It turns out that Flux over there at BlackChampagne (whose site layout I totally ripped off, btw) quoted part of an email that I sent him in his latest post. He linked to my site in the quoting of the email which was completely unexpected. The result of that is that anyone who linked through it would have seen one of my least entertaining posts. Unless those people enjoy reading baseball discussion. But with my current readership countable on one hand, even if the hand was missing a couple of fingers, I will take any publicity I can get. After all, had I known that he would be linking to my site it is not like I would have turned into a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for a day. I write what I want to write in the way that I want to write it. That may have something to do with the number of readers that I have. Come to think of it, I should write what people want to read in the way that they want to read it. Being that I do not have the skill necessary for that sort of an undertaking, I will just continue to ramble the way I always have.
• There was one thing in the news today that I thought I would never see. Especially since I had made a mention of it in a previous post. I actually mentioned it in passing the day before the link that I posted, where I said; “So when is the last time that you heard about a problem with the security on a macintosh system? Is that a rhetorical question or does the Imac team just handle it a lot better?” Here is today’s headline.
Apple Says OS X Vulnerable to Security Breach
SEATTLE (Reuters) – Apple Computer Inc. (Nasdaq:AAPL – news), long considered to be relatively immune to the security holes and viruses that plague longtime rival Microsoft Corp.’s Windows, said on Friday a security hole in its software leaves users’ computers vulnerable to attack.Mac, and its legion of enthusiastic users, have long touted the benefits of owning Apple’s Macintosh (news – web sites) personal computer, such as its ease of use and immunity from the computer viruses that plague users of PCs running Microsoft’s Windows operating system.
So it finally happened, right? They finally had a security flaw. Now let’s see if Microsoft jumps onto it as harshly as I speculated on March 11, where I said, in part;
I strongly believe that if a single OS X system anywhere on the face of the earth encountered security issues, Microsoft would be on it like maggots to rotting flesh. Macintosh has been a thorn in the side of Microsoft for decades and the thought of them not attacking mac if even one person ever had security issues is ludicrous. It would be in every Microsoft commercial and ad campaign from here until the end of time. If you are thinking, no, Microsoft would not attack them for something like that, since they have had so many problems of their own…Sober up…
I still believe every word of that. I really am curious to see if Microsoft is going to start doing ads about it. Not in a ‘better than you’ kind of way, but more in a ‘so they have security flaws too, now you are no different than us’ kind of way. Though reading further in the news article I saw one other line that sets the OS x security flaw apart from all of the windows security flaws.
“Apple takes security very seriously and works quickly to address potential threats as we learn of them-in this case, before there was any actual risk to our customers,” said Schiller.
That is going to be as opposed to what the quote would have read had it been from Microsoft where it would have read more like this.
“Microsoft takes security very seriously and works quickly to address potential threats as we learn of them-in this case, before there was any actual risk of me losing any money,” said Gates.
Keep in mind that the last quote was me spoofing the Apple quote, not actually anything that anyone named Gates, or anyone affiliated with Microsoft has ever actually said. But wouldn’t be funny if he/they did?
• After making a very brief mention of Deadly Rooms of Death yesterday, I decided that I would go ahead and play it on the new PC. Instead of just transferring game information over from the old machine I decided to play through it again. I don’t know, maybe I thought it would be nostalgic. It went pretty well for the first five levels or so, then I started getting back into the boards that really piss me off. I realize now why I like the game and why I don’t like the game.
The only reason that I like the game is that it is a puzzle game. I do enjoy puzzle games of all sorts. This one adds a bit to the idea of a puzzle game by making the components move in unique ways that add to the puzzle experience. That kind of thing can be appreciated when intelligence alone can solve a problem. When you must be intelligent and lucky it becomes tiresome. Perhaps I am reading into it wrong and every board can be solved with intelligence alone, but the boards that have multiple spawners on them are extremely difficult.
As I think about it I am pretty sure that each board can be solved pretty easily with intelligence alone. The guy who programmed each board probably tested them over and over again to make sure. The thing is that he knew where he wanted to start it and likely tested all of the boards based on that starting position. Most of the boards have three or four different starting positions (if it has only a single entrance) and if you enter on the wrong square it can be impossible to win without exiting the room and re-entering from a different square. That, in my mind, is not really using intelligence to solve a puzzle. If the game were modified to make the entrance squares to the board not count, so that you could move up or down a square (while still on the entrance tiles) and turn to get your sword facing the correct direction, that would definitely improve the game. Usually you are able to just exit the board an re-enter having done all that, but wouldn’t it be easier to figure out which would be the best starting tile and sword direction if you were actually looking at the board at the time?
I guess I really should quit bitching about that game. It seems to me that I have spent more time bitching about it than I have actually playing it. Maybe I should quit playing it too, but it gives me so much bitching material. Catch 22 eh?
That is all for today. Tune in tomorrow when I will feature an expose on self-circumcision, or not.