Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Probably the best ~30 minutes of video I’ve seen on the internet in quite a while.

I’ve definitely not upgraded my PC to Vista; I have little need to. Although I have been, and remain, curious about Vista given that I simply haven’t used it. The commentary about it has been overwhelmingly negative, but I’ve always had a sense that people were saying bad things about it because other people said bad things about it. Herd mentality strikes again! But Microsoft may have come up with a clever way to work around and start changing those impressions:

Microsoft last week traveled to San Francisco, rounding up Windows XP users who had negative impressions of Vista. The subjects were put on video, asked about their Vista impressions, and then shown a “new” operating system, code-named Mojave. More than 90 percent gave positive feedback on what they saw. Then they were told that “Mojave” was actually Windows Vista.

“Oh wow,” said one user, eliciting exactly the exclamation that Microsoft had hoped to garner when it first released the operating system more than 18 months ago. Instead, the operating system got mixed reviews and criticisms for its lack of compatibility and other headaches.

Good luck to them.

This morning I was doing some yard work, as I’ve done every morning this week. Today was quite a bit more enjoyable than the other days because it wasn’t ungodly hot at 7AM — it was actually quite pleasant — and because I remember to put on some bug repellent. As I worked, I thought to a conversation I had with my roommate the night before. She said that she was the only person she know who had a guy roommate who did not have a flat panel TV. In an attempt to justify this to myself, I thought, “retirement comes first.” It seems backwards, but the better I prepare now for retirement later, the better and sooner my retirement will be. So I’m sticking with my thought: retirement comes first.

Saw a couple of humorous license plates this week.

Today on I-66E, a Duke plate: UNC SUX.

A few days ago near my house, a Maryland (the state, not the university) plate: ICUCUMN.

Gross.

The Chinese have apparently had capped electricity prices for some time. Well, when the cost of coal went up, the generators started losing money and some of the generators shut down, leading to some electricity shortages. So the Chinese gov’t imposed price controls at the mines. So the price of coal arriving at the ports went up. And now the Chinese gov’t is imposing price caps at the ports. Talk about chasing your tail!

The world’s fastest-expanding major economy faces such acute power shortages that electricity-sapping industries including aluminum smelters have had to halt production.

Energy supply shortages have become a “key factor” in holding back the nation’s economic and social development, the Chinese government said in a statement yesterday.

To conserve energy and cut the nation’s demand for oil, Premier Wen Jiabao ordered the nation to cut back on summer air conditioning and drive less, according to yesterday’s statement. The nation will also shut more oil-fired power generators, it said.

Of course, more price controls will invariably lead to greater shortages. I really don’t see the benefit of low prices if there is nothing there to be bought.

It’s worth pointing out that the Chinese are facing actual shortages, whereas we are having to cope with ample supply @ higher prices. We tried the price control and shortages thing a few decades ago. Fortunately we still seem to have enough sense to try to avoid repeating that. Anyway, let’s welcome the Chinese to the 1970s. I hope they like disco.

I have yet to review the 4th book I read, It’s Not News, It’s Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap As News, written by Fark.com founder and operator Drew Curtis. The title of the book actually does a pretty good job of summarizing things. Curtis has created specific categories of “news” that aren’t news that we are subjected too. Among the categories are things like “advertising masquerading as news” and “article contradicts title”. He runs through the descriptions, provides some examples, and then includes some of the more humorous commentary from fark commenters. It’s a decent but not earth-shattering book. I recommend it as a good bathroom book. The takeaway, is that of course the media has to publish a lot of crap: if they want to be around when the real news happens, they have to fill space and make ends meet in the mean time.

Speaking of filling space. The geniuses at ForbesAUTO (WTF?) via MSNBC bring us How you can ease the pain of car ownership - Ways you can ease driving costs besides downsizing and driving less. Halfway through the article they write,

[b]esides downsizing and driving less, there are other ways to curtail costs, some of which have little to do with prices at the pump.

I only add that quote here because the first half the article explained the cost of car ownership how to ease it by downsizing and driving less. When they finally do get around to their point, all they really suggest is spending less on maintenance, ya know, by doing things like not-fixing things that aren’t broken and finding a mechanic who doesn’t rip you off. That’s it. That’s their advice. And then they spend the last third of the article explaining other costs that drivers can’t really control.