Accumulation of Win

Shocking – what people are capable of doing to others in the name of their religious believes. They even don’t stop themselves killing and destroying people’s lives based on a mere theory, which often has not even been built up on their own thought process. I always hated people that do not have the mental capability to reflect, criticize and judge themselves (religious or not). More amazingly, those are usually the ones that at the same time are the loudest when it comes to criticizing and judging others. What if god was never on your side?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAzb3KzaigY

Since a while I was kind of missing something like a wall or guestbook on my blog. Why? So you can leave comments that are not related to a particular post and (most importantly) not rely on Facebook and the like for staying in touch. Even though i am still registered at Facebook, Google+, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Delicious, Twitter, Deviantart and i don’t even know where else, I was getting a bit annoyed. It sort of feels like a couple of years ago with all the Instant Messengers out there, remember that? Everyone had their favorite and to stay really in the loop with all your important contacts, you had to maintain a bunch of separate buddylists on every one of them – at least until the rise of Jabber, Trillian, Pidgin, Adium…

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“Man…. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” — Dalai Lama Continue reading

picture via http://a.beining.com

I only work on a MacBook Pro once in a while, and every time i do i am wondering why it feels so edgy and not-smooth-at-all… I always thought it was the extremely low resolution those things offer, but now i know what makes a huge difference: its the ridiculous exponential mouse acceleration! Luckily i found a System Pane that you can install to set it to a ‘right’ feel:

http://triq.net/articles/mouse-acceleration-download

Since Leopard, emptying the trash was taking HOURS to complete because of the system’s default to actually overwrite all bits of a deleted file. Even though this might be secure to a certain degree, it is still BS for everyday use, because first of all not all data is that sensitive, second it drains battery and third it decreases your harddrive’s life expectancy and most importantly: it just takes too long. I finally found the option to turn this thing off:

1. Go to Finder preferences
2. Go to Advanced
3. Untick “Empty Trash securely”

I know its not a big thing,but… before you apple fanboys are sending me your facepalms: I am not a regular user (just using a macbook pro on the road) and things like this can really drive me crazy and i do not know intuitively where to look for them on mac. So i was very happy to find this little Sanity Saver. Still wondering why i can’t just select between “Empty Trash” and “Empty Trash Securely” in the moment he is anyway popping up a confirmation dialog…

Most websites today are full of ads, links, pictures and stuff that distract you from their actual content you would like to read. That’s why I try to keep this blog as clean and minimalistic as possible. And that’s why there is a browser plugin called “Readability”.

http://vimeo.com/3445774

Check out: lab.arc90.com/​experiments/​readability

Seriously. W.T.F.! Why are Apple Fanboys™ so afraid of open systems? Blogs and tweets are full of hate against open systems now. Did i miss on something that changed lately? Especially with the rise of Android (which just surpassed sales of the iPhone™ this year in Switzerland) the iPhone™ users seem to start to panic. Stop that! Why panic?! Just choose which phone works best for you! Is using the best phone on the market suddenly a sacrilege? Reminds me pretty much of some more radical religions… Why do you think people start switching to something like Android?  The iPhone™ is just perfect, right? No, it is not! And before you can even type a comment: no, the Android is not perfect either!

So what is it then? It’s not the slicker user interface! Not that the UI is that bad on Android, but to be honest the apps on iPhone™ just are a bit more sexy. No, I believe it is the fact that users realize that open stuff does give you some freedom and responsibilities – both of which getting taken away from people more and more in all aspects of life. Here is a list of things i believe are the most important reasons users start switching from iPhone™ Religion to Freedom, I mean… Android now:

1. A lot of apps which are available on both phones are either cheaper or even free on Android
2. You (as the user) are not forced to give your identity to anyone on Android
3. You can choose the source of your apps on Android, on iPhone™ there is only the App Store™, which is heavily observed and controlled by Apple™
4. You can choose the hardware that you like the most (for example do you prefer softkeys or keyboard, you want more battery life or 20cm HD display, you like to fold the phone somehow to cover the display? You want it to come slim or in cubes? Round or edgy? European or Asian?)

Please follow a clockwise path through the Temple™ while gently touching each of the relics on the tables in order to receive your personal blessing from Our Guru™.

Just recently the Apple Fanboys™ among my friends started complaining about the huge number of phones available with Android. I must admit that a lot of things to choose from might be overwhelming especially if you are not very informed in that particular area of expertise, but on the other hand it’s also not that difficult to browse some forums, go to a store and listen to the experts there and then just choose (!) a phone. In fact, you can choose depending on your taste or experience with other phones before – and it is not dictated to you what you should like from now on. By this process, some phones get more popular than others and those are the ones that evolve. Good concepts are taken over to the next generation of other phones as well, the rest dies out (i must admit, maybe too slowly but they die out).

It’s called diversity and it’s a good thing! Evolution has been succesfully doing that for millions of years! Adapting to requirements (in this case yours, the user) and getting better in each iteration.

But actually i am not in the mood to start a discussion on intelligent design (Steve Jobs™) vs evolution (Linux) – No question about it: I definitely want to take part in evolution (not get dictated a design) and nothing is going to change that right now. Stop complaining, switch phones or don’t, but go back to your Apple Store Temples™ and pray that after the evolution your species is not becoming the target of iXtinction™…

“Our problem is our inability to understand the exponential function” – Dr. Albert Bartlett of the University of Colorado at Boulder gave a lecture many years ago (as you can see by the crappy VHS quality of the video) about the problem we humans face with over-population and our growing demand of resources, which are limited and just can not keep up with economic growths. Basically we are doomed to create problems over time – and he explains this with very simple arithmetics. Dont get fooled by the guy’s appearance or the way he talks – the topic is most interesting and he presents it in a way everybody should be able to understand… at least I could not stop watching the whole lecture. so what are we going to do about it?

Make sure to watch all 8 parts on youtube.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=&p=6A1FD147A45EF50D&index=0&playnext=1

Do you also have the feeling that “News are not News anymore, they are advertising” [Mirror’s Edge] or that they all look the same? The following clip shows in an entertaining manner the repetitive way how news clips are put together in nowadays tv channels.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zYYCCsSjkw