* Progress - Masopher’s Mind

Windows 7 is not perfect

 Without spending too much time nerding over the undelivered promises of Windows Vista and the “rushed out the door” feel of Windows 6.1 (Alias Windows 7) I will say that Windows 7 is undeserving of the moniker implying wholeness and completion. Vista has been out for a while and has had next to zero uptake in the business sector. Windows XP through all of its iterations was a sorry inheritor to the only real revolution since Windows 95, Windows 2000. Windows 95 had wow factor back in the day because….it was Windows…Windows 2000 had wow factor because it was stable and quite secure….Windows XP and Windows Vista are aesthetic upgrades and incremental improvements on Windows 2000 just as windows 98 and 98SE  were upgrades to windows 95. Windows ME was a disastrous rushed out the door evolutionary dead-end and I can’t imagine windows 7 being anything but that as well.

As a Windows user who has on occasion used Apple and Linux products, I appreciate Microsoft as the everyman’s Operating System. It supports games and hardware something that neither of the aforementioned operating systems do. Using Apple Macintosh and despite them moving over to an Intel platform, requires that you pay ridiculous prices and visit their uber-ghey store for everything you need just to have know-it-little nerds speak condescending down to you. Linux while doing everything from imitation to far reaches of the OS imagination (something that I do appreciate when I have nothing else to do) is a community of warring tribes who will never sit down together to build an operating system for regular folk. Even the Vanilla Ubuntu requires many a kick up the ass to support my wireless card and I won’t even mention games that require occasional updates.

Like every empire before it Microsoft is appreciated for bringing peace and stability for commoners. Nothing fancy, nothing that takes up your day, just a place where you can sit in front of everyday churning through spreadsheets and word processors and every night browsing porn, downloading music and reading Wikipedia.

An Operating Systems like life isn’t perfect. Some people may want to geek out over a bit of software or feel in their hearts that they are privileged to own it, but some people like me have other interests. I feel that Microsoft feels pressured to maintain its market share, to combat the whiney bitching of people who love OS X and Linux. But the truth is that OS X and Linux people love these operating systems not because the operating systems are superior but because the operating systems make the people feel superior. If Microsoft was to vanish today and everyone was to start having to pay through their nose for a Mac they there would still be Linux baying at its heels and other “alternatives” would rise to challenge the leader and those same linux and Apple loving elitists would find something else to wave around in the eternal phallic waving exercise of life.

I know that Microsoft can put out revolutionary products; I have seen it twice in their commercial Operating Systems and also in their productivity tools. Windows 6.1 needs to be called for what it is, a less unwieldy version of Vista still waiting on hardware to catch up. My unheard advice to Microsoft is stop listening to peer pressure. You don’t make music players; you don’t have a community of antisocial but brilliant nerds making your applications and viruses that attack other OS’. You do have money, you do have time, and you do have intelligent professionals and the people’s trust to put out another innovative and timely improvement.

Don’t do it perfect, do it properly.

 

 

Posted in Progress at October 15th, 2008. No Comments / Email This Post Email This Post .

The Revelation of the divine. The End of the world.

Here are the words of this humble disciple as I listen to the demon Masopher and learn nothing more than what is already written in the heart of every man.

It won’t happen. The backward society of apes self elevating to godhood just won’t pull it off. We neither have the balls nor the brains to kill off the planet nor everything on it. Here I examine a few end of world scenarios that sadly didn’t and shall not come to pass.

 

Nuclear Armageddon. Despite the fact that more than a few countries in this world can exterminate a few million humans with nuclear weapons, only two can technically kill billions. This is a claim based on the reported nuclear capability of both sides. But what if it isn’t true? We all know that at considerable expense a few explosions have been performed. Grainy black and white footage of essentially field experiments sinking retired boats and knocking down ply board houses have been released. And just like the guy that broke into the tent of the ark of the covenant, no one has lived to tell if its just Hollywood lights and magic or a bonified boogy-man. If the claims are true then a lot of the world could be dead within a few years; but not all of it. Animals, plants, even humans would reappear soon after and all that would have been destroyed in the large stockpiles of weapons and meat-cicles. And it won’t happen. Both Communist and Capitalist empires want to rule the world, not die on it. After fighting the Nazi’s and spending millions supporting former Nazi scientists, none of these former allies would benefit from using these scientific experiments. They benefitted a hundred-fold from not using the Nazi scientist experiments but instead using Nazi Gestapo weapons. Fear subterfuge propaganda and intimidation.

 

Global Temperature Armageddon. 30 years ago scientists and governments agreed that if we didn’t drastically change our lives the world would become a frozen wasteland. Today if we don’t drastically change our lives the icecaps will melt and drown us all. Neither of these things will happen. Through-out the history of earth, the world has gotten hotter and cooler, some places are cold, some are warm. Sand and water collect more in some places, turn jungles into deserts visa versa and cover and uncover other places. Some times it gets dark and sometimes it gets light. Now mankind lives long enough to realize that after a few hours of darkness there are a few hours of light and it is not human pollution that is making the world so heavy that it is turning away from the sun. We know now that a giant frog isn’t eating the moon and disgorging it. Our sins don’t make stars fall from the sky and our wickedness doesn’t make the sun turn to blood. Just like day, night, the lunar cycle and an eclipse, wiser more experienced scientists will scoff at our naïveté. Give earth some fucking credit for crying out loud, the old bird has survived meteor strikes and iceages; I am sure that a few smarter than average monkeys burning fossil fuels wont put a sizable wrinkle in her petticoat. Very marginally smarter than average because we eat where we shit , literally living and wallowing in our own pollution, if it wasn’t noticeable then we are dumber than we give ourselves credit for. Monkeys are alarmists too, so humans naturally see their own shadow and get scared.

