Author: Kim du Toit

Malware, Change, And The Whole Damn Thing

Business

Over at samizdata, Perry Metzger (not De Havilland) has a few trenchant observations about stupid people who don’t use condoms when they have unprotected Internet intercourse, or something. (For those who don’t know him, Perry’s writing style is often blunt and dismissive, which is one of the reasons I enjoy reading his stuff. Go figure.) Read it all, including the comments, because a lot of what I say from here may be otherwise incomprehensible.

I’m not going to argue with Perry’s main point about the need to upgrade your computer’s software regularly. From a security standpoint, it makes sense to install the patches which cover the gaping holes in the thing. I also understand that the software companies don’t care to maintain elderly platforms, for the same reasons that Ford no longer maintains Model Ts. (The fact that software changes occur at an exponentially-quicker rate than automotive ones is just the nature of the beast.)

The problem, as noted the the Comments, is that system “upgrades” are not devoted exclusively to security patches anymore. Instead, all sorts of crap is included which at best causes irritating changes in functionality, and at worst undoes a lot of the learning and experience that one has accumulated. I understand why this occurs, but that doesn’t mean I’m at all happy about it. And so far, Microsoft has accommodated us Old Farts by including a “traditional” desktop view for all new Windows operating system versions, so I don’t have to memorize all the silly new pictograms in Windows 7 – infinity. (Note to MS: remove that feature and I’m gone.)

And this is the point. One of the commenters at samizdata made the excellent point that Microsoft (and all software developers, as far as I can see) are more interested in getting new customers, who would be more comfortable with apps, pictograms, symbols and what have you than they would be with the old icons or, gawd forbid, text (all those words and stuff? dude!). That’s stupid, for all sorts of reasons, and here’s why.

I might not be worth much to Microsoft as an existing customer right now; but there was a time when people like me — the early personal-computer adopters — helped build Microsoft into what it is today. When you have a person who like myself has been through all the hardware iterations of the PC, XT, AT, 386x all the way through to the current whatever-it-is-I’m-writing-on-right now, and has likewise been through all the software iterations of DOS 2.0 through Windows 7/8/not-9 [ahem] and 10; when you have a longtime customer group like that, then surely I, and all the countless millions of people like me, deserve just a little accommodation in the Grand Microsoft Marketing Plan? (Okay, you can stop laughing now.)

I know, everything these days falls into the “But what have you done for me lately?” category, but it’s still a basic truism of marketing that it’s ten times easier to get an existing customer to stay with your product than it is to lure a new one away from a competitor. But if you persist in changing your product so that it not only becomes a purely new-customer attractant, but also an existing-customer repellent, then I would suggest that someone in Marketing needs to go back to business school and/or get a swift kick in the teeth to adjust their thinking.

I know that it’s expensive and resource/time-consuming to maintain old products. Of course it is. But I would suggest that it’s also a lot easier than new product development — we old-timers don’t ask for much, because we’re used to working with, by today’s standards, relatively unsophisticated products.

Using the automotive industry one more time: Ford, GM and Chrysler have discovered that there is a huge market for nostalgia models such as the Dodge Charger/Challenger, Ford Shelby Mustang and the like. These new iterations of the venerable hot rods of yore have been improved, of course: better brakes, suspension and so on; they’re still simple and unsophisticated by modern whizzbang standards, but their manufacturers can’t make them quickly enough. Let’s go exotic: a new 2016 LaFerrari costs about $1.5 million; a 1966 275 GTB recently sold for $2.1 million. (I know, that’s mostly a factor of scarcity; at the same time, however, the 2016 model is a hundred times better than its 50-year-old counterpart — and still, someone was prepared to pay good money for it.)

Somewhere is all the above rambling is the seed of an idea for Microsoft. Or maybe, for someone not in Microsoft who can see a niche in the PC market which is similar to the automotive restoration market.

Or maybe I’m just an old fart “shaking his fist at heaven”, as Perry Metzger suggests. Still, I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who feels this way — in fact, there may be more of us than of them. Software developers — or to be more accurate, software maintainers — might want to take a look at that.

