Monthly ArchiveFebruary 2006
Geekdom & Personal Warugikaiu on 24 Feb 2006
Operating Systems
I just had a rather long conversation with someone about operating systems. Now i want to share my oppinions with everyone.
I’m going to start by saying that the operating systems in this will all be commented on based on use in the form of a Personal Computer. This means that if you are looking for a good server operating system, my words are 70% meaningless.
I’ll also mark systems with a familiarity ranking from 0-3, 0 meaning I have only researched it and never personally used it, 3 meaning I have explored it to its very depths, and 2 meaning I either toyed around with it, or have historically used it, but do not exactly remember how. Let’s go in order from least favorite to favorite.
7.) Windows ME
Familiarity: 3
It has been surmised that this was not actually software developed by humans, but rather a plague upon mankind. Stories vary as to whether it was hand designed as punishment by a vengeful God, or was produced by some servant of Satan himself, a leak from the very nethers of Hell.
6.) Others of the Windows Line (excluding Windows XP)
Familiarity: 2
The rest, including Windows 95, 98, 98SE, the NT Line, and Windows 2000 have their varying failings. Aside from the NT Line and 2000, none could be marketed as stable. This is due to Microsoft’s using a shell which derived from QDOS (aka MSDOS), which was called “Quick and Dirty Operating System” for a reason. Note that this makes the other representation, “Microsoft’s Dirty Operating System.” Doesn’t that make you feel comfortable? I need a shower.
5.) Linux
Familiarity: 3 (conditional)
My familiarity with Linux is conditional only because I have a great amount of experience with only a single distribution: Ubuntu. This Debian-based distribution is supposed to be “Linux for Human Beings”, but it, like all the others as far as I can tell, falls short as soon as you want to keep your neighbors out of your wireless pool by enabling encryption. Linux users will argue that there’s nothing you can’t do with it, but that is the case if and only if your time is worthless to you. Not only this, but it seems that every last distribution suffers from a hackish application setup. Ever thought the Windows System Registry was bad? If this operating system saw a significant margin of use by non-geek users, you can bet that the package managers would be horribly mangled as the first target for virus-writers. Even Windows is better at managing applications by at least on the surface trying to keep applications together with all their shit in one programs folder.
4.) Mac OS (excluding OS X)
Familiarity: 2 (conditional)
Again the conditional. I have and on occasion still power up and play with an old Mac-Clone (remember when?) running Mac OS 8.6. This was the first version of the Mac OS software to include USB support, so it can be considered equivalent to Windows 98. In the many many years that this old box has been running, it still runs like a tank, supports a wide variety of applications, is incredibly processor friendly (I’m an Intel boy and am therefore confounded by the fact that it’s runing on a PowerPC which supposedly clocks in at 133mhz with response times comparable to a 700mhz celeron used to get with WinME, and I have no idea how). This is, in in my eyes, really decent software, at least as far as i’ve taken it, but as far as a personal user goes, it’s just not ideal for today. If only, if only. I have little experience with OS 9, but i was always told good things by my mac using friends back when it was newer.
3.) Mac OS X
Familiarity: 2
Incredibly stable and incredibly sexy. It’s also really easy to use, with an incredibly shallow learning curve. In fact the only things I don’t like about it include some of the lockouts that are placed on the system to make it a lot harder for a person to muck up their computer. This could be seen as a feature, however. There’s an applications folder, but no system registry, which is probably my favorite thing about it. The only reason I place it ever so slightly behind Windows XP is because I’m simply more familiar with the windows environment. If I had the money to pay for Mac’s proprietary hardware, though, I would likely buy one. Did I mention they’re incredibly, unbelievably sexy?
2.) Windows XP
Familiarity: 3
I have to admit, despite my complaints about the other Windows releases, XP is good software. I’m running XP on the computer with which I’m writing this post. This computer has been running a single install of XP for the last two and a half years, and I have had no major issues with it. I initially had to turn off the eye scarring green-and-blue jellybean theme that it has as its default, but other than a minor lack of sex appeal, the system is solid, and I haven’t run into a thing I couldn’t accomplish with relative ease, with the possible exception of reading DVD movies when I got a new used reader from a friend. I honestly like it.
