02.25.09
Posted in Current Events, Rants at 1:48 am by Kaihaku
In the face of the economic downturn, Microsoft has launched a new ‘Elevate America‘ program with the goal of providing individuals with the technology skills they need to succeed in today’s economy. This comes following a series of layoffs at Microsoft.
Before anyone gets too excited at this great act of generosity on the part of Microsoft, let’s stop for a moment to review the context.
- Windows Vista is a terrible product, so now Microsoft is releasing Windows 7 which should have been a service pack for Vista not a ‘new’ operating system.
- For the average user in today’s business world, Windows XP is sufficient.
- Microsoft is facing competition in the form of Linux (operating systems), Google (server-based applications), and the Open Source movement in general.
- The economy is in a serious downturn and purchasing new copies of Windows isn’t a priority for most people.
So, Microsoft, out of the goodness of its “heart”, is giving two million Americans free training in their newest software?
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02.23.09
Posted in Ramblings, The Pursuit of Wisdom at 1:56 am by Kaihaku
A couple of days ago I was playing through a mini-game in the GBC Dragon Warrior III Remake and I triggered an unhappy little event. A sinister voice sounded, declaring… Fools clamor to teach, the wise choose to learn. Then my INT was lowered by 3!
Today, I was reading the Atlantic and was struck by this daily dish. I decided to read the source and was quite impressed by the Overcoming Bias post Against Maturity. Let me share some highlights…
You see the pattern developing here. “Adulthood” was what my parents appealed to when they couldn’t verbalize any object-level justification. They had doctorates and were smart; if there was a good reason, they usually would at least try to explain it to me. And it gets worse…
The most fearsome damage wreaked upon my parents by their concept of “adulthood”, was the idea that being “adult” meant that you were finished – that “maturity” marked the place where you declared yourself done, needing to go no further.
This was displayed most clearly in the matter of religion, where I would try to talk about a question I had, and my parents would smile and say: “Only children ask questions like that; when you’re adult, you know that it’s pointless to argue about it.” They actually said that outright! To ask questions was a manifestation of earnest, childish enthusiasm, earning a smile and a pat on the head. An adult knew better than to waste effort on pointless things.
But this is what I think my parents were thinking: If they had tried to answer a question as children, and then given up as adults – a quite common pattern in their religious decay – they labeled “mature” the place and act of giving up, by way of consolation. They’d asked the question as children and stopped asking as adults – and the story they told themselves about that was that only children asked that question, and now they had succeeded into the sage maturity of knowing not to argue.
To this very day, I constantly remind myself that, no matter what I do in this world, I will doubtlessly be considered an infant by the standards of future intergalactic civilization, and so there is no point in pretending to be a grown-up. I try to maintain a mental picture of myself as someone who is not mature, so that I can go on maturing.
From my parents I learned the observational lesson that “adulthood” was something sort of like “peer acceptance”, that is, its pursuit made you do stupid things that you wouldn’t have done if you were just trying to get it right.
At that age I couldn’t have given you a very good definition of “right” outside the realm of pure epistemic accuracy -
- but I understood the concept of asking the wrong question. “Does this help people?” “Will this make anyone happy?” “Is this belief true?” Those were the sorts of questions to ask, not, “Is this the adult thing to do?”
So I did not divide up the universe into the childish way versus the adult way, nor ever tell myself that I had completed anything by getting older, nor congratulate myself on having stopped being a child. Instead I learned that there were various stereotypes and traps that could take people’s attention off the important questions, and instead make them try to match certain unimportant concepts that existed in their minds. One of these attractor-traps was called “teenager”, and one of these attractor-traps was called “adult”, and both were to be avoided.
Of course there are a lot of children in this world who don’t like being “children” and who try to appear as “adult” or as “mature” as possible. That’s why they start smoking, right? So that was also part of the picture that I had in my mind of a “stupid teenager”: stupid teenagers deliberately try to be mature.
My parents had a picture in their mind of what it meant to be a “kid”, which included “kids desperately want to be adult”. I presume, though I don’t exactly know, that my parents had a picture of “childishness” which was formed by their own childhood and not updated.
In any case my parents were constantly trying to get me to do things by telling me about how it would make me look adult.
That was their appeal – not, “Do this because it is older and wiser,” but, “Do this, because it will make you look adult.” To this day I wonder what they could have possibly been thinking. Would a stereotypical teenager listen to their parents’ advice about that sort of thing?
