"This is what being president of the United States is all about. It's these tough, huge, monumental decisions… It's in a time of crisis making these executive decisions. It's just like our job… It's the same thing as being president of the United States."
— "Fox and Friends" co-host Gretchen Carlson
Boy, talk about an inflated sense of self-worth!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Oxymoron: Microsoft Works
Is anyone else irritated by Microsoft's unbridled arrogance? After the latest "in-between" operating system upgrade on Tuesday, 22 June 2010, Microsoft had the unmitigated gall to change my default home page in Internet Explorer from Google search to Microsoft's own Bing search engine. They have no business changing user preferences!
This is not the only instance of Microsoft's audacity:
Unfortunately, Apple and Steve Jobs are just as prententious as Microsoft in their own distinctly offensive way. A pox on both their houses.
Long live Linux/Ubuntu!
This is not the only instance of Microsoft's audacity:
- After almost every second-Tuesday-of-the-month operating system upgrade that includes an update to Outlook, the process changes my default email from Mozilla's Thunderbird to Microsoft's Outlook.
- Long ago and far away, I once made the mistake of setting my default bitmap file association to one of Microsoft's image software packages. I don't remember if it was Paint or the old Photo Editor, but whatever it was, it automatically established itself as the default file association not just for bitmap files but for all other image types as well: .gif, .jpg, .png, and others. I guess Microsoft thinks that if you want their product for one item, you will certainly want it for everything else as well.
Unfortunately, Apple and Steve Jobs are just as prententious as Microsoft in their own distinctly offensive way. A pox on both their houses.
Long live Linux/Ubuntu!
Friday, June 11, 2010
Journalistic Excess
In an article in the 9 June 2010 edition the Chester [Virginia] Village News, sports columnist John Hall wrote the following:
It turns out that Sam Bowie averaged a solid 7.5 rebounds and 10.9 points per game over a ten-year NBA career. Those statistics certainly do not rise to the level of a superstar like Michael Jordan, but they far exceed any reasonable person's definition of a "lottery bust." I would also contend that surviving the rigors of the NBA for ten years hardly qualifies as being "quickly out of basketball."
This is rhetorical excess at best, and shoddy journalism at worst. Mr. Hall's apparent ignorance led him to mistakenly disparage a solid if not spectacular player. Mr. Hall's basic premise—that number 1 draft selections do not always meet expectations—might be correct, but that does not in any way justify denigrating a decent player in such harsh terms.
Mr. Hall has never before come across as a mean-spirited person. In this case, however, he has clearly dropped the ball. Or perhaps he merely stepped out of bounds. Feel free to choose your own sports metaphor.
The NBA is famous for its lottery busts, as well. Sam Bowie was quickly out of basketball, but not before the Portland Trailblazers chose him over the great Michael Jordan in 1984.I was mildly surprised by that example because I vaguely recalled Sam Bowie as a fairly adequate big man for several years, so I looked up his career statistics on Basketball-Reference.com.
It turns out that Sam Bowie averaged a solid 7.5 rebounds and 10.9 points per game over a ten-year NBA career. Those statistics certainly do not rise to the level of a superstar like Michael Jordan, but they far exceed any reasonable person's definition of a "lottery bust." I would also contend that surviving the rigors of the NBA for ten years hardly qualifies as being "quickly out of basketball."
This is rhetorical excess at best, and shoddy journalism at worst. Mr. Hall's apparent ignorance led him to mistakenly disparage a solid if not spectacular player. Mr. Hall's basic premise—that number 1 draft selections do not always meet expectations—might be correct, but that does not in any way justify denigrating a decent player in such harsh terms.
Mr. Hall has never before come across as a mean-spirited person. In this case, however, he has clearly dropped the ball. Or perhaps he merely stepped out of bounds. Feel free to choose your own sports metaphor.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Hard Link Headslapper
Once again, I don't know where I have been lately (I'll resist the urge to say I was out in left field because in my younger days I was actually a good-field-no-hit center fielder), but I just recently discovered the virtues of hard links.
I have long wanted a way to allow my screen saver programs to access selected image files without actually copying those files to a separate folder, a process which would quickly gobble up disk space. For example, in baseball season I might want to include some baseball art, some player action photos, and some stadium scenes in my screen saver. I have folders containing photos of each category, but the photos are of mixed quality. I want to include only the better images. I currently face three unpleasant choices: display all of the images in a folder, including the inferior ones; display none of the images in a folder, thus excluding some outstanding ones; or selectively copy all of the desired files into a separate folder—and waste an inordinate amount disk space with duplicate versions of the same large image files.
I tried creating shortcuts to each specific image and consolidating those shortcuts into a single folder, but to no avail: none of the many screen saver programs I tried seem to recognize shortcuts. No matter: it turns out that hard links are the perfect solution. To make a long story short, use hard file links where you need multiple copies of a file but wish to save disk space by keeping only one physical copy on disk.
In Windows XP, create hard links using the following command line entry:
In Windows Vista and Windows 7, the equivalent command is:
Only then I noticed the "disk free space" value. It had remained unchanged when I created my hard links. As a test, I deleted my newly-created links and instead copied the corresponding files to that same folder. The disk free space declined markedly. Next, I deleted the duplicate files, after which the disk free space increased again back to its original value. Finally, I re-established my hard links. Lo and behold: the disk free space remained the same. That experiment showed clearly that the hard links were in fact not consuming any extra disk space despite initial indications to the contrary.
Beyond that discovery, I found much to my delight that my screen saver program could now successfully read the hard file links where it previously had failed to read shortcuts. Similarly, my image viewer could fully read and edit the hard links in the same manner as if those hard links were the original images. Bingo! Exactly what I wanted.
