So, damn it, summer is here. It's no surprise, of course, and even if I forgot the order in which seasons come, the news and weather stations never stop reminding you, moaning and faking orgasms at the mere mention of 20+ temperatures and bitching about how long a winter it was – even though the first flake of snow didn't fall until January and all but melted by March.
Word on the street is that people like summer, and I can't imagine why. I'm in no hurry to open my car door and be blasted with the heat of an oven, the seats reeking with absorbed sweat and the leather wheel too hot to touch. I'm in no hurry to have the sun wait to set until 9:30 and then rise at 5:30, depriving me of two and a half hours of sleep. I'm in no hurry to sit in a sweltering class, where I rest my arm on my binder while the professor speaks, so the paper sticks to my arm and tears out of the rings when I try to move my arm to write something. I'm in no hurry to get bees trying to nest in my eavestrough, or to get thousands of spiders coming together to fornicate in my mailbox, where they can't be blasted with Raid because that'd soak the mail and probably violate the new pesticide laws. I'm in no hurry to hear lawnmowers and hedge trimmers 'round the clock every weekend, sporadically interrupted by people bitching about how the lack of rain has made their lawns yellow – even though they bitch when it rains. I'm in no hurry to have the power, internet, cable, and/or phones cut out during and after every storm.
At least in the fall and winter you can regulate your temperature to exactly what you want. It's a little cold? Put on a sweater and swap your jeans for some insulated cargo pants. Wherever you've gone out to has the heat on? Take your sweater off. But what can you do in the summer if you're already in a t-shirt and shorts and it's still hot and humid, as it always is? The law says you can't wear much less than that in public or around your kids. And of course, you can't turn the air conditioning on anymore, because using electricity for any reason is the Eighth Deadly Sin these days. So you sweat like a pig all day, only to come home and stick to your chair, getting diaper rash, and at the end of the day try to fall asleep with the annoying whirring of the energy-efficient fan doing a poor job of blowing hot air at your blanketless body. The whole house, like your car seat, reeks of all the sweat that every fabric surface has absorbed, which of course means cleaning and washing all weekend and hosing everything down in Febreze – which some people claim causes cancer. Yippee.
Most of my readers are probably American, or at the very least have warmer climates than Canada, so you need to understand the uniquely frustrating part of dealing with these summerlovers up here. They bitch about winter and fake orgasms about summer, and it always leads me to wonder: why did they even move here? If you don't like cold, GET OUT OF CANADA. Move down to Florida or Texas or something, and enjoy your tornadoes and tropical diseases.
So now, there's nothing left to do but count the days until fall, and then winter - when the sun rises and sets at a reasonable hour, allowing you to actually get a full night's sleep; when you can add or remove clothes to be at exactly the temperature you want; when you don't sweat on anything and therefore nothing sticks to you and your house doesn't reek; when people finally shut up about using electricity to alter the temperature of your house, due to it being 20 below outside so you either turn the furnace on or die; when having your hot coffee or tea in the morning is actually refreshing, rather than just being a caffeine delivery system; when all insects are dead or hibernating; when lawnmowers and hedge trimmers are forgotten, and if even if a neighbor has a snowblower, they make a hell of a lot less noise so who cares; etc.
And you know, I'm willing to bet that a lot less teen pregnancies occur in the winter months. Cold weather means not being able to go out dressed like a whore. But that's an entry for another day.
So, here's counting the days to the Autumnal Equinox. 115 to go!
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 16, 2009
HealthFirst Bodybeneficiallé Yogurt, by Tsaalyo Foods Corps
Has anyone else noticed this insane prebiotic/probiotic yogurt fad? Every other commercial is about a brand of them. They’re really indicative of how blindly people follow what health food commercials tell them, because they’re not even using real words anymore. Look at Danon, for example. They flaunt their yogurt having “L. casei Defensis”. See that? See the etymology there? Oohh, “defense”! It’s Latin-sounding and it defends! Buy buy buy! Wow.
Now, that IS an actual strain of bacteria, but it just goes to show that the average consumer knows jack all about the actual ingredients listed on the sides of things. If that ingredient was listed by a proper name, people would be terrified of it. See: Dihydrogen Monoxide.
