Never Censored

Ending the Reign of Lobbyists and Political Bribery

nospam@example.com (Kurt) — 2012-02-02T20:49:00Z

I've been brewing a quick fix for a country overrun with lobbyists, and I think I've finally settled on it: pay politicians a lot more.

I know what you're thinking: "They already make way too much money." You're wrong. In comparison to the middle class, they make a lot of money, but it's not off the taxpayer dollar--it's off those of lobbyists. Why does this matter? Consider: the President of the United States (POTUS) makes only $400,000 per year off taxpayers...and that's to be the most powerful elected official in the world. That's pitiful in comparison to the position: a Fortune 500 CEO can make a hundred times that. On top of that, they have to pay for their own re-election campaign, so they're inevitably chained to campaign contributions from such evils as SuperPACs. The problem is doubly compounded when it comes to the similarly-pitiful salaries of congressmen: the most they make is $223,500--a sum landed by the Speaker of the House.

To put this in perspective, you could buy the combined salaries of every single senator for only $20 million dollars. That's pocket change for a companies like BP, whose annual revenue is $297 billion; GE, whose annual revenue is $150.211 billion; or even General Motors, whose annual revenue is $135.592 billion. They can risk the $20 million because even if they lose it, it doesn't take even a fraction off their revenues.

So to me, the solution is simple: give every single one of them raises. Bring Senate and House salaries up to $1-2 million dollars per year, and the POTUS's salary up to $10 million dollars per year. The net cost to the taxpayer ends up only being a couple billion dollars, and you'll shortly see why this is a hell of a deal:

One of the main benefits is that it frees the politicians to vote their conscience and retire at the end of their terms, if they so desire, without needing a golden parachute. On top of that, they then have significant disincentive to get kicked out of office prematurely: why spoil something you're guaranteed to bank on? Also, why risk pissing off voters if you can get a second term and instead retire at the end of it?

...but by far the most important benefit is much more subtle: raising their salaries that much makes it so that it takes a significant chunk out of anyone--company or individual--who tries to bribe politicians in bulk. For individuals, it becomes nearly impossible for a single person to bribe the entire government with their stash of personal wealth. For companies, it becomes an unacceptably risky investment; therefore, it's extremely difficult to justify to shareholders. It's risky because it's illegal to bribe politicians outright, so you must rely on the politician keeping their word or otherwise being bound to their source of revenue--the "campaign contribution." At the same time, it's difficult to justify to shareholders, because the money that would be involved--billions--is naturally better spent on R&D, which has a better rate of success when it comes to keeping a company profitable.

And there you have it: the answer to most of our current problems related to government stagnation and corruption. It's counterintuitive that the end-all-be-all solution involves spending more money on the people who seem to be screwing things up, but think of it like this instead: we'd be bribing our politicians to not take bribes.

Pretty cool, huh? :)

Ending the holy war between Macs and PCs

nospam@example.com (Kurt) — 2010-12-27T03:18:00Z

I get tired of people posting crap about both, so here's a truly objective overview for everyone:

