for the busted hard disk drive, but how 'bout a warning? Something like... Oh, I dunno... "Bad sectors detected", perhaps? Or maybe a blue dot on a red screen... Anything! Just cut the users some slack - no black screens.
Edit: It turns out that the HDD was faulty as a wooden leg caught on fire... I got it replaced fairly quickly, and everything is just peechy. Thanks goes out to Asus for notifying me about the failing HDD even though I have S.M.A.R.T. monitoring turned on... (pause)... NOT!
March 7th, 2008
Previous Posts
I'm just so freakin' glad to live in a free and prosperous country such as this one... In fact, Serbia is so great and righteous, that it has to remain the last on the list for all things good, and at the very top for all things bad, just for the sake of feeling important while pouring sacks of 10 day old manure on the head of every normal person that resides within.
