If slashdot hasn't fixed the unicode bug, there's a version of the article on my personal page. It will be included in "Random Scribblings", out June 19

        Ten years ago I wrote a humorous article titled âoeUseful Dead Technologiesâ about technologies that are no longer used that I sorely miss, like furnaces that still worked when the power went out, or things made of durable steel instead of todayâ(TM)s fragile and short-lived plastics.
        A couple of the things on the list have improved since then. Shoelaces, for instance. Ten years ago I wrote:
        âoeShoelaces have been designed for hundreds of years to keep your shoes on your feet. No longer. Today's shoelaces are designed with one purpose in mind â" to annoy you.
        âoeWhat are they making shoelaces out of now? Nylon! Good old frictionless nylon âbecause of its strengthâ(TM). One wonders if today's engineers even need a college degree, as it seems that some things, like today's shoelaces, were designed by âoespecial edâ students.
        âoeBecause now, not only are they made of a friction-free material, they're round rather than flat, further eroding their ability to stay tied.â
        Since then, theyâ(TM)ve been making them of both cotton and nylon woven together, with all the friction of cotton and the strength of nylon.
        And theyâ(TM)re flat again.
        Another item was knobs on car radios. At the beginning of the century they had buttons for tuning and volume, so you couldnâ(TM)t turn it up or down without taking your eyes off the road. It was dangerous. Thankfully, theyâ(TM)ve gone back to knobs, even though theyâ(TM)re digital rather than potentiometers.
        The radio in my car now really annoys me, because the morons who designed it stupidly put the volume knob right above the tuning knob rather than the time tested volume on the left side of the radio and tuning on the right. Often when I try to adjust the volume, Iâ(TM)ll grab the wrong knob.
        I also miss the way presets worked back in the analog age. They were simple to operate: to set a preset to a station, you tuned the radio to that station, pulled out on the button, and pushed it back in. These days you simply cannot tune a station to a preset while youâ(TM)re driving, at least unless youâ(TM)re a suicidal maniac. Whatâ(TM)s worse, every radio has a different way of tuning a preset button, and many are impossible to figure out without an ownerâ(TM)s manual.
        The worst thing about that radio is I canâ(TM)t change the time on the clock. The car came with a manual, but they put three different models of radio in those cars, and the manual lists all of them. But each of the three says to push a button that simply isnâ(TM)t on the radio!
        And I just discovered by watching a commercial where they were trying to sell new cars â" the morons took the knobs away again, and now itâ(TM)s even worse than the buttons. Now they have touch screens. Thereâ(TM)s no way possible to change the station or volume without taking your eyes off the road!
        Iâ(TM)m all for hiring the handicapped, but I wish they wouldnâ(TM)t hire idiots to be engineers. Touch screens for automobile controls are brain-dead stupid.
        The following items havenâ(TM)t all become extinct in the last decade, I simply didnâ(TM)t think of them when I wrote it. Here are some more.

Thermostats that donâ(TM)t need batteries
        In the twentieth century, thermostats were simple yet clever devices: a mercury switch on the end of two dissimilar metals. The metal would bend one way or the other depending on temperature. When the metal reached a certain shape, the mercury would roll down the inside of the switch and close the circuit.
        Shortly before the turn of the century they came out with programmable thermostats, and they were indeed superior despite the one disadvantage of needing a battery; perhaps it could be done, but I donâ(TM)t see how you could have a programmable thermostat without one. But they could be set to turn themselves down at bedtime, then warm the house back up before you arose in the morning. More comfort, lower heating costs.
        Fast forward to a couple of years ago when the landlord had a new furnace installed in my house. With the new furnace came a new thermostat. The old thermostat was programmable, the new one isnâ(TM)t.
        But itâ(TM)s digital and still needs batteries.
        At first I thought they had to be digital because mercury has been shown to be toxic, but on second thought you could simply have a copper ball replacing the mercury. Such a switch would be easy to engineer.
        Folks, digital thermostats have been in use for a couple of decades now. Why arenâ(TM)t new homes designed to have a low voltage DC supply to thermostats so batteries wouldnâ(TM)t be needed?

Sticky Menus
        When GUIs first came out they were a great improvement over the old CLIs. Easy to use and hard to screw up. Click on a menu heading and the menu drops down. Nothing happened until you clicked somewhere. If you clicked on an empty space the menu closed. Click on a different menu and that menu opened.
        So some moron had the bright idea that if you had the file menu open and simply mouse over the edit menu, File closes and Edit opens.
        This incredibly stupid change drives me nuts, especially in Firefox and GIMP. I have nested bookmarks in Firefox, and after clicking a folder I have to slowly and carefully slide the cursor over, making sure the cursor never goes over a different folder, as the folder I want will close and the one I donâ(TM)t opens.
        GIMP drives me nuts, too, especially trying to select the âoerectangle selectâ from the âoeselectionâ menu, as the âoefiltersâ menu will open when Iâ(TM)m trying to navigate to âoerectangle selectâ.
        Folks, losing sticky menus was an incredibly stupid, productivity killing thing. BRING THEM BACK!

Rectangular cabinets
        Stuff used to have cabinets made of wood. The better stuff had rounded corners, because they were safer.
        Every large CRT TV I ever owned was rectangular, before 2002 when I bought a forty two inch Sony Trinitron. It takes up a huge amount of floor space, and you canâ(TM)t set anything on it because itâ(TM)s stupidly shaped. My DVD and VCR and converter box should be able to sit on it, but nothing can.
        The rectangular shape is far from extinct, but more and more things seem to be eschewing it.

Useful user manuals
        Some would criticize me for this one, saying user manuals always sucked, and they would have a valid point. When I was young, user manuals were complete â" and completely unreadable to many if not most people. I had trouble making heads or tails out of more than one, and I could read at a post-doctoral level at age 12 (although I didnâ(TM)t understand the math).
        DOS 6.2 came in a box with two floppies and a thick user manual. Windows 95 came with a very thin manual. I donâ(TM)t remember what XPâ(TM)s was like, but the manual for this old Acer laptop was really thin.
        Then my phone. Honestly, come on, now, a smart phone is a complex, sophisticated piece of equipment but its user manual is three by five inches and a dozen pages?
        The worst was the âoeSeagate Personal Cloudâ, which is really a network hard drive. Tiny pamphlet with pictures and few words. Look, folks, pictures are good for illustration but lousy for information. I spent twenty useless minutes studying the thing, then finally just plugged it in and turned it on. It didnâ(TM)t even need a manual!
        I did find a detailed, very good manual for it online. Its printed manual should have added its URL.

Automobile hoods and trunks that didnâ(TM)t need props
        Before the 1970s, to open a hood you opened the hood latch, and springs opened the hood and held it open. It was an ingenious design where it didnâ(TM)t spring open, you lifted it a little first. Trunks worked the same way. It didnâ(TM)t matter if it was a Volkswagen, a little Plymouth Valiant, or a big luxury Cadillac.
        Then the Arab oil embargo hit in 1974 and the price of gasoline doubled in a matter of months. People started replacing their American gas guzzlers with compact Japanese cars that had far better mileage.
        The more weight a vehicle carries, the worse its mileage is. Part of the raising of gas mileage was replacing the heavy steel with a lighter material when possible, and those springs and the rest of the steel assembly for them were jettisoned, replaced with that stupid hood prop.
        Soon American auto makers started following suit. I donâ(TM)t know if big sedans and luxury cars ever went to hood props, but I know my â67 Mustang had no hood prop, nor did my â74 LeMans. My 76 Vega did, though, as did every other car I owned until I bought an â02 Concorde. Rather than springs or a hood prop, it had lightweight hydraulic struts for both the front and back.
        It was far better than a hood prop, but not as good as the spring mechanism. Those springs lasted forever, but the struts fail in a few years and you wind up propping up your hood and trunk with a stick. Either that or shell out for new ones.

Bumper Jacks
        All cars and trucks used to have bumpers, and there was a slot on each end of each bumper. The slots were for flat tires. If you had a flat, you got the jack out of the car, hooked it into the slot, and jacked it up with its handle like you were pumping water out of a hand operated well pump. This was easy on the back, as you were standing up. It took very little effort to jack up the vehicle.
        Now they all have scissors jacks, and I hate them. You have to get down on your hands and knees to slide it under the car, and jack it up by cranking it. It always takes skin off of your knuckles and takes twice the effort and three times the time.
        Yes, the new jacks take up far less space, but the trade-offs simply werenâ(TM)t worth it.
        I miss the full sized spares, too. If you had a flat, you changed the tire, got the flat tire fixed, and simply put that one in the trunk instead of having to change the âoedoughnutâ to put your real tire on.
        At least we have fix-a-flat now.