Most secure: FreeBSD.
Least secure: Windows.
Most compatible with software: Windows.
Least compatible with software: Linux (mainly because FreeBSD, for example, has a large amount of native linux binary compatability).
Most compatible with popular games: Windows.
Least compatible with popular games: Non-macs (admittedly, non-macs can get away with using commercial packages like winex and/or virtualization, but compatibility isn't guaranteed and there are still hardware compatibility concerns).
Most compatible with hardware: Windows.
Least compatible with hardware: *BSD.
Easiest to use: Mac.
Hardest to use: *BSD.
Easiest to perform core hardware upgrades: Windows.
Hardest to perform core hardware upgrades: Mac.
Easiest to perform OS upgrades: Mac.
Hardest to perform OS upgrades: Tied between *BSD and from-source Linux builds.
Best server platform: Trick question, and depends on what the server's doing, the budget, and the situation.
Worst server platform: Windows client builds.
Best development platform for iPods/iPhones: Mac.
Worst development platform for iPods/iPhones: Anything but Mac.
Best development platform for android phones: Linux; the rest are neutral.
Most expensive: Mac.
Least expensive: *BSD (this would have been tied between BSD and Linux, but BSD's license is less restrictive).
Most stable: *BSD.
Least stable: Windows (ungraceful handling of hardware failures and frequent security patching).
Best official support: Mac.
Worst official support: *BSD.
Best storage server: FreeBSD (due overwhelmingly to free zfs support without being locked into solaris).
Worst storage server: Windows client builds.
Best CUDA, OpenCL, etc platform: Linux.
Worst CUDA, OpenCL, etc platform: Windows.
Best as a media center: Windows (unfortunately due exclusively to PlayReady DRM).
Worst media center: Tied equally between non-Windows (again due to aforementioned DRM).
Best for truly tech-savvy users: Everything, depending on the situation.
Best for non-tech-savvy users who don't call tech support: Windows or Mac.
Best for pseudo-tech-savvy users: Mac.
Best for people who value aesthetics over low-level functionality: Mac.
Best for people who value low-level functionality over aesthetics: Linux (mainly due to the numerous embedded-device-specific flavors).
Worst for lazy people: non-Windows and non-Mac.
Best for lazy people: Mac.
Best for people who like to think they're trendier/better/cooler/edgier than everyone else: Mac.
Best for people who don't want idiots messing with their computer or server: *BSD.
Most open-source operating system: *BSD (wins over Linux due to having a less restrictive license).
Least open-source operating system: Mac (note: Microsoft does, contrary to popular belief, release their source code to companies with a large enough number of licensed PCs, so long as they agree to sign a very tight non-disclosure agreement. In contrast, Mac conformed to the licensing restrictions of the kernel at first, but does not publish their proprietary extensions to anyone as far as I know).
Best mobile phone platform: Android 1.6+ (primarily due to hardware locks restricting Apple's iOS to a specific manufacturer--that is, Apple)
Worst mobile phone platform: Palm and other manufacturer-specific operating systems.
Best for thin clients: Linux.
Worst for thin clients: Mac (hardware locks again).
Most vendor lock-in: Mac.
Least vendor lock-in: Linux.
Worst operating system ever made: Windows ME (there are worse, but this was the most popular of the worst).

Also, please note that there's no battle between "PC and Mac." In a way, that used to be the case when there was a processor and platform difference, but nowadays, Macs are now PCs made exclusively by a specific manufacturer (Apple) that happen to ship with a hardware-locked operating system. This is the reason you can install Windows on a Mac, but not vice versa—Apple hard-codes a lock into their operating system to prevent it from being installed on non-Apple-made PCs. There are ways around this using virtualization, however, but for the most part, the argument is overwhelmingly now between operating systems—not platforms. Thus, the arguments should now be more along the lines of "My Toshiba is better than your Apple," "My Apple is better than your Acer," "My custom-built box is better than your Apple," etc. Alternatively, for disagreements over operating systems, "OSX is better than Windows 7," "Windows7 is better than Linux," "FreeBSD is better than Windows 7," and such are the more appropriate forms of argument.

So yeah, now that the holy war's over, nobody will ever again post flames that are pro- or anti- whatever, right? RIGHT???

Well, crap, I guess it was worth a try anyway.

Cheers,
-Kurt

Letter from God

nospam@example.com (Kurt) — 2010-12-26T11:13:00Z

Apparently God thought my blog was the best place to put this. I'm guessing he was stoned again, but whatever.

To All That This Concerns:
Hi. I'm God. I'm a bit busy now, so I'll try to make this quick. As a preface, if you're reading this a thousand years or more from now, stop reading it and just use some common sense. Good. Now that that's out of the way, I've got a few points I need to cover:

