Happy June!
June 01, 2005 @ 04:08 AMHappy June everyone!
Hopefully everyone’s May was good. You pretty much know everything that’s happened for me if you’re reading this blog. To summarize: Not Much.
This month has started interestingly though. I had to take Hobbes (my cat) in to a specialist this morning. She has hyperthyroidism (or something like that) and requires a radioactive iodine shot. Apparently it’s the same treatment they give to humans with the same problem. I dunno, ask Dr. Jill. Anyway, I should get her back tomorrow evening all healthy and happy! For $825, I could have bought 4 or 5 more cats, so she better come back all healthy and happy!
If I ruled the world…
This two-party system of ours sucks. Both sides spiraling out of control to the extremes… everyone starting to believe that winning is more important than the process… it’s chaotic! Furthermore, most Americans don’t subscribe fully to either the left or the right viewpoints. That’s what reason why I don’t like a "line" analogy. Left-Right. It implies that any belief that goes against your "side"’s doctrine pushes you closer to a "middle". For example: a fiscal conservative that supports abortion and gay marriage rights. Where does she sit, politically? Somewhere in the middle, correct? In reality, she’s not a centrist, she has very strong sided opinions on these topics which lean one "direction" or the other. They just happen to include opinions from both major parties. And what about people who have ideas that don’t fit into EITHER party???
Unfortunately, our two party system will continue indefinitely without an inventive solution. This is because most people will vote for the strongest candidate on their "side," even if they would have prefered someone else who they knew didn’t stand a chance. Fortunately, I have a solution:
My solution - and the first thing I’d push if I ever got into office - would be to allow multiple votes per office on ballots. In this way, a person wouldn’t vote for their "favorite" candidate, they’d be voting for candidates they’d be okay with in office. So if you are a Liberitarian, for example, you could vote for your candidate AND the Republican candidate. Greens could vote for their guy and the Democratic candidate. The winner would simply be the person with the most votes, just as before. In this way, the two party system would largely be demolished overnight, and suddenly politics could be a wide open field of opinions, instead of Left<->Right. at their core—great! But let’s be honest, their UI sucks. They’re just not good systems for joe-schmoe out there. So here’s MY idea… Sun needs to get their Sun Ray Server running on Mac OS X. Imagine being able to buy thin-clients for your entire enterprise with all the benefits of running thin clients (cheap, no upgrades, etc) and being able to run Mac OS X on them. It’s a PERFECT marriage of ease-of-use and ease-of-administration, and light on the pocket book. I’m assuming Sun’s already working on it, it makes perfect sense. If this isn’t being worked on already somewhere deep inside Sun, then they’re dropping the ball big time.
Just a thought.
If I ruled the industry…
I’m the kind of person that tends to form loyalties to companies if I have a reason to. Example: Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems created Java, which is the language I develop in, and thus is partially responsible for my ability to earn a good living. As such, I want them to survive and flourish. It’s exactly for this reason that I would consider spending extra money to buy a Sun machine over a cheaper generic brand if I was given the option. Another example? Apple. 80% of the stuff they sell I would buy over competitor’s products for purely technical or comparitive reasons. However, because I’ve developed a loyalty to them, there are other things I buy from them that I might not otherwise. Like my AirPort Extreme base station. $150. You can buy something similar for under $100 from other companies. But the APE looks kind of neat (like one of the Batteries Not Included flying machines) and Apple’s earned my loyalty, so I spend a little extra.
(That "intro" had very little to do with this next paragraph in hindsight, so prepare yourself for the topic shift…)
That said, I want Sun’s SunRay thin clients to succeed. The thin-client model, if done well, would be perfect for SO MANY applications. Almost all corporate PCs could be replaced. They would be perfect for small businesses too. They would hypothetically "save money" because there’s never a need to upgrade or troubleshoot the clients, and all problems or upgrading is done in a central location (the server). And now with the SunRay notebook models, you can access your SunRay session from anywhere with WiFi. Because the notebooks only need to power the WiFi and screen (and input), batteries last up to 8 hours… perfect for wandering around large corporations or going to the nearest Starbucks.
Here’s the problem though… they run *NIX. Don’t get me wrong, I run Linux at home and at work… Unix operating systems are -
Anyway, I’ll finish up this long rambling post now. Thanks for listening!