My touchpad got screwy and Control Panel said its driver was missing, so I reinstalled Windows and lost all my bookmarks in the process. Unfortunately I didn't have slashdot messages bookmarked on the other computer. Slashdot has no link that I can find and its FAQ doesn't mention messages.

So if someone could shoot me the URL I'd appreciate it, I like reading you guys' journals and "messages" is how I get there.

I finished this story early January, and it's made the rounds of magazines it would fit in that I submit to, except Analog and the new site Compelling SF. Compelling has "Agoraphobia" and it will be six weeks before I can submit anything else, and Analog holds on to them for six months. So you guys get it. It will be in a future book titled "Voyage to Earth and Other Stories". If it's borked, go to a less retarded site

          Iâ(TM)m going to kill a planet. I donâ(TM)t know how yet, but I swear Iâ(TM)m going to do it.

        I was making a routine prospecting run and got a radio message from my best friend. As luck and coincidence would have it, the radio relay was only a little over two light hours awayâ"and Roger was either dying or already dead.

        The radioâ(TM)s message started âoeWarning! Anyone who hears this, stay away from Darius. This is probably the deadliest planet in the galaxy. If you land here, youâ(TM)ll die here. Iâ(TM)ll probably be dead by the time you receive this message.â

        Darius? He was prospecting in the Luhman system, the same system that I was, and I didnâ(TM)t even know it. I doubt he knew I was in the system, too. I hadnâ(TM)t heard from him in months, and here he was only between a light hour and three away. I wondered what he was looking for? I was after rare earths. This system was supposed to be a lot like the solar system and weâ(TM)d mined quite a bit of it from our own asteroid belt. Most of the rare earths in the belt, in fact. But Darius? What of value could possibly be there?

        I couldnâ(TM)t bring myself to leave him there despite his dire warnings, at least until Iâ(TM)d heard the entire thing and knew he was... Oh, God. Roger!

        I started the jump drive and in half an hour Iâ(TM)d be on my way to Darius to see if there was any way I could help him survive. I listened to the rest of the message as the engines warmed up.

        âoeI donâ(TM)t remember the crash, but I suspect it was the cornodium that caused it. Do not land on this planet!â

        I wondered what in the galaxy cornodium was. Iâ(TM)d never heard of the stuff before.

        âoeI woke up on the floor with a terrible headache, not knowing where I was. Hung over, maybe? I sat up and looked around. No, I was in the pilot room of my craft and wouldnâ(TM)t have been drinking. I got up with my head reeling, and stumbled to the controls.

        âoeIt looked like Iâ(TM)d crashed on Darius, the third orbit out from Luhman. Thatâ(TM)s the weirdest star system weâ(TM)ve found so far, weird because it was so much like the sun, and its planets were so much like our own solar systemâ(TM)s planets. Darius even has a giant satellite like Earth does, and the Luhman system even has a ring of asteroids between the fourth and fifth planets, just like the solar system. Nature is really strange sometimes.

        âoeI was looking for cornodium. Only small amounts had been found anywhere, and my calculations said the substance would be here, and likely vast riches of it. I donâ(TM)t know how many of us prospectors roam the galaxy these days, but weâ(TM)ve looked for valuable ores either not readily available or not available at all in our own system on hundreds of thousands of planets, and cornodium had only been found on six of them. None had much of it. It had all been mined and taken to Earth, less than a ton of the substance.

        âoeI didnâ(TM)t know much about cornodium despite doing as much research as I could about it. It was discovered only ten years ago and had revolutionized high end electronics, and the highest end at that because the stuff was so rare, and therefore very expensive. All I knew about cornodium was that they used it for power generation, but I had no idea how they got power from it. I didnâ(TM)t know what the stuff is or why itâ(TM)s so rare, but I didnâ(TM)t care. All I knew was that it was rare and very expensive, and if I found a planet with it Iâ(TM)d be rich, so I learned as much about its origins as I could. I was sure Darius fit the bill. If I was right Iâ(TM)d be as rich as my buddy who had found all that gold and platinum. I know now. Lot of good it will do a dead man.â

        I choked up again; Roger was thinking of me as he died.

        âoeWell, I would have been rich. It was obvious Iâ(TM)d crash landed on Darius.

        âoeMy head was bleeding, which explained the headache. I ignored it; I needed to assess my situation and get help if necessary.

        âoeI checked the controls, and yep, I was screwed. I tried to radio for help, but radio only goes at the speed of light and the closest radio relay craft was thirty light minutes away. I sent a distress signal, knowing it would be over an hour before I heard back.

        âoeTwo hours later it dawned on meâ"the antenna was on the bottom of the craft to better communicate with bodies one was taking off from or landing on. No one had heard me.

#
        âoeLike I said, Darius is really weird. Theyâ(TM)d only surveyed it by telescope so far, but Itâ(TM)s exactly like Earth and its moon, with two exceptions: the land masses are quite different, and there is no life whatever. The air is mostly nitrogen like Earth, with about the same amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide, and science couldnâ(TM)t explain where the oxygen came from. On Earth, it comes from vegetation and photosynthesis, but Darius was completely lifeless.

        âoeThat didnâ(TM)t matter to me, though. I needed to find the cornodium I was certain was here and stake a claim.

        âoeThe trouble was, I seemed to have wrecked my craft, and it was all I had. It was insured, of course, but with my antenna busted how could I collect on the insurance? And find the cornodium and stake a claim?

        âoeI decided to go outside and think about it, since I needed to see how much damage was done in the crash. After all, what danger could there be? This planet was lifeless, including microbial life. It being lifeless was, of course, the biggest mystery, even bigger than where all the oxygen had all come from. The planet was perfect for life to have formed, yet it hadnâ(TM)t. It should have even had sentient life, even though so far our own species was the only sentience we had ever found, which still puzzled evolutionists. Weâ(TM)d discovered lots of life in the galaxy, but most of it was no higher form of life than bacteria, and none smarter than a cow is on Earth.

        âoeI got out to do an outside inspection, and wow, I was right; the cornodium was everywhere, just laying on the ground! One piece looked like a daisy; nature comes up with some strange coincidences, and I laughed at it. There was a weird sound in the air, and I couldnâ(TM)t figure out what it was or where it was coming from.

        âoeIt looked like Iâ(TM)d smashed up the bottom of my craft pretty good. Iâ(TM)d have to find a way to make the radio work, and I decided to eat lunch and take a short walk first, since I was going to need all my brain and it didnâ(TM)t seem to be working right, so I decided to give it a break. I ate lunch and went back outside.

        âoeDarius reminded me of Mars, except there was air and water. And mud. And the skyâ(TM)s blue when Luhman is shining. It wasnâ(TM)t the same color as Mars, either, more brown than orange, with all of the patches of the bright blue cornodium. Lots of large areas didnâ(TM)t show dirt, just piles of small to tiny pieces of cornodium. And that strange sound, and it was heavy like Earth and the horizon was different than Mars, but it still reminded me of Mars, anyway. I donâ(TM)t know why.

        âoeIt wasnâ(TM)t all that muddy, kind of like dry dirt that had a small shower maybe the day before and there were enough rocks to keep my boots from getting too nasty. Most of the rock and gravel was cornodium.

        I figured the planet wouldnâ(TM)t be lifeless for long; this system had only been discovered six months ago. I came out as soon as Iâ(TM)d heard of it, because I had a hunch based on what Iâ(TM)d read about cornodium: it had only been found on lifeless planets with gravities between Marsâ(TM) gravity and one point five Earth gravities within a starâ(TM)s âoeGoldilocks zoneâ, and Darius fit perfectly. I wondered why nobody else had figured that out, the numbers were all there.

        âoeI walked up a shallow incline, and when I reached the top I saw in the distance what looked like it might have been a large machine, halfway buried. I started walking toward it to investigate, but it started sprinkling and the sky looked menacing, so I went back to my ship. I needed to work on that radio, anyway. Iâ(TM)d have to find some wire that didnâ(TM)t feed the radio or kitchen or air refreshment to use as an antenna.

