Seen while attempting to repair a disk…

2008-08-09 16:19:15 -0700: Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.2008-08-09 16:19:15 -0700:
2008-08-09 16:19:15 -0700: Disk Utility stopped repairing “disk1s3” because the following error was encountered:

Filesystem verify or repair failed.
2008-08-09 16:19:15 -0700:

That was the entire error, datestamps scattered around exactly like that. Steve Jobs would be rolling over in his grave were he dead. I mean, it’s not even symmetrical.

One of the more annoying things to come about in the Linux/open source world is the use of “info” pages, replacing the old workhorse standard of “man” pages. In doing so, developers often ignore documenting crucial elements in a man page, instead leaving this gem at the end:

SEE ALSO
The full documentation for date is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If
the info and date programs are properly installed at your site, the
command

info date

should give you access to the complete manual.

Isn’t that great? The documentation for date says that as long as date is “properly” installed, I should have the real documentation. Why not put it all in the man page? Maybe it’s because this sort of shit wouldn’t fly with the die-hards, quoted from page 1 of date’s info documentation:

27 Date input formats
*********************

First, a quote:

Our units of temporal measurement, from seconds on up to months,
are so complicated, asymmetrical and disjunctive so as to make
coherent mental reckoning in time all but impossible. Indeed, had
some tyrannical god contrived to enslave our minds to time …

blah blah blah..

Over the weekend I read a NYTimes article linked to from digg about the quality and quantity of online reviews. (If that link doesn’t work, here’s the link on digg, although be warned that the comments section is full of oh-so-funny kitchen/women jokes..)

Personally, I enjoy reading some reviews before buying a product. I usually look for the most negative reviews, and then some positive reviews, and decide whether or not I can accept the product’s limitations. (It’s kind of funny: buying something you want always seems to involve some compromise. It’s not as though I can order an item to my exact specifications.) But there are cases where the reviews are entirely worthless.

Case in point: the Spore reviews on Amazon. It looks like some people decided to have an anti-DRM party and focused on Spore. It’s probably seen as an easy target, because it’s been so anticipated. You won’t find reviews from honest people who actually purchased the game; instead you’ll see dozens of people complaining about a game that’s not even out yet.

Yeah, I get it. DRM is bad. I dislike DRM, too. I vehemently dislike DRM that requires me to keep the CD in the drive while I play the game. (As I understand it, Spore won’t require this. I haven’t received it yet, so I can’t confirm this personally.) But I doubt that flooding sites with anti-DRM reviews is really going to do anything. Here’s my bet: people who have heard of the game and go to Amazon to buy it will look at the low star rating and wonder: how could this be? They’ll go to the reviews and see how they’re all about DRM rather than game play, and then chances are most of them will ignore that (what’s a DRM?) and buy it anyway.

The way I see it: Don’t like DRM? Don’t buy or play the game. It’s that simple. Vote with your dollars and move on with your life. Find another game to play that doesn’t have DRM, and support the companies that make them.

Speaking of Amazon: why do they let people post reviews on games that aren’t even released?

Natalie Dee Blog: Dear Internet:
Then, I click on the link, and all there is behind the link is a fucking 2 minute news video or something. No article, no summary, just a video.

My favorite is when the news sites put a 30 second unstoppable/skippable commercial before the video, show the 10 seconds of real video, and then start another 30 second commercial video immediately afterwards, which you can only stop by reloading the page or closing the window or some such action.

That all said: I sure wish she put this in video form, because it was hard to get through the whole post in one sitting.

In Firefox, and other applications, why must I go to print preview to see how many printed pages a document would span? The print dialog’s “print range” section would be the ideal place for this information.

I guess British Columbia isn’t far enough to go to get away from insanity. Rather than educating people to be cool with the mural, and with art, they chose to cover it up permanently. Yeah, I’m intolerant of intolerance, it’s a vicious cycle.