The Unique Blockhead – Or Why Your Unique Self Just Ain’t Enough To Succeed
Inspired by What “Be Yourself” Really Means, a cool contemplation about an advice that is usually both, thoughtlessly given and taken.
Automatic Software Updates To Pain
Not long ago, I updated my antivirus software to a new version. I do that regularly, as it is so easy to keep track with new updates: The software does that for me! Every time a newer version of it was released, the software asked me if I wanted to update to that new version. (I’m not talking about updates to the virus database, which are independent of this.)
It was all cool and easy until the other day. Read more >>
Thousands of Dollars a Month Posting Links on Google from Home?
Recently, I’m increasingly getting spam comments which refer to (yet another) “easy money from home” program. Interestingly, this time the name “Google” is involved. So I just thought I might jot down a bit of rant about it, but this turned out to be an analysis of the “easy money from home” scam pattern. I hope it’s informative, or at least entertaining. And you are welcome to join in.
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What Is Open Source Support Worth To You?
The notion of “free” in FOSS – Free and Open Source Software – is commonly explained a “Free as in free speech, not as in free beer”. In practice, open source software is often provided literally for free – as I do with my plugins – and this is often referred to as “It’s free as in ‘free speech’, and as in ‘free beer’”. Read more >>
Professional vs Amateur UI Design
The other day I started a System Recovery1 on my Vista. Surprisingly (or actually not so surprisingly), I’ve been prompted with the following initial message (translation from German, underlining mine):
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- In case you don’t know, since Windows XP the operating system creates recovery points before every installation. If something goes wrong during the installation or an application, so you can’t uninstall it the usual way (or you are unsure if uninstallation really removed everything), you can roll-back relevant OS state (ex. registry) to a saved recovery point. It’s a sort of undo at system level. [↩]
The Conficker Syndrome, Salvationware, And The Real Matrix
Remember in “The Matrix”
What is the Matrix? Control.
Now, we might not live inside a matrix (and even if we did, we wouldn’t know it, so it wouldn’t make a difference), but much of the ado we are facing, especially in the mass media, is just about that: Control.
Mindfulness And Boredom
Some time ago, I discovered yet another article praising the “single-tasking” mode of the human brain. Once more, an artificial parallel to programming is drawn, and the inherent losses of context switching in multithreaded software.
As if the human brain was anywhere close in function to a computer!
Usually, I’d just smile and move on to more funded writing, but this time I decided I’d make a statement or two on the topic.
