The discussion on this article on Slashdot caught my attention. The article is complaining about the direction that Firefox development is taking, and many comments go along those lines. I won't discuss those comments and I won't discuss said development policies further than saying that one has every right to argue against those decisions in a civilized manner.
What pisses me off is people arguing in large numbers for web developers to drop Firefox support because of the new rapid-release cycle. I've noticed a pattern of people complaining that dealing with bug reports and generally supporting their web applications running on a large number of Firefox versions is painful and will cause them to drop Firefox support altogether.
Let me first say that this is a precise illustration of some of the many reasons for which I hate web developers, web programmers, Web 2.0 proponents and all the other web-*. With a few exceptions of course.
Furthermore, let me say that if your so-called application wasn't a monstrous, attack-prone, inefficient, poorly-documented, hastily-written-on-the-back-of-a-napkin-over-dunch, non-standards-compliant, unclear-specification-bending, latest-buzzstuff-incorporating, user-agent-string-dependent piece of spaghetti-code seasoned to taste with data, metadata and metacode, then maybe it would display OK and function OK in all reasonably recent versions of all mainstream web-browsers. I've worked (not a pleasure believe me!) with what I'm told are crappy CMS platforms and even those function reasonably well even in IE6, let alone Firefox, Chrome, Opera and that thing that Macs are using.
Now, even if your application isn't a monstrous, inefficient, undocumented, poorly-designed, badly written piece of html-css-js-xml-php-sql-jpeg-mashed-potatoes, that's still no excuse for being plain lazy with customer support.
But why so much venom? Why do I care? Because I'm forced to work with products that exhibit the above-mentioned characteristics on a regular basis, and that's costing me time and energy. I don't generally hate people who write bad applications, and I can always write applications that run on my PC if I don't like the ones that are around - at least theoretically I have that freedom, but I can't do that with someone else's web applications. It's when I'm forced to use some kid's late-night, inebriated brain-vomit that he calls a web platform, that I get pissed off, and I want to use this opportunity to say: I sincerely hate you. At the same time, I fully understand that somebody has to collect my garbage and somebody has to unclog my sewer, so you've got all my respect and thank God you're not programming critical infrastructure, I hope.
Getting back to the matter, I remember when I was a kid I came across a code sample from Microsoft on how to "sign"-or-something your ActiveX control that you wrote in Visual Basic so that Internet Explorer wouldn't warn the user that an ActiveX control is going to execute from the web page they're visiting, with the default IE settings at least. Yeah. ActiveX controls were IE's non-standards-compliant way of providing a 'rich web experience' or whatever it was called back then, and many businesses developed 'web applications' around said technology. Sadly ActiveX controls are not web applications, they're normal applications that contain normal machine code that's directly executable by the processor of the client computer and has access to all normal operating system functions, i.e. it is not sandboxed within the browser. Needless to say, that code can in principle do anything its writer wants with your machine. So yeah, go ahead and not support Firefox, and while you're at it complain that it's fat and slow, but remember that it's Mozilla who played an important part in promoting compliance to open web standards and distancing the web from the state described above. At least give them some credit for that, or just go ahead and implement your web application in platform-independent, not-quite-ActiveX Flash or Java or something and shut up.
Oh, and a late Happy 20th Birthday, Web, and a Happy 30th Birthday, PC. May you survive all this crap for decades to come and continue to bring us entertainment and prosperity.
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rants. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, June 20, 2011
internet
I'm on a long scientific visit at a scientific institute, I'm accomodated at a student guesthouse that's on the institute's scientific network and am not allowed to use the Internet for anything other than scientific purposes. I'm also not allowed to transfer more than 420MB/day or thereabout. Their leaflet says they'd let me but they can't because their traffic is metered and they're paying by amount of data transferred. I'm not a furious downloader, especially when I know I'm on a limited network. I just want to relax, read Slashdot and stream a news channel at some few 100 kb/s. But I can't because the institute's traffic is metered.
P.S. Oh shit this post is not scientific enough I'll be punished! [hides]
P.S. Oh shit this post is not scientific enough I'll be punished! [hides]
Monday, September 27, 2010
chrome
Had to set up a little website and wanted to test it on my server which doesn't use port 80. Works great under Firefox, wanted to also test it in Chrome.
A few months ago a similar setup worked just fine, but it seems some c0der/suit/whatever got smart and now I get
The webpage at http://example.com:1234/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address. (Gee, really? It was there 30 seconds ago!)
More information on this error.
Below is the original error message
Error 312 (net::ERR_UNSAFE_PORT): Unknown error.
Hey, it's mah puter and I read whatever port I want, bitch!
Furthermore, it seems there's no easy way to disable this stupid behaviour.
Can I say "Fuck Chrome" on a Google-owned blogging platform? Ok, I won't say it.
LE: There actually is an easy way to enable a list of ports; my bad for stopping on "recompile from source" in the bug discussion. Thanks Lucian. Still stupid behaviour.
A few months ago a similar setup worked just fine, but it seems some c0der/suit/whatever got smart and now I get
The webpage at http://example.com:1234/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address. (Gee, really? It was there 30 seconds ago!)
More information on this error.
Below is the original error message
Error 312 (net::ERR_UNSAFE_PORT): Unknown error.
Hey, it's mah puter and I read whatever port I want, bitch!
Furthermore, it seems there's no easy way to disable this stupid behaviour.
