Game over

I'm leaving for Prague next week. My stay here is basically over and so is probably this blog.

4th of July

I celebrated the 4th of July at the beach. Swimming just a little deeper allowed me to see a bunch of dauphins very closely. Being closer than 50 meters from them was really cool.
Unfortunately, after I came back to the beach to my stuff, I did not find my new sandals. I hope they serve the new owners well.

Happy days

I'm happy to inform you that this information came by mail

Your plans to leave the U.S. on the [July 16] have been approved...

Great! So I'm actually allowed to go home. I should not forget to apply for permission to breathe when I get there.

Graduate Education

So graduate education makes you stupid. I think this is sadly true for everybody. Except for me, of course.

Question of the day

Q:How stupid you have to be (even for an American) to watch Fox News?

A: Obviously a lot:

Back in the day – you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white – news organizations called potential first ladies “wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it’s basically fine for Fox News to use “Baby Mama” for Michelle Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, “some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can’t stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they’re all relaxed about that shit, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it’s not Fox News that’s calling Michelle Obama “Baby Mama,” it’s outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn’t want to use the term “Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

This is John Scalzi at Whatever.

Just so that you know. This shit happens here every single day. And Fox News has a motto: "Balanced News" (and variations thereof). Sometimes, I feel like I'm going to spend a long time in the bathroom after just seconds of these "balanced" news.

Why revenue sharing failed

It was a nice experiment. Apple sells the phones for almost full price and gets a share of revenues from those who subscribe to AT&T. The AT&T did not suffer badly - it pays only for those who actually use its services. At first, it looks pretty good, especially for Apple. It is a nice example of market segmentation (discrimination). If warranty and safety is valuable (or service provided by AT&T does not seem much worse than others), you pay full price. If you do, you still pay for the phone. Apple gets less, but more than if you would not buy at all.
What did not work well is that more people choose to unlock and jailbreak than anybody expected. In the profit equation, revenue was probably high enough, but the share of people delivering this revenue was too small.

Too good to be true

When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. New IPhone, 8GB, GPS, 3G, whatever, for $199? This beats every phone in Czech Republic on quality or price and most phones on both. Sure, if you HAVE to subscribe to AT&T for $70/month, total cost to ownership are around $1900 (I pay basically zero for voice), which is way out of my league.

Time Inconsistency

There are things I really don't like doing, yet I know I should. And since I know I should, I schedule them well in advance in a way that it is basically impossible to call them off. I don't really mind - it is far away, so it does not seem to be that bad. But as it is approaching, I realize how unhappy I'm doing that particular stuff. Yet, I cannot call it off, so I keep thinking "I won't do it next time". But I know I will...

Americans are babies

Or to be more precise, some Americans have mentality of teenagers. Most flagrant symptom is not being able to deal with things that you need to be dealt with.
Let me give you an example. Mr. W. is responsible for doing thing A. This thing needs to be done so that people XYZ can do thing B, which benefits Mr.W. and that he asked for. They are ready and waiting for Mr. W., yet he says "I'm not willing to deal with it right now". Or even worse "I don't feel like dealing with A right now". So he leaves other people waiting, which costs them time and money.
Other examples are credit card debts ("I don't want to think about it"), mortgage payments and so on. I have seen people to go on shopping spree after they lost their job and thus a significant amount of money and expected revenues.
Of course, you can ignore problems for a while. But they come back and then they are much bigger. In the meantime, the responsible people around you suffer...

Worst ever

I was not inclined to talk about Vista without first hand experience. Now I have it, but I'm not able to talk. Basically, it is the most annoying, worst designed operating system ever. Probably even Windows 3.1 were better.
I'm not sure I'm able to go through many details - the pain is too recent. But let me say this: if you can turn something on, you should be able to turn it off, if you provide "Help" button, it would be great if it actually led to the Help. If you say that by pressing X+Y something happens, then it should. And why the hell do you keep asking the programs MADE by Microsoft, on which I just clicked? If you think I might judged that they should not be run, maybe you need to give me some information useful to make that decision!
I could go like this forever, but I won't. I won't also be buying one any time soon...