        âoeShortly after I was inside my craft it started storming badly, with thunderâ(TM)s noise and the windâ(TM)s howl echoing through the boat constantly. I searched the ship for wire I could scavenge from the wreckage without stopping the kitchen or radio. I found enough to reach just outside, and now needed something to use as an antenna.

        âoeI thought of what had looked like half-buried machinery, and hoped there was wire in it, since all I would need for an antenna was a little more wire. I figured to go exploring it as soon as the storm abated.

        âoeIt stormed all afternoon and half the night. The next morning when I woke up, Luhman was shining brightly in a cloudless sky. I ate breakfast, despite not being very hungry, and packed a lunch, because it had looked like the machine might be quite a way off. It seemed Iâ(TM)d gotten a concussion in the crash, because my head still hurt, and I was still weak and disoriented. My stomach was a bit queasy, too, especially after breakfast.

        âoeIt was a two hour walk to the machine, and I had to rest halfway there. Where was my normal stamina? I should have been able to sprint to it. âProbably has to do with the concussion,â(TM) I thought. I still wasnâ(TM)t thinking clearly.

        âoeThe thing was bigger and farther away than it looked. Space ship, perhaps? I looked for a door or a window or a hatch. I didnâ(TM)t find one, but I did find an opening where the thingâ(TM)s metal had torn; it had to be some sort of craft, although it was nothing like any craft Iâ(TM)d ever seen or imagined.

        âoeI didnâ(TM)t find any wire, but I did find a steel rod I could use for an antenna, and two statues of some weird animal Iâ(TM)d never heard of, made of cornodium. There were strange sounds coming from the statues, which were clothed in rags. Art? Or... A chill went up my spine. Were these intelligent aliens that had somehow become cornodium? I thought of when Iâ(TM)d seen what looked like a flower made of cornodium earlier, and had thought it was one of those coincidental freaks of nature.

        âoeBy then I wasnâ(TM)t feeling well at all. In fact I felt downright sick, and decided to go back to my boat. I went outside, and noticed that my skin had taken on a slightly bluish tint.

        âoeBy the time I got back I was weak and shaky, and cold. Really cold, as if Iâ(TM)d been in the snow in summer clothes, even though the day was very warm, almost hot. It only took a minute to hang the rod from the wire and start the radio.

        âoeI had made quite a few incredibly profound discoveries, discoveries that were incredibly important to humanity. Iâ(TM)d found evidence of alien intelligent life in the crashed alien craft, and another alien was taking me overâ"the planet itself. Rather than being lifeless, the planet itself is alive. It grows, reproduces, and eats. The cornodium is its brain! I now know why the strange sounds were coming from the alien statues; the planet was trying to taunt me in an alien language. Itâ(TM)s talking inside my head right now, in English. I... I have to... I have to set this on repeat... before Darius...

        âoeWarning! Anyone who hears this, stay away from Darius. This is probably the deadliest planet in the galaxy. If you land here, youâ(TM)ll die here. Iâ(TM)ll probably be...â

        I shut it off and saved my best friendâ(TM)s last words, tears welling up in my eyes. Even if I could have gotten to him in time, I couldnâ(TM)t have rescued him. I doubt itâ(TM)s possible to land safely on Darius, as I suspect it caused Rogerâ(TM)s craft to crash land.

#

        The jump drive made it seem like I got to Darius immediately, but it would have actually been five to twenty minutes later when I really got there, and hours since he had sent the message. I went into orbit around Darius and called the survey bureau and staked a claim to it. Nobodyâ(TM)s going to make batteries out of my friend! And Iâ(TM)m going to contact the authorities when I get to Earth and see if I can get the use of cornodium outlawed before all life there becomes cornodium. And Iâ(TM)m going to learn everything I can about the stuff. Including how to kill it.

        God, but the government is exasperating! I not only didnâ(TM)t make any progress getting cornodium outlawed, I was issued a gag order! The substance promised to do wonders for the economy, because it seemed to produce free energy, despite the laws of thermodynamics.

        But of course it wasnâ(TM)t doing that. It was getting energy from somewhere, and I was convinced that the somewhere was from the energy in life forms that were, little by little, becoming cornodium themselves. My friend Roger who had died and become cornodium died in a about a day, but it had been a planet that was almost completely covered in cornodium. People, animals, and plants on Earth were only exposed to tiny amounts of it. They would die of old age before becoming cornodium, because there was so little of it.

        But eventually Earth would become cornodium, I was sure. Ultimately enough live matter would become cornodium that it would awaken and eat everything that lived on Earth.

        Iâ(TM)m a very wealthy person, having discovered a planet that was mostly made of gold and another made of mostly platinum, two metals that are incredibly useful in electronics, and my mining licenses donâ(TM)t come cheap. I decided to buy as much cornodium as I could, hopefully all of it, and send it to Darius. I hoped I could afford it.

        Iâ(TM)d bought half a ton at ridiculous prices when the government stepped in again. Iâ(TM)d dropped all the cornodium on Darius, and they took Darius from me. Imminent domain. There were a year of legal battles but I lost. Sure, I made a fortune on it, and I was now the richest individual on Earth, but damn it, I wanted Earth to live and these idiots were going to kill it!

        Crap. What to do next? I decided to chance ignoring the gag order and talk to a scientist, and contacted a local university. I was to have a meeting with a Dr. Felber, a materials scientist who was studying cornodium and trying to find a way to make artificial cornodium and a way to recharge cornodium batteries. I was a little uncertain about what the outcome might be, what with the gag order and all.

        She turned out to be a delightful woman, but of course the court order had me worried. âoeDr. Felber,â I said, âoeIâ(TM)ve been under a gag order about cornodium, and Iâ(TM)m not supposed to talk to anyone at all about it or theyâ(TM)ll put me in prison. Can you keep this to yourself?â

        She became a bit pensive. âoeNot if itâ(TM)s something subversive.â

        âoeIt isnâ(TM)t. I have a recording of a dead friend that Iâ(TM)m not allowed to play anywhere, and if they knew it existed it wouldnâ(TM)t exist. They had erased it from the radio relayâ(TM)s data banks, but didnâ(TM)t know Iâ(TM)d kept a copy.â

        She raised an eyebrow. âoePlay it,â she said. I did.

        When it was finished, she said âoeIâ(TM)ve been exposed.â

        âoeYes,â I replied, âoeand so have I. But there is so little of it youâ(TM)ll be dead of old age long before it affects the tissues; Roger was on a planet where most of the whole crust was covered in cornodium. But we need to save the Earth!â

        âoeYes,â she agreed, âoeBut how?â

        âoeI donâ(TM)t know, youâ(TM)re the scientist. How can we kill it?â

        âoeKill what?â she asked.

        âoeKill Darius,â I said vengefully.

        âoeKill a planet?â

        âoeYes,â I replied, âoebefore it kills us! It will, you know, if it lives.â

        She looked doubtful. âoeIâ(TM)m going to have to study that sample some more, our present theories may all be wrong. That recording explains a few things that had puzzled us and may be a paradigm changer. Iâ(TM)ll get back to you. Donâ(TM)t worry, this is between us.â

        A year and a half later rumors started leaking about government mining expeditions that had gone to Darius, all of whom had âoemysteriouslyâ disappeared. It was no mystery to me; those people were now all cornodium, no longer human, or even alive as we know life. They had been eaten by the evil monster that was Darius.

        Friends and relatives of the missing people were served the same gag order that I had been served, and a few were jailed after publicly complaining. So far, it was only rumor as far as the public was concerned... for now. Later on, a lot of politicians lost their jobs. But Iâ(TM)m getting ahead of myself.

        Six months after the rumors started, Dr. Felber emailed me. âoeSee what I foundâ is all the email said. So I did, and visited her at the university.

        âoeItâ(TM)s easy to kill,â she said when I visited her. âoeMiddle C.â

        âoeMiddle C?â I asked, perplexed.

        âoeTwo hundred sixty one point six Hertz,â she replied. âoeThat tone kills it. Earth is full of music, including that note, which we think is why they ever run down at all, so we have nothing to worry about.â

        My jaw dropped. âoeSo if Roger had been playing music there he wouldnâ(TM)t have died?â

        âoeMaybe, maybe not. It might have taken a very loud continuously operating tone generator, and even that might not have been enough.

        âoeThere are only tiny amounts in any one place on Earth, where thereâ(TM)s lots of music, and cornodium batteries last ten years or more, and most of Darius is covered in the stuff.

