Synthetic organisms who commune to make every decision and giant, octopoid robots that destroy all life every 50,000 years? Those are mostly original. Big insects are not. Plus, biologically speaking, giant insects couldn’t survive in normal gravity because their exoskeletons would be too heavy. This is why insects are so small today; when they lived in the water, millions of years ago, they were much bigger.

Mass Effect 2 basically tries to justify the Collectors by making them genetically modified Protheans. Yeah, whatever.

And those scions are fuckin’ annoying.

So, back to the idea of a grammar class. It could be optional, giving students a choice in whether they take it or not, but I think it should be mandatory. Grammar is essential when you get to college English; you can’t expect to get a good grade on a college English paper and not know where to put a comma. It should be taken in either sophomore or junior year, because freshman year is too early and senior year is too late. The curriculum would be moderately paced, so that no one’s left behind. They could cover certain relatively short books, like Camus’ The Stranger, and study the grammar and syntax, to help them understand.

It appalls me every day how many kids at my high school don’t understand basic English grammar, and I think this class would go a long way in resolving this problem.

Wouldn’t we all be better off if we just talked to each other like we used to? Back before texting and IMing and email? Wouldn’t it be better to have some sort of human interaction with each other rather than saying something into our phones and sending it off to be read?

Technology will progress, and there’s a good chance that in the future voice-to-text will be the dominant way that we communicate. Not likely, but it could still happen. And I can understand where voice-to-text could be great for those who are unable to type or have bad RSI or something, but for us normal folk who have perfectly working fingers, I don’t understand why’d we’d ever use it.

It’s Schizophrenic

The Finder can’t seem to decide what it wants to be: A spatial file manager, or a navigational one. That little capsule-like button on the upper-right of Finder windows switches it between the two modes, but it’s definitely not the best solution to the problem, and it ends up making both modes less usable. Spatial file management is basically what the OS 9 Finder did: each window is tied to a folder, and each folder opens in a new window. Windows retain their size and other appearance properties so that the user can create a “nest” wherein they memorize the window positions and attributes of their windows, and can instantly tell folders apart based on these attributes. The solution to this problem is simple: Apple just needs to have an option for spatial mode. Get rid of that damn capsule, and just give us a toggle in Finder’s preferences that’ll enable or disable spatial mode.

.DS_Store Files

.DS_Store files are a scourge. The Finder uses them to remember windows’ positions, sizes, and other things. They’re a scourge because the Finder creates one for every folder it visits. Apple needs to come up with a new way to store this information so that the Finder doesn’t have to create a new file in every single directory you visit.

View Preference is Global

In the Leopard and Snow Leopard Finders, when you switch to a different icon view, every folder you visit is also switched to that view. The previous behavior in Tiger – down was to save that view option for each folder, so that if you had one folder in Icon View and another folder in List View, those folders would always open with those view preferences. That is the way it should be.

No Cut Command by Default

Cut, the bastard child of Copy, is not turned on by default in the Finder’s context menu. You can’t even use the keyboard shortcut. Luckily, there is a preference hack you can use to get it there:

defaults write com.apple.finder AllowCutForItems 1

No Dropdown List for Back Button

If the Finder is going to take a more navigational approach and eschew its spatial roots, it should at least use basic browser conventions, like having a dropdown menu come down when you hold the Back button showing the history.

No Tabs

This is also an old one, and somewhat of a power-user’s complaint, but, hey, if the Finder wants to be more like a browser, why not implement tabs?

No Location Bar

Also another navigational feature missing from the Finder, a location bar located somewhere in the window would be nice. Typing in a path can sometimes be easier than double-clicking folder after folder. There is a keyboard shortcut (cmd-shift-G) that will allow you to go to a folder by typing in the path, but this isn’t as convenient.

No “Up” Button

I can’t tell you how much I wish the Finder had this. When you open a folder that is way out of range of your home folder, you aren’t allowed to go back, and then you have to click on the sidebar, which is cumbersome. There’s a keyboard shortcut for this too: cmd-up, but still, I’d prefer a button.

Better FTP

Networking has long been the weak point that many Finder-haters kick at with glee. It has gotten drastically better with Leopard and Snow Leopard, but FTP access is still read-only, which just makes no sense.

The Finder, for all its quirks and bugs, is still an “OK” file manager in my opinion. It’s not spectacular, and it’s not overkill. There are alternatives like PathFinder, but I think those are overkill. The Finder could be a lot better if the development team behind it would just get some vision and listen to the concerns of Mac users.

While looking up how to run Safari 2.0 on Snow Leopard, I found this neat web page called Multi-Safari that offers self-contained applications for Safari 1.0 all the way to 3.2.1. The original webkit frameworks were kept so that web developers could test older versions of the rendering engine on their sites and each icon has a little badge that shows what version it is (and so you don’t confuse them with the current Safari icon). The versions from 2.0 up will run on Snow Leopard and Leopard, even the tiger versions. If you try running anything below 2.0 on Leopard, you’ll get a message telling you that it’s not compatible with your version of Mac OS X.