Stop speaking for me — You read way too far into things and you're screwing up the message. Don't improvise, don't make it modern, and if someone doesn't believe the way you do, it is perfectly ok. In fact, I don't even care if people believe in me—they don't have to. Also, leaders of megachurches and centralized religions: stop abusing these people—you're stealing their money, and you know better. I know why you do it, and I know about the crap that's happened and not happened in your childhoods, and I understand, That said, please do me this one favor: stop. Just...stop. All of it.
There is no afterlife hell — I have no idea where you people got this from. To think you'd even think that angels would ever stand idly by, truly able to help while other people suffered—regardless of the reason—well, that truly astounds me, and it shows a profound misunderstanding of just what, exactly, is "good" or "evil" and what, exactly, angels are.
Don't worship me — I don't want to be thanked, remembered, died-for, or anything else. Just... just don't. Pretend I don't exist. In fact, if you really want a way to make me happy, truly do some good despite consciously believing there's no god and no reward coming because of it. It's the purest form of good that's even able to be done.
I'm not all-knowing, all-wise, all-powerful, or anything else — Oh, and don't be idiots—even I'm not sure if there's something even greater than me out there, so I'd completely understand if you doubt my existence. Again, that's totally fine.
You were all born happy — Everything from there on is entirely a product of society and from your upbringing, which was largely out of your hands and almost entirely in the hands of your parents and those surrounding you. I should note that you won't—in any way—be punished for how you turned out and the circumstances of your lives. Instead, realize only this: while there's no afterlife version of hell, you're obviously still free to create your own "hell" complete with demons. I say "obviously," because apparently you've already gone and done that, sadly.
Don't worry about religion — Try this: first look around you, Now, look at everything that's not around you. Don't get it yet? Here's a hint: you're screwing up the former because you're spending too much time worrying about the latter.

Oh and trash the Bible and all the other holy books. They're corrupted, outdated, and while there are some valid parts, the fact that they've been so heavily tampered with and abused through rhetoric negates what would have presumably been "divinity," at least, as far as I'm concerned. Reference them, by all means, if you so desire, but don't take them literally nor as my word.

Hmm...oh, and of course, when in doubt, smoke marijuana. It's there for a reason, and it grows everywhere for a reason, and it affects you in the way it affects you for a reason, and it's impossible for any human to overdose on it for a reason. I'm not quite sure why some of you thought I made a mistake on this (and therefore thought it'd be a good idea to make it illegal), but doing so forced me to write this letter because you were about to destroy yourselves in wake of the ramifications of outlawing such a critical plant. You might as well have outlawed oxygen—it was that stupid of a decision. I mean, I normally don't say things this candidly, but that really kind of pissed me off—especially when you started slicing wings off of angels by throwing them in jail because of your stupidity. You people are freaking idiots sometimes, you know that? It frustrates me so much because you're all just so...ugh! ...but I still love you, because I know you don't understand. You could never understand, and I would never be able to make you understand without destroying what you are. Above all, I'd never want to make you into me—nobody should have to carry that burden.

So yeah... toss the holy books. I know a lot of you will freak out, but don't panic. I've got you covered.

I say that, but then I realize that you'll just figure out a way to screw it up again, won't you? Hmm...ok, then...

If you need something solid—something to live by—then live by this: Just be excellent to each other.

Best wishes,
-G

Three new steps to avoiding getting winter plagues

nospam@example.com (Kurt) — 2010-10-18T02:31:00Z

'Tis the season when the media puts out a bunch of well-intentioned articles and reports with stereotypical suggestions for people to avoid getting colds. Ignore them, and follow mine instead.

1. ALWAYS avoid contact between your hands and your eyes. Around 80% of colds enter through the eyes and from there proceed to infect your sinuses (giving you the characteristic sniffles). It's a general rule of thumb to avoid touching your hands to your face (especially your nose), but avoid your eyes like the plague. Use your sleeve instead.

2. If you wash your hands, re-innoculate them with bacteria from your upper arms, neck, or lower legs immediately. You're not a surgeon, and your hands don't need to be "sterile." No matter how hard you scrub, you'll always have things living on your hands, so your goal should be to keep benign bacteria happily reproducing there in order to physically compete with and starve out the tough, pathogenic stuff that you will regularly encounter in the wild. Never, ever, assume that "germs" are inherenty bad.