        âoeIn any case, even if he had lived, the cornodium would have been useless. Like the Land Bridge theory was replaced by continental drift, and the solid state universe was discarded in favor of the big bang theory, all of our theories about what made it vibrate were completely wrong.

        âoeWe had believed that the vibration was caused by some process internal to the substance and trying to find where its power was stored; we had thought it must have been a chemical reaction that we hadnâ(TM)t found. It made perfectly logical sense, since it seemed that the energy drained like a normal old fashioned chemical battery, except far more slowly and they couldnâ(TM)t be recharged. People have been seriously injured trying to recharge them.â

        Wow. Dead cornodium wasnâ(TM)t useless. I wondered why nobody thought of military and construction applications, since such a small amount was so explosive; the cornodium in a thousand watt battery was only about a cubic centimeter in size, although most of the battery is the piezoelectrics and the battery takes up a lot more room than a cubic centimeter, more like four cubic decimeters, and that thousand watts lasts for ten years or more. Yes, Iâ(TM)d learned a lot about cornodium since Darius had murdered Roger.

        Of course I didnâ(TM)t say anything; kept to myself this could bankroll whatever it took to kill Darius. I needed to get that planet back.

        And kill the evil thing and let the military and construction crews blow the stuff up. Roger didnâ(TM)t deserve to die like that! Iâ(TM)d had my legal team negotiating with the government for months by then, ever since the rumors about the missing miners had started floating around.

#

        Six months after that the government, failing to find a way to mine Darius, ceded the planetâ(TM)s rights back to me, at twenty percent of what theyâ(TM)d paid me for it. Of course there were a lot of lawyers involved, but I can afford the best, and you can trust that I hired the best. When you need a lawyer, the most expensive one you can afford is usually your wisest investment.

        The next day I was in orbit around Darius with a drone, a tone generator tuned to middle C, and a hamster. I would have used a plant, but didnâ(TM)t know how long it took for plant tissue to become cornodium, but it takes about a day with a mammal on Darius. I sent the drone down, wondering if it would crash.

        It didnâ(TM)t, so the cornodium had affected Roger before he even landed. If heâ(TM)d landed on autopilot the fool might have lived. But probably not.

        This was a truly evil thing, and I planned to destroy it, full of hate for my friendâ(TM)s tormentor and executioner. Hate for the monster that had eaten him. Hate for the evil that wanted to consume all life.

        Forty eight hours later the drone returned, with a cornodium statue of a hamster. Damn, the doctor was wrong. Oh, well, my cornodium hamster would pay for the trip and a whole lot more. That was a valuable statue, at least after it was made into batteries.

        It was a six month jump from Luhman to Sol, and I donâ(TM)t understand the math behind that at all. The jump seemed instantaneous to me, but it was six months later when I arrived. The part I donâ(TM)t understand is it should have been years instead of months, and a whole lot more than only six. I simply donâ(TM)t understand jump drives. Yeah, they covered them in pilot school, but I just didnâ(TM)t get it. It has something to do with artificial worms drilling holes or something, and has a lot of really complicated math that has to do with space, time, and gravity. Like I said, itâ(TM)s over my head. Iâ(TM)m lucky I passed the test, it was multiple choice and I guessed at a lot of it.

        In any case, when I got back to Earth I of course visited Dr. Felber, who told me âoeWe have additional data since you left. The sonic frequency must be out of phase to discharge the cornodium; if itâ(TM)s in phase it strengthens it. Itâ(TM)s still dangerous to Earth!â

        âoeHave you said anything to anyone else?â I asked. âoePlease donâ(TM)t let anyone know cornodium batteries are rechargeable! My God...â

        âoeWell, finding a way to recharge them was one of my original goals, but donâ(TM)t worry. This thing needs to be gone before we are. Iâ(TM)m working with an engineer on a device that will take the cornodiumâ(TM)s frequency and send it back out of phase. Iâ(TM)ll email you when itâ(TM)s done.â

#

        It only took a month and I was on my way back to Darius with my drone and another hamster. Again the generator was sounding middle C, but the computers had measured and sent a perfectly out of phase middle C. I waited the two days to see if it would come back a hamster or a cornodium statue of a hamster.

        I got my hamster back, alive and bewildered. But maybe hamsters are always bewildered, I donâ(TM)t know. Anyway, it worked. I could mine explosives to make up for my losses now, then figure out how to kill this horrible thing once and for all. By âoethis horrible thingâ I mean the monster, Darius, of course. That bitch has to die! I returned to Earth to talk to Dr. Felber again, and maybe talk to my government contacts whom I had sought out during and after the gag order and imminent domain court proceedings, about sales of explosives to them. It would depend on what Dr. Felber said.

        Dr. Felber was pleased that the experiment was a success. âoeAdd more amplifiers,â she said, âoethen blow up the dead parts.â

        Blow up the dead parts? Not me, I was going to mine it and sell it to the government like a patriot and let them blow it up. But I took her advice on the amplification.

        But first I needed to do one more experiment before talking to my government contacts, to see how much of Darius died from the out of phase middle C. I had one constructed that would run for two days then attempt to âoerechargeâ it with electricity. According to Dr. Felberâ(TM)s theories, it should explode several square kilometers of the planetâ(TM)s surface.

        It didnâ(TM)t. So she had some calculating to do, I guessed. I sent a drone down to collect a hamster-sized chunk of dead cornodium for her to examine.

        I jumped, and six months later even though it seemed like a second later I was in orbit around Earth, and talking to Dr. Felber again the next day. âoeIt should have worked,â she said. âoePuzzling. Weâ(TM)ll examine the sample you brought back and call when we have an answer.â

        âoeOkay,â I said.

        I waited in the Bahamas on a beach. No point stressing about it, weâ(TM)d kill that terrible thing eventually.

#

        I sat on that beach for months. Finally Dr. Felber contacted me. âoeIt has to be processed before itâ(TM)s explosive,â she said.

        âoeProcessed?â I had no idea how these batteries worked, even though Iâ(TM)d tried to learn. It did make me think of something Roger said in his warningâ"it had stormed when he was there. If raw cornodium had been explosive it would have blown him up.

        âoeGround into a fine powder. Do that and the individual grains all sing in harmony, and you can turn that into a lot of electricity with a piezoelectric device, a really small one. Here, Iâ(TM)ll show you the math...â

        âoeDonâ(TM)t bother,â I interrupted, âoeI wouldnâ(TM)t understand it anyway.â

        âoeWell, okay,â she said, âoebut we can still kill Darius if you can afford it.â

        âoeI can afford it,â I said. âoeHow?â

        âoeIt emits sound. Kill a patch with your biggest amplifier and send a robot with a sound meter tuned to middle C to see how much is dead, and you can kill Darius a little at a time.â

        âoeYes!â I exclaimed. âoeLet that bastard suffer!â God, but I hated Darius because of poor Roger, who had been killed with extreme malice. It had to have been horrible for him.

        I teared up a little. It seemed I wasnâ(TM)t going to sell anything to the government, since dead, unprocessed cornodium was worthless. But that wasnâ(TM)t what made me tear up, I was thinking of poor Roger. I missed my old buddy terribly. We were partners way back when these boats needed two people to fly them, and still got together all these long years later. We had some great times, and I was looking forward to more good times. But it was too late now.

        The next day I made the jump to Darius with a huge bank of midrange speakers, a phased C tone generator, and fifty thousand watts of amplification, with all of it mobile. I sent a robot with a sound meter down with them.

        The next day the robot reported a dead zone a hundred meters wide, so I sent all the equipment moving in an ever widening spiral. When this land mass was clean Iâ(TM)d move it all to another land mass and get to work there. I figured it would take months to kill the entire planet, but I was determined.

        A week later the spiral, now a hundred kilometer radius, wasnâ(TM)t widening. Apparently, dead cornodium could regenerate in the presence of live cornodium. I left the equipment there running in circles, not wanting my meager progress to be erased, and went back to Earth for more sound equipment. Before I left I had a drone land with a robot to collect a few hundred kilos of live cornodium to bankroll the venture with.

        Killing Darius would be worth the incredible riches I was going to destroy by killing it. Poor Roger!

        I got to Earth immediately six months later. I sold the cornodium, mostly to Chinese buyers, and bought a huge number of mobile amplifiers, speakers, and the computerized gizmos that sent cornodiumâ(TM)s middle C signature back out of phase. I also bought the nicest casket I could find for Roger, and hired an engineer. An expensive one who had several different engineering degrees.