I think it’s really interesting to run these old browsers on a modern operating system.

It’s not that I hate him; I just can’t stand him anymore. He’s a little boy at heart, and it shows a little too much in his videos for my tastes. What really put me over the edge, though, were his new grammar nazi videos. So you know what I’m talking about, I’ve embedded one below:

Chris, these videos are insulting, annoying, and don’t solve shit. Someone who’s making these grammatical errors is not going to change their ways because a hairy Italian imp yells at them, and this is why I’ve unsubscribed from you. I would rather see some interesting tech news than this shit. Bye-bye.

Open up Terminal (Applications -> Utilities) and enter these two commands:

defaults write -g AppleUseCoreUI -bool NO

and:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSUseLeopardWindowValues NO

Log out and then back in and you should see the changes. If you want to revert back to Leopard’s look, you just need to replace NO with YES in the terminal commands and run them again.

PS: This also works with Snow Leopard.

Point 1: “I’m writing this on a Windows 7 computer, and I have a Mac running Snow Leopard sitting right across the room. Do they look alike? Not really. Are there similarities? Sure – they both have taskbars (which Apple calls a dock), they both have desktop icons, they both have “pretty” interfaces. The Windows 7 taskbar is far more functional, though: if I hover over a dock icon on the Mac, I get nothing but a pop-up of the application’s or folder’s name. If I hover over a taskbar icon in Win7, I get a preview of every instance of that app that’s open.”

I have to dispute that the Windows 7 taskbar is more functional. This is just my thing, but I hate having to take two steps to get what I want when one would do just fine.¹ If I have IE open with multiple tabs and I click on its icon in the taskbar, I get presented with all the open tabs. No, clicking on IE doesn’t switch me to my last open tab, it asks me which tab I’d like to switch to, which gets really, really annoying after awhile. The main function of the taskbar should be to, um, switch tasks, not ask me which task I’d like to switch to, which requires more thought and time.

Point 2: “Some say the ability to pin apps to the taskbar in Windows 7 is a case of copying the dock. But we have been able to put apps on the taskbar since Windows 95, in the form of the Quick Launch bar. There’s nothing new about that.”

Oh, sure, Windows users² have been able to pin apps to the taskbar for a long time with Quick Launch, but with Windows 7, the two jobs of task managing and app launching have been combined in the new taskbar. How is there “nothing new” about that?

Point 3: “How about desktop gadgets? Did Microsoft copy Mac’s widgets? Not really. Leaving aside the fact that gadgets were introduced in Vista, not Windows 7, they don’t work the same way as the Mac widgets. Although both are small applications that provide information (clocks, weather, stock market info, etc.), there’s a fundamental difference in the way they’re implemented. On the Mac, the widgets reside on the “Dashboard.” When you have the Dashboard displayed, you can’t do anything with your other applications. When you click on an application window, the Dashboard disappears. I can’t find a way to be able to work on a document and see my widgets at the same time, as I can so easily do with Windows gadgets.”

Who said gadgets were introduced with Windows 7? No one. Spotty rhetoric, this. It’s a totally moot point anyway, as Konfabulator (now known as Yahoo! Widgets) was the first widget application, dating back to 2003.

Point 4: “What else? The Start button? The Mac puts its Apple button on a whole different taskbar, across the top of the screen. It contains some of the same things as the Windows Start menu: recent items, the options to sleep, restart, shutdown or log off. But it’s not nearly as flexible; the Windows Start menu displays your favorite applications in the top left section, most recently used apps in the bottom left section, and links to commonly accessed folders and tools (documents, pictures, music, downloads, the computer, the network, devices and printers, Control Panel) in the right section. Windows 7 also places the Search box here, whereas the Mac’s search tool is at the far right of the top taskbar.”

First, that thing at the top of the Mac’s screen? Yeah, that’s a menubar, not a taskbar, you know, because a menubar has, like, menus and stuff, whereas a taskbar has, like, tasks. Second, WTF? Why are we even talking about the Start Menu? I’ve never once heard anyone say that Microsoft copied the Start Menu from Apple. Only Microsoft could come up with something as unpolished and overcomplicated as the Start Menu. And third, Spotlight pwns Windows Desktop Search.

