Occasionally thought about this in the past as well, or at least for the past year or so, but recent events definitely made the issue gain a whole lot more importance in my mind and in fact I already posted a quick rant about it somewhere else, on top of longer ones sent to the few people who’re still talking to me, more or less. As such, I should manage to make a quick post out of this train of thought, but keep it mind that it’s based on a rather angry rant and I’m definitely in no state of mind to make it much better.
Ever since getting the first computer, I always wanted something better, and as soon as I started being aware of what components were available and what they did, I constantly set targets and planned upgrades, the fact that at times I didn’t make any for several years being caused solely by lack of funds. Once I got to choose what will be purchased, I began to plan the next major upgrade almost as soon as I got one computer, or the components to build it, and would argue with my parents for years over the matter, eventually getting far less than I was aiming for, some two years after the date I had set for such an upgrade.
Well, the direction most software is heading in definitely made that stop being the case in recent years and I can now honestly say I’m actually afraid of the prospect of a computer upgrade. Yes, there are some reliability concerns regarding hardware as well, seeing as things aren’t built to last as much as they used to anymore and hardware failures are definitely something I never want to have to deal with, no matter how long I’ll end up using the components in question, but there are still some brands and product families I trust and, either way, newer hardware is clearly better in terms of performance, so there are reasons to be more careful and take even more time before making a choice, but there’s nothing about the hardware itself that could make me completely refuse a significant upgrade if given the chance.
However, it seems like software developers strive to take away as many user control and customization options as they can with every new version, constantly dumb down everything more and more and make components and tools less and less powerful, and therefore also less useful for advanced users. In addition, it seems that, at the very least, they care less and less about backwards compatibility and avoiding conflicts with older software or hardware, so one update requires others and may completely prevent you from using something else you want or even need from that point forward. Plus that free proprietary software, no matter how clean and trustworthy it used to be, comes more and more often bundled with questionable components that sometimes you’re not even allowed to opt out of installing, said components potentially providing entry points for malware or even behaving in ways that can easily cause them to be classified as malware or at least spyware on their own.
I think back and remember how I used to regularly look for updates or new versions on my own and install them as soon as possible, which after I got a permanent Internet connection frequently meant on or very shortly after release day, and there were also times when I was a rather early adopter of new versions that many needed time to come to terms with. However, in recent years I find myself going increasingly out of my way to avoid such updates unless necessary for security, and if security requires a new version that includes other changes as well instead of simply a minor update I may well start looking for ways to do without the program in question altogether.
I mean, I remember how I struggled to get Windows 95 despite the fact that others who supposedly knew better said my computer was too weak to be worth installing it, or how XP was the first piece of software I purchased legally, only some months after release, and then spent years defending it against the many who insisted it was terrible compared to 2000, or how I used even Vista for nearly five years without many complaints, yet now I wouldn’t even go anywhere near that piece of shit that’s supposedly the “modern” Windows! On top of that, the version of my antivirus that I’m still using is quite a few years old and I keep fearing they’ll stop proving definitions updates and support for it one day, because all those released since then are perfect examples of what I was saying above, taking more and more customization, monitoring and control options away from the users, the next version, which recently entered beta, apparently being a pinnacle of dumbing down. In addition, I just recently tried updating my PDF reader and immediately noticed suspicious behavior, which a quick search revealed to be caused by the crap it’s now bundled with, some of which the user can’t opt out of, so I had to do my best to clean up and go back to the version I had before.
In other words, it’s increasingly harder to consider software updates as upgrades and at the moment I see little reason to hope that the situation will improve in the foreseeable future, all evidence unfortunately pointing to the fact that it’ll continue to worsen. Yet it’s often impossible to upgrade hardware and install the same old software on it, in part because new hardware requires new drivers and the problems described in this post tend to apply to those as well, not to mention that new drivers may only work on certain newer versions of Windows even if support for the older ones hasn’t officially ended, which is definitely a sign that hardware manufacturers are completely fine with this state of affairs and want to enforce this trend instead of trying to reverse it.