3. Get plenty of sleep. Okay, so this one's probably not new to anyone, but nobody seems to actually follow it. :P It's right up there with "don't stress the hell out over trivial things," but then again, it's America. Long story short, your immune system very quickly starts to go nuts if you don't get enough sleep. It only takes a couple of days of poor sleep for Bad Things to gain a foothold. If you find yourself getting abnormally tired, a combination of going home, blasting the heat, and sleeping can be the difference between two weeks of semi-sick hell and two weeks of normality.

Anyway, that's about it. Sure, you'll hear a bunch of stuff about getting exercise and avoiding sick people, but many of the common infections are most readily transmitted when the person infected with them is asymptomatic (i.e., not apparently "sick"), while the exercise part is only really important when it comes to avoiding infections if your diet is either too high or too low in simple sugars (and, well, let's face it, if you live in this country, your diet is probably high in simple sugars). Either way, I consider exercise and avoiding dudes hacking up a lung to be common sense, so they don't get their own numbers. :P

Cheers.

Never, ever buy Microsoft Dynamics RMS

nospam@example.com (Kurt) — 2010-09-24T04:58:30Z

Let me preface this with the following: I rarely hate software.

There. Prefaced. Let's good to the goods, shall we?

Here's how it went with Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System:

Let's say you go, "OMG! Cool software! This would run my store really well!" and you shell out the $15,000+ dollars to provision a handful of points of sale, because you think it'd be a good investment, and that its ease of use combined with powerful backend (a trait Microsoft is known for) would be a perfect fit for a given situation.

Now like you should do with any computer program, you want to apply the latest security and bug fixes. Uh Oh! Apparently, unlike Windows, Office, SQL Server, and pretty much everything else, it seems that with RMS, critical security patches, bugfixes, and miscellaneous updates aren't delivered for free via Windows Update. Instead, Microsoft demands hundreds of dollars to give you access to "CustomerSource" in order to get them. Can't shell out the hundreds of dollars per point of sale, per year? You're screwed.

So not only do you pay around $15k for the initial investment in the software for 5 or so points of sale, you don't even get security updates. No updates! Not even when XP SP3 and Vista SP1 will corrupt your database and screw up everything. Want to prevent that and save your store from disaster? That'll be hundreds of dollars, per POS, per year—all payable to Microsoft. I kid you not.

It gets better.

Say you want to customize something in RMS like you would in Windows or basically any other Microsoft product. Guess where the documentation is? One would assume it's freely available on TechNet or MSDN like pretty much every other Microsoft product. Hah! You wish! This is RMS! It requires a subscription to "PartnerSource," which requires you to take multiple $100+ dollar exams, and once you're done there, you have to provide customer references of those you've performed RMS work for.

Yes, that's right, in order to get access to the PartnerSource website, which has all of the documentation, customization guides, and software development kits (SDKs) that you need to help customers with RMS, you have to somehow already have access to that information—available only via the PartnerSource site itself—so that you can have the customer references to send to Microsoft in order to get access to the PartnerSource site. It's unbelievably insane.

On top of that, even if you're an MSDN subscriber already paying thousands of dollars per year to be one, and you have access to pretty much every product Microsoft makes, you get no access to download RMS—not even to develop or test with. So you can't even practice with the software before taking the exams unless you buy it first.

Bear in mind, this insanity is just to get to the technical documentation, SDKs, and updates that come free'n'standard with pretty much every other Microsoft product.

I'm trying to figure out analogies in real life for how ridiculous the idea is. Here are some I could think of off the top of my head:

It's like requiring a baker to bake a cake before allowing him to buy or test an oven.
It's like requiring a car owner to become a certified mechanic before allowing him to change a flat tire.
It's like forcing air force cadets to fly F16s before letting them into F16 simulators (unless they want to buy their own F16 first).

In short: don't buy RMS. I don't care what you buy (or get for free), but avoid RMS like the plague. If they ever start to provide security patches, bugfixes, and documentation for free, maybe then it'd be something to consider. Otherwise, they've got you by the balls, and your entire business is at risk unless you pay whatever fee they choose to ask of you each year.

RMS could be great one day. All Microsoft has to do is not screw over the people who buy it. As it stands, however, my opinion is that it's a bottomless pit that both your money and your sanity will fall into but never return.