This is my Journal.

I have not posted here for a few years.

Time flies when you are pretending to be a zombie in order to fit into the boring parts of society.

Recently I decided to reform my life.

I will soon have more time "to myself", but will I spent more time for writing here?
Only time will tell....

Also, "gravity amplifiers" is a phrase I would love to use in a short hard sci-fi story.
I heard it in a documentary about UFOs recently... "they were powered by anti-matter generators and ... propulsion... gravity amplifies" was how part of it went, I think. (Ellipses where I can't remember the exact words.)

Years ago, in order to help avoid losing an anti-trust lawsuit, Microsoft claimed that Linux (and even Novell Netware, I think) were competitors.

However, it wasn't true then, and, it isn't true now...

It's not scared of Linux and would have no reason to be... the only thing that can compete with Windows is Windows, there's no way anything which causes binary incompatibility with all those applications will ever be a direct competitor.

Linux + Wine isn't enough, because it works with relatively few programs, and requires a copy of windows for best results, anyhow.

Does /. support OpenID?

I just ask because LiveJournal and the google commercial complex (youtube, gmail, blogger, and whatever it will assimilate tomorrow) all do... and with a name like OpenID, you'd think FOSS sites would be keen for it... yeah? Or... no?

I thought that /. had gotten rather pathetic, so this is the first time I've read it in months, if not years. It feels like eons.

The "talking to pirates" thing is especially interesting.

And, does anyone (still) read the /. journals?

I got like 2 replies in the entire time that I've had one.

I thought that I had something to say,
but now I realise,
I really have a many things to do.

Rather than being critical about
some of the problems I see,
I'll create something better.

Or learn something
whilst
trying.

Which would create
a better
me.

If

Tension = stress / strain;

positive stress motivates,
positive strain indicates effort towards acheivement,
dis-stress (anti-positive stress) inhibits thought, action, and "right feeling",
pressure is caused by forces moving against strain; which actually retard effort whilst increasing expended energy for the same result.

That's my theory (partially) so far, which can be re-written as:

Personal Tension = (stress less dis-tress) / ( strain less pressure)

Relaxation comes, thusly, in two forms: stress/strain and dis-tress/pressure. Why the latter? Well, that's stockholm syndrome type relaxation... security to follow vs. freedom and opportunity to achieve.

(Relaxation is positive P.T; Despair is sub-zero P.T.)

I don't think anyone even reads /. journals.

So I'll blog and journalize on k5 from now one, unless I get comments that suggest otherwise...

So if you are reading this, leave a comment saying so... .

You said:

"Even by MS's own figures, Xbox Live players are still very much the minority of Xbox owners, so why is 40-50% of the gameplay that people are paying for only available to them?"

My opinion:

Although they're a very small minority in terms of sales, they carry more clout in terms of marketing, and marketing ability is what drives the games esp. on XBOX360, with it's US-centric (and thus, advertising-centric) philosophy:

1. online gaming is still 'buzzy', and many game purchases are influenced by this buzz. Even though you might not play it online, someone who knowns nothing to little about games (parents, spouse, etc.) might still buy it just because it says so and they know you "have the Internet" (they won't know that XBox Live is a different service).

2. XBox Live is a different service... which means you have to pay for it, perhaps, which means more money for the XBox makers.

3. it's easier to make a platform for multiplayer networked games than it is to make a self-contained world that one or may people (some as players, some as spectators) can enjoy.

4. it's less work (less artwork, etc.) if there's less single-player longevity. Not only can you download updates, but you can trust that people who look for variety in the "social" aspects will not so much mind the monotony or limited variety...

Remember, it's to make money and sell units; pleasing you is just done enough to sell you stuff, not enough to "make you happy".

A short while ago, I watched an episode of the new Dr. Who series. The signifigant thing about this is that I've previously never watched an entire episode of Dr. Who. I think the old series used to scare me with its eerie music and stuff (I was much younger then) and the new series just airs at some weird times; I only managed to catch it because I was channel surfing while waiting for "Firestarter" to show on TNT and there it was on a feed of Canada's CBC Toronto, or something.