 

Computer aided Armageddon. Computers became popular in the 80’s and 90’s and in less than a decade computers were rumoured to be the source of our doom. Yeah. I was lucky enough to see the turn of the century, and luckier to see people believed that somehow computers were smart enough to know that after 99 comes 00 but dumb enough to not know that after 00 comes 01. Life went on and not a single computer exploded or spontaneously developed human-like (un)intelligence. Time, an old and imperfect invention of man and computers, a new and imperfect invention of man get along quite well, because unicorns and goblins also get along. Time computers unicorns goblins and the fear of these things are all mental inventions, fantasies and at the end of the day, none of these things can of their own volition hurt us, let alone bring on Armageddon.

 

A large magnet that aims two beams of light at each other Armageddon.

 

WMD?

WMD?

Somehow scientists and uneducated pundits believe that two beams of light colliding can mimic the beginning of the universe or initiate the end of the world. Sit for one moment and consider how many times across the universe and in the world two rays of light have ever collided. Think about it now. Shine a flashlight at another flashlight…What happens? Exactly what happened and what will happen: Nothing. It is so masturbatory to believe that a scientific concept unproven and unobserved can begin or bring an end to the universe. But after the ejaculation one realizes that Jenna Jameson has not been even near your cock and that it was your own rough unsexy hand that wipes your ass and picks up the phone that was giving you pleasure. Man is not an all powerful or all wise being; causing two beams of any particle to smash into each other will not do anything more than cost a lot of taxpayers money that they would rather spend shopping or buying hello kitty products.

 

 

 

An ancient civilizations demarcation of time Armageddon. In 4 years time the 12th (some say 13th) Mayan baktun will come to an end. And on the fifth year the new cycle will begin. Because Jesus did not arrive to carry us off in a rapture in 1999, people are hoping that some long unused pagan gods might turn up 12 years later. (Je ne pense pas!). The Mayans like the Aztecs, Cambodians, Ancient Zimbabweans, Babylonians Persians Romans and Egyptians were amazing empires perhaps equal or better to our own, and every empire probably has many individuals that hope that their empire is the last one, that human existence will cease to exist or will be brought to an end during their reign; But it doesn’t happen. It didn’t happen during those empires and it won’t happen during ours.

 

Masopher has seen many of these civilizations rise and fall and the one thing in common is the people, which have not changed much in the short span of millennia. We are just as conceited, arrogant stupid and superstitious as they were. Just as prone to living in self imposed fear and self stimulating awe. We have changed but not much, there will be no revelation, no apocalyptic titanic movements. Sure a lot of crackpots will write books, make money and start religions because of our fascination and hope for the end but in a few thousand years crackpots will still be doing exactly that.

 

 The Russians, the climate, technology or supernatural events will not kill us off. We die, grow change and move every day as individuals and a collective, like the inexorable dunes of the desert. Where we are going we do not know but we are going and there is nothing that can stop us, not even ourselves.

 

 

 

Posted in Philosophy, Progress, Uncategorized at September 17th, 2008. No Comments / Email This Post Email This Post .

The Olympics vs zombies (and cynics)

There will never be an Olympics for cynicism. Because cynicism is the opposite of human endeavours and progress. Cynicism is the tool of the weak who should never have been allowed to live long enough to attack the strong. When one sits on ones ass and has food delivered to your pie hole from a nice refrigerated supermarket on a daily basis sprinting and throwing a spear doesn’t seem to make sense, but there was once a time and will be a time when these things were what kept one alive.

 

The Olympics about being alive. It is the human body pushed to the limits of its potential because like the bomb technicians shirt says, “when you see me running, please try to keep up.” Is not about a fictional place that has been part of a country for thousands of years, its not about the overcrowded factories that make your protest t-shirts or silicon chips, its about the celebration of human achievement.

 

I can never be cynical about human achievement. I could never indulge in politically embarrassing a country because hypocrites and propagandists have fooled with my mind or because I am too ignorant to find out fact and history for myself.

 

I am ignorant and stupid and my mind has been fucked with by more people than I care to admit but I cannot be cynical about basic survival. Some sports like the one with the ribbon or the walking races, I don’t “get” but when the zombies attack, believe me I am going to wish I could do the iron cross or 100 meter sprint as good as the best of em!

 

Swimming, sailing, cycling (if there are still cycles around), running long distances and short, fighting, pole vaulting and javelin: We are going to need that if it ever “jumps off”. And you know what? The faster, higher and more skilled we are at those things the better it will be to escape the nuclear mutant cannibals. And you know what else? Maybe the ribbon thing could come in handy too: Hell, if I can find 22 other guys we can kick zombie heads at approaching zombies….hrmm maybe that’s overreaching it.

 

But in the post apocalyptic world; cynicism won’t be useful. Bitching about what is fair and unfair and what you prefer won’t help you. Sitting around on your ass tearing down other peoples achievements won’t assist you. I admit, later on when all the athletes have killed all the zombies or (stupidly) spare your life or rescue you, you can use your superior cynicism to rise in the ranks of the survivors but I am hoping that things will get so bad that rescuing you won’t be an option.

 

Even Tom Cruise is more useful after the apocalypse than a cynic. Strong and skilled people, yes definitely, these people I watch proudly every four years, funny and entertaining people, yeah sure they can come along too if I can lift and carry em but cynical people? I will see you at the other end of the skeet shooting range suckers.

 

Posted in Progress at August 24th, 2008. No Comments / Email This Post Email This Post .

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