I give it a day or two before someone gets pranked by getting their Facebook memorialized.  Or gets “Rick Astley’s Career” memorialized, since it’s long been dead, MEME’s aside.

It was a simpler time in computational history, advances were made responsibly, hardware was optimized and for every increase questions arose like “Will this take up too much power?” and “Is this too big?”  We have oppositely mirrored the automotive industry: instead of building cars smaller and more efficient after building clunkers and land yachts- we’ve gone from efficiency and compactness to being as large and gaudy as we can.

Enter the age of the footlong PCI Express expansion cards and octopus-like 1200+ Watt PSUs hemorrhaging power to devices more than happy to chew through it without swallowing.  Where is all this power going?  Is it absolutely necessary?  How much will this increase in power cost me in the 6 months I have my PC before it’s a dinosaur?  Can the environment handle this increased usage in power for recreational uses?

And for ever power-hungry device in your PC that crops up, so to do active cooling solutions in the form of fans or water coolers.  Don’t even get me started on the numbers for overclocking.

And yet we as consumers continue to purchase these beasts, forsaking performance components in reasonable packaging with reasonable power requirements.  We can’t get enough, and all for what?  To impress your friends?  To brag on forums?  To have a 5′ server case to lug around between LAN parties?

It’s just bad engineering, the industry is so hell-bent at all times to produce the fastest card the most quickly, that there just isn’t the time to sit down and make it efficient or of a reasonable size.  Chips and coolers are slapped on PCB along with as many power connectors as they deem necessary to make it seem “extreme” and off it goes to the consumer, bloated, uneducated and simple.

When was the last time you saw a computer component that says “Energy Star”?  I can’t remember.  I specifically bought my current mainboard because it has a power saving engine that shuts off or scales back parts of the motherboard that aren’t being used in order to save power, eventually putting the computer in a deep sleep mode.  Yet reviews questioned it from the get-go: “What sort of gamer cares about saving power?”  This one.

Indeed, the only thing that makes sense are these new “netbooks”: Very small laptops that pack a lot of punch into their tiny frames.  Some embodiment of the way computing used to be that is, luckily, growing in popularity.  Computers are supposed to get smaller as they get more powerful, right?  Right?  That’s how it worked up until a couple of years ago…

In closing, industry, allow me to leave you with something simple: slow down.  Take the time to do it right.  You need not bankrupt consumers while simultaneously breaking their backs as they cart your hulking components to their cars; meanwhile destroying the environment with your wanton electrical abandon.  It’s cool.  Seriously, just stop, because I’d like to be your friend again.  There are enough people like me that appreciate a responsibly engineered product that can live without all the stress of constantly having to buy a bigger PSU when one should last you a long while.

That’s what the makers of Raindrop, from Mozilla Labs- makers of Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird free software, aim to accomplish with their new beta software.  To take all the social sites in your life and create one aggregate feed into a browser-based website that automatically filters out the stuff you don’t want.  The idea is similar to Trillian or Pidgin for creating an aggregate of all your instant messaging protocols.  Sounds simple, right?  Or maybe just too good to be true.

It separates your spam and social networking messages from robots or applications (Farmville, for example) and other detritus from the stuff you actually want like e-mails from your mother, or status updates from your friends.  All of the other types of messages are put into special folders you can easily access from the main page should you want them!

According to their website: “Raindrop uses a mini web server to fetch your conversations from different sources (mail, twitter, RSS feeds), intelligently pulls out the important parts, and allows you to interact with them using your favorite modern web browser (Firefox, Safari or Chrome).”  Their slogan is “Open messaging for an Open web”.

We’ll see what develops and how far they take this new technology.  I, for one, would love not having to visit five sites just to keep up with all that’s going on…

The .NET Framework Assistant caused quite a stir when it was introduced earlier in this year, not because it did anything grand, mind you, but because it was installed without permission and was difficult to remove: An annoyance that most computer users took as personal offense; as an invasion of their privacy because Microsoft feels safe in assuming that they can modify your end-user experience regardless of what software you choose simply because you are using the Windows operating system.

Most users were left wondering what, exactly, this program did, and just who it reported your .NET statistics to judging by the 753 comments worth of nerd rage on the original Slashdot article.

“There’s anonymity. Everyone should and must have an identification, or Internet passport. The Internet was designed not for public use, but for American scientists and the U.S. military.

