Rubenerd

Whenever I use software installation wizards I always choose the custom option to make sure it’s not installing anything I don’t want (package managers with custom flags are so much easier)! It was a good thing too, because when I installed Flip4Mac this afternoon it was going to install Microsoft Silverlight. Say what?

Silverlight may have been of interest to me when I was a .NET developer in my high school years, but thesedays I have absolutely no use for it whatsoever and I’d prefer not to have yet another plugin and API that could be used as a vector for exploitation. Plus, I’m a purist and I like having as little software on my computers as possible.

As a kid I spelt it as "Trogan Horse" #confessions

A Trojan Horse [in computer science] is a malicious application masquerading as, or hiding within, an application an end user wants; in other words it takes advantage of the user thinking it’s something else to get itself installed without their knowledge.

I’m not suggesting Microsoft, Flip4Mac or any other vendor that does this is in the same league as black hat hackers who use Trojan Horses to monitor for credit card details, how many comments you’ve posted to Rubenerd.com, what heat settings you have your oven on while you’re making grilled cheese sandwiches, but it still doesn’t come across as very honest.

End users have enough trouble maintaining secure systems without more software being installed they either didn’t ask for or didn’t want. If I hadn’t selected a custom install for Flip4Mac and Silverlight installed itself, I wouldn’t know it was there so I wouldn’t attempt to keep it current with patches. On the flipside, if it attempted to keep itself current itself, I’d be bombarded with even more "update available" alerts of which I get enough already.

"This is the post that never ends…" oh, wait

I guess I’d end this rant by asking what I think to be a simple question: why would an application designed to let Mac people watch Windows Media Video need Silverlight in the first place? It never needed it in the past.

I registered and paid money for a licence for Flip4Mac because I reckon it’s a fantastic piece of software, but such experiences leave a bad taste in my mouth. And besides, the Silverlight logo isn’t even silver which makes even less sense.

What's the opposite of an oxymoron?

While sitting at my beloved Boatdeck Cafe doing some programming, who I thought was a nice old woman came over to me and complimented me on my work ethic. Then she asked me if I’d accepted Jesus Christ as my saviour, and suffice to say things went downhill.

So here’s what happened

After she sat down at my table I told her I wasn’t interested. Ignoring me, she started discussing how letting Jesus into my heart would set me free and make me a better person. I’m about as hardline atheist as they come, but unlike people like her I don’t attempt to impose my beliefs (or lack thereof) on strangers, so I reiterated I wasn’t interested and kept on typing.

Had I just kept ignoring her, she probably would have just got the message and left, but when she started talking about how the lord saves people and cures the sick something snapped inside of me. I told her my mum had cancer for 12 years, and that if God hadn’t created illness there’d be no need for cures in the first place. Bad idea.

I don’t really know what I expected her to say in reply, but what she did say made my jaw hit the table. This is paraphrased, but is pretty close to what transpired:

Her: "Well… did she accept Jesus as her saviour?"
Me: "Excuse me?"
Her: "She would have been healed…"
Me: "Of all the facetious…
Her: "No, but the lord would have healed her…"
Me: "No, you know who helped her? The doctors and nurses who pulled double shifts several days a week and stayed with her in the ICU and oncology wards for 12 years while…"
Her: "No, don’t put your faith in man, put it with God."

At this point I knew there was nothing more to say, so I looked back at my computer and told her to leave again. She tried to shove a pamphlet in my face and I pushed it away, so she kept trying. I could feel my face was burning. Our exact words after this paper scuffle:

Her: "See, you’re a bit messed up and…"
Me: "No you know what? FUCK YOU. LEAVE."
Her: "No but you see your mum…"
Me: "LEAVE OR I’M CALLING THE POLICE."

I’m a very shy person, I don’t think I’ve ever shouted a swear to someone in public before. She seemed unfazed and talked to me about how God would fix my messed up mind (her exact description). Some more shouting and she said I was being rude, then finally left.

I’ve dealt with people like her many times before but for some reason after this encounter I started crying. It was embarrassing as hell and I got a ton of strange looks from people in the cafe, but I just couldn’t help it for some reason. I hope she got what she wanted.

I’m for free speech and freedom of (and from) religion, but this is food for thought: in Singapore the Jehovah’s Witnesses are a banned organisation.

Dedicated to that vile, facetious women who made out that Debra Schade’s slow and painful death was her own fault

It's exactly what John C. Dvorak and my high school English teacher Mrs Gravina said: facts may be concrete but how you choose to phrase them in a report can have a dramatic effect on their interpretation.

The folks at Alltop reported that only 7% of Americans use Twitter. While they were obviously unimpressed by its market share, I had always thought the percentage was much, much lower, so I wrote the heading for this post to convey the same data but with a meaning I prefer. I hope I don't get sued by Burger King.