Of courses, Danon isn’t the only one exploiting the stupidity of the health food sheep. Astro, another yogurt brand, has a new yogurt called “Biobest Maximmunité.” Wow.
This really is sad. Most consumers have no idea what pre or probiotics are, and are led around like sheep by nice sounding names, while scared away by anything complicated sounding. Because, you know, if you personally don’t know what it is, it’s inherently bad. Don’t research, just assume the worst.
I’m just waiting for one of these yogurts to be linked to colon cancer. You know something like that will happen eventually, what with all the crap that’s put into that creamy slop and marketed as good. Remember how aspartame was flaunted as a zero calorie sugar substitute? Yeah, now we know that it causes cancer. You never hear about aspartame anymore. But of course, now we have Splenda, another zero calorie sugar substitute. I’m taking bets on how long before THAT is linked to some terminal ailment too.
And you know, the yogurts also flaunt how there are no artificial preservatives or ingredients of any kind. I find that delightfully hypocritical, how “preservatives” – which are of course never elaborated on by the commercials nor researched by the consumers – are crucified, while artificial sugars and butters and whatnot are praised. And when those artificial things lead to detrimental health effects, wouldn’t you know it, the effects of MSG and the like are exaggerated and based largely on anecdotal reports, while the effects of aspartame and the like are swept under the rug. If you want to have an all natural diet, great, I commend you for that. But don’t be a hypocrite. Have your unsweetened apple juice, your whole wheat bread, and avoid fast food, but at the same time, avoid yogurt, chocolate, "healthy" water flavorings like Crystal Lite, diet anything, and use real butter, real sugar, real vegetable oil, real milk, real eggs, and so on. Substitutes for those are just as iffy as those evil preservatives. And by the way, don’t shell out the big bucks for eggs with Omega 3. When you cook any food containing Omega 3, the fat burns away. So unless you plan on drinking the eggs raw, you’re not getting any Omega 3 from them. Why do you think we never hear about them anymore? Swept under the rug, just like aspartame.
So, I’m asking you people, who haven’t realized this already, to wake up and smell the fad. I remember a time when saturated fats were the enemy. Every commercial told you to avoid them. Then, carbs became the enemy. Then, trans fats, which are no worse than saturated fats and are actually found in far lower quantities than saturated fats in most foods, but apparently they’re sooooo bad now. And now, we’re being told to guzzle yogurt, because the brandname is healthy sounding.
Wake up and realize that to be basically healthy, the key is simply to not overeat. Yeah, if you eat a McDonald’s dinner for every meal of the day, you’re gonna gain weight. That holds true for basically every dinner food. That doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is the devil. You can go there, and you get the double Big Mac, supersize the fries (they’re back btw, now that the Supersize Me thing was pushed aside for the newest pop culture bullshit), ask for no ice in your soda so you get more of the actual drink, and you can eat yourself to oblivion. You’ll likely be so full you’ll just have a sandwich or something for dinner. Have plenty of water in a day, take multivitamins and some mineral supplements and whatnot, try to keep under 2000 calories in most days, and you’ll be just generally healthy. Will your cholesterol be higher than someone who eats salad for every meal? Of course. But is living an extra two months really worth that? Those two months when you’re like 78, laying on your deathbed and hit with Alzheimer’s, your family sitting around the bed crying because you don’t know who they are? Enjoy those two months, health nazi. You’ve earned’em.
Now, that IS an actual strain of bacteria, but it just goes to show that the average consumer knows jack all about the actual ingredients listed on the sides of things. If that ingredient was listed by a proper name, people would be terrified of it. See: Dihydrogen Monoxide.
Of courses, Danon isn’t the only one exploiting the stupidity of the health food sheep. Astro, another yogurt brand, has a new yogurt called “Biobest Maximmunité.” Wow.
This really is sad. Most consumers have no idea what pre or probiotics are, and are led around like sheep by nice sounding names, while scared away by anything complicated sounding. Because, you know, if you personally don’t know what it is, it’s inherently bad. Don’t research, just assume the worst.