Can I say "Fuck Chrome" on a Google-owned blogging platform? Ok, I won't say it.
LE: There actually is an easy way to enable a list of ports; my bad for stopping on "recompile from source" in the bug discussion. Thanks Lucian. Still stupid behaviour.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
logic
Do you know those 'logic' puzzles where you have to choose which item 'logically follows' in some sequence, or which item 'doesn't belong' in some group? You can do them for fun ('brain training') or they can be administered to you in certain situations such as a job interview. People would normally be employed based on their relevant skills, but it seems some 'progressive' management types think that they should be 'logical' too. That's an idiotic practice and should stop, because:
A. My logic can be different from the author's logic, and that doesn't make it any less correct:
In hindsight, it should have been obvious to me that 25*25 is 625 and that 30*30 is 900, but at the time it was obvious to me that answer A is the only number not divisible by 3. Fuck you, gbrainy!
B. The question text can be ambiguous:
'Frontiers between different sheets' means that where there's a line a sheet ends and another one begins (like with countries, you know, they don't overlap). In that case it's impossible to build that shit because there are non-square 'countries' in it. So it's clear that (a) the question is wrong and (b) the sheets must overlap.
Now there's a question of what the author meant: whether that's how the figure is seen from above or the lines are just paper edges (like sea borders or something where there's no other country there) and maybe the paper is semi-transparent or something. Of course, if that's what's seen from above and the paper is perfectly opaque, you need 5 sheets, but if those are just (possibly hidden) paper edges somewhere you only need 4, which is less than 5. You might say that I'm stoopid and of course paper is not even conceptually transparent. But then why can you see the brain in the background through the sheets? Fuck you, gbrainy!
C. The questions can simply be annoyingly stupid:
Yeah thanks for lecturing me on how P is 5 letters away from K which is 5 letters away from F which is 5 letters away from A! I knew there must have been something like that, but I didn't even bother counting*, because the answer was obvious from comparing the three squares: A-B-C, F-G-H, K-L-M, P-?-R, gee, what letter could that be? There was a similar question with some clocks where they put forward a similarly contorted explanation, while the minute hands on each column were all pointing to the same number. Fuck you, gbrainy.
---
* some of my friends know all the letter indices and ASCII codes so they only need to subtract. They can also read binary T-shirts.
A. My logic can be different from the author's logic, and that doesn't make it any less correct:
In hindsight, it should have been obvious to me that 25*25 is 625 and that 30*30 is 900, but at the time it was obvious to me that answer A is the only number not divisible by 3. Fuck you, gbrainy!
B. The question text can be ambiguous:
'Frontiers between different sheets' means that where there's a line a sheet ends and another one begins (like with countries, you know, they don't overlap). In that case it's impossible to build that shit because there are non-square 'countries' in it. So it's clear that (a) the question is wrong and (b) the sheets must overlap.
Now there's a question of what the author meant: whether that's how the figure is seen from above or the lines are just paper edges (like sea borders or something where there's no other country there) and maybe the paper is semi-transparent or something. Of course, if that's what's seen from above and the paper is perfectly opaque, you need 5 sheets, but if those are just (possibly hidden) paper edges somewhere you only need 4, which is less than 5. You might say that I'm stoopid and of course paper is not even conceptually transparent. But then why can you see the brain in the background through the sheets? Fuck you, gbrainy!
C. The questions can simply be annoyingly stupid:
Yeah thanks for lecturing me on how P is 5 letters away from K which is 5 letters away from F which is 5 letters away from A! I knew there must have been something like that, but I didn't even bother counting*, because the answer was obvious from comparing the three squares: A-B-C, F-G-H, K-L-M, P-?-R, gee, what letter could that be? There was a similar question with some clocks where they put forward a similarly contorted explanation, while the minute hands on each column were all pointing to the same number. Fuck you, gbrainy.
---
* some of my friends know all the letter indices and ASCII codes so they only need to subtract. They can also read binary T-shirts.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
hour
Last night they changed the time again, they stole one hour. 6 months later they're going to add it back again. But unlike the bank, where they pay me interest for the money I give them, the authority that implements daylight savings / time change doesn't. And I want my time back. I know I'll get it back in winter, but I want interest on that. I want 5 minutes officially subtracted from one work day by law. But I'd rather have daylight savings abolished altogether, and here's a few reasons why.
I don't know how it's like in other countries, but here, when they add an hour in autumn the trains actually stop for an hour at 3 am to align to the new time. Imagine that! In spring they supposedly run faster to catch up with the new time. Supposedly.
It's true that my computer's clock adjusts to the time change automatically, but many stand-alone clocks don't, and my mobile phone's clock doesn't. Well guess what, it's exactly those clocks that wake you up in the morning. A few years ago I actually arrived at work one hour late because of fucking daylight savings. As if in the 20-fucking-1st century when we have electricity and efficient lighting there were any relevance of "saving daylight" at 6 in the morning. But back to adjusting the clock. I will now adjust my mobile phone's time. I did it. It took 20 key presses and about half a minute. But even if I could live with this, if for example the state offered me 5 to 10 minutes interest on my borrowed hour, there's still the problem of when to adjust the clocks. Here they officially change it at something like 2 or 3 am, and that's when the computer does it, but most people are asleep at 2 am and need to wake up at something like 6 or 7, so there's the option of setting the alarm one hour earlier or adjusting the time in the evening before going to sleep. But what happens if the phone that implements the alarm clock actually does adjust itself at 3 am without the user knowing? You lose one hour of sleep or arrive at work one hour late. See, daylight savings creates a lot of unnecessary headaches and basically loses people money indirectly. Time is money you know. Its disadvantages outweigh it's advantages which are mostly historic. For goodness's sake Fuck Daylight Savings.
