This is the only headstone I could possibly want. It must be made of carbon-fiber-laced stainless steel, and run on biofuel with solar igniters.
Only this could possibly summarize my life's work and goals, my attitude, and my sense of place in the universe. Oh, and the great-grandchildren can write something nice on it.
Warning. Do not click. NSFW.
http://oglaf.com/bliss.html
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
The Hosts to Avoid at ALL Costs...
You should never pay someone to "host" your website, but if for some reason you must... I want to help you avoid being totally ripped off and try to help you minimize the amount of cash you will be cheated out of.
With that in mind, some benign soul invented: http://www.nouptime.com/ which is the "worlds worst host, with ZERO uptime.
They also list the worst hosts, ever. Don't use any host listed here unless you like throwing away your money. No Uptime is fun to read, and is an extremely sarcastic, if somewhat TOO accurate portrayal of what most hosts will give you.
Nothing.
With that in mind, some benign soul invented: http://www.nouptime.com/ which is the "worlds worst host, with ZERO uptime.
They also list the worst hosts, ever. Don't use any host listed here unless you like throwing away your money. No Uptime is fun to read, and is an extremely sarcastic, if somewhat TOO accurate portrayal of what most hosts will give you.
Nothing.
Why so little content?
There are good reasons why so many google blogs and other blogs have very little in the way of media or other content. Google will delete it.
Even when you're entirely acting legally, posting your own music or royalty-paid distributions you've obtained from the music label itself - your blog is now dead. As of today Google has shut down most music blogs.
This is part of why corporations can NEVER be trusted with content. Not even Google. To me, the big Gee is mostly useful for linking and advertising. I'm careful to keep as much content as possible firmly on my own servers.
No one can delete the content on my personal machines.
A perfectly functional aging server can be found online by searching "used servers under 100 dollars." I got three for 40 each. I already have one running Knoppix, and Sun's VirtualBox with minimalist linux/apache webservers installed. The knoppix OS runs off the CD, so it's unhackable! Virtual box utilizes hard drive and USB memory space for the virtual machines serving individual domains. Hack one domain, if possible, but the others are unaffected.
1. Host YOURSELF and pay NOTHING.
2. Get Google to do two things for you: Provide bandwidth and revenue.
3. Get a business license online for only 15.00.
4. Take that info to a Credit Union and get a business account for a 5.00 deposit.
5. Congratulations. You're now self-employed.
For twenty dollars I'll coach you on how to do these things, but if you already have the skills then you don't need my help.
Never forget the following rules for small business:
+Don't pay for anything you can do yourself.
+You don't need a bookkeeper. Businesses are often blackmailed by bookkeepers.
+You CAN do your own taxes, safely. No worry about prison.
+Never pay anyone to host your company. Provide your OWN hosting.
+Learn how to market yourself and your company.
+Provide a service or product, and be HONEST.
Even when you're entirely acting legally, posting your own music or royalty-paid distributions you've obtained from the music label itself - your blog is now dead. As of today Google has shut down most music blogs.
This is part of why corporations can NEVER be trusted with content. Not even Google. To me, the big Gee is mostly useful for linking and advertising. I'm careful to keep as much content as possible firmly on my own servers.
No one can delete the content on my personal machines.
A perfectly functional aging server can be found online by searching "used servers under 100 dollars." I got three for 40 each. I already have one running Knoppix, and Sun's VirtualBox with minimalist linux/apache webservers installed. The knoppix OS runs off the CD, so it's unhackable! Virtual box utilizes hard drive and USB memory space for the virtual machines serving individual domains. Hack one domain, if possible, but the others are unaffected.
1. Host YOURSELF and pay NOTHING.
2. Get Google to do two things for you: Provide bandwidth and revenue.
3. Get a business license online for only 15.00.
4. Take that info to a Credit Union and get a business account for a 5.00 deposit.
5. Congratulations. You're now self-employed.
For twenty dollars I'll coach you on how to do these things, but if you already have the skills then you don't need my help.
Never forget the following rules for small business:
+Don't pay for anything you can do yourself.
+You don't need a bookkeeper. Businesses are often blackmailed by bookkeepers.
+You CAN do your own taxes, safely. No worry about prison.
+Never pay anyone to host your company. Provide your OWN hosting.
+Learn how to market yourself and your company.
+Provide a service or product, and be HONEST.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Microsoft will never stop lying.
Here we have a guy who once worked on OpenGl, and now works for the Evil Empire. Of course, he's talking a ten mile trail of sh*t about OpenGl now. The article is so bad, so logically flawed, as to be a comedy of technology. I laughed, winced, and ground my teeth at the derailment of logic in favor of greed.