So, it occurs to me that Dr.Who is like "sci-fi for dummies", which is probally why everyone likes it so much. I mean, the plot was simple and the allusion to present day events was obvious, and the science isn't really that great, it's just a plot point.

This isn't a bad thing... sometimes it's nice to have something light to watch. However, I wonder if anyone really looks at the deeper meaning, even when it was so obvious. For example, the episode I watched was about a satellite/TV channel in the future which had been used to mold the uman race, for 91 years or so, into compliant slaves that would never rebell against their alien masters. Or something like that.

So, this could be analogous to many things, but the recent "crimes against computing" stories really show that people making the decisions in technology and people who implement those decisions are largely at odds. To put it another way, it's like if aliens run the big corporations, but another brand of aliens actually do the work. People who aren't directly involved in stuff like implementing the DRM for iTunes or selling hotmail to Micrpsoft might think "hey, I'm different, I work with Open Source stuff..." or whatever, but remember that the majority of slaves just "do their job", it's only a few that do any dirty work. ... but there's better work that most people could be doing. And I don't mean keeping a fuss and demanding that Windows be Open Source or something. I mean looking at the products they buy, and asking "why are these limits here"?

Just a few years ago, every motherboard was Socket 7 in consumer space. You had AMD, Intel, NEC (well, socker 5 at least...), and a few other minory producers doing CPUs. Now, everything is either AMD or Intel or embedded. There's less diversity in the CPU space... but we just keep buying them without asking if the world won't be better if there was more of the same commoditisation that built the PC Hardware concept in the first place.

Although, was it really the PCs hardware design that won out, or was it Micrsoft's push to get DOS to run CP/M programs, and then their push to get PCs to look and perform better than Macs? Not that I like Microsoft, but in order to sell Windows and Office products, they pushsed a hardware platform that they came to have influence over. Outside the US, they were a driving force behind MSX, which didn't come stateside except for a derivative, the Sega Master System, which only had a 2% share against the NES but still lead to Sega becoming a big player, eventually, with some re-org and the Genesis and later on, the Dreamcast. The Dreamcast which Microsoft also had a minor role in, software wise, before they brought out the X-BOX.

All this ranting is just to say that there's nothing wrong with OSS or pretending that the world is run by people; but in terms of mindsets, the world is run by aliens and populated by droids; and it's people that make decisions that affect the present and future... living in a world that is more and more restrictive is not nearly as exciting as the sci-fi movies make it seem, because there is no revolution when droids in human bodies want to be slaves.

There's nothing much to say.

It's hot, I've gotten a lot of stuff done,and there's yet more to do. My ability to set priorities has greatly improved. I'm almost totally over that "cold-like thing", where I was coughing and stuff, triggered by fatigue, overwork, and working with excessively violent dust.

I'm making this entry because I miss working on tech. stuff... but I'm on track to resume those types of activies.

On the Anime font, I just finished watching "Karin" and "... no Shana", the latter I'll get the proper name for later if you're interested. ... but, unlike k5, the diary/journal section on /. is fairly dead. So I might stop posting here altoghter.

Instead, check out: [ http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/k31/diary ], which actually gets responses and seems somewhat intelligent, and is fun, lately.

Must be a sign of positve changes, and the arrival of a Great Era.

I've been playing starcraft. what would it be like if I
had a lua console builtin?

Most of my journal entries here have been, at best, little notes to myself. I don't really think anyone reads this space, and most of the time, I forget I have it, totally.

However, right now I feel that the last post, back in feb. 2006, needs a bit more (or less) to follow it.

You see, something is wrong with "my space". Not the website, but I more mean my room and so forth. However, to be more precise, it's that something is amiss with my "energy system" and I see it manifested more clearly in space which is basically static and which I can control more precisely.

What it is, indirectly, is that I'm dealing with people who have undiagnosed mental illnesses from day to day, and it is "getting to me"; but not nearly as much as it used to, say, three years ago. So overall I'm actually proud of my personal development in gaining partial immunity to "them", "those crazy people", but I am still striving to eliminate both the effects and the frequency of my interaction with them.