I’m just waiting for one of these yogurts to be linked to colon cancer. You know something like that will happen eventually, what with all the crap that’s put into that creamy slop and marketed as good. Remember how aspartame was flaunted as a zero calorie sugar substitute? Yeah, now we know that it causes cancer. You never hear about aspartame anymore. But of course, now we have Splenda, another zero calorie sugar substitute. I’m taking bets on how long before THAT is linked to some terminal ailment too.
And you know, the yogurts also flaunt how there are no artificial preservatives or ingredients of any kind. I find that delightfully hypocritical, how “preservatives” – which are of course never elaborated on by the commercials nor researched by the consumers – are crucified, while artificial sugars and butters and whatnot are praised. And when those artificial things lead to detrimental health effects, wouldn’t you know it, the effects of MSG and the like are exaggerated and based largely on anecdotal reports, while the effects of aspartame and the like are swept under the rug. If you want to have an all natural diet, great, I commend you for that. But don’t be a hypocrite. Have your unsweetened apple juice, your whole wheat bread, and avoid fast food, but at the same time, avoid yogurt, chocolate, "healthy" water flavorings like Crystal Lite, diet anything, and use real butter, real sugar, real vegetable oil, real milk, real eggs, and so on. Substitutes for those are just as iffy as those evil preservatives. And by the way, don’t shell out the big bucks for eggs with Omega 3. When you cook any food containing Omega 3, the fat burns away. So unless you plan on drinking the eggs raw, you’re not getting any Omega 3 from them. Why do you think we never hear about them anymore? Swept under the rug, just like aspartame.
So, I’m asking you people, who haven’t realized this already, to wake up and smell the fad. I remember a time when saturated fats were the enemy. Every commercial told you to avoid them. Then, carbs became the enemy. Then, trans fats, which are no worse than saturated fats and are actually found in far lower quantities than saturated fats in most foods, but apparently they’re sooooo bad now. And now, we’re being told to guzzle yogurt, because the brandname is healthy sounding.
Wake up and realize that to be basically healthy, the key is simply to not overeat. Yeah, if you eat a McDonald’s dinner for every meal of the day, you’re gonna gain weight. That holds true for basically every dinner food. That doesn’t mean that McDonald’s is the devil. You can go there, and you get the double Big Mac, supersize the fries (they’re back btw, now that the Supersize Me thing was pushed aside for the newest pop culture bullshit), ask for no ice in your soda so you get more of the actual drink, and you can eat yourself to oblivion. You’ll likely be so full you’ll just have a sandwich or something for dinner. Have plenty of water in a day, take multivitamins and some mineral supplements and whatnot, try to keep under 2000 calories in most days, and you’ll be just generally healthy. Will your cholesterol be higher than someone who eats salad for every meal? Of course. But is living an extra two months really worth that? Those two months when you’re like 78, laying on your deathbed and hit with Alzheimer’s, your family sitting around the bed crying because you don’t know who they are? Enjoy those two months, health nazi. You’ve earned’em.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Windows Useless... I mean, Windows 7
The Beta has been there for a while, ready for free download and testing if you've got a spare computer lying around or have enough spare time to set up a partition. And now, Release Candidate is here.
I've been looking at dozens of reviews, and just like with Vista, so many people seem to be brainwashed by all the pretty colors and seemingly innovative but actually useless new features. Things like sticky notes – little stickynote-shaped things that you put on your desktop, and write stuff on so you remember something when you come back to the computer. Gee, I thought we already had an extremely simple text application that could serve this purpose. But I guess Notepad isn't stickynote-shaped, so clearly it's useless.
Another such feature is the ability to highlight a portion of the screen and save it right there as an image, eliminating the need to press Print Screen and paste it in an image editing program. A nice feature, were it not for the fact that this feature saves with the quality that Paint does anyway! For those of us that actually have standards, we'll still be Print Screening and pasting in Photoshop.
Aero Snaps: You drag a window to the left or right side of a screen, and it resizes to the side of that screen. Top to bottom, but from the side to the center of the screen. Or, you can drag the window to the top, and it maximizes the window. I had no idea simply clicking the little Maximize button was such a nuisance.