P.S. What if the state interprets my request for interest on time as me having to "pay" for the hour they give me in autumn and take back in spring? That would suck so much.
The other hour that happened recently was of course Earth Hour ("urth our! urth our!") which I explained previously is utter bullshit. People shut off the electric lighting for one hour and light candles and glowsticks instead. Candles emit pollutants into the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (which causes, OH MY GOD, global warming!!1), carbon monoxide, ash, et cetera. Candles are energetically inefficient (horribly inefficient), much less efficient than a lightbulb plus coal-fired power plant. It is much more environmentally responsible to use electric lighting than to use candles. It doesn't bring you closer to nature or all that shit when you use candles. Candles are bad for the environment. Use electric lighting, which if supplied by renewable sources, has nearly zero impact. Idiots. Also, a small diesel or compressed-air engine on a lightweight, aerodynamic chassis is more efficient and pollutes less than you riding a bike. You breathe out global-warming-causing carbon dioxide too you know, hippie.
I don't know how it's like in other countries, but here, when they add an hour in autumn the trains actually stop for an hour at 3 am to align to the new time. Imagine that! In spring they supposedly run faster to catch up with the new time. Supposedly.
It's true that my computer's clock adjusts to the time change automatically, but many stand-alone clocks don't, and my mobile phone's clock doesn't. Well guess what, it's exactly those clocks that wake you up in the morning. A few years ago I actually arrived at work one hour late because of fucking daylight savings. As if in the 20-fucking-1st century when we have electricity and efficient lighting there were any relevance of "saving daylight" at 6 in the morning. But back to adjusting the clock. I will now adjust my mobile phone's time. I did it. It took 20 key presses and about half a minute. But even if I could live with this, if for example the state offered me 5 to 10 minutes interest on my borrowed hour, there's still the problem of when to adjust the clocks. Here they officially change it at something like 2 or 3 am, and that's when the computer does it, but most people are asleep at 2 am and need to wake up at something like 6 or 7, so there's the option of setting the alarm one hour earlier or adjusting the time in the evening before going to sleep. But what happens if the phone that implements the alarm clock actually does adjust itself at 3 am without the user knowing? You lose one hour of sleep or arrive at work one hour late. See, daylight savings creates a lot of unnecessary headaches and basically loses people money indirectly. Time is money you know. Its disadvantages outweigh it's advantages which are mostly historic. For goodness's sake Fuck Daylight Savings.
P.S. What if the state interprets my request for interest on time as me having to "pay" for the hour they give me in autumn and take back in spring? That would suck so much.
The other hour that happened recently was of course Earth Hour ("urth our! urth our!") which I explained previously is utter bullshit. People shut off the electric lighting for one hour and light candles and glowsticks instead. Candles emit pollutants into the atmosphere such as carbon dioxide (which causes, OH MY GOD, global warming!!1), carbon monoxide, ash, et cetera. Candles are energetically inefficient (horribly inefficient), much less efficient than a lightbulb plus coal-fired power plant. It is much more environmentally responsible to use electric lighting than to use candles. It doesn't bring you closer to nature or all that shit when you use candles. Candles are bad for the environment. Use electric lighting, which if supplied by renewable sources, has nearly zero impact. Idiots. Also, a small diesel or compressed-air engine on a lightweight, aerodynamic chassis is more efficient and pollutes less than you riding a bike. You breathe out global-warming-causing carbon dioxide too you know, hippie.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
february
Whoever decided that February should have 28 days was an idiot (less so than the idiot who came up with daylight savings but an idiot nevertheless). Why should all the months have 30 or 31 days with the exception of February which has 28? That's inconsistent and thus stupid. Why not have more months with 30 days instead of 31 and make February have 30/31 days as well? Because someone was stupid, that's why.
Here:
There. Isn't my scheme much neater? Look how fine the months alternate. And on leap years you add one day at the end of the year, not at some arbitrary position. Much like they do with leap seconds on New Year now.
Here:
| scheme | j | f | m | a | m | j | j | a | s | o | n | d | total days |
| stupid | 31 | 28 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 365 |
| stupid leap | 31 | 29 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 366 |
| fine | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 30 | 365 |
| fine leap | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 30 | 31 | 366 |
There. Isn't my scheme much neater? Look how fine the months alternate. And on leap years you add one day at the end of the year, not at some arbitrary position. Much like they do with leap seconds on New Year now.
Monday, February 22, 2010
http
One morning I was webbrowsing:
WTF? No shame:
Anyway, here's the rest of the reply:
(some-html-tags-that-blogger-chokes-on)
LOL.
Later edit: oddly enough there actually is a www.some-server.com which obviously has nothing to do with this post, please substitute www.example.com in the text above :P
ret@ret-laptop:~$ telnet some-server.com 80...404 and so on.
Trying some.ip.address...
Connected to some-server.com
Escape character is '^]'.