As such, I quite simply ended up dreading the prospect of a major hardware upgrade for reasons that have nothing to do with the hardware itself and can’t understand why this is happening. I mean, the PC hardware market keeps growing and this growth is driven almost exclusively by the performance and enthusiast segments, while casual users and those interested in the value and mainstream segments are moving to mobile platforms. What this means is that there are many people out there using and building powerful computers, plenty of them upgrading individual components on their own, and most of these people know what they’re doing and obviously want to control all that power and customize their experience, and yet the manufacturers and developers that one would assume are at least somewhat interested in surviving on this market seem set on simply ignoring them while they focus on catering to those who are migrating to other platforms. It makes no sense…
I guess I need to post something here this week, right? In that case, let me try to ignore the fact that I’m going from one panic attack to the next and whimpering and wanting to just curl in a ball and block everything out, and see if I can start with the good, which is that earlier this week I actually went through two more sections I wrote. Took me an outrageous amount of time for three and a half pages, but it’s the first time I do that in months, so at least it’s a start, even if I still have plenty to go at the moment and when trying to do one more yesterday I gave it up as a bad idea after the first paragraph.
Another good thing may be that I submitted over 20 mobyranks yesterday on MobyGames. Submitted a few last month, but just one at a time when I stumbled into them, the last time I submitted several for one game in one day being more than two months ago, but now I definitely have my eyes on Divinity: Original Sin and, while I obviously won’t be playing it too soon and have no intention of purchasing it until I’ll either know I’ll start it right away or see it for the equivalent of no more than 50 RON, including Paysafecard fees, on GOG, I wanted to see what some reviewers have to say about it and decided to submit all I found while I was there.
On the other hand, I had one huge scare regarding my computer a few days ago, when I noticed that it was reporting all SETI@home work units as completed almost instantly. I actually noticed it on the 15th, but when I later checked I saw it had done the same on the 13th as well, and some other invalid reports were listed even earlier, though it appears that the lists are cleared rather quickly, so I couldn’t know when the problem actually appeared. I had finally gotten around to updating BOINC on June 27, so that may have caused it, but it’s odd that only the second BOINC project running was affected and only if it was a SETI@home work unit, Astropulse ones running fine.
After asking, I was told it may be a software issue, but may also be a sign of the CPU overheating or even failing, and I knew it wasn’t overheating, so I obviously panicked. Worse, after uninstalling BOINC, deleting all project data and reinstalling the old version I was using before updating, two work units were once again reported as completed extremely quickly, though not quite as quickly as before. However, there were no more problems after that and the report for the second of those work units lists a normal early termination due to detecting 30 spikes, which seems to be the maximum number allowed, within the 45 seconds spent processing it, so let’s see if the other user who received it will report the same result. As for the first, there is an obvious problem there, but so far three different results were reported, so it’s possible that the work unit itself has an error.
Still, while that was probably the worst concern regarding my computer, there’s also the matter of my antivirus finding something obvious, and then something else that I considered suspicious when I had it scan again. What it found was an exploit that should have been patched quite some time ago, and I did apply that patch and all others that were released since then, so the fact that it existed doesn’t mean it actually did anything, but there’s only one way I can think of that the file itself may have ended up on my computer and that would indicate that a trusted site was compromised, so I asked them about it and I’m still waiting for a reply.
Otherwise, I once again lost a tooth filling. Just like last time, it seemed that something hard was stuck between my teeth for the past couple of weeks and last night I finally worked some dental floss in there and, after some 15 minutes, managed to get it out, the “something” obviously proving to be the filling which had once again fallen out. The thing is that it’s probably the same filling that fell out then as well, so I’m thinking they should replace it without charging me this time, since it hasn’t even been six months, but I sure hope they’ll find a way to make it stay there now!
That’s not the only dental problem, however, since a tooth on the right side also started hurting slightly when I press on it, and for a couple of days it also hurt when touched by something cold, though that pain went away on its own as suddenly as it appeared. Somewhat more worryingly, that tooth also had its filling replaced a few times before they could make it stay in place for the past five years, so now I’m worried that, even if the problem itself may be relatively easy to fix, I’ll just end up with another that will keep falling out. In addition, I’m also worried that what did fall out now may actually be a piece from the filling in the tooth next to the one I think it’s from, which is the one that had quite a lot of work done on it back in 2007. I don’t think it’s from there, but it may be, and either way something may be wrong with that anyway, which will definitely be more difficult to fix, and at the moment I’m too scared of everything to see if I could make sure.
There were some other things I meant to add, but I guess I should stop while I still make some sort of sense. Earlier I started whimpering simply because a piece of watermellon which I had brought here to eat fell back in the plate and splashed my desk a little, so you can imagine my state of mind… And tomorrow I have a march I was thinking of participating in, though at the moment I have no idea how I’ll manage that… Nor how will I manage to go to the dentist on Monday.