        I worried about taking all that cornodium to Earth, but the newspapers said that there was a backlash against cornodium and the rich people who used it, and middle C phase generators were becoming popular among normal folks who couldnâ(TM)t afford cornodium devices and were afraid of them. Justifiably afraid, I thought, despite Dr. Felberâ(TM)s initial reassurances. That relieved me quite a bit.

        I thought it was funny, I was very wealthy and rather than using cornodium devices, I was the first to call for their prohibition. But I did have more cornodium than anyone, a whole planet full, even though I was extirpating all of it. Well, what I didnâ(TM)t sell to mostly China, at least.

        A year later, Darius seemed completely dead. There wasnâ(TM)t a milligram of cornodium on any of the land masses at all, even dead cornodium; Iâ(TM)d mined it all and sent it to the heart of the perpetual fusion explosion known as Luhman.

        It looked like Darius had destroyed an intelligent species from what few artifacts had surfaced. The planet had been lifeless for a long, long time and very little was left to tell us about these aliens, but this monster had very obviously destroyed a great spacefaring civilization.

        Of course, before mining the dead cornodium and sending it to the star we recovered the cornodium bodies of the people who had tried to mine cornodium for the government, Darian artifacts (We found a cornodium Darian, but we donâ(TM)t know if it was the intelligent species), and the intelligent aliens Roger found that Darius had eaten, and shipped them to Earth. The bodies, both alien and human, were now dead cornodium and therefore harmless as long as they were kept away from live cornodium. The few ruins of stone buildings stayed, as did Rogerâ(TM)s ship and the alien ship. Maybe some day they would be tourist attractions.

        I thought I had beaten the evil monster, but I hadnâ(TM)t.

        I had several tons of Earthian dirt shipped to Darius for its microbes, and enough grass seed to wipe out the supplierâ(TM)s inventory. I was determined to bring Earthian life to Darius, starting with grass and then with cows, and other species of flora and fauna later. I had a home by the sea side built there, and a shrine and burial site for Roger. I really missed Roger and the good times weâ(TM)d had together.

        I ran the C generator for a year just in case, with nary a peep from it, and finally shut it off. I shouldnâ(TM)t have.

        I went back to Earth for a visit, and to buy supplies. The few folks I had hired took care of my grass and cows when I was gone. Those cows were incredibly useful, widening the zone where plants would grow.

        Back on Earth, the Chinese had really taken to cornodium batteries. They actually believed that the batteries promoted health! Very wealthy Chinese folks powered their entire households with cornodium batteries. The government there had outlawed phased C generators, saying they were a plot to ruin the Chinese economy.

        However, in the Americas, particularly South America, most communities had outlawed cornodium. It was illegal in all of Peru and Venezuela, as well as most communities in the rest of the countries in those continents. It was also illegal in much of New Zealand, Australia, and in parts of many African and Asian nations. Europe was in the grip of a massive economic recession, so there were very few cornodium devices there. Most of the world got power from rooftop solar panels and back yard windmills. China was the only country still using fossil fuels, and was the only country to outlaw the phased C devices.

        They had also developed something called âoetwist jump radioâ. I donâ(TM)t understand how it works, but it has something to do with âoetwisted pairs of photonsâ. At any rate, it made communication instantaneous no matter how far away the other radio was... well, usually. Sometimes there were lags, and the theoretical physicists were still trying to figure out why.

        This was a real breakthrough in communications, since normal radio was useless between stellar systems, and messages had to be sent physically on a ship with jump drive.

        Of course, I bought five of them.

        After visiting friends and family I returned to Darius with all sorts of seeds, several honeybee hives, some pigs, chickens, a few other animals, my new twisted radios, and other supplies. Darius would become a pest-free paradise.

        A few months later I made the mistake of wading in the ocean for an hour or two, maybe even longer. It made me weak and dizzy and nauseous and I had a terrible headache, so I headed back to the house. I noticed that my skin seemed to have a slight blue tint, as if I were really cold, and I felt like I was freezing.

        On a hunch I turned the C generator on, and it came on very loud; there was cornodium somewhere, and lots of it.

        The cornodium it was reacting to was in me! I was suffering from cornodium poisoning, the same thing that had killed Roger.

        The ocean... Iâ(TM)d forgotten about aquatic life, and apparently the seas, rivers, and lakes were full of that damned cornodium. I got a blanket and sat weakly on a recliner, hoping the C generator would help.

        It did. An hour later my chills became a fever, and I threw up my breakfast. The vomit was blue, and later my urine and feces were blue as well. I was perspiring profusely, and my sweat came out with a blueish tint. I couldnâ(TM)t eat at all for a week, and it was a sick, painful, miserable month before I was anywhere near normal.

        When I was mostly over the poisoning I returned to Earth again to hire another engineer to help me figure out how to kill the rest of Darius and to talk to Dr. Felber about sending an out of phase signal underwater. It turned out that she knew little about underwater sound, but put me in touch with a sonic engineer who could, and he got me acquainted with another engineer who specialized in robotic submarines. Both agreed to visit Darius and work on the underwater sonic equipment.

        The news on Earth was all about a panic in China, and it was about cornodium. It seems that a large part of the very wealthy Zhejiang Provence had succumbed to cornodium poisoning, and thousands of people and uncounted plants and animals there were now cornodium. The Chinese government quickly outlawed cornodium and cordoned the area with phased C generators. They then confiscated every cornodium device in China and sent them to the sun, and suspended trade with any country where cornodium was legal.

        The engineers and about fifty other folks went to Darius with me and a great big load of supplies, as I had more and more people working for me on Darius now. It wouldnâ(TM)t be long before Darius was self-sufficient, at least as far as food was concerned. Weâ(TM)d need to import some robotic harvesters soon.

        Everyone wore a C generator on their belts to protect against cornodium poisoning, and we put up large phased C generators every hundred meters along all the planetâ(TM)s seashores.

        Of course, one of the workers, new to Darius, got drunk and fell into the ocean. His two drunken buddies hauled him out laughing, and took him home. They werenâ(TM)t laughing for long, though, as all three developed mild cases of cornodium poisoning. Even a âoemildâ case is pure sick and painful misery, but at least now we knew that a C generator was a cure.

        A message came over the twist radio from a doctor on Earth saying that one of the men had gotten a routine physical before coming to Darius, and his test results showed that he had developed a small tumor in one of his lungs and had to return to Earth for treatment immediately. It was the man who had drunkenly fallen into the water. The message had been terribly lagged, and should have reached Darius months before we did.

        The engineers, both family men, went back to their families on Earth. I accompanied the three of them, deciding to get a physical myself; I hadnâ(TM)t seen a doctor in years and actually worried a little about the cornodiumâ(TM)s effect on my health after I found out about the guyâ(TM)s tumor. After all, who knows? The stuff might cause cancer or something later.

        The doctor said she was amazed at my health. I was almost fifty, and she said I looked thirty five and my vitals were normal for a healthy twenty five year old!

        Sheâ(TM)d been the doctor Iâ(TM)d seen years earlier, and asked when Iâ(TM)d had my mole removed and who had done the surgery. âoeI didnâ(TM)t,â I said. âoeI hadnâ(TM)t noticed it was missing.â

        âoePuzzling,â she said. âoeThey donâ(TM)t usually go away by themselves. Your vitals are puzzling, as well. Iâ(TM)ve never seen anyone your age so healthy.â

        After I left, the fellow with lung cancer whose name I canâ(TM)t remember called, saying he was going back to Darius with me.

        âoeBut you need cancer treatment,â I exclaimed.

        âoeNope, the doc said he couldnâ(TM)t understand it, but there wasnâ(TM)t any cancer. Said none of my vitals were anything like they were when I saw him seven months ago either, said I was healthy as a twenty year old. My warts went away, too!â

        I called Dr. Felber and told her what had happened, that it looked like controlled cornodium poisoning could cure some diseases. âoeWell, I donâ(TM)t know,â she said, âoea sample size of two isnâ(TM)t very meaningful. Iâ(TM)ll talk to some of my colleagues.â

        When I got back to Darius I stopped decontamination of one medium sized lake. After all, if this was a cure for cancer...

        Five months later Dr. Felber showed up with over a hundred other scientists, from different fields; biochemists, chemists, biologists, materials scientists like her, and a lot more.

