The joys of school. I took my second to last final today, in my Business Communications class. This one really din't worry me much, since I managed a 96% on the first test, and a 98% on the second. It was actually a halfway interesting class, if kinda easy.
It was kinda interesting, though, I was asked by my professor to get her some information on teaching at the local Community College that I teach at. It seems she recently had a baby, and she's considering doing that part time, instead of teaching at the University full time.
Microsoft Stupidity...
I was glancing through the free copy of InfoWorld that shows up every week (despite the fact that I don't remember ever subscribing for it), and came across an interesting, if somewhat scary, article. It's in Ed Foster's latest column.
Basically, it describes how Microsoft is going to start disallowing OEM's to include Windows installation CDs with the computer systems they sell. They're taking a fairly quiet stance, and basically telling OEM's to tell customers themselves. They're also forcing OEM's to come up with their own solution to this problem. Something of a, "Yeah, we're screwing the customer over and making life damn inconvenient for them. And what's worse, is we're going to screw you over and make you deal with it. You get to tell them what's going on, and you get to try to fix it." Of course, their solutions are subject to Microsoft approval....meaning it has to be a CD locked to *that* specific machine, or an image on the hard drive, or something like that.
I think this has to be one of the stupidest things I've ever seen. I can't count the number of times I've had to reinstall Windows, or even pull out the CD so it could copy files when adding new hardware. The inconvenience this is going to cause is mind boggling.
This whole 'medialess' OS thing is supposed to reduce piracy....but, after thinking about it, I almost think this will increase the number of pirated copies of Windows that are floating around. Why? Becuase people will be forced to pirate copies of the retail version just so they can reinstall or fix their existing Windows installations.
I dunno who came up with this new policy, but I can't help but feel they must be truly clueless.
Hacking...
I think I've come up with an idea to waste my summer with. I've pretty much worked out an idea for a program that will include just about all the programming technologies that I'm interested in, but have never, so far, gotten around to playing with. This halfway impressive list inlcudes, but is not limited to:
- Graphical Interface Programming
- GTK
- Gnome
- zlib
- XML
- LDAP
- Basic encryption
- Some sort of module interface
- Autoconf/Automake
- Anything else I can fit in ;-)
I'll post a better description of the program as I flesh out the details in a tangible format.
Work...
Work sucks, especially when I'm only going to get about 4 hours of sleep due to my bad habit of staying up and playing when I shouldn't be....doing things like making diary entries on a certain site.