The Enigma of the Notbook

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Dec 262010
 

My mother has a habit of sending very LARGE holiday packages which are a mixture of gifts for the kids and odd things she picks up (for example, I have a large collection of note pads with cat show logos on them). I made the mistake of telling her to go ahead and send along any electronics she happens to pick up.

Thus, in thumbnail size for your bandwidth and sanity-roll protection: the Notbook.

Lower right corner.

And yes, if you read closely, you can see that the tech writers didn’t know whether this notbook was seven feet or seven inches in size. (I haven’t measured it, but it’s definitely not seven feet across.) You can also see that there’s no logo or manufacturer’s imprint on the manual, which continues in even more disturbing fashion on the back cover:

Ceci n'est pas une notbook.

Clearly even the least tech-savvy have figured out by now that this is some kind of strange intellectual-property-infringing variety of machine, but shouldn’t there be a logo of some sort on the notbook? Even a fake one like “Bindows”?

The CR-48's evil twin!

All right, this whole generic concept isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given that the cool new Google Cr-48 is generic and blank and THAT doesn’t radiate an aura of weirdness and menace. That is because Google does not produce a tiny 7″ laptop with documentation clearly written by non-native English speakers that runs what purports to be….Windows CE.

It's a Windows Book. It says so right on the boot screen.

The “Windows CE” desktop is also extremely strange. The right half of the screen has a permanent widget bar. You can’t see it here, but there are things missing from the Startup menu….like a command to shut the machine down.

YOU CANNOT SHUT ME DOWN MEAT CREATURE

“So, Mom, where the heck did you get this thing?”

“Oh, I don’t know….I picked it up at a seminar somewhere for free, I don’t remember.”

Right. Next thing you know the Yellow Sign will pop up as a screen saver.

 

Usually I just donate a few bucks to the cause and don’t bother writing, but this year I decided to go through with the whole thing. The last time I tried was perhaps seven or eight years ago, when it was sadly cut off by my getting a job that paid hourly with unlimited overtime. It’s a bit hard to sneak in half an hour or an hour a day writing when you can, quite literally, instead turn that time into money.

Given that the whole point of NaNo is quantity, not quality, I made some deliberate choices that made the process go more smoothly.

Continue reading »

Nov 142010
 

John Scalzi links to a New York Times online feature called “You Fix the Budget“, which purports to let you eliminate various categories of spending and raise various categories of income to come up with a ‘projected’ budget. Of course, despite the impressive credentials, this is an online exercise put together by journalists, which means it has one moderate problem and one extremely serious problem:

The moderate problem is that the descriptions of each category are oversimplified, in some cases are policy statements having not much to do with reality (such as medical malpractice ‘reform’) or are laughably vague (what are those ‘other’ cuts going to look like, exactly?), and considers nothing but the net effect on the deficit – ignoring externalities, societal costs and, really, anything except ‘deficit, plus/minus’.

The serious problem is that, as you can see from comments not only at Whatever but elsewhere on the Internet, people are completely oblivious to the existence of the moderate problem. “Why, that was easy,” they say. “Why can’t our lawmakers figure this out? It’s not hard!”

Indeed, it’s not hard to push numbers around and come up with a surplus, when you’re working with extremely limited information and don’t have to care one way or the other about anything other than whether the “projected” result helps the deficit. It’s quite a bit harder in the real world, where things like public safety and unemployment are also important considerations.

It’s an economics version of  “My kid could paint that!”

 

I was sort of wobbling on doing it this year, as normally I just go donate $10 to encourage them and hang out in the forums. But Offspring Prime is going through with it, and god knows I don’t want to listen to that if I don’t do it this year.

I may post it up here eventually if I can figure out how to do friends-only posts and make everybody register or something, but in the meantime it’s over at LJ.

It’s very weird to write something and not revise it.  You can’t do that and survive NaNo; quantity over quality isn’t a joke, it’s a necessity. As another NaNo’er advises, you have to be like  a shark: swim forward at speed at all times.

Oct 292010
 

And I may get around to posting a longer one when I’m not about to dash off to Sacramento, but:

There are many subjects on which reasonable, well-meaning people can disagree, often with no clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ on either person’s part. Birthright citizenship is not one of those subjects.

“PC”

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Oct 192010
 

Why it’s such a butt-stupid term, and why I love N.K.  Jemisin:

So consider this a plea, on behalf of those of us who are sick of all the whining and doubletalk: please grow a pair. When you complain about political correctness, we hear “Man, if only we were still back in the good ol’ days, when I could stomp all over other people with impunity!” That’s what you really mean, so why not just come right out and say it? Own your selfishness and sadism.

And, may I add, stop whining about how other people need to ‘get over it’ and ‘stop being so thin-skinned’, then crying like a bully who just got hit back for the first time when somebody is  mean to you and how awful it is they made you feel guilty.

City of Books!

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Sep 212010
 

I’m not posting much in the way of book reviews because I haven’t read all of these yet. Half the fun/pain of visiting Powell’s is that you end up with far more books than you came in to buy – since, hey, there’s a used copy of that book I’ve been wanting and it’s way lower than cover price, which means I can buy more books, and then HOLY SHOES MY GROCERY MONEY.

Continue reading »

 

Problem Chylde explains the proper etiquette of poverty.  Something to consider if you’re tempted to go on about how poor people in America aren’t “really” poor because they have color television.

(h/t unusualmusic)

 

Shakespeare is one thing, but there’s a reason the whole Great American Writers passed me by, and Garland Grey nails it.

 

The above e-mail today from a friend was how I found out about the results of the Proposition 8 ruling (which the District Court apparently slipped under the door into the court’s press room and then ran like hell; it wasn’t read aloud in court).

I am bummed that I am out of the city and so can’t participate in the celebration, but still OMG OMG SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

And yes, I told my friend she should leave work early in case the court is persuaded to impose a stay. In the meantime, you can read the entire opinion here.

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