VirtuMonde.sci

That’s the name of some malware that’s giving the Black Box under my desk a licking right now. I haven’t managed to get rid of it and while I think I’ve found out how to dispell it once and for all I simply don’t have the energy right now to sit through the whole bloody proceedure. So. Here I am on my Mac.

Now there are a lot of Mac evangelicals out there. They pray to Steve Jobs and use his urine like holy water to heal all ailments digital. They keep iPhones under their pillows and relentlessly tell people like me “Once you go Mac you’ll never go back.”

Well. I went back once, after my first Mac debacle, and I’m ready to go back again now.

I suppose I should convert to the cult of Macdom, eat the golden apple as it were, but…

One mouse button?!?!?! Seriously guys, its been almost two decades since the second mouse button was invented. I know you’ve got this slick minimalist aesthetic to maintain – this precious “hip” branding strategy, but fuck. Function is nice. Everything doesn’t have to look like a Star Trek TNG prop. I like things that WORK.

And while we’re on that topic, software that’s ported from PC to Macs sucks. It does. You Mac people probably don’t realise it but the PC versions of a lot of Mac software is WAAAAAAAY better. Macs are a niche market and why go to the trouble of recoding all the cool useful features when you dumbass cultists will yum up anything so long as its spread on some shiny glossy plastic case?

So yes, I’m going back to my PC, the only thing I’m going to play with the Mac for is porn – so I don’t contract any more bugs. That’s one virtue of the Mac, they’re not worth coding viruses for.

Waste Not, Want Not

There’s a Korean BBQ/Sushi restraunt in Calgary that has an all you can eat platter where what you pay is based on how much you leave on your plate. No doggie bags. You can order as much as you want, but they add money to your bill for everything you don’t eat. This sparked an idea for me on the way home today thinking about how wasteful and corrupt our modern society has become.

What if goods and services were free, or at least significantly cheaper than they are now, and she shifted the cost to waste management? Your garbage bags get weighed and you’re charged accordingly for what you’ve wasted. Of course systems would have to be put into place to prevent abuse and illegal dumping would become a serious felony, but just imagine the impact on things like recycling, re-using, reduced packaging, etc. It would create a massive shift in the economy.