Question of type and character...

I have a soft corner for cursive fonts. But of the non-cursive types, I am not too sure what I like more, serifs or sans-serifs. :-(

In short, I like most types of types. :-)

But, type rendering on Linux still pisses me off. When will it become at least tolerably good? Being an armchair critic is much easier than trying to implement a good font interpreter all by myself, anyway. :-)

Small is beautiful...

May be.

But I do prefer my laptop to be at least 14.1". Watching videos on PDAs and mobile phones is not my cup of tea.

I wonder where all these convergence and miniaturization is taking us. Some people are buying into it (literally), and some people are making a bunch of money.

More Norton WTF...

Uninstalled and re-installed Norton Internet Security. Now SystemWorks keeps flashing that no anti-virus is installed. If it can't even detect an installation of a product from the same vendor correctly, how on earth would it protect me from virus, and other more exotic stuff... I mean, WTF.

Selective un-installation does noes even work.

Money gone down the drain... :-(

A sense of security...

Often wonder how effective the anti-virus, anti-phishing, anti-malware tools really are. It is nothing short of blind faith that I have in the particular (Norton) products that I have.

Might as well switch completely to a Linux only environment. Too reluctant to get out, as things mostly "just works" on Windows XP, and more importantly about one tenth of the cost of the laptop was for the OEM version of Windows XP.

Have both Norton Internet Security 2009, and Norton Systemworks installed. I was able to register one of the products, while the other just refused to do so citing lack of connection to the internet.

Another quirk. If the Windows firewall is disabled, following the advice from one of the products, the other complains rather loudly about it, and will flash till both the firewalls are enabled, and slowing down my rather old laptop. A (false) sense of security, twice over. Wonderful integration, indeed.

The online account needed for the product registration allows only letters and numerals in the password. That really is something to be appreciated, coming from a company peddling computer security tools.

Problem is elsewhere...

....Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve Chairman. Greenspan says the world is facing “the type of wrenching financial crisis that comes along only once in a century,” but, reports the New York Times, "his faith in derivatives remains unshaken." Greenspan believes that the problem is not with derivatives, but that the people using them got greedy, according to the Times.

This is quite a view. Is it a surprise to Alan Greenspan that the people on Wall Street -- said to be ruled only by the opposing instincts of greed and fear -- "got greedy?"


by Ralph Nader in a recent CounterPunch article.

C++

C++ was my first programming language. Kind of liked it, mainly because it was the first one I learned. It was somewhat like diving into the deep end of the pool to learn swimming.

Used to think that I did have a decent understanding of the language. Not anymore. The language has evolved a lot, and am badly out of touch after becoming a full-time Java programmer. Not sure if I can continue to have it in my resume. Especially after realizing that I could not answer most of the questions in the GOTW.

Then a few interviews happened. Talked to some people who claimed to be very good at C++. Most of them were surprised to know that "struct"s can contain methods. Or why a copy constructor should take a reference.

That was a real confidence booster, personally.

Any openings for a born-again C++ programmer?

Haskell...

Trying to learn Haskell...

Don't know if anything useful can come out of this intellectual exercise. Many a year back I came across a comment in a piece of PERL code I was maintaining that it was much easier to accomplish the same thing in a functional language like Haskell. That piece of code is no longer maintained, but the urge to figure out for myself if the claim is valid still remains.

Learning Haskell on a Sunday evening. Hmmm...

Am not a geek, not even trying to appear like a geek. :-)