Point 5: “As I’ve mentioned before, Apple has “borrowed” or “adapted” just as many ideas from Windows as the other way around. They’re just now getting around to releasing a 64 bit desktop OS, they’ve “copied” Exchange support from Windows, Leopard introduced “stacks” for combining items in the dock (emulating the “groups” that did the same, years before, in Windows). Apple’s Quick Look for viewing documents in the Finder without opening them seemed a whole lot like Vista’s Explorer preview pane, which came first. I could go on, but here’s my point: just because two operating systems have a similar look, or even have similar features, that doesn’t mean that one is a “copy” of the other. And if Apple folks think it’s such an outrage for Microsoft’s operating systems to adopt features that are similar to their own, why don’t they feel the same sort of outrage about all the new graphical interfaces for Linux that look so much like Mac and Windows? Heck, if Microsoft were really out to “copy” OS X, wouldn’t they have ripped off my very favorite thing about the Mac interface: the genie effect?”

What are you smoking? How did Apple copy Windows by making OS X 64-bit? Was 64-bit technology invented by Microsoft? I don’t think so. Exchange support? How is Apple supposed to have exchange support before Microsoft does? Exchange is a Microsoft product! You’re comparing Stacks to task grouping? Seriously? And don’t even get me started on the differences between Quick Look and that useless chunk of space called the Preview Pane.

Listen, all of these points? They don’t matter, because the fundamental difference between Apple and Microsoft is that Apple innovates. When’s the last time Microsoft’s done anything radically different? Windows is still using technologies from twenty years ago. Apple completely rebuilt Mac OS from the ground up only 9 years ago. Just look at the Zune: why did Microsoft want a piece of the PMP market? Because of Apple’s iPod. What is the Zune HD if not a less functional iPod Touch? The Zune HD even has a message on its side that says, “hello from seattle” (sic). Sound familiar? What about Windows Mobile? When’s the last time Microsoft released an update for Windows Mobile that wasn’t just a shoddy paint job? ‘Sbeen awhile, it has.

So, I think the output of our innovation is great. We have a culture of self-improvement. I know we can continue to improve. There is no issue. But at the same time, our absolute level of output is fantastic.

— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO

My changes are fairly subtle except for the window-buttons, but I like them. If you like them too, you can download my mod here. There’s a .obt as well as a source folder so you can make your own changes.

General Acronyms

A.C.D.C. = American Council of Disseminators of Cable

A.F.R = Les Assassins des Fauteuils Roulents (Wheelchair Assassins.)

ACOA = Adult Children of Alcoholics

ACOG = Adult Children of Gamblers

ACONA = Adult Children of Narcotics Addicts

ALGOL = ALGOrithmic Language

ATHSCME = It’s not clear what it stands for. It’s a company that makes really big fans.

B.S. = Before Subsidization (Before the subsidization of time, wherein companies purchased the rights to name a year after a product, i.e. Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment, Year of Glad.)

B.S.S. = Bureau des Services sans Specificite (The Québécois acronym for O.U.S.)

C.T. = Charles Tavis (Hal’s uncle and the headmaster of ETA after Hal’s father kills himself with a microwave oven.)

C.U.S.P. = Clean U.S. Party (The party of President Gentle.)

E.T.A. = Enfield Tennis Academy

E.W.D. = Empire Waste Displacement

HmH = Headmaster’s House

M.G.M. = Militant Grammarians of Massachusetts

M.O. = Modus Operandi

O.N.A.N. = Organization of North American Nations (The new country formed by the combination of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.)

O.N.A.N.C.A.A. = Organization of North American Nations Collegiate Athletics Association

O.N.A.N.T.A. = Organization of North American Nations Tennis Association

O.U.S. = Office of Unspecified Services

P.A.C. = Political Action Committee

P.G.O.A.T. = Prettiest Girl Of All Time (A.k.a. Joelle v. Dyne.)

S.A.S. = Substance Abuse Services

SOP = Standard Operating Procedure

TP = Teleputer

U.H.I.D. = Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed (A group that Joelle joins after her face is marred by her own mother, who accidentally throws acid in her face while trying to mar herself.)

U.S.D.D. = United States Department of Defense

U.S.T.A. = United States Tennis Association

V.D. = Victory by Default

WASP = White Anglo-Saxon Protestant

W.H.I.N.E.R.S. = Wounded, Hurting, Inadequately Nurtured but Ever-Recovering Survivors

Y.D.A.U. = Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment

Eschaton Acronyms

AMNAT = American Nations

CONFORCON = Conventional-Force Concentration

INDDIR = Infliction of Death, Destruction, and Incapacitation of Response

INDPAK = India + Pakistan

IRLIBSYR = Iran + Libia + Syria

LIBSYR = Libia + Syria

MAMA = Major Metro Area

REDCHI = Red China

S.A.C. = Strategic Air Command

SACPOP = Strikes Against Civilian Populations

SOUTHAF = South Africa

SPASEX = Spasm Exchanges

SUFDDIR = Suffering of Death Destruction, and Incapacitation of Response

SSTRACS = Sites of Strategic Command