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Saturday, May 02, 2015 - 22:35 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

Same Old Same Old



Windoze crashed irrepairably again?
[N.B. Spoons do happen to be extremely dangerous weapons]


When the home PC refused to load Windows 8.1 on Thursday night, and the first couple automatic repairs/system restore/CHKDSK attempts yielded no improvement, I knew what had to be done - a fresh OS reinstall.

The good news is, the process is likely more convenient than it has ever been - with most of my critical applications' installation discs ripped to ISO files on a secondary drive, getting them back up and running was a breeze. Caution, however: reinstalling straight to existing folders appeared to cause problems with Visual Studio, which necessitated a do-over after cleaning up the registry (repeat the scan/remove cycle until a stable state)

I was most concerned about losing the environment for my Visual Studio development settings, which has in the past been the source of many a headache, but fortunately the relevant environment variables could be retrieved from the previous Windows installation folder (preserved as Windows.old). Happily, it then proceeded swimmingly, other than having to upgrade to CUDA 7.0 (changing the appropriate Visual Studio paths accordingly) to be compatible with the latest graphics card drivers.

One small issue was that FIFA 10 (required for the other site) no longer runs for some reason, which forced me to emulate Windows XP in VMware (there's a whole industry around providing a safety net for companies with software relying on legacy operating systems, it appears). It'll have to do. Time to finally back up those portable hard drives in their entirety...


Wheeling And Dealing

While swigging my usual pre-work canned drink at the Central Forum, a guy zoomed past on what looked like a seatless unicycle, which after a quick search was revealed to be a Solowheel (or knock-off). Sure is nifty, other than the pricetag of over a thousand bucks (which is probably at least partly why the Segway never quite took off)

At the other end of the spectrum, NASA's hot new electromagnetic drive claims to provide thrust without expelling propellant. Clickbait article titles being what they are, this piqued my curiosity, and it turns out that such drives are hardly as "impossible" as ballyhooed. It might seem so with a cartoon simplification to bouncy balls perpetually ricocheting within an enclosed engine, but what's going on is that electricity is input to the system, so energy is conserved.

The Internet being what it is, references to warp drives were always going to appear, after some enthuasists noted the similarity between the how the EM drive's microwaves were produced, as compared to lasers. That said, getting about in space has always been about the initial thrust, since there's next to no resistance, and the stopping once you've arrived.

Returning to more mundane modes of transportation, local motorheads will probably be cheering lower COEs. Alongside that, our officially-puritan The State's Times ran a feature condemning the use of attractive models during car shows in China... while publishing ads for an SPH-organized expo featuring just that. The PC madness is spreading...


Free For All


*gasp* That's... that's... midget shaming!
(Source: iwatchstuff.com)


Yes, that's the UK bowing to public pressure to ban "beach body ready" billboard ads, thanks to feminist activists (who coincidentally tend towards being... inoffensively shapeless) decrying them as "promoting unhealthy body standards". I dunno, the examples featured in the ads look perfectly fine to me. This is an area in which China's getting it right; as for those fallen colonialists, may they get what they deserve, at least until computers manage value-neutral assessments.

Following up on the now-Famous Amos' saga, Singapore's most-infamous sixteen year-old got whacked outside the courthouse, by an assailant who appropriated his "sue me" taunt; this may yet happen, since he (the attacker, not the already-charged provocateur) has been arrested. And the immediate reaction? Why, put out an ad, of course, as usual.

Lest we get too negative here, it should be noted that Famous Amos had received pro-bono representation from three lawyers, in addition to being bailed out by a Christian counsellor, after his parents refused to put up the S$20000 (which, as we shall see, was a wise decision on their part). Certainly, as gestures go, this sort of thing reflects well on a religion (and others, slightly less so)

Unfortunately, the good Samaritan was perhaps unaware that one of the terms of the bail was to not post anything online, which the unrepentant bailee promptly broke with two new blog entries. Figuring that it was pointless to pour good oil after bad, his bailor has discharged himself.


No Reform For You!

I'm a little torn on this. On one hand, I am wary of any and all techniques that effectively amount to silencing individuals, given the already-tenuous state of freedom of speech here. While pre-trial gag orders are certainly not unknown, the blanket nature of the one imposed this time does seem overblown (recall, the last major incident was initially resolved by the removal of the offending posts); in this case, the plaintiff has left what might be... delicately described as a closeted Thatcherite's wet dream untouched on his blog, which in my opinion he is perfectly entitled to (and as our Reform Party leader has rightly pointed out)

On the other hand, the big problem with the people that have recently been bringing these rights to public attention here is that they have tended to be... a bit off. In comparism (stretching a little here) to far more effective civil rights activists of the past, their displays of disobedience (such as Amos attempting to wear pajamas to his court hearing) feel more petty than anything - which, come to think of it, may partly be why they have mostly been allowed to continue...

Which brings us to the "unique culture and history" interpretation of China's mostly-nonexistent political reformation, expressed some days ago by a visiting professor at the LKY School of Public Policy. Now, his book on the subject has sold over 250000 copies worldwide, so I suppose that he has to be considered an expert.

His observations that China's size has made their economic transformation impressive in itself do make some sense, but he then describes the support for the ruling party coming from a "longstanding historical and cultural respect for government" (as discussed here a month or so ago), and thus "the party's legitimacy will (not) be threatened by... economic slowdown"


Defender of the traditional Asian values


Frankly, I'm sincerely unsure as to how and when this "loyalty, respect, hustle" tagline got so intimately associated with the Chinese identity by CCP apologists, since a cursory sweep over China's long history reveals that their many dynasties tend to last maybe a century or three if they're lucky, before being overthrown in bloody revolution - same as the Egyptians, the Romans, the English, the Japanese (shogun houses)... and basically every other imperial system. Then again, it is entirely possible that all those regular Chinese uprisings were uniquely more respectful than the norm.

Of course, any sane person should hope that China continues to discover peaceable resolutions to their internal issues. Back to the visiting expert, he then claims that "...Google pulled out of China... because Baidu gave them a competitive beating". Which I suppose is true, if one considers "blocking Google off after forcing self-censorship" as being a valid method of competition. Not that I don't understand why China would like a domestic search engine to be dominant - today's democracies have often been protectionist, after all.


Voicing Out

Back in Singapore, one of my former profs has managed to distract dedicated EDMW-ers from continuing to dig into the pit of questionable qualifications, with his piece on work-life balance (summary: don't expect it). Definitely, he's correct in that one is more likely to succeed if one gets damn good at what one does, but his detractors may well have a point too.

In the meantime, one of my NS platoon mates has written in to the ST Forum to suggest that the LionsXII and Young Lions be closed down, and concentrate efforts on the S.League, which was soon followed by a proposal for a hybrid S.League that includes semi-pro clubs. This latter suggestion would seem to naturally promote a local Big Four (which, it has to be said, might not be detrimental given EPL and La Liga experience)... but let's just say that I don't see no shit given.

No more Wendy's here either, sadly. Dropped by the Jurong Point outlet a couple of times some years back, when they still offered the shrimp burger. Darn, now I want one.



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