        One of the scientists was dying of liver cancer, contracted because of exposure to some chemical when he was young. He ran straight into the lake as soon as he left the ship!

        None of my crewpeople went into the water to drag him out, since theyâ(TM)d seen how nasty even a mild case of cornodium poisoning was. However, after quite a while two dumbass PhDs waded in and got him out. They all got sick, of course. The scientist with the cancer almost died, I think. He was in the water a long time before his fellow scientists even missed him, and the cancer had weakened him considerably.

        He did recover, though, and there was no cancer afterward. Three out of three!

        A year later Dr. Felber published her teamâ(TM)s first report. Cornodium attacked the simplest life, like viruses, first. Next was microbial life, then aberrant cells in the higher life form, then that life formâ(TM)s healthy cells. It affected plants far more slowly than animals.

        Weâ(TM)d not just cured cancer, but almost all diseases. It wouldnâ(TM)t cure diabetes, or arthritis, or baldness, or disease caused by genetics, or mental illnesses, but there were other treatments and cures for those ailments. It would cure the common cold or flu, but the cure was far worse than the disease in those cases. Believe me, you have to be really sick or dying before youâ(TM)ll want to get cornodium poising, even a mild case.

        So weâ(TM)re building a health facility around that lake, and decontamination of the rest of the aquatic bodies continues, as does the research. Right now the biologists are testing its effects on heart disease in rodents, since the worry is that the cornodium may make it worse rather than better, weâ(TM)ll see.

        Roger and I were hailed as heroes, saviors of the Earth. He hadnâ(TM)t died in vain after all.

        I do worry, though. What if thereâ(TM)s another cornodium planet somewhere?

In Mainah-speak, I'd say that this privacy policy is, "A riaght pissah." (That spelling looks about right. For those not in the 'know' I'm kind of fond of the various American dialects and the various colorful olloquialisms. I'm also missing home.)

Anyhow, I want to quote it but I don't want to steal the guy's thunder. So, you seriously need to see this:
http://www.donationbasedhosting.org/privacy-policy/

As in, seriously... It's amusing, informative, interesting, and insightful - all at the same time. I kind of want to host with the guy but I don't think I've anything that's server-appropriate. He's just got one server and probably has quite a few people on it.

Actually, my spying button says they've only got 14 domains hosted on the one server and he's got a single Debian box at Linode.

At any rate, that page needs more attention. It's quite funny. It's the best privacy policy that I've seen lately.

Speaking of which, I have to/want to do some custom error pages. I know the mechanism but I lack the creativity to do something enjoyable with them. I gotta find something creative to do with 'em. Maybe random redirects, just to screw with people.

If anyone's interested in checking out my project, lemme know. There's a bunch of goals but the idea of the site is generally fostering a place for intelligent discourse/civil discussion. The idea being that it's possible to remain civil while debating or discussing any topic and the site tries to make that possible while offering a number of ways to participate as a registered or anonymous user. The entire thing is also an attempt to demonstrate something (in the manner of a wager that is still ongoing) where it must be entirely self-funding - it's a bit of a competition against "traditional" social media which I think is unnecessary but not overly evil, in and of itself. This was the best idea I could come up with to demonstrate my belief and, if nothing else, it has been rather fun and it has been great to relearn a lot of stuff.

It's oddly timed but the site is moving to a new server shortly but that actually has nothing to do with the site that I linked to. I found that site by clicking around the Chrome extension site and it looked like an interesting name for a hosting company, so I clicked. Then it didn't appear to be much of a hosting site. So, I clicked around and the privacy policy was what I clicked on. And then I giggled like a little schoolgirl. :/

Oh, it's http://kgiii.gq if you're curious about the project. I'll just link it here, instead of in the comments or by email. Feel free to stop by, sign up, whatever. Basically, anyone that participates gets turned into an author eventually. Ideally, the site will self-fund and be handed off to a committee of site participants who can then decide how it is run in perpetuity. I've actually had a couple of similar projects in the past. However, it has been a long time since I've done any coding, tweaking, editing, and whatnot. So, I've (re)learned a lot and it's great 'cause it's keeping me busy while I wait a while longer as I'm still trying to get permission to go to Cuba before I return to Maine.

I don't think I'm going to get to go.

The first copy of Random Scribblings came about a week ago, and I was happy that there only needed to be some very minor changes to some of the graphics, and the cover needed to be completely redone. They shipped the corrected copy Monday, so I'll probably get it next Monday.
        I'm releasing it on June nineteenth, and having a book release party at George Ranks from noon to two. I'll have copies of books for sale, including the new one that won't be in bookstores until late July at the earliest.
        I'm also raffling off a hardcover copy of Yesterday's Tomorrows. No purchase is necessary but food and drink will be available. I may raffle off a copy of the new book as well.
        So if you're in Springfield Sunday the nineteenth, drop by and say "hi". You may get a free book out of it!

I didn't notice any update or information given from on-high but I will say that I am neither offended nor bothered by it and I appreciate the honest. I even made it a point to click through it. Odd, too, 'cause it required multiple clicks - my security software wasn't fond of it. No, it wasn't malicious, but it's an add and the MS MVPS Hosts file (incorporated in uMatrix & uBlock Origin) has that listed. So, I told it to temporarily allow it to pass. And it did.

So, Whipslash, congratulations. It's not intrusive, it's not misleading, it's not over-powering, it's not unacceptable. I, for one, appreciate that. I value that you took the time to do so without making it problematic or a burden to work around. Seriously, thanks. I might even click on a few - I might even go so far as to buy something from one of the companies. You never know... It could happen.

I'd just urge you all to not go overboard but I don't think that's going to be a problem. You've shown fine judgment so far and I've every reason to believe you'll continue to do so in the future. I'm thinking it's probably best to not allow comments in those threads - good choice. We've got our share of idiots here. Hell, we've got more than our share of idiots here.

So, thanks. Thanks for looking for *good* ways to monetize the site and to keep the site afloat. It being easy to notice is the icing on the cake. Others may disagree with me. I'm inclined to think they're idiots if they do. Unicorn farts only get you so far. Eventually, it has to have money.

It's fairly well known how I feel about Firefox. I don't like it much and I use it long enough to install Opera. It's default on most every Linux distro out there. I much prefer Opera. At the same time, I'm not some crazy zealot and I don't actively dislike Firefox. I don't uninstall it. I keep it updated, I use it once in a while, and it has its own special tabs that open by default when I open it. It gets used.

On the other hand, I've pretty much used Opera since 1998 or something like that. I don't even remember when I first found it. When I first found it, it would let you block images (such as ads) right from the browser itself. It was built in. It had "fit to width" which meant that you clicked a button and the width of the text filled the entire page. I seem to recall that you could actually adjust the margins for that somewhere. Then, not much later, it got tabs and the world went crazy with tabs not long after.

It was a start of a whole new adventure. Netscape ended up eventually turning into Mozilla. Microsoft got sued pretty handily for their market manipulations (which is a topic for another day). They also got popped for screwing with the world via their fake Java (or was it JavaScript? I'm kind of stoned - again - can tell I'm ready to go home).

And a whole bunch of new browsers came out - changing the web as we know it. No, really, the rest of the web changed as we know it. Opera had some impact on those changes and it was well worth the price I paid for the privilege to use their browser. I bought licenses for friends and I didn't even have much money back then. I liked Opera that much.

Anyhow, I've pretty much used Opera since then. There was one point, from about version to 15 to 23, that they really sucked and for that time, and that time only, they've not been my default browser - since about 1998. It was a fairly quick process, actually. They just POOF went retarded and changed from Presto to Chromium/Blink or whatever is under Chromium.

And it sucked. I'm not gonna lie about it just because I used them. No, they straight up sucked donkey balls. It was unstable, unwieldy, unsecured, and unacceptable. It really was unacceptable. I didn't go rail and rant at them. I didn't have to - people are STILL yelling at them and we're all the way on version 37 now. Dev is 38 and Stable is 36.

Anyhow, that's where I stand on Opera. I've said it before, I'll say it again. I don't care what browser you use. I use what works best for me. For a while, that was quite distinctly, anyone but Opera. At about version 23 it became tolerable again. At about 28 it became acceptable again. At about 31 it became good again. I've got some pretty high standards but at about version 24 I decided to switch back to Opera as my default and to go see if there was something I could do to help - it's open source. So far so good, except I've only given them one idea that they decided to act on. There's still a few more things that would be neat to see. I might actually write an extension myself to fix the remaining issue. That'll be neat.