GET /32452tr534tfgr4 HTTP/1.1
Host: some-host.com
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Date: Mon, 22 Feb 2010 12:07:12 GMT
Server: NOYB
Connection: close
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
WTF? No shame:
# Server masking is optionalHey, NOYB yourself, fucker! You know I'm OK with you bragging about how secure you are and everything, but what makes you think you can abuse protocol like that? It doesn't hurt to be polite, you know! Is it so hard to come up with something decent like "hidden"? So much for user interface. Kids these days...
#fake server banner - NOYB used - no one needs to know what we are using
SecServerSignature "NOYB"
Anyway, here's the rest of the reply:
(some-html-tags-that-blogger-chokes-on)
Apache/1.3.34 Server at www.some-host.com Port 80(some-other-html-tags)
LOL.
Later edit: oddly enough there actually is a www.some-server.com which obviously has nothing to do with this post, please substitute www.example.com in the text above :P
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
mutex
I got an email offer to attend a web seminar ("webinar" :-& ) by some company selling Real-Time Operating Systems. A RTOS is an operating system that, unlike usual PC operating systems, can guarantee that some task will be performed before some future moment, if properly used. The guys were charging $39 for the exquisite privilege of attending their online seminar about mutexes and semaphores. Not any seminar about mutexes and semaphores, but an introductory seminar on mutexes and semaphores. Mutexes and semaphores are used so that two programs don't work on the same data at the same time, in order to avoid corrupting said data. Here's an introduction to mutexes and semaphores. Enjoy.
P.S. Some time ago a colleague was asked by a professor what "methods" does a semaphore have ("P" and "V"). "And which one of them increments the semaphore?" Dude, how the fuck should I know, I don't speak Dutch and I don't care for Verhogen! Can't you just call them increment and decrement or up and down like normal people?
P.S. Some time ago a colleague was asked by a professor what "methods" does a semaphore have ("P" and "V"). "And which one of them increments the semaphore?" Dude, how the fuck should I know, I don't speak Dutch and I don't care for Verhogen! Can't you just call them increment and decrement or up and down like normal people?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
ads
I was browsing the Web for Information. There it was, the front page. An annoyingly blinking red-on-green banner was announcing that I am the 999999th visitor and it was congratulating me. I would've smiled if it weren't blinking red-green/green-red. Of course I couldn't have been the 1e6-1th visitor because (a) that's too improbable and (b) that site claims to have one million visitors, yeah right! So I scroll down, trying to ignore the ad, and I see this other banner, a vertical one this time. This one is blinking red/blue. It's saying that I'm the 10000th visitor, but this time, "this is no joke!". This time I laugh. At least this number was plausible, visitor-count-wise. Of course it would've been much cooler to be the 999999th visitor because (a) the number is almost 100 times bigger and (b) it's not one million, it's one million minus one (that's being creative!). But sadly, the lesser number was more probable, and besides, that wasn't a joke. Deciding that I had to settle for ten thousand, I scroll down and laugh again when another red-green/green-red banner (this time neither horizontal nor vertical, but squareish) informs me that I'm the 999999th visitor after all! OK, now I'm confused.
I fire up a new browser but this time under the guest user so that my files would stand a lesser chance of being trashed by malware. Wow, now I'm suddenly the 12796869939th visitor! That site must have a lot of traffic, given that I was at most the 999999th about 10 minutes ago. The "this is no joke" banner disagrees by a much smaller percentage this time, indicating 12769870797. The square one says 12796871217, but there's a twist: I'm the 12796bla-blath visitor to see "this lucky banner", so maybe there are other sites showing the same banner and there goes my "not enough visitors visiting this crap" argument down the toilet. The small difference could even be explained by the different times my browser queried the ad server for the three banners while loading the crap. [must be a very big server.] I hit Refresh and lo and behold, I'm either the 999999th or the 10000th visitor again. This clearly can't be, because I already visited the site before as both the 999999th and the 10000th, under a different identity.
So I hold my breath and click the first banner.
It asks for my name, address, and e-mail address. There you go. Move along, nothing to see here, and quit clicking stupid adverts and quit encouraging spammers by opening their e-mails and clicking on their links and buying their cockpills, because if you encourage spammers and spammers send me spam, then you're indirectly to blame. The fuck!
I fire up a new browser but this time under the guest user so that my files would stand a lesser chance of being trashed by malware. Wow, now I'm suddenly the 12796869939th visitor! That site must have a lot of traffic, given that I was at most the 999999th about 10 minutes ago. The "this is no joke" banner disagrees by a much smaller percentage this time, indicating 12769870797. The square one says 12796871217, but there's a twist: I'm the 12796bla-blath visitor to see "this lucky banner", so maybe there are other sites showing the same banner and there goes my "not enough visitors visiting this crap" argument down the toilet. The small difference could even be explained by the different times my browser queried the ad server for the three banners while loading the crap. [must be a very big server.] I hit Refresh and lo and behold, I'm either the 999999th or the 10000th visitor again. This clearly can't be, because I already visited the site before as both the 999999th and the 10000th, under a different identity.
So I hold my breath and click the first banner.
It asks for my name, address, and e-mail address. There you go. Move along, nothing to see here, and quit clicking stupid adverts and quit encouraging spammers by opening their e-mails and clicking on their links and buying their cockpills, because if you encourage spammers and spammers send me spam, then you're indirectly to blame. The fuck!
