Cogs can think.

Okay boys and girls, sit back, get some coffee, some popcorn, and enjoy the show. It’s always fun to see zealots exposed.

Today, one of my closest and bestest (heh) friends turned 23. Again, congratulations with yet another year, Renaatje :).

She celebrated it yesterday eve, in a very succesful way, I may add. Lots of laughs, lots of jokes, lots of things that were good in other ways. Of course me and Renaat couldn’t resist hitting one another whenever possible. When she spilled a few drops of Coca-cola on my head (I was wiping spilled Coca-cola off of the floor), she said: “Mmm, maybe it helps,” obviously referring to my ever-thinner set of hairs. I had enough chances to retaliate, and obviously did just that, but I’ll spare you the details. Anecdotes came from everywhere… I always like that.

In any case, here’s to another year, Renaat!

PS: Here’s a picture of me and Marco in chill-mode in Antwerp (blogged about it just yesterday):

Yesterday, at around 16:00, I arrived home after being in Antwerp for three days, with virtually the same group as the one I went to Belgium with. Everyone (except my fellow-graverobber, by the way) was there, and this time Martin was ’round too (there were no game awards to go to dubbelepuntpee).

‘T was the night ‘fore we left, that I already went to Amsterdam, where I joined Marco and Levi for a drink at the pub where Levi works. I got Kaballa’d there (or whatever it’s called) by I believe the sister of the owner, and she told me I was good at sex and that sorta stuff, and I was also persistent. For what it’s worth. We had a few drinks, wandered around Levi’s place, and went to sleep. I made some remark about a duck, they say, but I deny everything.

The following morning we hopped on the train, where we met up with the rest of the group. We first had a mandatory museum visit from university (we did?), but after that, we were on our own. We went out to dinner to a pretty fancy restaurant, with really good food and one cute-looking waitress. After the food, me and Marco went into chill-mode and ordered good after-dinner drinks. Marco a Cointreau, and I an Irish coffee– which was a perfect one, just the right amounts of the three ingredients (whiskey, coffee, cream).

After dinner we decided to watch Man United vs. Blackburn Rovers in a pub (that pub would play a central role the next evening). When the game was over, and already a few alcoholic beverages later, we decided, after some disagreements, to go to a karaoke club. There, me, Marco, Levi and Onno brutally raped and murdered Oasis’s Wonderwall (my sincere apologies to Liam Gallagher), and other people felt the urge to rape and murder other people’s songs. At that karaoke bar, Onno taught us a new way to fcuk with digital cameras: you shake your head real fast (dear lord that hurts after a few drinks), while someone takes a picca (something which turned out to be especially funny the next evening when Nadia tried it). On our way back to the hotel (or whatever it’s called in English), we raped and murdered even more songs (my sincere apologies to The Eagles, Robbie Williams, Dire Straits, and James Blunt). We fell asleep pretty quickly.

The next morning, the group split up, because half of the group didn’t really feel like ’semi-treehugger-bio-food’ (according to Levi). I obviously was part of that group (I don’t vote for the green party and I have too little hair to be a hippie), and we ate at a much more Starbucks-like-place (but then for breakfasts instead of just coffees). It was de-li-ci-ous, allbeit a bit pricey (EUR 2.55 for a fresh juice). After wandering around town for a short while, playing pool at the Irish pub, we went to the cinema, to see Jarhead. What a redicilously good movie. Seriously. It’s good. Cinematography was excellent, the acting outstanding, and the music extraordinary. If this doesn’t get an Oscar, I don’t know what will (then again, American History X didn’t get an Oscar either, so I’m not sure if Oscars are good indicators for film quality anyway).

When the movie was over, there were some struggles as to where we’d eat. I was all for the McDonalds, but the ladies wanted something a bit more fancy. I did a Charles Darwin, and adapted, and as such we went to a decent Italian restaurant. Really good food, and when we were done, me and Marco again went into chill-mode with an Irish coffee and a Cointreau, respectively. This one wasn’t as good as the other one, but it was still good enough (it’d better be good enough, seeing the price).

Dinner was over, we went to the hotel, bought us some alcohol, and started preparing for the evening. This time ’round, as I already mentioned, it was Nadia’s turn to shake her head in front of the camera– but she couldn’t stop laughing so I ended up with 4 pictures of her laughing and smiling. In the end I did succeed– wonderfully.