As I was saying...

So, I read an AC post earlier. They said they were really surprised about the Developer version of Firefox. Now, I knew what the developer tools where and I knew there was a developer's edition and that the two are not the same.

If you're using one of the Ubuntu flavors or derivatives, then it's not the "firefox-dev" that you find by searching the app. In fact, you don't even really need to install it if you don't want. You can, there's a PPA for it. But, it's this version:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/#developer

I kid you not... It's not bad, it's not bad at all. It's not only not bad - it's REALLY good. It's a whole different version than the regular Firefox. It's entirely different. Just extract it and run the firefox-bin and you're good to go. It's light, responsive, and... I'm not sure how to say this?

The developer tools? Err... There's more to them than you see in any other browser that I know of BUT... They're actually good. They're pretty good, even. I was kind of shocked. I still am. I've been beating the piss out of it all night. I started beating on it this afternoon. If you really hammer on it then I think it might grow into a memory leak over time - but I've not had it open that long. I've had a ton of tabs open in it. (No, not 500 like some of you weirdos.)

It's fantastically good. It really is. I can't stress that enough.

If you've not given Firefox a try lately or you've not tried the Aurora edition then give it a shot. Here's a slightly different link:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/05/firefox-and-the-release-channels/

No, it's not going to become my new default browser. That's EXTREMELY unlikely. It will, on the other hand, take the place of one of the Opera versions in my line-up/order of procession. I use Opera beta as my default. I have the browsers set for different tasks. My next favorite is Developer. It opens its own set of tabs, has its own special folders on the speed dial, and sits on a second monitor or on its own virtual monitor. Then comes the stable version, if you're curious.

But... I think that Firefox is going to become the second browser. No, I know it's going to - or at least it's getting an extended audition as my second browser. The developer tools are really good. That's what I use Opera's for, I do the checking and configurations in that browser usually. Then I have the stable build open on a third physical or virtual monitor and that keeps my extended searches. If I'm researching something and want to have that open and read to stay with just a few tabs - that's the browser to do it with. (Then I might test in a few other browsers.)

So, no... It's good enough seeming, at this point and after this series of tests for the past dozen hours or so, like it is a very good browser. It's good enough for me to give it second place and that's saying something - I think. I am fast approaching 20 years with Opera. I am giving up a slot that's been devoted to Opera for a fairly decent portion of that 20 years. If I had to stop using Opera tomorrow AND if the developer build is as nice as it was to me today then I'd not mind switching.

As it is, I kind of neat to be ready to switch. Opera's sale to the Chinese company may go through and I'm not sure what direction they'll take the project. I was expecting to go to Vivaldi or Pale Moon or Chromium. If it happens that they destroy the browser beyond all repair, I'll go with Firefox developer as my main browser and work my way down from there. To be completely clear, I might not even mind the switch much at all. I'm really that impressed with the speed, display, resource usage, easy of access to the tools I want, and then some...

I can say this with 100% certainty. When I woke up this morning, I was not even remotely aware that I'd be saying this by this evening. Yes, yes I'm that impressed.

People try to put us d-down
Hard for us to get around
Things kids say sound awful c-c-cold
'cause I didn't die before I got old

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

Why don't you all f-fade away
I can't dig what kids all s-s-say
I'm not trying to cause a big s-s-sensation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-generation

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

Why don't you all fu-fu-fu go away
Forgot what I was going to say
I'm not trying to cause a b-big s-s-sensation
I'm just talkin' 'bout my g-g-generation

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

People try to put us d-down
Hard for us to g-g-get around
Things they say sound awful c-c-cold
I didn't die before I got old

This is my generation
This is my generation, baby

A photo of me with a phone from 2020

It appears that autorefresh still works. If you were a fan then it's:
https://slashdot.org/?source=autorefresh

It still appears to work. There are times when I still prefer it and I've learned to work around it. I don't mind it refreshing and I was sad to see it go. I'd have complained but enough people disliked it so that I didn't bother complaining about them removing it.

(Just because I like something is no reason for me to bitch about other people getting their way - I'm just not that kind of idiot.)

Actually, there are a whole lot of that kind of idiot types out there. Some of them frequent this site. I'm reminded a bit of the recent story where people were OUTRAGED!!! that there were pretty girls at an after-party at a gaming convention. No! Other people may not have fun that I myself would not enjoy! Stupid fucking pricks, the lot of 'em.

The usual names showed up. I asked them the various questions and got the usual non-answers. Some of them had mod points but others came along and fixed it. There is an unusual trend in moderating lately.

Suggesting that people take responsibility, make informed choices, and accept the consequences of their actions is seen as trolling. Even though, I assure you, I was not trolling. Speculating that one made an agreement without reading and understanding the details (easily spelled out) is bad form, it seems. Suggesting that one is not entitled to alter an agreement that they made also makes me smug, or so I'm told.

How to elaborate? That was the Netflix proxy banning thing...

"I paid to watch it!"
"No, you paid to watch it while physically in a specific location - you, personally, present in that physical location. You did read the terms of service - right?"
"Don't be fucking smug!"
"You're saying that you are entitled to break the agreement that you signed, entitled for more than you paid for, are entitled to continue to break the rules you know about or should know about, and I'm the smug person? Really?"

That's the gist of it. The moderators gobbled it up. I'm glad they did it to me instead of someone else - I've got karma points to burn. I'm not even sure if it's possible for me to go below the "excellent karma" rating without a very concerted effort. So, it doesn't bother me but I dislike the trend that I'm seeing. It is getting worse and I see it happening more to others than it does to me.

Advocating accountability cuts both ways. If you want the businesses to be accountable, how about accepting some fucking responsibility yourselves? Why the hell are we enforcing immaturity? Why the hell are we attempting to silence (what more is voting down) someone advocating making informed choices and accepting accountability for those choices?

It speaks of a larger societal problem. I noticed a similar trend in many other threads but I also noticed it in the thread concerning Microsoft's gaming convention with scantily clad women. It appears that I'm a bad person for pointing out that nobody was hurt and that this was not the only option for entertainment. See, they weren't obligated to ogle women - that was optional. Not one person was hurt. Being offended was optional and stupid. There's no reason to be offended, outraged, or even unhappy.

Yes, if there were no other sources of amusement then you might be unhappy. If it were during a talk then, by all means, get irate. But this? They're just inventing reasons to be pissed off. I noticed the moderation in that thread as well and it confirms my belief that there are people spending points in absolutely retarded ways. Again, I'm immune - I don't give a shit *except* that it impacts people who do give a shit. That's not cool people, not cool at all.

Think about what you're saying. You're saying that being outraged over non-events is acceptable. You're saying that personal responsibility is not acceptable. You're saying that nobody is allowed to do things you don't like - even if it harms nobody. You're saying that people don't have to make informed choices - and I can tell you that the use of Netflix service is clearly laid out and in plain language. They're quite specific about who the watcher is and where the watcher must be physically located, for example.

If you don't like the rules - don't give them your money. If you give them your money, live by the rules. This is pretty basic and yes, the suggestions go beyond people just using free speech to be unhappy. Saying that you have a right to the content is surely free speech, it's just stupid. You quite clearly do not have that right. Using the products of another person's labor without payment and express permission is slavery. It is all the more amusing when it is done in reverse. The hypocrisy is thick.

Ah well... I'd go on but that's rant enough.

The important thing is that autorefresh still works. Just use this address:
https://slashdot.org/?source=autorefresh

I do wish there were a switch somewhere. I imagine that someone could make such a thing, pretty easily, with GreaseMonkey/ViolentMonkey. Hell, you could probably fit it into Stylish somewhere. Or, you can still just use the URL and have autorefreshing done for you.

It does not appear to work on older pages - by default. You'll have to append the URL manually and then make it autorefresh from there. I can see that being handy - I often only prefer it autorefresh on the home page. I'm often a few pages back (I usually read oldest to newest) so having it refresh and mess things up was sometimes confusing.

I understand that refreshing might actually impact moderation points but I think that's on the articles themselves. Those who fall in the average, for article views, get moderation points - assuming they're eligible, or so I understand. That's how they described it when the system came out. I'm guessing it has made some changes since then. I do not actually use my moderation points so I don't really know.

