geekdom – Page 20 – Wis[s]e Words

#$@&! Negroponte

Published on November 4, 2011Leave a comment

Nicholas Negroponte used to annoy me back in the nineties when I still took Wired seriously (we were all young once) when he’d bleat about his simplistic solutions to real problems in their backpages. These days he’s involved in doing crappy computers for third world countries, with the business plan there being something like

create a new rugged tablet pc and drop them in Africa
????
A whole continent achieves its true potential and becomes a free market paradise.

Jamie has the mindset behind this down pat:

Why do you want to do this? Because it’s a laptop. It will promote learning! How? Because its information technology with information in it. The child just switches on the laptop and gets the information out of it. Then it will be educated.They’ll just use it to play games. No they won’t, because it will be a special computer which won’t be able to play games. How are you going to make that work? because its new technology and new technology is flexible. Anyway, How can you deny a child a shiny new laptop, with a software package kindly provided to us by the manufacturers at only a third more than the normal retail price. What kind of progressive are you, anyway?

This is a vanity project to salve the conscience of guilty liberals, a solution in search of a problem, undertaken by people who don’t want to believe the problems their pet project is trying to solve are hard. It’s magic thinking.

Why I love Dr Who

Published on October 31, 2011Leave a comment

This:

And this:

Wanna feel old?

Published on October 23, 2011Leave a comment

The Ipod is ten years old this month. Metafilter remembers.

I only got an Ipod in 2007, a freebie I got at an ultimately failed job interview. With 2gb of storage it had enough room for a dozen or so albums, i.e. enough variety to last a medium length commute. Loved that thing, even if I’m no great Apple fan — something about them presenting locked down computer products as tools of freedom rubs me the wrong way — but sadly I lost it when it slipped out of a pocked while biking one day. Progress being what it is, that specialised piece of consumer electronics has been replaced by a more generalised bit of kit, my mobile phone which has the same amount of space and which cannot just hold music, but also books and movies undsoweiter.

Also ten years old today: Grand Theft Auto III. The first Grand Theft Auto was cool enough already, in all its old skool topdown 2d glory and controversial enough with its antisocial, crime glorifying violent gameplay, but once it all became 3d and the violence became up close and personal, whoa boy… Brilliant though.

The internet has not been kind to me today

Published on September 8, 20111 Comment

First up, can we please stop it with the 9/11 hysteria already. Yes, it’s the tenth anniversary, yes it’s an important turning point in recent world history and a raw wound for a great many people still, but can’t it all be done a little bit more dignified and restrained? Every television channel seems the need to come up with its own unique 9/11 spin and it’s getting sick making. I can’t imagine how bad the family and friends of those who died that day must feel right now, having this shoved in their faces 24/7 this week…

Second, this is the week that Michael S. Hart died. Who he? Just the founder of Project Gutenberg, who had a simple vision: make public domain books freely available on the internet. For all your Google Books or Internet Archives, Hart thought of it first, back in 1971. He was an avatar of the old skool, not for profit internet, seeing it as something that would enrich people’s lives, not something to make himself rich. He’ll be missed.

Superman in his new costume

Third, you should never tug on Superman’s cape, but that hasn’t stopped Jim Lee and DC comics from “improving” it. It’s not just that it now looks like a thirteen year old’s idea of what a cool costume should look like, but that it looks like what a thirteen year old twenty years ago would think was cool. All it misses is some goddamn ankle pouches. DC should know better than to try for the hip, edgy look: it’s constitutionally incapable of doing so. Superman’s costume is a design classic, something that has been able to stay iconic and classy for decades with only little tweaks. It doesn’t need to be chucked just because some nerd can’t live with the underpants over his trousers jokes anymore.

Fourth, well, this:

Horatio brought him his sword. “Laertes is looking for you,” he said.
“I don’t have time for Laertes. He must know I didn’t mean to kill his father,” Hamlet said.
“It’s not his father,” said Horatio. “It’s his sister.”
“Ophelia? I didn’t touch her.”
“She killed herself. Walked out into the sea, dressed in her heaviest gown. A funeral gown. Two soldiers went in after her, and a boat was launched, but when they brought her body back, she was dead.”
“And for that he wants to kill me?”

Orson Scott Card “improves” Hamlet and makes it all about teh gay menace. The homophobia is expected and you can feel some pity for Card being so messed up in the head by his church, as by now it should be quite clear that he himself is the biggest old queer to ever force himself into the closet, but the sheer arrogance of wanting to adapt Shakespeare for our times? Ugh. Have some antidote:

That’s better.

Somebody pulled the drama tag…

Published on September 2, 20111 Comment

Cheryl Morgan has a rather strange response to the criticism of this year’s Hugo Awards winners

The reaction to this year’s results, however, has been the worst I can remember. Depressingly much of this has come, not just from outraged fans, but also from professionals in the field. And some of those people, accidentally or otherwise, have said things that can be taken to imply they think the process is corrupt.

[…]

I guess this sort of thing is inevitable. The higher profile a set of awards, the more carping there will be. But I’m tired of having to worry about it. In particular I’m tired of worrying that projects I’m involved in, which I care deeply about, will suffer through their association with whatever mud-slinging is affecting me. And I have to face up to the fact that for a large segment of the community I will never be anything more than a fan who won fan Hugos in controversial circumstances.

So I am bowing out.

Honestly, this all seems a bit over the top, especially the idea that the bogstandard complaints of the Hugos being a popularity contest has anything to do with Cheryl Morgan herself; that’s rating yourself far too highly. In fact, the first time I’ve heard Cheryl Morgan mentioned in the context of Hugo controversies is erm, here. It is of course Cheryl’s right to get away from fandom, but to blame unnamed Hugo bashing critics for her own decision is absurd.

Being less than truthful about what those supposed critics said is not helping either. There’s enough drama in fandom without making more up.