Monday, May 18, 2009
brideparade
I came home this morning looking forward to a good sleep, only to see the news: there's been a "Brides' Parade" in Bucharest! Now I can't really understand how I missed that, given that I crossed about half the city... maybe it was because we were busy spending meaningful time together instead of dressing up and parading... maybe it was because I was too drunk... I don't know. The Brides' Parade featured "past, present and future brides" (basically any woman would qualify) in wedding dresses parading on some street, possibly in a 1900s car. I hate it when "historical cars" run on the road, they're ugly, obsolete and environmentally unfriendly (mwahahaha). But I digress. The fun part was watching a relatively young girl in a wedding dress being interviewed by some reporter: "So, are you married?" "No, no :)" "Are you getting married today?" "No, no! :) No guy will take me! :) Heeeey! Guuuys! Take me! Take me!!!! I'm [fucking] yours!!!!! Take me!!" Yeah. Yeah. Ok. Great for you.
Parade. Feel fine. Waste time. Feel good. Exhibit yourselves. Feel nice. Display your young, succulent flesh on the counter. Feel great. Spend. Feel wonderful. Burn, age, wither away,... death of the soul, indoctrinated in false grace. Be happy.
One six six! The number of the bitch!
One four four! The number of the whore!
Parade. Feel fine. Waste time. Feel good. Exhibit yourselves. Feel nice. Display your young, succulent flesh on the counter. Feel great. Spend. Feel wonderful. Burn, age, wither away,... death of the soul, indoctrinated in false grace. Be happy.
One six six! The number of the bitch!
One four four! The number of the whore!
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
please
I see more and more people embedding phrases such as "Please consider the environment before printing this email." near the end of their e-mails. I can only agree: please consider the environment before printing anything. For instance: energy/cut trees/oil/whatever needed for printing the document versus energy spent by you turning on your laptop to read the document while traveling (by train, of course). Stuff spent for printing and reading by daylight (or by incandescent light (inefficient) or econo-bulb (mercury-containing)) versus reading on LCD (or CRT) monitor, in darkness or in lit room. Think before you (don't) print. If I could be bothered to dig up the data, I'm sure I could find at least 8 cases in which it would be more "environmentally responsible" to actually print the fucking paper. I saw a documentary about loggers recently. Their company administers a huge area of forests, cutting down old trees and planting new ones instead, continuously. They claimed that younger trees absorb more CO_2 than old trees, therefore they're actually helping the environment. So there, when you're feeling lonely and depressed and nobody likes you because you're an environazi drone, go print a nice flower or something.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
vi
vi in an ancient text editor present on Unix-like operating systems, known for its two modes: a normal mode where letters and numbers mean commands such as move one word to the left, delete 3 lines et cetera, and an insert mode where chars are inserted into the text. Normal chars can also be deleted with backspace, but somehow \n (newline) can't. If you accidentally press q in the middle of the line, you can press Backspace and undo that. If you accidentally press Enter in the middle of the line, or for some reason you want to join two lines, you hit Esc to exit insert mode, then Shift-j to Join the lines, then i to enter insert mode again. That's wonderful ain't it? Now, on large computers people can use whatever editor they want if they hate vi. But on small embedded systems such as home routers and set-top boxes, vi seems to be preferred (due to its inclusion in the BusyBox userland, which is probably due to it being part of the UNIX standard), and even though there are ways to install other software, it takes time which I may not want to waste. Therefore - fuck vi, vi sucks.
Monday, December 29, 2008
energy, of the black kind
As noted before on this non-blog, many self-titled environmentalists have no idea what they're talking about. For instance, this blog came up with the idea that a "black Google" would save 750 MWh/year (that's about 86 kW) because black pixels supposedly take less power to display than white pixels. The guy apparently failed to note that only obsolete CRT monitors do that, initially stating a 3000 MWh/year figure (see it in the URL, he also admits it). Apparently, when he found out that LCDs actually use more energy to display black than white (this comment on his blog agrees) he changed the figure to 750, a commendable action. Even so, his calculation is highly approximative at best. So it's easy to campaign for stuff without having the slightest idea what's going on. As CRT displays are being slowly but surely replaced with LCDs, his black background idea is actually going to result in increased energy dissipation. It's true that OLED displays might eventually favor his idea, but the point is he did no serious studies before launching an idea that thousands of sheeple intercepted and praised, leading to sites such as this, which was brought to my attention today. Its about page (where I learned about the naive but honest guy's blog) is full of smug about how much it protects the environment, while its front page mentions how much energy it saved. I guess if we take the approx. 1MWh stated and multiply it by 0.6/15 (measured watts increase in LCD consumption versus stated CRT watts decrease) we get about 40 kWh of wasted energy. At least it's not very much.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
energy
I once heard that the standby/clock display on a microwave oven uses more energy than the oven uses to cook food. I find that unlikely, so let's do a quick calculation. The microcontroller used to drive the clock or whatever's on display shouldn't draw more than a few mA, 10 at most, or else it's a piece of shit. Most LEDs (I'll assume it was an LED display, because segment LCDs consume next to nothing) are rated for 20 mA average current, though in many cases they're used with less. High-efficiency LEDs can glow sufficiently brightly with as little as 2 mA. Let's assume 20mA per LED (worst case scenario), and a display made up of 4 standard 7-segment digits and 2 dots. Now, not all LEDs are simultaneously lit, because the clock doesn't show 88:88. To find out how many LEDs are lit on average, I built the following table:
Note, totally off-topic, that 4, 5 and 6 are the only digits whose 7-segment representation has the same number of segments as the digit value.