Nope... I don't moderate at all. Ever. I haven't in a long time. I think the system noticed? I don't get moderation points as often - even though nothing else has really changed. I just don't spend 'em and they seem to stop giving them to me as often. I'm kind of grateful. I do, sometimes, meta-mod but I don't ever moderate. Who am I to judge? Besides, I'd rather say my opinion than signify what others should think of it devoid of any context.

Finally, as some of you know, I'm hoping to go to Cuba. I've got some folks who are trying to help hurry the process along but I went all last week without any new information except that it can take up to 90 days. *sighs* I don't HAVE 90 days and, by then, they'll have been inundated with well-meaning idiots and they'll be shredding the culture to pieces. I'd like to see it before its gone. I've been twice and loved it, I'd like to go officially and be able to have my passport proudly stamped with it. However, I might just fly in to Mexico and then fly over. If I don't give any notice (I'm not gonna admit to it publicly before going) and I just *poof* for a few days - that's probably where I am.

Sadly, I won't be able to tell people before I go. I may get my passport stamped just to piss 'em off at this point. However, I'm not a huge fan of burning bridges unless i have to. But... In the words of the immortal Kurt Vonnegut, "So be it."

There's a chance, today or tomorrow, that I find out that I have the chance to do a little bit of exploring. We shall see and I'll hopefully return with pictures for those who are interested. I don't want to get my hopes up too high but I did crawl out of bed at 0530 to start making some phone calls.

Note: Typed this out last year but never got around to posting it.
        Iâ(TM)ve been meaning to install Linux on this notebook for quite some time, and finally got around to it Friday.
        I started using Linux back in 2002 with Mandrake, and I loved it. They later renamed it Mandriva, and I kept using it. Then I found out that they were disbanding and patches would stop coming, so I switched to kubuntu, which is Ubuntu with a KDE desktop instead of that God-awful Gnome desktop. It ran happily on an old HP tower for years until the old tower had a severe hardware failure. I still need to take its hard drive and video card out and install them in the old Dell, which isnâ(TM)t on my network because itâ(TM)s running XP.
        My first notebook I had like this one was stolen in a burglary five or six years ago. It was the same model as this, and it ran kubuntu very well, far better than its native Windows. With Windows I had to run a program from the ISP to get wi-fi working on it, but it just worked fine on kubuntu without my having to do anything.
        So Friday I put it on this notebook dual-boot, since I need Microsoft Word even though I hate Microsoft Word. Knowing it would take a while I plugged in its power, and plugged it into the network for more speed. It took ten minutes to get my part of the installation done, and watched the news as Linux installed.
        I booted it up when I was done, and egad, KDE! What have you done?! Yes, itâ(TM)s a beautiful desktop, but it isnâ(TM)t the same KDE Iâ(TM)ve been using for almost fifteen years.
        What the hell, you stupid wet behind the ears software designers, are you NUTS? Look, you dumbasses, changing an interface all around for no good reason is just brain-dead stupid. I donâ(TM)t want to learn a brand new God damned interface unless itâ(TM)s instantly recognizable as an improvement, and this is about the same stupid move Microsoft made with Windows Eight. Look, you morons, if I wanted to learn a new interface Iâ(TM)d install Gnome or something.
        Next I wanted to hear music, so I needed on the internet. I tried to connect to my server but simply couldnâ(TM)t get on with the wi-fi. Strangely, I was able to connect with someone elseâ(TM)s unsecured wi-fi. It had gotten on the internet easily with the network card plugged in.
        Someone had said that Libre Office could read and write .doc files well, so I tried it. First I opened an Open Office document, and the font face was some cartoonish sans serif font instead of Gentium Book Basic.
        Then I opened a .doc file, and it opened, although instead of Courier it had a different sans serif face.
        I wanted to get at some files on my external hard drive, so I plugged the network cable in. It indicated a connection, and I could get on the internet through the router, but the external drive didnâ(TM)t show up.
        I doubt thatâ(TM)s the OSâ(TM)s fault, though, since it wouldnâ(TM)t let me connect with my own wi-fi but was fine with someone elseâ(TM)s. Iâ(TM)m pretty sure itâ(TM)s that damned modem-router that the cable company makes me rent. Iâ(TM)d change ISPs if I werenâ(TM)t planning to move next Spring.
        At any rate, KDE now sucks. Someone said XCFE was good, Iâ(TM)ll have to try it.

(Note: I've been way too busy)

Since the arrival of the new overlords, I've observed a trend. It's a good trend, I think?

See, I pay attention to usernames and, with that, I often note the UUID number. Since the announcement that the site has sold, I'm seeing some familiar names that I've not seen in a while. I'm also observing an increased number of posts from folks with a lower number.

There are a variety of reasons that I may be seeing this but, to be clear, I didn't just start paying attention to the names and numbers recently. No, I've been noticing them for years.

At any rate, I dare say that this is a good thing. The articles seem to be improving (from what people are saying - 'snot like I'm a heretic and going to admit to reading them) and the comments seem to be marginally improved but that may be a matter of perception and the latter due to confirmation bias. I suppose that means we can be nice to the new owners of the site.

As an aside, they seem to be aware that they just own the site and only that. I've noted (and mentioned to one of them) that they've not stressed it but I think the attitude is there. They've referred to us as a community as opposed to calling a an audience. That makes me think good things may be in store and it appears that I'm not alone.

If this is mangled, go here.
        I received a strange note, made of cut up magazines pasted to paper and slipped under my door. It read âoeYour muse has been kidnapped. If you want her back, meet under the Facebook Street Bridge after dark. Bring your wallet, passport, and an umbrella.â
        Crap, my muse was gone? I looked, and sure enough it was missing. It's really important to me, so I got my passport, made sure my wallet was in my pocket, and took an umbrella, even though the weatherman said there was no chance of rain. I went to the bridge around sunset and waited.
        The weatherman was wrong. As I waited under the bridge it started pouring. A little after dark a black limousine pulled up, and the rear door opened. âoeGet in,â a woman's voice said. I did.
        A mean looking short haired blonde in the front passenger seat was pointing a very large black handgun at me. âoeYou're not Neo,â the skinny dark haired girl in the back said accusingly.
        âoeMe?â I replied, scared to death. Or scared of death, maybe. âoeNo, I'm mcgrew, I don't know any Neo. I'm missing some property and someone said to wait under this bridge and I could get it back.â
        âoeOh,â said the blonde, putting the gun away. âoeMorpheus said to give you this,â and handed my muse to me!
        I put my muse in my jacket and started to open the door. The blonde had her gun out again. âoeFifty bucks, asshole!â
        I gave her two twenties and a ten. âoeWhy was I told to bring a passport?â I asked. The dark haired skinny girl laughed. âoeMorpheous was just fucking with you. Now get out!â
        I still can't figure out what that was all about...

There's that guy, the HIV drug price gouger guy, named Martin Shkreli. I hadn't been to Cracked in a long time but I was bored and I needed amusement. Holy shit! I'm not usually a violent person and, really, I honestly hadn't given two shits about this story until just now.

That dude has the most punchable face I have ever seen. Seriously, I'd take the $500 fine and time served to punch him in the face. I bet I can break his jaw in just one punch - and I'm just a little fella at exactly 172 pounds (I am almost always exactly that weight) and 5' 11". I'm really just a fairly little person and I'm still reasonably certain that I'd hear a nice satisfying crunchy sound.

I still don't really give a shit about the story and I'm still kind of curious where he's going with this (besides prison) but I really want to crack him in the jaw. How odd, really. I'm normally really not that violent at all. It's not like it'd be a felony so I'd not lose my right to bear arms. I'd not use a weapon or anything. I'd just crack him once in the jaw and then laugh until they came and arrested me. I'd then bail out. I'd plea bargain for time served, a $500 fine, and pay his hospital bills after a civil trial. It'd be so worth it.

Maybe I can get the missus to record it on her phone. I got her a new phone the other day and she's been busy recording most everything that moves and a few things that don't move. I've since suggested she go get a real video recording device so maybe she'll find one that she likes and pick that up. Then, I just need to find Mr. Martin Shkreli and see if he minds if she records it while I crack him in the jaw. I'm a polite person, after all. It'd only be the proper thing to ask his opinion on the matter. He might want the recording for court. It's not like a misdemeanor and a civil trial scare me. Hell, it won't even have been the first time I've been in a situation like that. It will be the first time I've had someone record the evidence.

How does he make it through the day without someone constantly running up and cracking him in the jaw? It's truly the most punchable face that I recall seeing.