ArseTech

My expectation of technology is very simple – it must work. If I buy a computer, I want the computer to work. I shouldn’t be forced to use my IT knowledge just to get it to start. If a mechanic buys a new car, the car should work fine and it’s working should not depend on whether the owner is a car mechanic. It would be unacceptable if the car were to break down the next day. Further it would be even more unacceptable to expect the mechanic to fix the issues, just because he knows how to.

Yet when it comes to computers people accept that they will not be reliable and are happy to tolerate very shitty products. Well I have no intention to put up with that sort of attitude. So I will start to include product reviews on my blog.

Now a website like arstechnica is pretty useful when it comes to news and reviews. I don’t really want to compete with them. I just want to rant about things that shit me. And I will call my tech review rants ArseTech.

Lost for tweets

Just as I was trying to share some exciting aspect of my life in 140 characters or less I got to see this:

Love not war, but religion above all

The recent barrage of religious nonsense is brought to us by Islam. Though not to say that the other religions were sensible in the meantime.

Other people on … religion

A quick view to see what other intelligent people think of religion.

None of your business

The other day I went to the bank with the intention of depositing money into my account. The most common difficulty when it comes to depositing money at the bank used to be the lack of it. Now it is the mandated small-talk by the bank tellers.

Are we there yet?

A man recently died when he was walking. He hit a pole, fell and fatally injured his head. I am now waiting for the government to outlaw poles in streets. In the meantime there are plans to reduce speed limits to 30km/h because a bunch of pedestrians were run over in Victoria (Australia) in 2008. The government must look forward to handing out speeding fines to bike riders.

The frugal planet

All figures are in US dollars!

I recently discussed one of the two main objections to the LHC experiment at CERN in Switzerland, namely that of the usefulness of pure research. The objection that I did not talk about is one that money spent on the research should instead be spent on more useful things. Now that the world is in the midst of an economic crisis, scientific funding is bound to suffer. The claim is that money spent on LHC research ($9 billion over 15 years or $600 million/year) is a waste and should be spent on more important things (feeding the hungry in Africa is always the most popular one). However, with the global GDP at about $70 trillion ( 2008 ) there is a lot of money going around and it’s difficult to look at all of the spending in detail. I thought to look at some spending which apparently is more important than financing scientific research.

When I grow up I want to be a …

Given the current economic crisis, kids should think hard what career path they would like to take. Here are some suggestions.

Happy Birthday Jesus!

Dear Jesus,

it has been yet another year. I hope you are well. All the best for your birthday and may all your wishes come true. Have a good one mate!

Melbourne to be activated

Old Melbourne town had to elect a new mayor. The new Lord Mayor is Robert Doyle, a state politics looser whose aim is to ‘Activate Melbourne’.