regress

Feb 26, 2008 15:03

I'm reading Vernor Vinge's online novel, Rainbows End. It's authentic Vinge, all right -- I glanced at the first paragraph, and haven't wanted to put it down since ( Read more... )

excellence, computers, complaining

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Comments 12

dr_pipe February 26 2008, 20:20:22 UTC
what the hell! I paid for that!

just kidding, I'd still buy it. got a thing for dead trees I guess. Only for books, though!

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inhumandecency February 26 2008, 20:29:59 UTC
me too, usually, but I have a few spots open for computer-based procrastination and for emergency e-texts for my blackberry.

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griffjon February 26 2008, 20:26:39 UTC
Yeah; PortableApps basically saves your arse in those unfortunate situations.

NB: Even a properly configured Vista acts like it is not properly configured. some amusement:

*Dell ships Trend Micro anti-virus with Vista. Incompatibilities cause it to shut Vista down and/or BSOD; updates are now finally available.

*Vista's user access control is just as bad as the Mac commercial parody made it out to be

*unsigned programs that ask to start on boot have to be given permission every time by the user in a multi-step process. y'know; like Western Digital's backup service and things like that. No, there's no way to say "just do it every time!" (except by removing it from the startup menu and creating scheduled tasks...)

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inhumandecency February 26 2008, 20:32:54 UTC
So, is MacOS currently the pinnacle of "it just works," or am I missing out on something even better? Jus today was wondering if I should try installing Linux now that I have honest-to-goodness VM software.

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griffjon February 26 2008, 21:00:12 UTC
Linux is still far from "it just works" -- mainly because it lets you do/try things that might work; where Mac seems to lock you down a bit more tightly. I'd stay with Mac and run Linux in a VM.

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inhumandecency February 26 2008, 21:28:14 UTC
Given that Apple's nonstandard file permissions system saved my stupid ass last time (and I assure you, it was the _very_ last time) I ran a non-interactive batch rm, maybe I'm better off sticking with a more locked-down environment. I should at least give the linux VM a try, though. It's been ten years since I tried a linux system, and that's just silly.

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tanjent February 26 2008, 20:33:11 UTC
yay for portable apps. is there a portable python?

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inhumandecency February 26 2008, 21:10:14 UTC
Doesn't look like it. I've been playing with the packages for making individual python scripts portable, and even those suck right now.

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griffjon February 26 2008, 22:03:26 UTC
codepad.org supports small python scripts...

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inhumandecency February 26 2008, 22:13:14 UTC
(: Yes it does! Thanks for reminding me. Unfortunately I mostly use python for munging large data files, so a lot of the big projects might not work. But at least I can run those on the UM server.

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ommango February 26 2008, 22:07:52 UTC
I am a fan of Joan Vinge, a fantasy author. Related? This one that you speak of sounds good.

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inhumandecency February 26 2008, 22:27:01 UTC
Vernor is Joan's ex-husband. She kept the name.

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