Aero Shake: If you have several windows open, you grab one of them and jerk it back and forth, and it minimizes all the others. Do this again, and it brings the others back up. Not only is this fairly useless, but I can already see a bunch of people inadvertently setting this feature off and minimizing/maximizing all their stuff without wanting to.
Aero Peek: This feature makes all your windows transparent, allowing for a look at your desktop. I guess if you enjoy having memory-hogging widgets all over your desktop you'll find this feature useful.
Device Stage: A new feature where you plug in a peripheral that's compatible with Windows 7, and an icon for it will appear in the taskbar. Click it, and a window will pop up telling you all the things you can do. Play files, add files, etc. This window will also tell you applicable information for the specific device, such as the power remaining on your MP3 player, and how much free space is left. Useful, but I can't help but think that a person who plugs in a USB will simply use the popup window right there to do what he wants.
Bitlocker To Go: This is a security feature for your USB flash drives and external harddrives. It puts a password on the drive, which has to be entered to view the files. This works on every Windows 7 machine you use, which is good. But this means that your drives will be read-only on older versions of Windows. Another move to add to Microsoft's history of trying to force people to upgrade and monopolize the market without getting busted for it. As a side note, I have NEVER saved anything as a .docx or any of the other filetypes designed to drive OpenOffice and other free/non Microsoft suites out of the market, and I never will.
Windows 7 comes with a Windows Media Player, which has a new user interface. Need I say more? Jesus, Microsoft, leave WMP alone. But that isn't to say this new version doesn't have new features. For example, it comes with a feature called “miniplayer”, which shrinks the playing window very small. So lets say you're watching a movie while doing other things that take up the majority of your screen, you can use this feature. Yeah, you know how often THAT happens, right? Well, if it's such a pressing issue, why not just resize the window manually? Is clicking and dragging such a hard thing to do? Why then do we have Aero Snaps trying to do away with clicking the Maximize button?
Windows 7 hypes their improvements of the taskbar. For starters, it's about twice as tall. That means it's BETTER!
But that aside, for example, you can drag an application to the taskbar, and the application will be given a shortcut there, allowing it to be launched with a click. This is different from the Quicklaunch toolbar... how? Well, it takes up more space than the Quicklaunch toolbar, I guess that's a difference.
The other massively hyped feature in the new taskbar are the Jump Lists. Right click on one of those quicklaunched icons, and a list of recently accessed documents for that program will pop up, saving you the trouble of first opening the program and then going to File > Open Recent. This works from the Start menu too. I can see how this would be useful, but is this feature worth buying a new operating system for? It won't take long for a third party to whip up a freeware program to do this just as well. Or maybe Firefox and Linux have spoiled me in that assumption.
But I could go on all day and highlight all the seemingly innovative but mostly useless new features that Windows 7 offers – features for speech recognition (which we've already had free programs for since the first Ninja Turtles movie), touchscreen compatibility (because using a mouse is too hard), new networking features such as Homegroup (features which normal people don't need and networking gurus spit on for trying to overly simplify rather than using industry-standard terminology), etc. Rather than go into detail on all that, let's look at the basic thing that Windows 7, like all of Microsoft's recent products, does.
It makes you relearn everything you want to do.
Remember how the Ribbon system in Office 2007 forced you to relearn how to do even the most basic things you wanted to do? Well, now it's been implemented into Paint and Wordpad as well. For simple programs like these the system works better, but simple programs like these also had a much smaller toolbar up top. Now you have that big, honking ribbon up there, eating up twice as much workspace as the old system.
And really, so many things in 7 are rearranged just for the sake of rearranging. Nothing is actually improved; the thing that was once on the left side is now across the top. Kudos, Microsoft, you've changed my life and tripled my productivity.
Windows 7 is basically a polished version of Vista. It's the same basic operating system. What does that mean? It means that all of Vista's compatibility issues will be present in Windows 7, simple as that. Those programs you need, those games you want, that laser color printer that's only 4 years old so there's no reason at all to upgrade, say goodbye. Nobody has noticed because nobody is using the Beta to actually do all their day-to-day work, but the fact of the matter is still there. Windows 7 is Vista with a fresh coat of Oxy-Clean, so anything you had trouble with in Vista will still be there.