So, another job-hungry tech guy got sucked up by Evil. It happens. Most of them are happy to just take the money and feed the family. Not this guy, he has to take aim at the community he learned from.
Microsoft has demonstrated repeatedly that they will absorb competition that they can't beat, sue those who can't be absorbed, and conduct a war of misinformation against the one thing that they can't buy off: Open Source.
20 years of government contracts, exclusive deals with colleges, lawsuits against competitors, closed-door deals with intel, the "Intel Tax" and the "MSFT Tax", being convicted of being a monopoly, and losing repeatedly in Europe for violating fair trade laws later - Microsoft still hasn't changed the way they do business:
Lie, Cheat, and Steal.
I have news for this guy, I used to work at the Evil Empire, and I spent my time advocating FOR open source and questioning why MSFT's own products do not interlock or even work together at all. Sure, they bought Word from one company, and Excel was ripped from another, but that's no reason that they can't be made to work together in the same suite after more than a decade.
Newsflash to the general public: After years of working with, and then for, Microsoft I have yet to find any software that is wholly written by MSFT. They buy everything. At most, they modify it slightly and rebrand it. MSFT is a marketing company - not a software company.
Programmers who once worked on a specific product at MSFT are now nowhere to be found, usually working in another company entirely, and I know of no case where someone still works in the same division after more than a few years. They move around rapidly. They have to, or the problems will catch up to them.
Problems? Coding around MSFT's odious restrictions, and being forced to release Alpha software to the public as stable. They do this by slapping programming band-aids on everything and calling lots of bugs "features under development."
To this day, MSFT is the proud owner of more security holes than all other software worldwide combined*. All. Think about that. MSFT doesn't have that much software. What they do have is swiss cheese.
*Gross estimate, lines of code are pretty hard to count in proprietary software -since you're not allowed to look at it or talk about it.
Actual article: Beware, hard to read without feeling ill if you work on open source.
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/mod/journal/journal.asp?jn=263140
So, another job-hungry tech guy got sucked up by Evil. It happens. Most of them are happy to just take the money and feed the family. Not this guy, he has to take aim at the community he learned from.
Microsoft has demonstrated repeatedly that they will absorb competition that they can't beat, sue those who can't be absorbed, and conduct a war of misinformation against the one thing that they can't buy off: Open Source.
20 years of government contracts, exclusive deals with colleges, lawsuits against competitors, closed-door deals with intel, the "Intel Tax" and the "MSFT Tax", being convicted of being a monopoly, and losing repeatedly in Europe for violating fair trade laws later - Microsoft still hasn't changed the way they do business:
Lie, Cheat, and Steal.
I have news for this guy, I used to work at the Evil Empire, and I spent my time advocating FOR open source and questioning why MSFT's own products do not interlock or even work together at all. Sure, they bought Word from one company, and Excel was ripped from another, but that's no reason that they can't be made to work together in the same suite after more than a decade.
Newsflash to the general public: After years of working with, and then for, Microsoft I have yet to find any software that is wholly written by MSFT. They buy everything. At most, they modify it slightly and rebrand it. MSFT is a marketing company - not a software company.
Programmers who once worked on a specific product at MSFT are now nowhere to be found, usually working in another company entirely, and I know of no case where someone still works in the same division after more than a few years. They move around rapidly. They have to, or the problems will catch up to them.
Problems? Coding around MSFT's odious restrictions, and being forced to release Alpha software to the public as stable. They do this by slapping programming band-aids on everything and calling lots of bugs "features under development."
To this day, MSFT is the proud owner of more security holes than all other software worldwide combined*. All. Think about that. MSFT doesn't have that much software. What they do have is swiss cheese.
*Gross estimate, lines of code are pretty hard to count in proprietary software -since you're not allowed to look at it or talk about it.
Actual article: Beware, hard to read without feeling ill if you work on open source.
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/mod/journal/journal.asp?jn=263140
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Comic Review for 2009. Better stand back a bit...
I just can't put them in solid numerical order. Those near the top are better than those near the bottom. It's hard to even pick a top three. I have all sorts of points to grade on, but the trouble with web comics is that they are so vastly different. Some have pretty lame art but are amazingly funny, others have mind-blowing art and aren't funny at all. There's too many ranges to race up and down, and I've yet to figure out a good system to compare them all.
So, here they are, arranged in the purely subjective ranking of my random desires.
