I’m a physics student in college and I also work as a programmer for the Department of Environmental Quality here in Oklahoma, so believe me when I say, I’m inundated in an atmosphere of real scientists, but it never ceases to amaze me how, when observing society, how many people claim to be on the side of science, or use the term “logical” when the person has absolutely no place using the term.  I’m sorry but anyone who has a degree in Philosophy or Humanities should be barred from using the term all together.  I’ve found the vast majority of them to have a highly subjective definition for “logic”

I guess part of it descends from the attitude of some people to define a term however they damn well please.  Sorry guys, if you can’t prove it, its not real.  Despite the fact that English is an atrocious language (especially our Americanized version of it), words do have definitions and meanings and changing them just gives anyone with better things to do that think up new definitions to words all day a major headache.

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Is Microsoft on the ropes right now?  It certainly seems so with the high levels of attacks they’ve been levying on the Linux and Mac market (even though M$ does own most of Mac, I’d call their attacks on Apple merely a charade for the public).

It may seem like they’re clearly trying to take the lead, but everyone in psychology is familiar with the defence mechanism, which alludes to the possibility that Microsoft is about to have a corporate-equivalent of a stroke.

And honestly, if I were Microsoft I’d be sweating it too.  Its getting to the point where Ubuntu Linux is matching OSX in the eye candy factor (though I’d argue its been vastly superior for years now, especially since XGL and Beryl came onto the scene), its much faster than 7 or XP, in many arenas, much more secure than Vista or OSX (“Vista SP2 most secure OS”…yeah…right, apparently they’ve never encountered OpenBSD or the grsecurity Linux kernel, even the NSA likes Linux), and invariably cheaper (who wants to spend money on an OS AND have to pay for support when they can have a free OS that works most of the time and you only have to pay for support when/if you need it, but even then, there’s plenty of documentation around the web about how to do things, so you really don’t even have to pay for support, though the same could be said about Windows, but sometimes there’s that one situation no one has ever tried before).

So it could be very good news for us Linux fans.  With Google’s Chrome OS coming up (albeit its not truly Linux, it does at the very least include the Linux kernel), OSX on the rise, and Windows 7 on shaky grounds (with the MS Word injunction, and all of the anti-trust litigation surmounting M$ right now); it could very well be the start of the decline of Microsoft’s empire.

You know what they say, everything with a beginning, must have an end.

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Actually its a tale of just one. I’d like to take the opportunity to praise UPS (the United Parcel Service) for their end result in an extraneous case.

My friend had me build him a computer, but he lives out of state so I had to send it off.  UPS has good prices in comparison to FedEx and like hell I’m gunna put a desktop computer in the hands of the USPS.  However I know crap happens from time to time, so I packaged the computer in the box the case came in (double walled cardboard and a custom fitting Styrofoam pack), as well as purchased enough insurance to replace the unit should it be necessary.

Well, the worst case scenario ended up happening.  The desktop arrived at my friend’s house with the case trashed and the computer itself, non-functional.  So I had him send it back so I could get a better look at it.  It was indeed broken.

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