Back in 1954, Popular Mechanics ran a story about computing of the future. At that time a “home computer” was a far-off concept. Attached below is the projection of what a home computer in 2004 would look like.
I have several comments. First, what’s with the steering wheel? Also, I find this especially amusing: “With teletype interface and the Fortran language, the computer will be easy to use.”
Read on for more…
I do my taxes on my computer every year.
For the past two years, I have used TaxCut. This year, I had several unpleasant surprises:
1. It would crash hard at a particular screen in the program, every time. I finally figured out how to skip that screen. Fortunately, it didn’t pertain to me.
2. It refused to let me file because it didn’t have charitable giving ready to go yet, saying I should run the automatic update procedure. Guess what — I already did, and it installed its latest updates.
3. The state tax program for Kansas is available for Windows, but not yet for Mac. So I can’t even try to file my state taxes.
Fast and easy? I think not.
I originally switched from TurboTax because:
1. It was more expensive than TaxCut and provided no extra features
2. TurboTax would charge $10 more simply for the privilege of getting the same product for Mac
3. TurboTax tried to write to your boot sector as part of its copy-protection scheme, often rendering machines unbootable.
4. TurboTax tried to restrict how many returns one could prepare with it, even though there was no technical reason for that.
5. Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, have been known to intentionally break features of their software such as Quicken simply to force people to upgrade.
So it seems there is no non-crappy choice out there. I could go with TaxCut and get a product that is apparently unintentionally crappy. Or I could go with TurboTax, and give my dollars to a company that intentionally handicaps their software.
Either way, I’m displeased.
Perhaps I should get a slide rule and quill pen and do things the old fashioned way.
Why Does Windows Still Suck? from the San Francisco Gate. Mark Morford asks the question: why do people put up with Windows? Unfortunately, he can’t find an answer.
Spamhaus on MCI’s tolerance of spamming.
Marty on ER runs and contesting speeding tickets.
Also, I released a new program yesterday: MissingPy. It’s a link between Haskell and Python. This marks the fifthh major language link to Haskell, after C, C++, .NET, and Java. With my Python library, I was able to add bzip2 support to Haskell in under 10 lines of code. Sweet. This one binding knocks out most of the things on my todo list.
Things I want to do in Haskell:
I saw an ad on my site today for ServerPronto. I’m always on the lookout for better hosting deals, since hosting is expensive. They looked good — inexpensive dedicated colocation. So I quickly googled for “ServerPronto Debian”. It turns out that ServerPronto has run afoul of several spam RBL lists and generally refuses to remove spammers from their network. Result: you’ll have a lot of trouble sending e-mail from a box hosted there. On the other hand, there’s at least one person happy with them. I wonder if they’ve cleaned up their act since last July?
I did some more googling and found a nice personal colo chart. I found a few interesting ones, including OSEM here.
Newsforge has a nice article about Debian From Scratch, my Debian install-it-yourself CD, rescue CD, and CD builder package. I must say, Bruce Byfield’s instructions are more complete than my own documentation for it.
I now use DFS for most of my new Debian installations. Best of all, porting it to new archs is trivial.
Apple: iPod Domination Or Just Another Fad? at The Register.
Various SELinux material from Gentoo. Also, Getting Started with SELinux and Writing SELinux Policy. SELinux looks very complex. I think I’ll just use vserver instead.
The System Rescue CD and Partimage pages. The system rescue C looks like it can pretty much eliminate the need for spending money on Partition Magic or Ghost because of its inclusion of qparted and partimage. Nice!
Debian’s Haskell packages have been stuck out of testing for some time. I learned that they’re going in today, though, finally! There are also several other packages that this will push into testing, including my own MissingH.
Here’s what I’ve been reading today:
Hackers, Slackers, and Shackels by Matt Barton, a fascinating article about trends in game development. The author calls Martin Luther “the Richard Stallman of his time.” That’s one analogy I hadn’t heard of before. (seen on Slashdot) Also a bit of insight into the history of Unix I hadn’t heard of before, either.
Personal Chemistry and the Healthy Body by Gerald Weinberg, (via Slashdot). Seems like sound enough conclusions, with some rather mushy in-between stuff.
Review of Author Unknown by Foster. Foster attempts to identify the authors of various bits of text. Seen on a comment from Jon on an earlier story here.
Here’s an interesting read from Joel on Software: Advice for Computer Science College Students