Given a 24-hour clock (the worst case scenario), the sum for all 24 hours is: 6*10 for the leading zero plus 49 for the following early hours, plus 2*10 for the leading one plus 49 for the following mid hours, plus 5*4 for the leading 2 plus 18 for the following late hours. That's 216, so diving by 24 we get 9 LEDs lit on average to display the hours.
The minutes are just as easy to calculate: There's an average of 27/6+49/10 (for the first, second digits), that is 9.4 LEDs on average. The two points average 1 if they blink, 2 if they don't (worst case, which is what we choose).
In total there are 20.4 LEDs lit, that's an average current of 410mA, holy shit that's fucking much. In reality the current is significantly lower, but this is a worst-case calculation. So the display uses at most 420mA, microcontroller included. Suppose it's supplied with 5V, that's 2.1 watts. Assuming a supply efficiency of around 50%, the standby-mode clock eats about 4W averaged over a whole day, neglecting the small intervals the oven is used for cooking.
Now for the cooking. My oven has settings for 800W, 640W and 320W or something like this. I don't know if that's the useful power or the total power drawn. For the worst-case we're discussing I'll assume it's the total power. I always use it on 800W for about 1-2 minutes. So let's say the oven is used for 10 minutes a day (an average family might use it for 20-30 minutes a day). The display eats up 4W*24(hours)*60min=5760 watt-minutes. The cooking eats up 800W*10min=8000 watt-minutes, which is more. There, the display does NOT consume more energy than the oven-proper. If I only used the oven for 5 minutes a day, and the display was a really lousy one like the one described above then yes, the display might have consumed about as much energy as the cooking. Note, my oven displays a singe 0 when not in use, so that uses more than 3 times less energy. It still eats up quite a lot of energy, which sucks, but still significantly less than the oven-proper, so there goes the propaganda down the drain.
Digit Number of Segments
0 6
1 2
2 5
3 5
Partial Total 18
4 4
5 5
Partial Total 27
6 6
7 3
8 7
9 6
Total 49
Note, totally off-topic, that 4, 5 and 6 are the only digits whose 7-segment representation has the same number of segments as the digit value.
Given a 24-hour clock (the worst case scenario), the sum for all 24 hours is: 6*10 for the leading zero plus 49 for the following early hours, plus 2*10 for the leading one plus 49 for the following mid hours, plus 5*4 for the leading 2 plus 18 for the following late hours. That's 216, so diving by 24 we get 9 LEDs lit on average to display the hours.
The minutes are just as easy to calculate: There's an average of 27/6+49/10 (for the first, second digits), that is 9.4 LEDs on average. The two points average 1 if they blink, 2 if they don't (worst case, which is what we choose).
In total there are 20.4 LEDs lit, that's an average current of 410mA, holy shit that's fucking much. In reality the current is significantly lower, but this is a worst-case calculation. So the display uses at most 420mA, microcontroller included. Suppose it's supplied with 5V, that's 2.1 watts. Assuming a supply efficiency of around 50%, the standby-mode clock eats about 4W averaged over a whole day, neglecting the small intervals the oven is used for cooking.
Now for the cooking. My oven has settings for 800W, 640W and 320W or something like this. I don't know if that's the useful power or the total power drawn. For the worst-case we're discussing I'll assume it's the total power. I always use it on 800W for about 1-2 minutes. So let's say the oven is used for 10 minutes a day (an average family might use it for 20-30 minutes a day). The display eats up 4W*24(hours)*60min=5760 watt-minutes. The cooking eats up 800W*10min=8000 watt-minutes, which is more. There, the display does NOT consume more energy than the oven-proper. If I only used the oven for 5 minutes a day, and the display was a really lousy one like the one described above then yes, the display might have consumed about as much energy as the cooking. Note, my oven displays a singe 0 when not in use, so that uses more than 3 times less energy. It still eats up quite a lot of energy, which sucks, but still significantly less than the oven-proper, so there goes the propaganda down the drain.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
netbooks
Laptops are now called notebooks, because they get too hot to hold in one's lap. From the article: "A study by State University of New York researchers found that heat generated from laptops can raise the temperature of the scrotum, potentially putting sperm count at risk." Small laptops are now called netbooks (Firefox 3 spellchecker underlines the word red) because well, I don't know why. Maybe it's because they have a network interface, as opposed to normal laptops which somehow don't. There is some truth to that: my laptop's internal wireless card failed a few months after purchase. Fuck warranty, I wouldn't have been able to use my computer for a month or so while they repaired it. I tapped the card firmly and it started working again, it worked for another week and then it finally kicked the bucket. Given the low price of PCMCIA or USB wireless cards, fuck it. Maybe I'll reflow the solder some time (fuck BGAs and fuck RoHS (I wonder what they use to replace the Pb in CRT glass - you know, the Pb that shields you from the X-rays generated in the CRT)).
Anyway, thank Microsoft for indirectly limiting netbook performance.
Anyway, thank Microsoft for indirectly limiting netbook performance.
Friday, October 31, 2008
ev0lut1on
We had a course in the last year of faculty called "Evolved Interfaces".
It talked about cute stuff like how a menu should ideally hold no more than 7 items, a notion which I later heard, during another course, in the form of "humans have a 3-bit memory", to which I quickly crafted a reply I (very wisely) never uttered.
