Slashdot

I hadn't taken time to journal about this because of my electronic mishaps yesterday and the big ass birthday party of my father in law on Saturday, and the matching hangover Sunday.

Anyway, as you know every second Saturday is my dumpster diving day. Simply, because about every second week, I have enough recyclables to bring there. When I approached the electronics bin, a nasty little red paper pasted on the bin caught my eye. It was titles "Avis Important". I have of course no copy of it, but it essentially said that it was prohibited to touch anything in the electronics dumpster at the risk of getting banned from the premises. There was evidently no reason given. Not only that was forbidden, but taking anything from their "store" (they have a "store" where objects that are still functional can be taken free of charge, but at best you'll find a shoddy inkjet printer there. The rest is books, toys, china, etc, etc...) and selling it for profit is a big no-no too. Sure, I understand that, but it's an unenforceable condition. There was also a line about not being allowed on the premises after closing time, which is also a bit like a "Duh!" to me.

There was however one line that pissed me of and it was the fact that it is forbidden to ask another "customer" of the recycling centre for the goods they want to dump. Reminds you of something?. I bet that line was added because of me. That computer didn't even touch the dumpster, but apparently driving on their premises with your trash already makes your trash their trash.

I'm sorry, but since primary school I've been trained that trash-avoidance and reuse are Good Things. How is this even remotely reconcilable with the mission of a recycling center, being: protect the environment and recycle. I repeat: re-usage is the best recycling.

Computers are not like defect microwaves because they consist of a number of "modules" that could still be working and can be reused. Even better, a computer taken apart from its parts could avoid future trash because it could provide parts for a defective computer that otherwise would end up in the trash. On top of that, these parts are highly toxic and hard to recycle. Re-usage is simply the best way. I won't even begin about the fact that computers are thrown away purely based on software problenms.

I am seriously thinking about writing the management of the recycling centre [Warning, horrible website]) a polite lettre about my concerns. If that doesn't help, I'll simply write a readers-lettre to the biggest newspaper in the country.

I simply think it's outrageous. On the other hand, I might want first to check with a lawyer if dumpster diving is theft in my country. Even if it is, does that make my trash in their dumpster, their trash or my trash?

I took the machine of a friend of my sister to repair. Turned out the power supply was flaky, and he knew it. Since I wanted to continue to reinstall the machine, I took one of my power supplies and hooked it up "alongside" the case if you know what I mean. After all, the machine was nicely cabled and I didn't want to mess it up, and he is definitely capable of replacing it himself.

Today, I was satisfied with the installation and I decided to remove my power supply and hook up his defective one. Then happens, what had to happen... These stupid modern graphics card need a power supply connection, and wiggling off the connector, I touched a capacitor with my fingers and it snapped off. Fuck! Note that the capacitor was on one of the worst possible places next to the connector: exactly where you'd touch for fastening the connector. This is -of course- an AGP card, and a limited edition platinum edition one. Nowhere in hell am I going to be able to replace it.

I think, that from now on, I will abstain opening anyones computer. This will set me back couple of hundred euros, simply because of bad luck and because I like to help people. I should have stopped working on that computer the day that the power supply gave up. It's not that I can't handle hardware, but I have no insurance for such mishaps.

Software, no problem... Hardware? Go to a computer shop or do it yourself. The worst is, I feel bad about it.

Slashdot sometimes gets on my nerves. I see people using "weather" when they mean "whether", using "capitol" when they mean "capital", "principal" when they mean "principle", "then" when they mean "than" and those are just the ones I just remembered on the spot.

And then, when I venture on the more popular sites frequented by non-geeks, I must always admit that slashdot is a place where people actually are smart. It astonishes me to no end how bad the comments are on other sites, with horrible spelling, inappropriate use of expressions, no capitalization, and horrible SMS-like spelling.

Look now what happened to me over at youtube: Trip to the Large Hadron Collider by Phil Plait, aka "The Bad Astronomer". He is American, a scientist, and in his video he uses the metric system. Naturally, I make a comment jesting that Americans won't understand him because of that. I even add a smilie to make it evident that I'm joking.

What must happen, happens and this kohoro71971 guy comes along and throws a hissy fit that Americans know metres. I know that, Phil surely knows metric, don't you think? So, this guy insults me, doesn't use capitalization, writes "meters" instead of "metres" (okay, this is most likely a US vs British English issue). I reply that in fact I was joking and that the smilie indicates exactly that. In that reply he doesn't even get his expressions right! "pick fun at Americans"... He either means, "pick on Americans" or "poke fun at Americans". I can't decide which one. He wrote exactly two sentences and managed to make him like an utter idiot.

Slashdot is the centre of civil, courteous and well written discussion compared to pretty much everything out there. Sometimes, I wonder how people still manage to remember how to breathe with the level of intelligence they demonstrate.

Aaaagh, I need to get off the Internet. It's bad for my blood pressure.

Of course, xkcd has already commented it... ;-)

Well, for now I'm still programming some C at work. At least it's a bit motivating. Now, for the thing I need to make, I need a network connection and thus use sockets. I was initially a bit scared of it, because I've never done network programming in C. Besides, back when Java was launched, the word was that "nerworking is so much simpeler on Java" so I was naturally a bit scared.

Frankly, that's a load of bullshit. Creating and communicating over sockets in C is really straighforward and easy. Okay, it took a while before I found the shutdown function, but everything has got a learning curve. Frankly, the way sockets work in C feels much more natural than what Java does and I've been programming Java for 10 years.

That itching on my chin must be my greybeard that starts to grow ;-)

Last Saturday we had a party here and my wife "cleaned" a bit. That's all fine and dandy, but I don't find my Playstation Portable Games anymore. That sucks... In less that 7h, I'll be on my way to Munich for a long weekend.