Kaspersky, creator of the leading anti-virus software company in Russia, Kaspersky Lab, is quoting as saying in a ZDnet interview, found here and it has left this blogger speechless.

You expect to hear this sort of drivel from politicians, people who have never touched a computer, and people who just like to anger the internet by poking it with idle threats, but not from one of the largest anti-virus software companies in the world and certainly not from someone who was visionary enough to streamline his product for Windows 95 when other competitors felt no need to- thereby giving him the edge over the Russian market, according to ZDNet

He is right about one thing, the internet was developed out of the the U.S. Government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, not to be confused with DARPA), and was originally called the ARPANET.  But by his logic we should give up memory foam because it was invented by NASA through space exploration and not “properly” distributed to the public.  Just out of curiosity, what is the proper way to “give” something like the internet to the public, Mr. Kaspersky?  I think he forgets that while the government provided the backbone and initial concept and working model of the internet, it was the world, end-users, other goverments, businesses, corporations, and criminals, etc who actually fleshed out, evolved and made the internet what it is today.  It is a far cry from the ARPANET, my friend.

To control the internet would be to destroy it at it’s nature and what it is is due to freedom, not regulation and yet he is quoted as saying this:

I’d like to change the design of the Internet by introducing regulation–Internet passports, Internet Police and international agreement–about following Internet standards.\

Is it not true that if you love something, you should let it go?   Maybe you and the internet have had your run and it’s time to break up, because clearly you don’t know each other anymore.  I bet you don’t even talk over breakfast, like strangers in your own router.

Of course there’s always the George Orwell 1984 bit, government monitoring and thought-control, conspiracy theories and generalized fear which I would wholeheartedly subscribe to.  If I had to register and get an internet license as Kaspersky suggests, I think that I would probably simply quit using the internet.  And his hardline policy toward nations who may not be keen on the idea:

…if some countries don’t agree with or don’t pay attention to the agreement, just cut them off.

How do you really stop a country from accessing the internet?  Ask nicely?  Go there and physically cut the communications lines?

If this were attempted, methinks another, free internet would most likely just crop up and gain in popularity, the same way freeware crops when companies charge too much for software, or regulate software too much.  It would also create an entire new generation of underground users, hackers, crackers, and people who simply become outlaws like in the old American west.  I daresay that it would cause an open digital revolt that would be the downfall of whatever ruling body was trying to govern it…  It would certainly do nothing good whatsoever.

In the end, something like this never would or could come to pass, it’s absolute madness even to suggest, Mr. Kaspersky is simply too easy to pick on.

Perhaps best put by The Register:

…to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, those who sacrifice net liberty for incremental increases in security no doubt will get neither.

lol.

Just as easily, he could have acquired his own gun, picked up a knife, or failing that, grabbed a rock. I don’t think that anyone who will brutally murder someone else really cares what tool they use, probably just whatever’s clever.

Of course, this doesn’t lead to media sensationalism and lots of shocked people watching the news and gasping in horror, but feeling somehow relieved that all their fear-mongering world views are being justified through a skewed lens.

As if answering my prayers, the next story on the news was about a UCLA student stabbing another in the neck, as if whatever playwright in charge of this whole “earth” thing was like “guns kill people, but so does pretty much anything else, and for just as little reason. So why spend all your time crying about it?”

Guns are defensive tools, and that being said, they are the most efficient and effective ones that we possess. They can’t be decried because of user error or irrational fear due to lack of understanding. Most people don’t know much about quantum physics, does that invalidate it as a field of study?

Scaling back second amendment gun rights, would just see another weapon rise into prominence, as evidenced in the European Union where the fall of guns saw the rise of swords, which also had to be banned. You would end up scaling back or banning rights on everything down to cinder blocks and rocks, heck, even your toaster is a potentially deadly weapon.

Humans are a bloody and war-like lot. No matter what weapon you take away from them, they’ll find another, all the way down to punching each other to death. Then what do you do? Require everyone to wear foam pads on their hands? Stop picking on the gun-owners that obey the law and pay their taxes, especially the ones that fought for the freedom of every single citizen in this country.

Say what you will about Kallaway and Vice President Getachew Kassa, the campaign they ran and the job they have done since taking office. They have never been the most politically sexy students in the room.

