Isotropic is …
... my personal blog. Anything I write here is simply my personal, probably ill-formed, opinion and does not represent the views, beliefs, positions, or opinions of any other person or entity.
Monthly Archives: June 2009
27 Jun 2009
Alexithymic world
I was browsing around Netflix and ran across this review, by ‘SK 1596697’, of “The Invasion” (yet another remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers“, this time with Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, et al): I’m a research psychologist who studies alexithymia, which is a personality trait that involves difficulty in identifying and expressing emotions. This […]
26 Jun 2009
Gimme your passwords!
Wow! Would you really want to work for these people? The city government in Bozeman, Montana, isn’t content to cyberstalk its potential employees—they’re now asking applicants for their login information for any social networking sites. —John Timmer, City to job applicants: Facebook, MySpace log-ins please, Ars Technica, 2009-06-18 According to the article, a waiver form […]
23 Jun 2009
Why I prefer real books
I prefer “real” books over electronic ones. So much of what I do is intangible: mere transient electromagnetic disturbances in a wire or chip, displayed on a glowing screen, precariously stored on whirring platters, streaming tape — all susceptible to destruction by emp, power failure, careless shell commands, or obsolescence of technology… In contrast, a […]
22 Jun 2009
Cornucopia of Stupidity
Thanks to Mark Dominus for today’s wonderful title, scarfed from the punchline of his post “A child is bitten by a dog every 0.07 seconds…“. Postal Bulletin 22258, in a section about dog bites, says “Children are the majority of victims and are 900 times more likely to be bitten than letter carriers.” However, according […]
19 Jun 2009
Today’s snarky comment
“IE8 is pretty reliable. It finished downloading Firefox without a single crash.” — a comment on Lifehacker’s Microsoft’s Browser Comparison Chart Offends Anyone Who’s Ever Used Another Browser
11 Jun 2009
MS smacks MS
According to a media release, “Mississippi has reached a multi-million dollar anti-trust settlement with software giant Microsoft […] worth up to $100 million”. The article goes on to say that “This is the largest cash payment made to a state government.”. The state gets $40 to $48 million directly, while vouchers to just about any […]
11 Jun 2009
ut? Are you there? Hello? HELLO!
It must be grouchy old man week at Isotropic. Anyway … One of my favorite bloggers has this to say about the expectation of instantaneous response to text or email messages: First: If you are the sort of person who believes that all your e-mails/texts must be responded to instantaneously or sooner, you may be […]
09 Jun 2009
Keep this site a Secret
That’s the tagline of Corrupted-Files.com. Yeah, right. All you students wanting to scam your professors should immediately go there and buy a document of the appropriate type and size. They guarantee that it won’t open on a PC or Mac. Riiight — if all you know is “double-click to open”. I’m almost tempted to buy […]
08 Jun 2009
Cold-hearted man
Or so I was called today by a panhandler in the grocery store parking lot. I think he was offended by my refusal to shake his hand and telling him to go away. Do not come up to me cold outside the Quick Stop, in the grocery store parking lot, or anywhere else, with a […]
07 Jun 2009
Complete installs and uninstalls
I think I must have missed a transition somewhere along the way, where the qualifiers “sorta” or “not really” became implicit for words like “Complete” or “Uninstall”. There have always been rogue application (un)installations that due to programming errors or negligence don’t really do what they say, but I’ve lately grown increasingly annoyed at a […]