When I was still gripped in illness a couple of weeks ago, I picked up The Silver Chair which I remembered as my second-favorite of the Narnia series. As is sometimes the case, my memories of the book were fonder, sadly, than what I found on my last reading (which leaves me quite hesitant to read once more my favorite book in the series) but it remained an enjoyable book. Regardless, this topic reminded me of a sentence that caught my attention while I was reading and I thought that I’d share it here as well, “Even in this world it is the stupidest children who are the most childish and the stupidest grown-ups who are most grown-up.” Not quite the language I would use but not entirely off base.
And so I take a certain dark delight in quoting anime fanfiction at people who expect me to behave like a wise sage of rationality. Why should I pretend to be mature when practically every star in the night sky is older than I am?
I think I may just have found quite an interesting new blog to follow. I think one of the most sage points raised was how perceiving ourselves as incomplete, as a work in progress, leaves us open to growth and development, while perceiving ourselves as complete closes us to new lessons and growth.
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02.19.09
Posted in Ponderings and Incomplete Thoughts at 5:10 pm by Kaihaku
I’ve had a problem for a good portion of my life in that I don’t actually have many favorites, for instance I don’t have a favorite food, game, or brother. Even in areas where I do have favorites I don’t usually have one favorite; my favorite books are The Brothers Karamazov, The Prophet, and The Silmarillion but not a one of them stands out above the others. I like each of them for different reasons. It’s the same with my favorite songs; The Day We Killed, California Dreamin’, and Carrying You. Anyway, the point of this is that our society has a bit of an obsession with favorites, absolutes in general really, and it’s been rather a bother for me throughout my life. So, recently, I decided to start using Especially instead of Favorite and I thought I’d promote that subtle switch via blog; I guess we’ll see if anyone actually finds it meaningful in the same way I do. 
Also, on a completely unrelated note, I also am pondering inserting the word “Shruggle” into internet lingo for an argument one shrugs at. It’s such a shruggle.
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Posted in Webmastering at 2:08 am by Kaihaku
For a few months now I’ve been active on the Giant in the Playground forum which, recently, has gone through some server troubles. These troubles, of course, has triggered a wide range of responses from forum members ranging from sympathetic support to condensing advisement to open outrage. I witnessed an interaction between the Giant and a forum member which I found striking. I thought I’d share it for anyone who, like me, has administered a website and forum.
Originally Posted by The_Giant 
There are some very good financial reasons why it’s a bad idea to fund a permanent ongoing expense with a burst of one-time voluntary donations, but on the philosophical side of things, this is as good an example of what I don’t want to see around here as I could imagine. Everyone who says there wouldn’t be a sense of entitlement from donators, look closely, because here it is, staring us all in the face:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Admiral_Kelly These are going to be my last thoughts on this issue. After this I have nothing more to say about the server. So without further ado, hear me out.
I understand this issue is being taken up in far more detail with the people who run this website and thus in a much better position to so than I, but, as someone who would like to see an end to the server issues, I see the current plans to fix the server problem which Rich has presented as illogical. Many, many people on this site have either
- expressed interest in giving donations
- expressed interest in having banner adds so the site can maintain itself
- expressed interest in contributing in some other way.
I understand Rich does want to run a donation-free banner-free site; however, it does not add up for him to do so at this point with the site constantly going down and his vocal fans wanting some change so they can continue to see the product without sacrifice of other services. While it is true 95% of readers do not use the forums, we cannot know whether they disagree or do not disagree on the matter. It would not be unwise to assume those who hold views of wanting to maintain the site represent, statistically, a percentage of the overall readership.
Yes, I understand previously Rich has said the forums will be locked down first before donation buttons or adds are put on the site. Yes, I understand Rich and Co. do not want the forums to be taken down. Most importantly yes, I also get this is Rich Burlew’s site. However, this does not mean his reasoning is sound logic.
Anyway, these are my final thoughts and I hope they are taken into consideration. Either way, I wish Rich and the mods best of luck with getting the server running smoothly with whatever method they do so choose. |
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit A in the “Case Against Donations”.
The above poster already feels such entitlement to the continued existence of this message board that he feels the need to question my reasoning without having given a cent. He claims that I need to change the way I am running this website simply because a number of people wish to continue availing themselves of the services that I have always provided, and that my unwillingness to capitulate represents a failure of logic.