Some of my critics will point out that it's those hardware and software manufacturer's responsibility to make patches for compatibility. It can come down to support from the game company or product-in-general company, yes, but simply put: not our problem. There are programs, games, and peripherals that are upwards of a decade old that a surprising number of people still use because there's just no reason to fix what isn't broken or because it's still fun to play, and it's impossible to rewrite an operating system from the ground up while still being fully compatible with every one of them. That's why Vista failed and that's why Windows 7 will fail. Well, that, and the memory hogging, useless features and shiny things.
Now, Microsoft can take suggestions from users on programs to try to make compatibility patches for, or to contact the companies of to have them do it, but I seriously doubt that'll happen. The Xbox 360 can still only play a handful of original Xbox titles, and most of them are laggy and barely playable, if at all. If Microsoft cares this little about backwards compatibility of their own products, imagine how little they give a damn about the products of other companies.
In closing, XP added many actually useful features. Primarily, plug-and-play compatibility with most USB peripherals. Nothing new in 7 is that useful, and hell, very little of the new things in 7 are useful at all. It's all memory-hogging shiny things, mildly amusing but basically useless new features, incompatibility with any non-mainstream software, and a big price tag. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 7, as I'm predicting it'll be the OS that finally cracks Microsoft's stranglehold on the industry. Then we can get some new minds on fixing the last of Ubuntu's problems, and move on from these dark ages of proprietary operating systems.
I've been looking at dozens of reviews, and just like with Vista, so many people seem to be brainwashed by all the pretty colors and seemingly innovative but actually useless new features. Things like sticky notes – little stickynote-shaped things that you put on your desktop, and write stuff on so you remember something when you come back to the computer. Gee, I thought we already had an extremely simple text application that could serve this purpose. But I guess Notepad isn't stickynote-shaped, so clearly it's useless.
Another such feature is the ability to highlight a portion of the screen and save it right there as an image, eliminating the need to press Print Screen and paste it in an image editing program. A nice feature, were it not for the fact that this feature saves with the quality that Paint does anyway! For those of us that actually have standards, we'll still be Print Screening and pasting in Photoshop.
Aero Snaps: You drag a window to the left or right side of a screen, and it resizes to the side of that screen. Top to bottom, but from the side to the center of the screen. Or, you can drag the window to the top, and it maximizes the window. I had no idea simply clicking the little Maximize button was such a nuisance.
Aero Shake: If you have several windows open, you grab one of them and jerk it back and forth, and it minimizes all the others. Do this again, and it brings the others back up. Not only is this fairly useless, but I can already see a bunch of people inadvertently setting this feature off and minimizing/maximizing all their stuff without wanting to.
Aero Peek: This feature makes all your windows transparent, allowing for a look at your desktop. I guess if you enjoy having memory-hogging widgets all over your desktop you'll find this feature useful.
Device Stage: A new feature where you plug in a peripheral that's compatible with Windows 7, and an icon for it will appear in the taskbar. Click it, and a window will pop up telling you all the things you can do. Play files, add files, etc. This window will also tell you applicable information for the specific device, such as the power remaining on your MP3 player, and how much free space is left. Useful, but I can't help but think that a person who plugs in a USB will simply use the popup window right there to do what he wants.
Bitlocker To Go: This is a security feature for your USB flash drives and external harddrives. It puts a password on the drive, which has to be entered to view the files. This works on every Windows 7 machine you use, which is good. But this means that your drives will be read-only on older versions of Windows. Another move to add to Microsoft's history of trying to force people to upgrade and monopolize the market without getting busted for it. As a side note, I have NEVER saved anything as a .docx or any of the other filetypes designed to drive OpenOffice and other free/non Microsoft suites out of the market, and I never will.