This is one of those forehead-slapping moments where I find myself thinking, "If I had only known about this years ago!"
I have long wanted a way to allow my screen saver programs to access selected image files without actually copying those files to a separate folder, a process which would quickly gobble up disk space. For example, in baseball season I might want to include some baseball art, some player action photos, and some stadium scenes in my screen saver. I have folders containing photos of each category, but the photos are of mixed quality. I want to include only the better images. I currently face three unpleasant choices: display all of the images in a folder, including the inferior ones; display none of the images in a folder, thus excluding some outstanding ones; or selectively copy all of the desired files into a separate folder—and waste an inordinate amount disk space with duplicate versions of the same large image files.
I tried creating shortcuts to each specific image and consolidating those shortcuts into a single folder, but to no avail: none of the many screen saver programs I tried seem to recognize shortcuts. No matter: it turns out that hard links are the perfect solution. To make a long story short, use hard file links where you need multiple copies of a file but wish to save disk space by keeping only one physical copy on disk.
In Windows XP, create hard links using the following command line entry:
fsutil hardlink create [NewFilename] [ExistingFilename](Click the following link to view Microsoft's own documentation for creating hard links as well as some other uses for the fsutil command line utility.)
In Windows Vista and Windows 7, the equivalent command is:
mklink /H [NewFilename] [ExistingFilename]I admit to being skeptical when I initially created my hard links. In Windows Explorer, the file sizes displayed in bytes for my new links duplicated those of the original files, and the total disk space reported for the folder containing my hard links showed a large number consistent with the sum of those individual figures. It first appeared that I was still consuming duplicate disk space just as if I had copied the files.
Only then I noticed the "disk free space" value. It had remained unchanged when I created my hard links. As a test, I deleted my newly-created links and instead copied the corresponding files to that same folder. The disk free space declined markedly. Next, I deleted the duplicate files, after which the disk free space increased again back to its original value. Finally, I re-established my hard links. Lo and behold: the disk free space remained the same. That experiment showed clearly that the hard links were in fact not consuming any extra disk space despite initial indications to the contrary.
Beyond that discovery, I found much to my delight that my screen saver program could now successfully read the hard file links where it previously had failed to read shortcuts. Similarly, my image viewer could fully read and edit the hard links in the same manner as if those hard links were the original images. Bingo! Exactly what I wanted.
This is one of those forehead-slapping moments where I find myself thinking, "If I had only known about this years ago!"
Begone, Human Element
The world of baseball is still buzzing over the bad call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce that cost pitcher Armando Galarraga of the Detroit Tigers a perfect game on 2 June 2010. We should all commend Mr. Joyce for his forthright honesty in quickly admitting his monumental mistake. Even more noteworthy is the exemplary class and dignity with which Mr. Galarraga responded.
What trips my chain, however, is the reason cited by numerous players and managers to explain why major league baseball (MLB) should not expand instant replay beyond present guidelines (i.e., determining if a fly ball is a home run or not). Almost to a man, they invariably state that the "human element" is an inextricable part of baseball.
Oh, please. Results on the field should be determined by player performance, not officiating blunders. On the day in question, the pitcher was perfect, but the umpire was not. There is no justice in penalizing players for the mistakes of umpires.
If there were a cost-free system that could guarantee correct calls 100% of the time, you can bet that MLB would adopt such a system in a heartbeat, and rightfully so. The human element involving players is indeed unavoidable and sometimes even grimly fascinating. However, the fate of players should not be determined by unrelated external forces like umpiring foibles. The human element with regard to umpiring should be minimized or eliminated altogether whenever possible. Expanded instant replay is a reasonable means to that end.
The only legitimate issue is what price people are willing to pay to make the correct calls, particularly if they might affect the outcome of a playoff or a World Series game. Mr. Joyce has been circumspect in his public statements about leaving it up to the commissioner's office to decide on any rule changes governing instant replay. However, given his obvious distress at having made the wrong call, I strongly suspect that Mr. Joyce would have welcomed the opportunity to pause an additional 60 or 90 seconds to review TV replays and insure the correct call.
You know that Mr. Galarraga would have welcomed that.
What trips my chain, however, is the reason cited by numerous players and managers to explain why major league baseball (MLB) should not expand instant replay beyond present guidelines (i.e., determining if a fly ball is a home run or not). Almost to a man, they invariably state that the "human element" is an inextricable part of baseball.
Oh, please. Results on the field should be determined by player performance, not officiating blunders. On the day in question, the pitcher was perfect, but the umpire was not. There is no justice in penalizing players for the mistakes of umpires.
If there were a cost-free system that could guarantee correct calls 100% of the time, you can bet that MLB would adopt such a system in a heartbeat, and rightfully so. The human element involving players is indeed unavoidable and sometimes even grimly fascinating. However, the fate of players should not be determined by unrelated external forces like umpiring foibles. The human element with regard to umpiring should be minimized or eliminated altogether whenever possible. Expanded instant replay is a reasonable means to that end.
The only legitimate issue is what price people are willing to pay to make the correct calls, particularly if they might affect the outcome of a playoff or a World Series game. Mr. Joyce has been circumspect in his public statements about leaving it up to the commissioner's office to decide on any rule changes governing instant replay. However, given his obvious distress at having made the wrong call, I strongly suspect that Mr. Joyce would have welcomed the opportunity to pause an additional 60 or 90 seconds to review TV replays and insure the correct call.
You know that Mr. Galarraga would have welcomed that.
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