In what could be characterised as classic duopoly abuse, Woolworths supermarkets here in Australia have announced they will no longer honour Visa debit card requests. Ugh.

"A long time ago, we used to be friends…"

I have a Visa debit card with my credit union, it’s been fantastic. I can pay for goods and services online and sign for things in shops but the money comes from my checking account instead of an expensive line of credit that I don’t trust myself to be responsible with. Credit transactions are also free, unlike direct debit EFTPOS (the Aussie equivalent to Singapore’s NETS) which incurs a small charge each time.

What this Woolworths decision means is that when I give them my card to pay for groceries, I won’t be allowed to say credit anymore and I’ll be forced to use EFTPOS. This way Woolworths pawns the cost of the transaction to me. Yeah, gee, thanks guys.

I actually like shopping there

I shop at Woolworths here at Mawson Lakes because they’re walking distance from my house and they have a really good selection of stuff. A lot of the produce comes from here in South Australia which I argue has some of the best food in the country (despite being born a New South Welshman!).

While overall I prefer living in Singapore, supermarkets there are either extremely expensive (Cold Storage charges double digits for small blocks of cheese) or their selection is abysmal (NTUC Fairprice is in many ways a glorified 7-11). You also constantly have to check where food is made, because if it comes from the United States chances are it’ll be laden with partially hydrated corn syrup… YUCKIES! Except for grains from Bob’s Red Mill in Oregon, that stuff is so wholesome and tasty it should be illegal.

That said, this move by Woolworths is kick in the pants of their customers, and what’s worse they know they can get away with it. With most Aussies only having a choice between Woolworths or Coles in shopping centres and whatnot, this kind of blatant exploitation is almost the norm rather than the exception.

Can they do this?

What I want to know is whether this kind of behaviour is legal. I know cash is the only form of legal tender, but if they have signs in their window advertising they take Visa, MasterCard, ChuckPeddle and the like, are they allowed to refuse it just because it’s a debit card? Is it false advertising?

Might be time to send a letter to the Better Business Bureau, assuming they haven’t been inundated with correspondence about this already.

Is there an IGA or Foodland within walking distance of Mawson Lakes?

Eh, I thought I was funny. Grilled cheese sandwiches.

I don't usually create posts here just to republish comments I've written on other sites, but EdibleHat's latest adventures with a botched Windows Update patch got me to thinking about the state of computers for Real People™.

Was worth reading just for your “and CDs are as cheap as chocolate eggs” analogy :). Glad to see you got this figured out.

I’ll save my usual Microsoft bashing and jeering and just say it’s experiences like this that demonstrate just how far we have to come to make computers accessible to people who’s lives and/or work don’t revolve around them. Wow that was a long sentence. Perhaps Apple is somewhat closer than Microsoft on this, but OS X still has enough tricky quirks to make a Genius bar or a phone call to a techy friend necessary. And I love FreeBSD, but I certainly wouldn’t make anyone who doesn’t love it and computers in general use it!

For all the brewhar about the closed nature of the iPad, perhaps that’s the direction computers for “real people” should be heading.

If you have a comment on this or on EdibleHat's Windows Update adventures, leave a reply on his blog.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy yesterday confirmed his department was hosting a private online forum to discuss controversial issues about the filter with internet service providers (ISPs) — including the possibility of making it an offence to promote methods of circumventing the filter.

Did I miss something, or did Conroy just admit that a mandatory internet filter could be circumvented and therefore laws need to be introduced to make up for its failure? No, surely it can't be that simple.

That's what women worry about, right? Sharp earrings?

I was refraining from comment about this issue for the longest time, but I'm fed up and need to say something.

My lamentations about large blog networks aside, a guy found a lost prototype iPhone in a bar, and instead of handing it into the police as Californian law stipulates or back to Apple like a good Samaritan, he goes one step further from outright stealing and sells it for $5000. When Apple demands legal action, three quarters of the internet get their knickers in a knot and say Apple is evil. Fake Steve Jobs practically wet his pants at the opportunity with six dull new posts. I'll stop with the pants analogies now.

Sorry Jon Stewart, I love you, but for the first time in a while you're completely wrong. You've always stood for exposing shoddy journalism standards, and now you're defending it?

Has the whole world gone insane, or has selling stolen goods all of a sudden become kosher? I'm a sad panda.

Oh yeah and while I'm at it, to all those people claiming Apple did all this on purpose to generate media hype (that history has shown they're obviously incapable of generating any other way): yes, and the moon landing was faked, Roswell was an alien crash site and on the night of a blue moon if you throw a grilled cheese sandwich into the air while chanting a disco tune it'll turn into a flying echidna.

Is it any wonder I've stopped taking most tech journalism (and most other journalism for that matter) seriously any more? I know I've already said this, but I'm a sad panda.

Metaphorical representation of tech journalism by BinaryDreams on Flickr.