Besides the cute stuff, the main stuff was about Web thingies. Sitez, Blags, F0rumz, Chats and the likes. We actually had to make a team project which consisted of a website using modern xml-y and javascripty and CMSy stuff and an accompanying blog. The site had hit counters and points (which made up a percentage of the course's final grade) were awarded for hits and Google PageRank. This is why each year around this time, people start putting up weird Messenger statuses linking to their Evolved Interfaces projects. People click the links because they sound intriguing and students get hits. This pollutes Messenger contact lists.
Evolved Interfaces is the only course I've had which mentions "Web 2.0" as a valid concept. I find that revolting.
Semi-off-topic: stupid TV commercial for Orange: "...I'm Reeves, the first too point ooh poet and I'm inspired..." bla bla. No, you're just an idiot who "uploads downtown and downloads uptown" and thinks that's so fucking creative and poetic.
Back on topic, I'm not saying that webby stuff isn't evolved interfaces, but until I can tell my light bulb "dim please" or "turn off please", and my air conditioner "computer, 20 degrees please", I'm not buying it. I mean we're in the 21st fucking century and I still can't buy an affordable, widely-available product that takes voice commands and performs useful stuff such as opening my windows (the real ones not the broken ones), flushing my toilet or heating up my dinner. Or at least changing the TV channel. And intelligently replying to queries such as "computer, tell me how that vote in the Parliament on the teachers' salary raise went". That's what I'd call an evolved interface.
It talked about cute stuff like how a menu should ideally hold no more than 7 items, a notion which I later heard, during another course, in the form of "humans have a 3-bit memory", to which I quickly crafted a reply I (very wisely) never uttered.
Besides the cute stuff, the main stuff was about Web thingies. Sitez, Blags, F0rumz, Chats and the likes. We actually had to make a team project which consisted of a website using modern xml-y and javascripty and CMSy stuff and an accompanying blog. The site had hit counters and points (which made up a percentage of the course's final grade) were awarded for hits and Google PageRank. This is why each year around this time, people start putting up weird Messenger statuses linking to their Evolved Interfaces projects. People click the links because they sound intriguing and students get hits. This pollutes Messenger contact lists.
Evolved Interfaces is the only course I've had which mentions "Web 2.0" as a valid concept. I find that revolting.
Semi-off-topic: stupid TV commercial for Orange: "...I'm Reeves, the first too point ooh poet and I'm inspired..." bla bla. No, you're just an idiot who "uploads downtown and downloads uptown" and thinks that's so fucking creative and poetic.
Back on topic, I'm not saying that webby stuff isn't evolved interfaces, but until I can tell my light bulb "dim please" or "turn off please", and my air conditioner "computer, 20 degrees please", I'm not buying it. I mean we're in the 21st fucking century and I still can't buy an affordable, widely-available product that takes voice commands and performs useful stuff such as opening my windows (the real ones not the broken ones), flushing my toilet or heating up my dinner. Or at least changing the TV channel. And intelligently replying to queries such as "computer, tell me how that vote in the Parliament on the teachers' salary raise went". That's what I'd call an evolved interface.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
dos
In 2008, this guy is still including dos.h.
Vista's command prompt still uses DOS commands.
In Romania, certain high-school programming contests are still happening in Borland C (on DOS), and many high-school students are still learning programming in Borland Pascal (on DOS).
A few weeks ago a 1990s program didn't work in dosemu with a USB-to-RS-232 converter. Was it failing because of the high clock speed, like the Pascal library? Was it written like the guy's code? Was it failing because the serial converter wasn't emulated accurately enough? I don't know.
Anyway, I thank Microsoft for removing the serial ports from desktop PCs and notebooks (they're not called laptops anymore, because some dissipate too much heat to allow comfortable use in one's lap).
Apart from the once ubiquitous but now outdated dial-up modems and serial mice, serial ports are actually useful for a huge lot of devices and tasks, such as:
Vista's command prompt still uses DOS commands.
In Romania, certain high-school programming contests are still happening in Borland C (on DOS), and many high-school students are still learning programming in Borland Pascal (on DOS).
A few weeks ago a 1990s program didn't work in dosemu with a USB-to-RS-232 converter. Was it failing because of the high clock speed, like the Pascal library? Was it written like the guy's code? Was it failing because the serial converter wasn't emulated accurately enough? I don't know.
Anyway, I thank Microsoft for removing the serial ports from desktop PCs and notebooks (they're not called laptops anymore, because some dissipate too much heat to allow comfortable use in one's lap).
Apart from the once ubiquitous but now outdated dial-up modems and serial mice, serial ports are actually useful for a huge lot of devices and tasks, such as:
- dial-up modems. Over mobile GPRS or satellite.
- serial mice. Why occupy a hi-speed USB port with a low-speed mouse? (if you happen to want 2 or 3 mice on your system)
- serial barcode scanners
- small serial printers (frequently used for printing receipts)
- uninterruptible power supplies
- networking (wireless modules for interfacing low-power sensor networks, for instance. The networks run IPv6, btw.)
- GPS receivers
- mobile phones and PDAs (some mobile phone "USB data cables" are actually USB-serial converters)
- a huge variety of industrial and laboratory instruments (meters, process controllers etcetera)
- infrared communication (with mobile phones, PDAs, instruments etc)
- serial console for configuring and debugging routers and other embedded systems and screenless devices. Frequently used by network administrators.
