Fisher Times-Post-Dispatch-Courier

Yes, we have snow. Yes, it’s a lot. No, it’s not problematic (or any more so than past winter weather).

"It’s Division 1 Football!"

I’ve been sick.  I’m (mostly) better now, it wasn’t anything serious.  Just a little cold.

"It’s the Big 12!"

I read some disturbing reports about the new Vista operating system.  The worst is that Mike Rowe Soft has implemented some copy-protection features that will cause people who have legitimately purchased High Definition content (HD-DVD or Blu-Ray) not to be able to play their discs through Vista or with intentionally downgraded (non-HD) signal if they don’t have the "perfect" hardward setup.  Not that the hardware is unable to play the content, or that Vista is unable to play the content, or that the person with the computer hasn’t obtained the content legitimately or doesn’t have the right to view his content, but that Vista wastes system resources monitoring what is played, looking for high-def content, checking the hardware setup, and deliberately choosing to degrade the signal or not play the signal if everything isn’t perfect.

To the Evil Empire: yes, you have every right to bow to the pressures of the Hollywood, and to write your code any way you want.  But as a result of this and other concerns (see: over-protective licensing agreements, agressive activation requirements, general "bloatiness" of the coding, lack or slowness of response to genuine security threats [while responding literally over night when someone breaks the encryption code on Vista high-def protections],  and your general "we own the market and can do anything we want for way too much money"), no computer I own will ever run Vista.  As of this week, I am migrating to Ubuntu Linux, which has support for everything I want and need: OpenOffice Suite to replace M$ Office, Media players, photo viewing and editing programs, and even Windows emulators to allow me to play games written for Windows.  Hopefully this will allow me to completely uninstall Windows in the near future.

If you run an older version of Windows and it works for you, I encourage you NOT to migrate to Vista.  It will be many years before XP is no longer supported, and even without support will probably continue to run new programs for quite a while.  By that time, hopefully we will have made enough of an impact on MS that they will be forced to respond to our concerns.

"It ain’t intramurals!"

Way to go Dan Hawkins.  You’re now on the list of all-time greatest rants, along with Denny Green ("They are who we thought they were!"), Jim Mora ("Playoffs?  Are you kidding me?  Don’t talk to me about playoffs!  Playoffs?"), and of course Howard Dean ("AAAAAaaaaaaaaaah").

"Go play intramurals, brother."