 

…And Here We Go Again, Again

Culture, Politics

From the Comments on my post about the alt-Right comes this:

Splendid Isolation indeed. Young white men today certainly won’t be enjoying any splendid isolation as they grow older. They’ll be lucky if they can find any isolation at all, splendid or not. And they won’t be staring vacantly off into space, their backs turned on a world they would rather ignore, choosing not to look at what they don’t want to see. No, reality will get in their face and force itself into their space, like it or not. Nor will they be getting any ice cream, shit-topped or not. They’ll be getting a full shit sandwich, courtesy of a system their fathers and grandfathers have either supported, acquiesced in, or “opposed” with little more than impotent whining. And if you want to know who they really hate, it’s not blacks or even Jews, but smug, clueless boomers who claim to be fighting for truth and justice, for Western Civilization and against liberalism, but who reserve their utmost condemnation for the only movement that speaks for them and their interests. And I say that as a boomer myself. If you want to argue against the Alt-Right, you should deal with the actual positions they hold and arguments they make, rather than with the strawman caricature you’ve constructed only to demolish. Countercurrents and the writings of Greg Johnson are a good place to start.

I get it: I don’t know what I’m talking about, because I just haven’t studied the issue enough, or haven’t read this or that which explains it perfectly.

Here’s the beauty of age: you recognize silliness when you see it, because you’ve seen it so many times before at first hand. Add a small dose of historical perspective (such as I possess), and it’s clear that you don’t need to eat a whole egg to know that it’s rotten. People who try to justify silliness like the alt-Right are like the vicar in Punch magazine, talking about eating a rotten boiled egg: “I assure you, parts of it are excellent!”

The good part of splendid isolation is that I get to pick who my allies are, and like I said: I know who you are, I know your philosophy, I know where you’re heading, and I want no part of you.

And one last thing: if you think I’m reserving my utmost condemnation for the alt-Right, then you’re not too familiar with my writings. You probably missed the one, for example, where I suggested that I’d like to tie Senator Ted Kennedy to a chair and beat  him to death with a lead pipe. Or maybe it was Chuck Schumer… there are so many options when it comes to liberals. Compared to pricks like them, the alt-Right gets barely a mention.

You see, Mr. Expatriot, I’ve been hating liberals since before most of the alt-Right were born, and I don’t need to get lectured by some suddenly-aware Baby Boomer about the evils of liberalism and socialism and where they’re taking us. There is an answer to this problem, and the alt-Right ain’t it.

Home Is The Hunter

Friends and Family

Doc Russia finally released his African safari pics for publication, with the understanding that I blur his features — ever since that Minnesota dentist got into trouble just for shooting Cecil The Geriatric Lion in Zimbabwe, hunters have become skittish about showing their kill pics on Teh Intarwebz — so here we go.

In case anyone missed the stats: the rifle used was a CZ 550 Safari (essentially the old 602 Brno ZKK) chambered in .375 H&H Magnum. Ammo was Buffalo Bore 300gr solids. Also, the hunt took place on a game farm in the far-northeast area of South Africa, near the town of Hoedspruit (full details on request by email for anyone who wants to give this a go themselves).

Doc told me he wanted to pot a hyena just because its skull is unlike that any of the usual predators one sees about the house. Being Doc, he had to bag Giganto-Hyena:

Apparently, this was done over bait at night, and despite his first shot being a killing-blow (i.e. sucking chest wound), someone neglected to inform the hyena, so a second shot was necessary.

Then on to serious business,: Cape Buffalo. The pic below shows Doc, his buff and Mr. Free Market (features likewise blurred because of Cecil-bullshit):

Mr. FM also got a buff, and declared it so much fun that he might do it again next year. Because I’m not keen to lose yet another friend to African silliness, I’ll try to talk him out of it; but I must admit that for someone who did several tours with the 1st Paras in Northern Ireland during the unpleasantness of the late 1970s, “danger” is probably a relative term. And Doc’s a rifle-company Marine, so ditto. Maniacs, both of them.

Maybe next year I’ll go along, just to keep an eye on things, and the lads in check.