- microcontroller programming, homebrew hardware, firmware upgrade for various devices
- small auxiliary text-mode LCD screens to display what song you're playing or what mail you've got or whatever
- infrared remote control receivers (for controlling your computer from the comfort of your bed/armchair/whatever)
- low cost, easy to build laser links between buildings (with enough speed - 92kb/s - to stream medium-quality audio, transfer documents or work in a remote shell)
- etcetera.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
puţa
It's now Google's turn to show me questionable advertising. True, this is not spam per-se, but it's close:
Translation:
Penis enlargement 6 cm - Total satisfaction or your money back. 100% Guaranteed, test it for free!
I find this situation truly alarming, as I usually receive useful advertisements in the WebClips, and I certainly believe Google to be a reputable company that adheres to higher standards.
Translation:Penis enlargement 6 cm - Total satisfaction or your money back. 100% Guaranteed, test it for free!
I find this situation truly alarming, as I usually receive useful advertisements in the WebClips, and I certainly believe Google to be a reputable company that adheres to higher standards.
Saturday, July 26, 2008
idiocy
1. I stumbled upon some show on some channel where they were showing some stuff and then blurring some other stuff "for security reasons" or something like that. Good thing I don't remember. If the stuff they were blurring out was in fact real and not some "reconstruction", they'd have made a terrible mistake. Blurring doesn't "delete" any information, it just "scrambles" it. Furthermore, it's a poor scramble. Blurring does what's called a convolution, which is basically adding pixels to their neighbors. They can be easily subtracted - the frame can be deconvolved, revealing the original image. It's being used to enhance pictures that come out defocused or otherwise distorted (by analog convolution versus the digital blurring you do in the GIMP). So I hope those sequences were bogus.
2. News are getting dumber by the day. Besides the presenter obsesivelly calling some kids who pretended to sell stuff on some websites, without actually sending the items, hackers, which is insulting to all hackers on many levels, some other dude was reporting on the way cool "thousands of decibels" at some concert the actual TV station was organizing. Yeah, i'd have liked having a few thousand dB SPL there... any increase in news quality is welcome; though anything above a mere 200 dB isn't physically sound anymore, it's a blast shockwave, a concept similar to the one discussed near the end of the previous (relevant) post.
2000 dB SPL (the smallest that could count as "thousands") equals about 2*10^95 pascals (notably, almost one googol, or "ten duotrigintillion":), of them). Normal air pressure is about 10^5 Pa, or 2{90 zeros} times less.
Having failed to find what the pressure is inside a neutron star, the densest object known, let's calculate a very rough estimate. The average density of such an object is thought to be about 10^17 kg/m^3, although it varies from the surface to the center in a way I don't know, so this limits the accuracy of my calculation. Anyway, the pressure dp contributed by a layer of thickness dx at distance x from the center is dp(x) = rho(x)g(x)dx. The gravitational acceleration g(x) = Gm(x)/x^2, where m(x) is the mass contained in the sphere of radius x. Assuming a constant rho(x) for simplicity and lazyness to search for data, dp(x) = G*rho^2*(4/3)pi*x*dx. Integrating over x from 0 to R we get the pressure in the center of a homogenous sphere of density rho and radius R: p = 2/3 pi G rho^2 R^2. In terms of its mass, that would be p = 3/8pi G M^2/R^4 (the smaller, the more crushing). Doing the numbers, I get around 1.4*10^32 Pa, which is of course much, much, much less than 2*10^95; any other more accurate model would still give a result that's much, much, much less than 2*10^95. So on second thought, I wouldn't like having "thousands of decibels" anywhere, if that were possible.
2. News are getting dumber by the day. Besides the presenter obsesivelly calling some kids who pretended to sell stuff on some websites, without actually sending the items, hackers, which is insulting to all hackers on many levels, some other dude was reporting on the way cool "thousands of decibels" at some concert the actual TV station was organizing. Yeah, i'd have liked having a few thousand dB SPL there... any increase in news quality is welcome; though anything above a mere 200 dB isn't physically sound anymore, it's a blast shockwave, a concept similar to the one discussed near the end of the previous (relevant) post.
2000 dB SPL (the smallest that could count as "thousands") equals about 2*10^95 pascals (notably, almost one googol, or "ten duotrigintillion":), of them). Normal air pressure is about 10^5 Pa, or 2{90 zeros} times less.
Having failed to find what the pressure is inside a neutron star, the densest object known, let's calculate a very rough estimate. The average density of such an object is thought to be about 10^17 kg/m^3, although it varies from the surface to the center in a way I don't know, so this limits the accuracy of my calculation. Anyway, the pressure dp contributed by a layer of thickness dx at distance x from the center is dp(x) = rho(x)g(x)dx. The gravitational acceleration g(x) = Gm(x)/x^2, where m(x) is the mass contained in the sphere of radius x. Assuming a constant rho(x) for simplicity and lazyness to search for data, dp(x) = G*rho^2*(4/3)pi*x*dx. Integrating over x from 0 to R we get the pressure in the center of a homogenous sphere of density rho and radius R: p = 2/3 pi G rho^2 R^2. In terms of its mass, that would be p = 3/8pi G M^2/R^4 (the smaller, the more crushing). Doing the numbers, I get around 1.4*10^32 Pa, which is of course much, much, much less than 2*10^95; any other more accurate model would still give a result that's much, much, much less than 2*10^95. So on second thought, I wouldn't like having "thousands of decibels" anywhere, if that were possible.
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