Anyway, I was drinking Martini at my usual rate, so I got loose, so did others. We then left, to go out, and one group wanted to go to some club to dance, while some of us (including yours truly) was more interested in the relaxed atmosphere of a pub. So, Marco, Nancy, Marloes, Martin, and me went to the Irish pub again, where we got kicked out at 12 because they were closing down. Then, we decided to move our asses back to that pub where we watched football the night before. They were about to close– but as I peered through the windows, I saw someone walking to the door. He opened it, and with a clear Australian accent told us we could come in. From that point on, we had our own private pub– with a big-ass beamer with 900 TV channels, and self-service at the bar. And, of course, we had this crazy Australian guy with an incredibely good sense of humour. From that point onwards things start to get a tad bit blurry. I do remember having a discussion with the Australian guy, Ben, about which album by The Streets is better (Original Pirate Material or A Grand Don’t Come For Free).

When we got back at the hotel, I still had some Martini left in the bottle I bought earlier. I started drinking that too. I got pretty far away. A really cool thing that happened was this; I was sitting in the hallway of the hotel, with my head against the wall. I banged my head against it slightly, and at exactly that point, Nancy coughed in her bed. In my drunken mind, I had found a causal relationship, and I felt the world needed to know. I ran to the room where Nancy was trying to sleep, stormed in, and told her.

Next thing I remember, is waking up, Martin completely sick in his bed, telling me I’d already been asleep for 2 hours. I looked at my watch, and fcuk, he was right.

Next thing, I woke up. We packed, had breakfast, sung English songs in Dutch (’Laat het zijn, laat het zijn, laat het zijn, laat het zijn/woorden van wijsheid/laat het zijn’). I got home.

—

Yup. It was worth it. Thanks guys and girls for yet another wonderfull trip. CIW DE GEKSTEEE!!

Fiona hits the nail on the head here as usual:

If you don’t have a song to sing
you’re okay
you know how to get along humming
if you don’t have a date
celebrate
go out and sit on the lawn and do nothing
‘cause it’s just what you must do
nobody does it anymore

no I don’t believe in the wasting of time,
but I don’t believe that I’m wasting mine

if you don’t have a point to make
Don’t sweat it
you’ll make a sharp one being so kind
(and I’d sure appreciate it)
everyone else’s goal’s
to get big headed
why should I follow that beat
being that I’m
better than fine

Yesterday I went to the beach, and the dunes and forrests which lie behind it, with Renate. It’s very cold here, only a few degrees centegrade.

It was a fun day, we should do it more often!

And on another note, my Queen Beatrix is in the hospital with pnuemonia– I hope she regains her full health soon.

Let me state for the record here, the moment Apple abandons the (for me) superior single-menu-atop-the-screen-for-all-apps, is the moment I will sell everything related to Apple in favour of something else.

To all Americans,

I’m sure you are getting annoyed about my anti-US-government stance. I can completely understand how frustrating it must be (being slightly chauvinistic myself). However, your government is just making it so damn easy to not like them…

My sincere apologies, however. You Americans do rock. Seriously.

David Pogue,

You complained about Vista stealing stuff from Apple’s OS X. You were at the keynote at CES, and THUS you now are completely educated and experienced in using Vista. Sure, my friend. Let’s recap the things you complain about:

Transparent window edges. Well, it’s true that Vista looks nicer than any previous version of Windows. But I’m just not sure about the value of transparent window edges. They’re cool, sure; but exactly how many times, in your work life, have you muttered, “Darn! If only I could see just the part of the background window that’s currently obscured by the 1/3-inch margin of the foreground window”?

I have been using Vista on my machine for a few weeks now, and even though I was the first to say, “what’s the use in transparent borders??”, I now completely understand Microsoft’s point. They wanted to do 2 things in the Vista Aero UI: 1) create a sense of depth, and 2) put the actual repeating UI elements (window borders, etc.) out of focus; make the user focus on the actual content. It takes USAGE to figure out they’ve succeeded in doing just that– you cannot understand that by watching a keynote.

Widgets. Vista will let you summon, at the right edge of the screen, widgets: single-purpose, single-window little programs. One’s an egg timer, one’s a news ticker, and so on. It’s a lot like the Dashboard in Mac OS X (or the shareware Konfabulator that came before it), except that apparently, you can’t put the widgets anywhere on the screen you like.

The whole concept of the sidebar is much older than Dashboard in Tiger. You would be right as to say that in effect, Apple has invented the idea of widgets (in pre-System 7 environments), but that wasn’t because Apple had this cool idea of widgets; no, it was a nescesity. Because those early systems lacked multi-tasking, Apple needed a hack to give a sense of multitasking. And as such, they created this idea of ‘desk accessories’– small applications like calculators, that weren’t really calculators, but drivers, so they could run simoultaniously, giving a sense of multitasking.