Twisted

Two-Minute Hate

So I’m reading the newspaper (Daily Mail, of course) when all of a sudden, I experience a RCOB (Red Curtain Of Blood, for my New Readers) which falls over my eyes, and I start cursing uncontrollably. Why? Because of this:

Mother-of-two ‘drowned’ in paint after boyfriend poured it down her throat, battered her with an iron and burned her alive

The little bastard has been put in jail for life — amazingly, this being in Britain, he wasn’t just given a severe scolding by a judge and sent home for tea with his mum — but if ever there’s a kind of crime which screams out for the death penalty, it’s this one. (Last night I asked Doc Russia why this maniac shouldn’t be executed. After about a minute’s silence, he said simply, “I got nothing.”)

When someone acts with such sustained psychopathic  violence, explain to me why his life shouldn’t just be snuffed out like a candle. Explain to me why he should be allowed to live, to even have a chance of parole. Explain why he deserves to be part of any society, even in prison. Explain why taxpayer money should be spent on his food, his clothing, his shelter and his healthcare, when he quite evidently deserves none of them.

I bet that you, too, have nothing.

And by the way, people who throw acid into other people’s faces deserve to be thrown in jail for life, and scourged daily. Perhaps then we can try to return our society to normalcy, with animals like this out of circulation for good.

I don’t want to hear about “cruel and unusual” punishment, when these raving psychopaths kill, maim and disfigure their victims so cruelly and unusually. We need to go all Old Testament on them and start meting out “eye for an eye”-style punishments. Maybe that will make them think twice; and if not, we give them exactly what they deserve.

 

 

Of Passing Interest Only

Culture

As one who quit watching network TV shows in about 1990 and has barely watched anything since, I’m not really qualified to pass comment on many of the shows that have been renewed / canceled for the upcoming season. Nevertheless, while The Mrs. was going through her invalid stage she did watch some shows, and as I was generally in the room with her, some stray bits of video have stuck in my brain and allowed me to make at least a few superficial judgments on the ones of which I do remember seeing the occasional snippet. In no specific order, here they are.

Grey’s Anatomy lost my interest in about the third episode of its first season, when it became clear that it was a combination of Black- and female wet dreams (unsurprisingly, as the show’s writer is — ta-da! — a Black woman). I know that most entertainment requires a suspension of disbelief, but seriously? A hospital in Seattle with a Black chief surgeon (as opposed to Jewish or, even more likely, Chinese)? Ha ha ha ha… considering that in just about every hospital in the United States, the highest Black executive is generally someone like the Benefits Administrator, HR Director or some similar bureaucratic fonctionnaire, the Anatomy Hospital is such an unrealistic construct that it might as well be on Mars. Ditto the various couplings and characters: McSteamy and McDreamy? One can only imagine the furor had the main female characters been nicknamed McTitty and McVaggie by the male cast. What a load of shit. And a final comment: in the episode where a disgruntled man takes a gun and starts systematically shooting doctors, was I the only one who made a mental promise never to go unarmed into a hospital again? (On a personal note: Ellen Pompeo is a dead ringer for one of my long-ago girlfriends — coincidentally, a nurse — which made watching the show an interesting experience for me, to say the least.)

Bones: I think Emily Deschanel is one of the most beautiful women ever to be on TV (despite being a liberal vegan nutcase in real life), and her character was wonderful: the outspoken and nearly autistic brilliant forensic scientist whose unbending logic made her paradoxically all the more human. Also, the same logic made her a gun owner — I have no idea how that little quirk made it through the network’s GFW (gun-fearing wussy, for my New Readers) editorial committees. The real mistake came when the male and female stars got married — the same mistake made in Castle and Moonlighting — which took away all the sexual tension of the show.

Grimm remains the only modern TV show I’ve ever stayed home to watch. As any fule kno, I detest the fantasy genre whether books, movies or whatever, but the premise of Grimm, plus its brilliant cinematography completely captured me. I did lose interest when the show created a grand story arc involving Austrian princes and such — the weekly episodes of catching various (and wonderfully-named) monsters was more than enough for me — so I lost interest after about the third season, something which I find myself doing for just about every TV show, incidentally, when the show’s premise is generally fulfilled and the writers have to jump the shark to keep it interesting.

I’m glad that Blue Bloods has been renewed, even though I don’t watch it anymore (another casualty of Kim’s Season Three syndrome). The conservative, religious and pro-law enforcement slant of the show makes a refreshing change from the usual liberal crap.