Logic. As if its illogical to have priorities different from those that someone who has never met you has imagined your priorities to be.
The true failure of logic here is the unfounded assumption that the message board has an inalienable right to exist, or that I have any obligation to provide services that I have provided in the past indefinitely into the future. Neither idea is true. I could shut the message board down tomorrow, for no other reason than because I was tired of it. (I’m not going to do that, obviously, but I refuse to give up the right to do that.)
If hundreds or thousands of people donated their hard-earned cash to keep this forum operational at peak efficiency, how much more adamant would they be that I have an obligation to continue operating it at all costs? That I need to consider the opinions of the fans when making decisions about it? How long before there are posts demanding the right to, say, post threads about religion or politics, backed up with demands that they paid good money for this forum to exist, they have the right to talk about whatever they want? Or people asking for refunds if they get themselves banned? How much more angry and alienated (and unwilling to purchase GITP products) would they be if their mild dissatisfaction with the website’s service was converted into actual outrage over being “cheated” because I didn’t take these wishes into account after accepting their donation?
In short, take the quoted post, multiply it intensity by the number of dollars donated, then add one for every person who donates, and you’ll get an idea of what the Board/Site Issues forum (and my email inbox) would look like every day if we had donations (and, to a lesser degree, advertising).
Thanks, but no thanks. We’ll fix this problem on our own terms.
For emphasis, my favorite line one more time: Logic. As if its illogical to have priorities different from those that someone who has never met you has imagined your priorities to be.
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02.11.09
Posted in Current Events at 4:45 pm by Kaihaku
Even here in Cambodia I’ve been hearing the question raised, “What if Michael Phelps were Black?” The general conclusion seems to be that he would be in a worse situation than he is now. I’m not so convinced. In fact, I wonder if the opposite is true?
If Phelps had darker skin would this be a controversy? Would anyone be outraged at how he failed to be a “good role model”? Or would they shrug their shoulders and answer “That’s just they are.” There would have been public condemnation but without the tone of surprise or betrayal. He probably would have be arrested and released by now without his image being “tarnished. My take is that, in this case, racism put higher standards on the guy with lighter skin, he was suppose to be a model citizen. Wouldn’t it be nice if those standards were applied to all athletes?
A better question would be “What if Michael Phelps were a woman?”
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02.08.09
Posted in Life and the happenings there of at 7:45 pm by Kaihaku
Over the weekend the Phnom Penh MCC office network was completely rewired. The cluttered mess of cables and routers has been replaced with a single central switch and labeled strands of CAT6 cable. Later this week Ubuntu server will be installed on a revamped computer. This was made possibly through some direct donations to the MCC Phnom Penh office, which is very fortunate as computing situation was becoming dire. Over the next couple of months I’ll be beginning to switch individual computers over to Ubuntu and helping staff adapt to the new operating system. Files will soon be stored on the server allowing for automatic archiving. It’s quite exciting.
Also, I’m still sick and on antibiotics now from the Doctor. I spent most of the weekend laying around.
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02.06.09
Posted in Life and the happenings there of at 6:39 am by Kaihaku
It’s been a mixed month.
I’ve been at work in the Phnom Penh office this month cleaning up the worn computers, slowly archiving away at the mess of old files, and advising the Program Administers on network changes. After two years of struggling in a position filled with uncertainty it is a relief and reassurance to touch on my chosen field. I’m more qualified than I had come to believe. Excitingly, the Phnom Penh office is switching to a server model and beginning to switch over to Ubuntu. Now that’s change I can believe in.
I’ve also begun work on two personal projects, both stretch my capabilities and stand to strengthen some old social bonds. The greater part of one could be accomplished in a devoted weekend but the other is far more ambitious.
In the midst of this, I have been sick for two weeks. The illness lingers on and has reached the point where tomorrow I’ll finally visit a Doctor. Given my dislike of most of the medical profession that should speak volumes.
As a closing note… I found that the Phnom Penh office laptop had a frustrating problem where opening the Start Menu froze the computer. After trying a few fixes, I tried a registry cleaner and found that the laptop had around 150 registry errors. In my naivety I was impressed. Then, later, I took a look at the registry on one of the office desktops and discovered that there were nearly 2,000 registry errors. Another computer topped that with almost 3,000.
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