In the primary debate they had to go against Nick Gower, who talked until he shook and threw a pencil, and Carina Miller, the source of all of those recent oblique references to people crying during Athan Papailiou’s Senate confirmation hearing. Though Gower and Miller are two of the more politically predictable individuals in the ASUO, whenever I’m around them I feel I don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Then there was Nick Schultz, who can talk for hours with a cadence and facial expressions that show at least he is convinced what he is saying is very, very interesting. There was Michelle Haley and Ted “Football tickets” Sebastian, who gave us A-Robb and Puddles, booze bottles, energy drinks and months-overused “shitty” quotes.

(And Ryan McCarrell was, well, Ryan McCarrell.)

Through it all, Kassa barely spoke above a whisper and Kallaway, in her sharp red shoes, inspired a concerted nod and an, “Oh. That makes sense. I guess we should vote for her.”

Now shes president and things are about the same. Haley filed the grievance; Kallaway responded and quietly went on working. All the talk of how she would be tainted in every news story didn’t quite pan out. The confirmation hearings for her well-spoken, seemingly qualified and previously uninvolved judicial nominees went off without a single tough question. Each was confirmed 18 votes to zero.

Then those nominees put their heads down and went to work, releasing an opinion at the beginning of the third work day after confirmation. No more dragging that story along, not that it had been interesting any time in the past two months.

Perhaps the ASUO is more of a microcosm of real politics than we ever recognize. As Barack Obama painted himself the polar opposite of George W. Bush not by being a partisan of the angry left, but a post-partisan healer, Kallaway ran not as a fighter for student unions but as someone who doesn’t relentlessly schmooze, pout and call people pipsqueaks.

The opposite of a supposedly fiscally conservative iconoclast is not a student power iconoclast. It’s a well-mannered, consensus-building workhorse.

Even when she could have given us months of reality TV-style drama, Emma Kallaway just did her work and bored the story to death.

Weintraub said the decision “was extraordinarly appropriate” as a response “to baseless allegations.”

“I hope that matter is behind us,” he said. The new justices, who were confirmed last Wednesday night and released the decision early Monday, handled the grievance promptly and delivered a well-written document most students could understand, Weintraub said.

“I think they really wanted to send a message that if you bring us something silly we’re going to handle it in a way that’s proper. We’re going to do our job, we’re going to take it seriously, but don’t try to cripple our government” with personal attacks, he said. He said some may still try to use the court for that purpose, but the decision showed the court will not take such matters lightly.

Valve, however, has a reputation for stellar support and update for it’s games, by consistently releasing additional maps and freely downloadable content patches. It did this with Counterstrike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Team Fortress 2, and in Half-Life 2 it experimented with serialized add-ons for $10, which were more than worth the money.

I wholeheartedly believed that Valve would support Left4Dead by adding additional maps and expanding the experience consistently. Instead, Valve dropped the ball on it’s Source Development Kit holding back modders, added two new maps, both of which are tiny, and one short gameplay mode, which I felt, was quite weak and did not do the original gameplay modes justice.

Considering that Team Fortress 2 has received new maps, new weapons, new achievements, and is rumoured to be receiving a new playable class, one has to wonder: Did you just not love Left4Dead, Valve?

An announcement, which felt like a knife in the back after the gravity of it sank in, was Left4Dead2. Which would be just as small, just as limited, and hopefully not just as unsupported as the original- for another $40.

Perhaps, Valve has engendered within me a sense of entitlement in terms of their post-launch game support, but I feel like Left4Dead never really breathed or lived it’s life-span and now they want more money. But surely, with their stellar digital distribution network and their ability to control and reprice games on it, as well as the large share they take out of purchases, they can’t be hurting for money?

I can’t say for certain, but everything I keep hearing is “They don’t owe us anything, you aren’t entitled to anything, so take what you get and quit whining” Which seems bizarre to me…if I’m paying an amount and getting a service…and suddenly the quality of that service drops, I think I, as the end-user, have the ability to at least ask why. And I’m sorry, I’m not going to stop asking why Valve has decreased its quality of service. I think we should all be asking why the company that runs the digital distribution network that holds the lion’s share of digital distribution is decreasing its quality of service. It only bodes ill.

As the market for downloadable games develops, surely, we don’t want the juggernaut at the helm steering it onto the rocks…