EXCELLENT:
Five stars
- Warning. Some adult content, or worse! [Which I love. Art should be independent of offensiveness.]
http://zebragirl.keenspot.com/
http://www.freakangels.com/
http://platinumgrit.com/
http://www.oglaf.com/
http://www.viruscomix.com/
Best:
Four stars
http://www.threepanelsoul.com/
http://schlockmercenary.com/index.html
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/
http://www.illwillpress.com/
http://www.baldwinpage.com/bruno.html
Very Good:
Three stars
http://www.errantstory.com/
http://sharingauniverse.comicgenesis.com/
http://jessemoynihan.com/
http://www.drunkduck.com/Charby_the_Vampirate/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
Above Good:
Two stars
http://xkcd.com/
http://www.supermegatopia.com/comics.htm
http://www.megatokyo.com/
http://www.sabrina-online.com/
http://faith.rydia.net/101.html
http://www.poisonedminds.com/
http://www.choppingblock.org/
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
...
To be honest, there should probably be about twenty to thirty more links with 'one star' but I just have a hard time adding any of them. I have a huge list of bookmarks that I've read before, or still read, and none of them are begging me to add them.
They're "Okay", not "Good." I don't feel driven to sort them.
Complaints:
"What? Foglio on the last link? WTF?" Okay, no matter what you like, there's somebody who won't agree with you.
Personally, while I like Phil and have always loved his art, he's somewhat sexist in a backhanded way in my opinion. His art is phenomenal, but the stories fall flat. If I were editing a 2010 version of "Heavy Metal" magazine full of webcomics - I don't think I'd include Phil. The male characters are laughable, the females overblown, etc. And, it's just not that funny.
Freakangels is far more artistic, has a better story line, and is more amusing. I don't think I'd even like the author, given some of the expressed views therein, and the excessive use of violence to resolve issues, but still. I put it up there at #1 or damn close.
Zebragirl is just mind-blowing with art, story, and humor that keeps you begging for more. Don't start reading this one in the middle of cooking. You'll be burning the house down before you know it.
Virus Comics has a few comics, and all of them are awesome. I sat there reading while my tummy was growling for hours. Feed me! No. Feed me. Shut up! I didn't want to get up and eat until I'd finished the next storyline.
Platinum Grit is another mega-art dream of a comic. If I had wet dreams about comics, this would be it.
The others all have great things to be said about them, but the best thing you can do is just read them. Art is best supported by donating to the artist. Buy some of their junk and don't worry too much about my review. Send me a tee shirt if you care that much.
~D
So, here they are, arranged in the purely subjective ranking of my random desires.
EXCELLENT:
Five stars
- Warning. Some adult content, or worse! [Which I love. Art should be independent of offensiveness.]
http://zebragirl.keenspot.com/
http://www.freakangels.com/
http://platinumgrit.com/
http://www.oglaf.com/
http://www.viruscomix.com/
Best:
Four stars
http://www.threepanelsoul.com/
http://schlockmercenary.com/index.html
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/
http://www.illwillpress.com/
http://www.baldwinpage.com/bruno.html
Very Good:
Three stars
http://www.errantstory.com/
http://sharingauniverse.comicgenesis.com/
http://jessemoynihan.com/
http://www.drunkduck.com/Charby_the_Vampirate/
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/
Above Good:
Two stars
http://xkcd.com/
http://www.supermegatopia.com/comics.htm
http://www.megatokyo.com/
http://www.sabrina-online.com/
http://faith.rydia.net/101.html
http://www.poisonedminds.com/
http://www.choppingblock.org/
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
...
To be honest, there should probably be about twenty to thirty more links with 'one star' but I just have a hard time adding any of them. I have a huge list of bookmarks that I've read before, or still read, and none of them are begging me to add them.
They're "Okay", not "Good." I don't feel driven to sort them.
Complaints:
"What? Foglio on the last link? WTF?" Okay, no matter what you like, there's somebody who won't agree with you.
Personally, while I like Phil and have always loved his art, he's somewhat sexist in a backhanded way in my opinion. His art is phenomenal, but the stories fall flat. If I were editing a 2010 version of "Heavy Metal" magazine full of webcomics - I don't think I'd include Phil. The male characters are laughable, the females overblown, etc. And, it's just not that funny.
Freakangels is far more artistic, has a better story line, and is more amusing. I don't think I'd even like the author, given some of the expressed views therein, and the excessive use of violence to resolve issues, but still. I put it up there at #1 or damn close.
Zebragirl is just mind-blowing with art, story, and humor that keeps you begging for more. Don't start reading this one in the middle of cooking. You'll be burning the house down before you know it.
Virus Comics has a few comics, and all of them are awesome. I sat there reading while my tummy was growling for hours. Feed me! No. Feed me. Shut up! I didn't want to get up and eat until I'd finished the next storyline.
Platinum Grit is another mega-art dream of a comic. If I had wet dreams about comics, this would be it.
The others all have great things to be said about them, but the best thing you can do is just read them. Art is best supported by donating to the artist. Buy some of their junk and don't worry too much about my review. Send me a tee shirt if you care that much.
~D
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