12 years since me and Andra actually met the first time, 12 years since we kissed for the first time, 12 years since our relationship started… And close to nine since it ended. What would have been our 12th anniversary is the ninth, I don’t know, commemoration perhaps? Does that term still apply if I’m the only one remembering and caring about it?
I’m exhausted, my brain refuses to cooperate and I don’t know what else to say at the moment, but at least now I can more or less curl in a ball and listen to emotional music, after wasting my time with a protest earlier today. If someone is tempted to say those were at least some four hours less spent moping around and feeling like shit, I’ll disagree, the only difference being that I just sort of sat around and didn’t let it show quite so much, which only made it even more exhausting. Too few people care at all, even fewer enough to do anything, and Alex just made it a whole lot worse by acting like somebody had just fucked him in the ass and didn’t pay, and I apologize to those who practice anal sex, prostitution or both for the comparison.
Also couldn’t eat anything today, since the kitchen keeps being blocked most of the day lately, parents spending more and more time there. Then again, after getting thrown back here I had settled into only eating once per day, late at night, after they went to bed, so guess I could get back to that if this keeps up. I’ll definitely be doing it today, and then let’s see what the next days and weeks will hold.
Otherwise, sent a message into the void a few days ago, by which I mean I sent an e-mail to her address, where as far as I know I’m blocked. Unlike those I send on her birthday, when I’m particularly worried about her for some reason or sometimes also around New Year’s, when I try to figure out ways to increase the chances of them actually reaching her, despite knowing they almost certainly won’t be read either way, that wasn’t the point this time. Not that I’m particularly sure what the point actually was, but it wasn’t that. May have been to simply think with my fingers a little more, see if anything is clearer or otherwise noticeably different once written, but also see if having her name there at the top will make it in any way different from simply writing in a file nobody else will see, or in a message that I’ll delete without ever sending it, which happens at times.
But I guess that’s enough for today. Less than an hour until the third place match, so I’ll just put my clothes back where they belong and then wait for that to start… Though at this point I just want to curl up under the blanket and come back out after I’ll wake up from this bad dream I’ve been living in all these years.
Today is World Population Day and, even though I have no intention of focusing on or even mentioning this year’s theme, I couldn’t miss the opportunity… Then again, I have missed it each year with the exception of 2008, the main reason probably being the date, considering what the next day is for me, but I had to write something this week anyway and this can’t hurt, right? After all, though the truly efficient methods will need to be harsh and not the result of debates or awareness campaigns, any opportunity can and should be used to point out the elephant in the room, the worst problem the world is facing, caused entirely by our behavior and extremely easy to fix if only enough people would actually use their brains to think instead of their gonads.
Actually, this year’s theme sadly seems to be quite a good example of, shall we say, insufficient brain usage, seeing as it represents the UN hijacking the purpose of its own event to sweep the issue of overpopulation and all the problems it causes under the rug. Not that I’m in any way surprised, mind you, knowing that the tremendous majority of people react with great hostility when the matter is brought up and that the way the UN works pretty much ensures that it can’t do anything that needs to be done, but even simply mentioning the usual necessary but laughably insufficient series of measures regarding voluntary family planning, accessible safe and effective birth control and sexual education would have still been something. Since I’m not even seeing that, I’ll say again that we’re talking about a hijacking of the event, changing the message into one that’s the opposite of what should be said on such a day, if you think about it for a moment.
The thing is that this year’s theme could have easily been connected with those issues, the difficult part being to justify picking such a focus without making this connection, but even the UNFPA Executive Director’s message barely squeezes a few words through. There’s no point in having a World Population Day if the focus is not the population, the numbers and problems that arise as a result, and from there on the reasons why it has reached such unsustainable levels and still continues to grow, and yet here they are, doing precisely that.
But there’s little point in paying any more attention to them. If we’re to have any chance of solving pretty much any environmental or social problem, to offer people as well as the other species we share this planet with a life that’s actually worth living, we need to drastically reduce the number of births so the population will return to a sustainable level in a reasonable amount of time, and those of us who can use our brains enough to realize this must do it on our own and by any means necessary. The tremendous majority of people will keep putting basic instincts above reason and vehemently oppose us at every turn and the powers that be, at any level, will not help… Though there may be some truth in the conspiracy theories saying that some ruthless individuals are trying to reduce the population by increasing mortality, because a large number of children and young adults are required to sustain the current model of overconsumption and wage slavery, while the old, sick or otherwise inconvenient are a burden for it, so we may have to fight those as well.
