Older blog entries for mathrick (starting at number 57)

Woah

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Let A be class of IDE disks, a be element of A such that a is my disk, D be the class of USB devices and F:A -> D be the mapping (“USB2.0 IDE disk case”). Show whether for every x in X (set of machines running WinXP) the following predicate P is true:

P(x) = F(a) plugged into x fucks the network connection n

Discuss the hypothesis H0 that F(a) and n (set of network connections) are independent values (so called No Fucking Way paradox).

Note: The following lemmas can be useful:

1. Microsoft’s character picker is totally useless
2. Whoever thought of securing official Unicode character charts against copying to clipboard must be braindamaged

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00:05:48 will forever live in our memory. That is all.

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ghrrrrrrr.Apple pisses me off.

Why? Well, in anticipation of some substantial cash surge (knock on wood), I decided to check in the local (hell yeah, in Odense there’s one) Apple store, to take a look at 12″ iBooks, because that’s exactly what I’d like to get – it’s damn small, has very long battery life, and is sexy (I’m not the only one to share this view, I think, because people with 12″ iBooks are common sight at the Uni). So, I went in, there was one on the display, small as expected, checked the price, OK, within acceptable range, seems they all ship with Tiger these days, which is also good. So the last question was, can I have SuperDrive with this one?

No. That’s only with 14″ ones.

Fuck. Of course, you can have 12″ PowerBook with SuperDrive, so it’s not a technical limitation, it’s just that Apple wants to suck every bit of cash out of you, because prices for PowerBooks are really crazy. It’s 13.500kr vs 8.200kr. And there’s no way I can afford that. But OTOH, I don’t want to get stuck without DVD burner either.

So, does anyone know a good, linux-compatible, 12″ notebook with DVD burner and long-lasting battery, x86 or whatever? And yes, the 12″ bit here really does matter, when you commute to school every day by bike at least.

This is what (amongst other things) AbbreviationZ dictionary says about the entry “sm":

<img src="http://mathrick.org/images/sm_hmmm.png" title="Curious" />

I must say that gives new light to certain things…

Robsta, ugh, that hurts. This is one of the reasons I dislike C++[1]. Good that templates were too fresh of a thing for that document (2001 it says) to be used universally. The same effect, just stronger, seems to occur in Java. Not that I have anything against the language, but somehow, Java and (my private theory) the way its standard library is constructed tends to get the OO designer out of people, multiplied x10. Also, I think that because Java cannot be developed with without dedicated tools (because to get one, simple hello world app you need to create 10 directories, and running a simple jar is still a challenge, 10 years later), people go all the way and make it impossible to understand without dedicated tools. God forbid there’s anything like UML nearby, or we’re all doomed.

[1] And Mozilla/Gecko. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but to my knowledge, up until recently not all the string classes in the platform were frozen. Which means you cannot use strings and keep compatibility with future Geckos. Which means huge, gaping suckage the size of hallway.

This is damn crazy. This saturday the ads delivery I had to do was about 160kg of paper, 27 different ads (plus one free newspaper) per mailbox. Pure insanity, no less.

Salmoni, that was Genuine Windows programme, not programming :). And besides, http://www.arafaelion.com/ seems to be claimed by godaddy.com or something.

Couple of observations from Denmark:

• They are really hyperpatriotic in some regards. You see discount stores display their offer-of-a-day invariably on top of the Dannebrog. But what really made me laugh was a visit in Netto store, where I found the shelf with honey. There were 2 jars labelled as follows:
  • Danske honning - 25,-kr
  • Udenlandske (ie foreign) honning - 12,50kr

  So, you pay twice as much for the Danishness of it. Where I come from, we’re more used to classifying honey by what it was made from, not the nationality of bees which produced it :)

• Symbols do matter. You don’t notice (or even know about) it normally, but there are some hidden assumptions and conventions used where you live even in truly trivial matters, and you only come to realise that after coming somewhere else, where those no longer hold. Like, here when ending a mathematical proof, you won’t see people writing QED on the blackboard. Instead, about 90% will draw â-  (U+25A0 BLACK SQUARE), just like you see printed in some books. Also, when marking true/false, in Poland you’d use âoe`` (U+2713 CHECK MARK) and âoe-- (U+2717 BALLOT X). Here you see âoe`` (U+2713 CHECK MARK) and % (U+XXXX NO CLUE, that is, symbol which looks very much like percent sign, but has dots instead of circles).
• Ads delivery is a very nice job here, because people actually wait for them. It’s really extremely nice when everyone you meet is nice and greets you, although I have to bring them down with my “Sorry, I don’t speak Danish", so usually no further talk follows. Pity.

In other news, I (finally) started frequenting gym in here; taking shower is a funny experience when you cannot raise your hands above your shoulders :)

Turns out that this MSKLC thing (which I downloaded to try and fake Compose key from Unix) is more fun than I suspected. First, the whole download process, with its braindamaged “genuine windows” stuff, which apparently wasn’t read by any English speaker before publication:

To share comments with and ask questions of other users of genuine Microsoft software, participate in the Windows Genuine Advantage newsgroup.

And then, I get to see this pinnacle of UI and HCI design:
<img src="http://mathrick.org/images/msklc_fun.PNG" alt="UI design at its peak" />

Now I finally understand the true benefits of Genuine Windows programme.

Sez M$ in the “advantages of genuine Microsoft software” (emphasis mine):

“You will also have access to new innovations and offerings available only to genuine Windows customers”

Cool. Now where do I sign up for old innovations?