Apple ditched this concept with the advent of multitasking in I believe System 7. Then, with the advent of OSX, we had Konfabulator– the same basic idea (mini-apps) but done in acompletely different way, and this time ’round not as a hack, but as a feature. Apple blatantly ripped the creator of Konfabulator off, and implemented an exact copy of it, renamed it, and squealed innovation.

But, before Apple did Dashboard, the earliest builds of Longhorn in 2003 and maybe even 2002, already had the sidebar, in which you could load, well, plugins (widgets) that did the same as Dasboard widgets do now. Who’s ripping off who here?

Other than that, BeOS had replicants. Also very similar (but replicants had much more potential). I believe os/2 had widgets too, thanks to Stardock (and thus Windows too, also thanks to Stardock).

3-D application switcher. With a keystroke, Vista can present you with a stacked deck of every window that’s open on your machine, making it easier to hunt through them for one particular window. It’s a lot like the Exposé feature in Mac OS X, except that you don’t get to see all of the windows simultaneously; you have to walk through them one at a time with the mouse or keyboard.

I do not really see the point in this 3D application switcher either. But to call it a rip-off of Exposé? Are you serious? Exposé as well as this 3D switcher are just a logical step forward from the ordinary alt+tab switcher, just two different ways of doing the same. Hey, Apple has a two-button mouse now, a total rip-off of all other mice since 1267! I mean, not every tiny insiginificant feature even deserves to be looked at in the sense of a rip-off.

Vista has icons. It is such a rip-off of BeOS– BeOS also has icons!

Global, fast search. Vista can now find words in any of your files, quickly and easily, just like the Spotlight feature of Mac OS X.

Spotlight is nothing more than an improved variant of BeFS from BeOS– illustrated by the fact that ex-Be engineers now work at Apple. It is clear to everyone who has even the slightest understanding of the operating system business where Spotlight came from. Apple took BeFS, improved upon the concept by adding searching inside documents and squealed innovation.

Other than that, Vista’s search also started somewhere in 2002/2003. I even remember using it in 2003.

Photo organization. Some limited photo editing is now built into Vista’s photo browser, which couldn’t look more like Apple’s iPhoto program if you ran it through a copying machine.

I’ll give you that. Then again, there were a thousand iPhoto-like apps before Apple. Should now suddenly no one be allowed to make photo managers anymore, just because Apple made one of those thousands?

I’m sorry David, but by reading your article I have only come to one conclusion: you are an obvious pro-Apple, anti-MS troll. Nothing more and nothing less. And yes, I use two Macs on a day-to-day basis, and I’m really happy with them. But at least I don’t have my distortion field up.

Good day,

Thom Holwerda
Managing editor of OSNews.com

Anyone remember Kelly McNeil? The guy, subject of this long post? Well, he’s back. Or better yet, he was back.

As I was browsing OSNews, reading comments, I noticed this comment. I saw it go up from 0 points to +5 points in just a few minutes. I didn’t trust it, as comments rarely, if ever, reach the +5 status, let alone in a few minutes. I IM’d Adam, our site’s maintainer, and told him about it. Adam did some magic, and he dug up the user information of the readers who had modded that comment up so quickly. It turned out all of the accounts that had modded the comment up, came from one and the same IP address. And one of the accounts that modded the comment up, was account number 1116… Infamous number, because it’s the ‘kellym’ account.

So we nailed him.

But Adam wasn’t done. He then ran that IP address through the search engine of the database in the OSNews.com backend… And our jaws dropped. We found 21 accounts, all registred under that same, single IP address, so he had many more modpoints than other users! But that wasn’t all– they all used the same password: ‘kelly mcneil’! So, by accident, we had uncovered a major fraud on OSNews– the biggest to date! And as it turns out… Every single attack against my character on OSNews, and all flamewars that followed them, in the last few weeks, were instigated by one of Kelly’s accounts. I already felt that. More than often I had this itchy feeling that many of the readers who attacked me had a ‘Kelly-ish’ tone. All this proves I wasn’t crazy :D.

I’m astonished.

But I’m also, really, really happy. We have uncovered a major fraud. Adam has suspended all the accounts. He banned the entire subnet of the IP. Remember, this is already the 2nd time Kelly has created mutliple accounts in order to fcuk up OSNews. He did it earlier, but then openly (he had accounts named ‘kellym2, ‘kellym3′, etc.).

This is an advice to everyone in the online computer news business: place a ban on Kelly McNeil on your website. Secondly, never, never ever link to his website, OSViews.com. Never submit news to it. Don’t read it. Piss on it. By doing any of the just mentioned you are supporting this maniac, and multiple-offender of OSNews’ basic rules.