The renewal of Law & Order: SVU keeps the exquisite Mariska Hargitay on TV (she’s Emily Deschanel’s only real competition, beauty-wise), which is just fine by me even though I haven’t watched the show in years. The only other Law & Order show I watched — and that, compulsively — was the series which featured the brilliant Vincent D’Onofrio as the tortured, driven detective who eventually falls apart because of the continuous horrors of his job. Absolute genius, both the writing and D’Onofrio’s performance.

Finally, just to prove how irredeemably out-of-touch I am with modern culture as it pertains to TV: I’ve never watched a single episode of The Simpsons all the way through, ditto South Park (the latter because I can’t understand a single word the characters say).

I have watched every episode of the espionage satire Archer, however, because I love all the characters, and especially Sterling Archer himself. Archer‘s very first episode nearly caused me to pee my pants, I was laughing so hard, and the shows since have seldom faltered in that regard. No other TV cartoon show has ever featured characters and scenes such as the samples below:

,..and let it henceforth be known that I have a massive crush on Sterling’s mother, Mallory Archer:

One last thought: please don’t recommend any of your favorite TV shows to me: watching TV is so peripheral and inconsequential an activity in my life that I probably won’t take you up on it. If I’m going to watch any TV at all, it’ll be Formula 1 Grand Prix, English football (Chelsea wins the league!), international cricket and the occasional major golf tournament. Oh, and the Men’s Championship match at Wimbledon. Other than those, you’re more likely catch me at the range instead.

The Pursuit Of Happiness

Culture

The problem with “happiness” is not just that it’s a personal issue: it’s largely an unresolved personal issue. As individuals, if asked whether we’re happy, we might just say “Yes” without really thinking about it. Then we think about it — not always a Good Thing, by the way — and might realize that we’re not really happy, because someone else seems happier than we are, therefore we’re not as happy as we could be.

Worse still, we think we’re somehow entitled to happiness. We aren’t. Here’s writer Tom Utley:

“If you think of life as a series of duties — and of happiness as an undeserved blessing, rather than a right — you are likely to be much happier than if you think happiness is yours by right.”

He’s absolutely correct. If we think about it — this time, a Good Thing — we can come to realize that performance of that series of duties brings its own happiness: not the joyous ecstasy kind of happiness (which I think too many people seek, thinking it’s the ideal), but the quiet contentment of a job done to the best of one’s ability.

Raising children is an excellent example of one kind of duty which, when performed properly, brings to the parents not just satisfaction of a job well done, but a profound sense of contentment, nay even joy.

Yet we live in times when almost all the leaders of Western Europe are childless, and have never experienced that joy. When they have never held their own child in their arms, watched them walk unsteadily across the room, or marveled as that child does something remarkable, is it any wonder that such people are beset with inner conflict and ignorance of what most people need to be happy?

I’m not suggesting that bearing children is the sine qua non of happiness, of course; yet it would be foolish to ignore that fact that as procreation and survival of the species are so deeply ingrained in the genetic code, that the individual’s success in the accomplishment of so basic, so elemental a need must surely bring at least a foundation of happiness to a man or woman?

And that’s just one of the “series of duties” of which Utley speaks. There are many more — a man’s duty to provide for his family, a woman’s duty to look after her children, a duty to protect the family from harm, a duty to protect one’s community from harm, a duty to provide support to one’s true friends… the list goes on and on, and the beauty of all these duties is that they are largely self-generated, and the fulfillment thereof creates a different happiness for each individual.

There is no universal definition of happiness. Happiness is how each individual defines it and where he chooses to find it. I would take this even further: that when we are unhappy, it’s often because we have allowed other people to define the terms of our happiness, and allowed them to dictate where we may find it.

To end this little thought, take a look at this picture:

It’s a very old one of a family picnic, taken in a simpler era — sometime in the early 1950s, I think —  but as simple as the activity is portrayed, I defy anyone to deny that at this particular moment, every single person in that picnic is unbearably happy. It may not last, and probably won’t: the father may have problems at work the next day, the wife may have some household accident, one of the little girls may get bullied at school the next day, whatever. But at this particular moment in time, there is happiness. Moreover, it is happiness that hasn’t been mandated or defined by any authority or even by society; it is happiness that didn’t need to be pursued, only found.

May your happiness, may all your happinesses be that simple, and enjoyable.