Let me start with the good news, which is that Opportunity‘s solar panels were at one point even cleaner than when I last wrote about this, the dust factor reported on May 13 being 0.964, meaning that the dust still gathered on the solar panels blocked only 3.6% of sunlight from reaching them. That value has dropped back under 0.9 according to the most recent updates, but it’s still better than at any other point since these measurements started being reported, back in 2007, and I remember reading somewhere that the panels are actually cleaner than they have been since the first year, which was 2004. In fact, though the days are still short, the Martian Southern Spring Equinox falling on August 17, the rover has so much power available that mission managers need to come up with reasons to wake it up late at night in order to condition the batteries.
Unfortunately, however, flash memory problems have been particularly frequent lately, leading to a number of resets and “amnesia events” that make me worry about the mission’s future, seeing as a rover that can’t store the data obtained or even the commands received will be useless. Not that it’s in any way unexpected, since there’s a limit to the number of times each sector of flash memory can be written to and Opportunity has been operating on Mars for nearly ten and a half years while tomorrow it’ll be exactly 11 years since she was launched, but I sure hope they’ll find some way around the issue and keep going, because it’ll sure be a terribly sad day when this mission will end.
And since I mentioned terribly sad days, we’re definitely set to have them in 2017, when both Cassini and Juno are set to end their missions, the latter obviously assuming that it’ll work properly in the first place, since it’ll only reach Jupiter in 2016. Obviously, NASA won’t admit that and even chose to name the final phase of the Cassini mission the Grand Finale, but I’d quite clearly go with something along the lines of Great Failure instead, considering what it implies.
While in the near future there will be two, at the moment our presence on or around a celestial body beyond Mars is limited to a single spacecraft, and that’s Cassini. Dawn is set to reach Ceres in 2015 and end its mission at best in early 2016, while Juno, as I said above, is set to reach Jupiter later during 2016 and end its mission the following year, likely a few months after Cassini will be sent inside Saturn’s atmosphere to be destroyed. And that’s it. The only planned mission beyond Mars at this moment is JUICE, which is set to launch in 2022 and reach Jupiter in 2030, so for many years we will have absolutely no presence whatsoever on or around any celestial body outside the inner solar system.
But wait, it gets even worse! The Voyagers are also set to run out of power at some point during the 2020s, while New Horizons may shut down even before that time, as current efforts are aimed at finding another target it can reach no more than four years after its 2015 flyby of Pluto. What this means is that there will probably be a period during the 2020s when we’ll have absolutely nothing left beyond Mars. Ever since the early 1970s, when Pioneer 10 reached first the asteroid belt and then Jupiter, we’ve had a continuous presence outside the inner solar system, yet some 50 years later that will probably cease to be the case!
In 1969 we could put people on the Moon! In 1977 we could launch the Voyagers, which are still operational and exploring the outer boundaries of the solar system, a few of their instruments even being better than those on New Horizons, which was launched in 2006! Then in 1997 we could launch Cassini, which is now set to end its mission around Saturn 20 years later! Yet in the late 2010s and early 2020s we won’t even be getting past Mars anymore!
We sure stopped dreaming, haven’t we? I mean, what the fuck happened to us? Isn’t science and technology supposed to advance? Weren’t we supposed to be in the space age? Why are we moving back instead of forward? Why do we keep looking down towards our feet instead of up towards the sky? And if we are to look down, why don’t we go up first, to gain a new perspective as we’ll look down at our beautiful, fragile world?
This does remind me of another Babylon 5 quote: “When you stumble a lot, you… You start looking at your feet. We have to make people lift their eyes back to the horizon and see the line of ancestors behind us saying ‘Make my life have meaning.’ And to our inheritors before us saying ‘Create the world we will live in.’ I mean, we’re not just holding jobs and having dinner. We are in the process of building the future.”
Too many people forget that. Too many care only about their pockets, stomach and groin, and at most those of a few loved ones as well. Too many focus only on the here and now, on immediate problems and instant gratification. Too many are only concerned with quick gains and practical results. Too many stumble merely because they refuse to open their eyes and lift their heads enough to see the cracks, hurdles, twists and turns ahead… And too many who would look and go farther are brought down by them as they writhe and crawl through the mud and dirt.
Well, I for one will keep looking up, here on Earth as well as to the stars, both literally and figuratively, and can only hope that, against all odds, enough others will eventually do the same. Merely looking and hoping and aiming won’t be enough on its own, but it’s necessary if we’re to have a chance to create a future worth living in, for ourselves and for the other species we share this pale blue dot with… And who knows, perhaps for others we will someday meet out there as well.