Here are some things which are small in themselves, but weird, and somewhat recent:

- Since Sunday, 2 April, 2006, a local politician's office has had a dead cat and dead toad lying in front of the secondary (mostly disused) entrance to the front yard. The toad, no-one seemed to notice at all, but the dead cat calmly decayed until the present. I'm not sure , but I think this is a health and safety violation. More weird is that I've never seen that happen before. Dead animals don't litter the streets here; you call the sanitation department and they take care of it. However, for some reason, no-one has done either the former or the latter, for more than a week.

- This guy who's a quasi-supervisor at a local cinema, where I was training to be a Projectionist (they call it "operator" there, for some reason - must be the culture of that particular business), called me in the middle of the night. Actually, he called at least a dozen times, but I didn't notice until I got up for a snack and saw my cell phone wanted my attention. Upon answering, he accused his girlfriend of being there, saying that he had reliable news that it was true.

Somehow, I was in a calm mood... I probally thought it was an April Fool's joke... and explained to him that if he thought his girlfriend was with me, then he was a total idiot. Mind you, I've seen the chick twice, when he asked me to accompany him to visit her. She treats him with the scant disrespect that one usually reserves for annoying pests like mosquitoes or dead cats on the sidewalk, even shunning physical contact with him. However, it seems the guy is stuck on memories of when they had a better relationship and, moreover, paranoid and delusional as to their current status.

In my opinion, she's the last girl I'd associate myself with; but the weird thing is that he ended the conversation by changing tone and going "well, okay, I'll see you soon then" as if he hadn't insulted me majorly, woken me up in the middle of the night, and believed a rumour over me.

- And then he called back the next evening with the same accusation. So I explecated in his direction, and resolved to shun him in the future.

- According to my cell phone, he and/or some chick that he wants me to drop home or something have called at least 30 times in the last 3 hours or so. They don't leave a message,they just hang up and call back. Talk about definition of insanity. Needless to say, I'm not answering. I don't do favours for insane people... at least not for free, and certainly not when they take me for granted.

It seems I forgot to fix the space.

This is interesting http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060201/ap_on_hi_te/software_piracy;_ylt=Ap31tkoLLZhIz.lkBTLbyJAh2.cA;_ylu=X3oDMTA4ZnRnZjhkBHNlYwMxNjk1, as it mentions my two favourite islands: Austrailia and Barbados. And, no, I'm not connected in anyway.

Of course, most people consider .au an island-continent, whatever that means, but six is also half-dozen, unless you're a baker.

Update: a local (Barbados) newspaper ran a front-page article which declared that the rumours of a Barbadian being extradited are just rumours, and that no formal request has been made from the FBI.

However, it might just have been delayed in red tape. Eventually the truth may probally surface.

For most people, the fear of public speaking is worse than the fear of death. At least, that's what books written about half a century ago tell me. That probally only applies to middle-class people who grew up in those days.

I don't like keeping a journal, wheter offline or online. But I try to do both because it is good to have. Occasionally I read something I wrote and I remember something positive which I forgot, or I notice how I've grown over time. For the most part, though, I tend to want to erase what I've written afterwards.

I found a link to an article about the HIV virus: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4642940.stm on the BBC's website. Its a short article but basically they're claiming that the virus is smaller than the wavelength of light, varies in diameter up to 3 times, and is basically genetic material wrapped in protein. As are all viruses.

I don't know much about biology... but it seems to me that viruses are ananlogous to people with problems and sex appeal: when you try to eat them, they reprogram you. Or as one guy said "[evil girls] fuck with your mind, not just your body".

I recently fired up VC++ and wrtoe some trivial code using the STL. It seems most of my spare time's been spent programming; I've done other stuff but most of my notebooks, besides school work, are filled with the stuff.

There's also this journal that makes me look really depressed; but although that may be apparent what it really is is caring too much about other people's stuff. To be more self-focused, self-centered, and generally uncaring would probally be my new years' resolutions, if I made any. That's more important than, say, finding better people to hang with because I can't really choose my family or, to a degree, co-workers. Coping strategies and healthier emotional habits thus become more important.

One of my friends who I was once really close to died a few days ago, also. On my mother's birthday, actually. I guess she's in a lot less pain now... the dead chick, I mean, although (unrelatedly) my mother seems happier as well. She tends to celebrate birthdays for a month.