Windows 7 comes with a Windows Media Player, which has a new user interface. Need I say more? Jesus, Microsoft, leave WMP alone. But that isn't to say this new version doesn't have new features. For example, it comes with a feature called “miniplayer”, which shrinks the playing window very small. So lets say you're watching a movie while doing other things that take up the majority of your screen, you can use this feature. Yeah, you know how often THAT happens, right? Well, if it's such a pressing issue, why not just resize the window manually? Is clicking and dragging such a hard thing to do? Why then do we have Aero Snaps trying to do away with clicking the Maximize button?
Windows 7 hypes their improvements of the taskbar. For starters, it's about twice as tall. That means it's BETTER!
But that aside, for example, you can drag an application to the taskbar, and the application will be given a shortcut there, allowing it to be launched with a click. This is different from the Quicklaunch toolbar... how? Well, it takes up more space than the Quicklaunch toolbar, I guess that's a difference.
The other massively hyped feature in the new taskbar are the Jump Lists. Right click on one of those quicklaunched icons, and a list of recently accessed documents for that program will pop up, saving you the trouble of first opening the program and then going to File > Open Recent. This works from the Start menu too. I can see how this would be useful, but is this feature worth buying a new operating system for? It won't take long for a third party to whip up a freeware program to do this just as well. Or maybe Firefox and Linux have spoiled me in that assumption.
But I could go on all day and highlight all the seemingly innovative but mostly useless new features that Windows 7 offers – features for speech recognition (which we've already had free programs for since the first Ninja Turtles movie), touchscreen compatibility (because using a mouse is too hard), new networking features such as Homegroup (features which normal people don't need and networking gurus spit on for trying to overly simplify rather than using industry-standard terminology), etc. Rather than go into detail on all that, let's look at the basic thing that Windows 7, like all of Microsoft's recent products, does.
It makes you relearn everything you want to do.
Remember how the Ribbon system in Office 2007 forced you to relearn how to do even the most basic things you wanted to do? Well, now it's been implemented into Paint and Wordpad as well. For simple programs like these the system works better, but simple programs like these also had a much smaller toolbar up top. Now you have that big, honking ribbon up there, eating up twice as much workspace as the old system.
And really, so many things in 7 are rearranged just for the sake of rearranging. Nothing is actually improved; the thing that was once on the left side is now across the top. Kudos, Microsoft, you've changed my life and tripled my productivity.
Windows 7 is basically a polished version of Vista. It's the same basic operating system. What does that mean? It means that all of Vista's compatibility issues will be present in Windows 7, simple as that. Those programs you need, those games you want, that laser color printer that's only 4 years old so there's no reason at all to upgrade, say goodbye. Nobody has noticed because nobody is using the Beta to actually do all their day-to-day work, but the fact of the matter is still there. Windows 7 is Vista with a fresh coat of Oxy-Clean, so anything you had trouble with in Vista will still be there.
Some of my critics will point out that it's those hardware and software manufacturer's responsibility to make patches for compatibility. It can come down to support from the game company or product-in-general company, yes, but simply put: not our problem. There are programs, games, and peripherals that are upwards of a decade old that a surprising number of people still use because there's just no reason to fix what isn't broken or because it's still fun to play, and it's impossible to rewrite an operating system from the ground up while still being fully compatible with every one of them. That's why Vista failed and that's why Windows 7 will fail. Well, that, and the memory hogging, useless features and shiny things.
Now, Microsoft can take suggestions from users on programs to try to make compatibility patches for, or to contact the companies of to have them do it, but I seriously doubt that'll happen. The Xbox 360 can still only play a handful of original Xbox titles, and most of them are laggy and barely playable, if at all. If Microsoft cares this little about backwards compatibility of their own products, imagine how little they give a damn about the products of other companies.
In closing, XP added many actually useful features. Primarily, plug-and-play compatibility with most USB peripherals. Nothing new in 7 is that useful, and hell, very little of the new things in 7 are useful at all. It's all memory-hogging shiny things, mildly amusing but basically useless new features, incompatibility with any non-mainstream software, and a big price tag. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of 7, as I'm predicting it'll be the OS that finally cracks Microsoft's stranglehold on the industry. Then we can get some new minds on fixing the last of Ubuntu's problems, and move on from these dark ages of proprietary operating systems.
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