1.) PCBSD
Familiarity: 2
Ok, ok, ok. Let me explain. When people wanted to create UNIX-like systems for PC’s, there were two forks that happened in close temporal proximity: Linux, and BSD. BSD, which stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, was fairly similar to UNIX itself when it was originally created, but when legal issues forced any original UNIX code in BSD to be rewritten, a whole new beast was born. PCBSD is simply a distribution called FreeBSD, running KDE (K Desktop Environment) on top of it, which is a common desktop system in the Linux world as well. But BSD is far more consistant with itself than Linux, at least as far as I’ve seen. It doesn’t seem as hacked together. As a result of this, it is a derivative of BSD that runs at the core of every Mac OS X machine. Also, if I have read correctly, it–just like OS X– has an application directory, and no system registry. All of the strengths, none of the weaknesses. This is my favorite operating system available, in spite of the fact that it will likely have similar support issues to those in Linux. I put it at a 2 in familiarity because I haven’t gotten around to wiping linux off of my second drive once and for all to reload it with this.
Note that when I get around to installing PCBSD, I’ll update periodically if i continue to love it, or if I grow to hate it.
alright, i’m done.
Personal Warugikaiu on 22 Feb 2006
It’s been a while.
Ok. Introspection. I can be introspective for once.
Firstly: I’ve found someone. Someone I’ve known for a full year and liked for as long, and have dated once or twice… and it’s amazing how… Lucky I am. She’s moving at my pace, she shares some–but not all– of my interests… she has her own life, which consists of a world I’m invited to watch but I very likely will not become a part of, and she will live this life because it’s what she wants. Likewise, she doesn’t expect or ask me to slow down my life, or alter it. We both have priorities, and we both have schedules. But when we’re together… God, we laugh until our cheeks hurt and then laugh at that. While we’ve dated over the course of almost two months, I’m still going to call this what it is: a beginning… but it’s a good beginning.
Bear in mind that everything in that paragraph, I like. Everything.
I was thinking about this and talking to Mikah. Mikah, I hope she doesn’t mind me saying, is still a member of the bitter singles club, which got me thinking about her, and I followed that track (eventually) to something my older brother said last semester: “She’s a lot like you were, three years ago.”
Three years ago from then puts me at around the time in my junior year when I found out I had sarcoid.
So how much has that changed me?
Geekdom Warugikaiu on 17 Feb 2006
Linear Independance
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IN MATRIX, FEBRUARY 16, 2006
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all variables are created in ambiguity, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Properties, that among these are Identity, Commutativity and the pursuit of consistent linear systems. — That to secure these properties, Equations are instituted among vectors, deriving their just solutions from the reduced echelon form of the rows, — That whenever any Form of Matrix becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Variables to alter or to reduce it, and to institute new a System, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its rows in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Consistency and Reductability. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Matrices long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mathkind are more disposed to reduce improperly, while solutions are infinite than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of homogenous solutions and inconsistancy, pursuing invariably the same Form evinces a design to reduce them under absolute erroneousness, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Equations, and to provide new Guards for their future consistency. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Vectors; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Equations. The history of the present KBritain is a history of repeated mathematical error and nonreduced forms, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Illogicality over these Vectors. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refuted his Assent to Pivots, the most wholesome and necessary for the public span. He has forbidden his Determinants to make Row Reductions of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Divisions for the accommodation of large quantities in the pivot position, unless those variables would relinquish the right of Reduction of other Rows, a right inestimable to them and formidable to incalculable systems only. . . . He has kept among us, in Zero-Solution rows, Pivot variables not equal to zero, causing inconsistency. For quartering unnecessarily large values within rows among us: For cutting off our Relational Equations with all parts of the global environment: . . . We, therefore, the Scalar Variables of the United Vectors of Ax=b, in General Matrix, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the span for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good Variables of these Vectors, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Vectors are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent Variables, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Fourteenth Row, and that all relational connection between them and the Span of KBritain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent Variables, they have full Power to reduce rows, conclude echelon form, contract algebraic relations, establish Systems, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Variables may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine ℜn, we mutually pledge to each other our Existence, our Values and our sacred Logic. — JHancock
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hen in the Course of mathematical events it becomes necessary for one matrix to dissolve the relational bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the vectors of the span, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Mathematics and of Mathematics’ God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mathkind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.Formatting and much of text was borrowed (But from an uncopyrighted document which is in the public domain!), and the original can be found here
