So I'm apparently not the only one.

So I'm apparently not the only one.

Rhea Seahorn, the actress that plays Kim Wexler on Better Caul Saul, has a very similar outcome for the series that I do.

I always thought my outcome was quite ridiculous.  Her's is pretty similar, (basically the same, at a high level) although slightly more obviously ridiculous.

My basic premise was that Kim and Saul/Jimmy should wind up together.  No matter how ridiculous that is.  Jimmy and Kim should end up married.  My theory was the Kim turns over to the "dark side", and remains with Jimmy throughout the entire Breaking Bad saga, through thick and thin.  She would be an unseen character that is there along side Jimmy/Saul.

Saul has these scenes where he's "working at a Cinnibon in Nebraska", exactly as he described it in an episdode of Breaking Bad.  He comes home to his condo, and watches his old "Saul Goodman" commercials, and this is the first time you see a gleam in his eye.

My premise, at the endpoint, is that Kim peaks out from around the corner and says something to the effect of "hey honey, you coming to bed?" (Or coming in from outside from work, and having a similarly marital conversation).  This would be the last scene of the show, proving that she turned shadey and was there all along.

Rhea's outcome is a bit more ridiculous, but basically the same: they end up together albeit in a lessor sense.  I take her statement to be fan service, honestly, so apparently I'm not the only one.

On Apollo Hoax Conspiracy Theories

There is a (hopefully small) but loud group of people that truly seem to believe that the Apollo moon landings not only didn't happen, but were deliberately faked.  Their claims largely lie in fundamental misunderstandings of science, selection bias, and just plain wishful thinking.  I'm not going to refute any of that, as it's been well covered elsewhere.

What I want to discuss is the hoax theorist "reasoning", which I consider to represent a short circuit of logic in the brain.  Their "logic" is essentially this:

• I'm an intellegent person
• As an intelligent person, I don't believe everything I'm told
• The US government or other authority figure is telling me that something is a certian way or happened a certain way
• Therefore this is wrong

THAT'S one of the things I find so obnoxious and frustrating whenever I read anyone that holds these views.  Up to the second bullet point, I basically agree.  It's the two after that I consider to be a short circuit of logic.  The idea that, if the government (or other party of authority) says something, it MUST be wrong.

Their arguments are not falsifiable.  Their view doesn't have the option to be false.  It just is.  It's pure stupidity by any other name.

While I make it a point to never, ever argue with these types, its frustrating to read or watch.  If you present evidence that shows their position is flawed, well, whatever you presented is doctored. 
To my knowledge, 3 different space programs have released photos of the landing sites.  India, NASA, and JAXA.  Japan and india have NO vested interest in furthering a hoax if it was real.  Yet people claim, out of hand, with utterly no evidence, that the photos are fake.  Uggghhh.

Its not an uncommon line of thinking for conspiracy "theorists".  Chemtrails, Holocaust denial, you name it.

I think that the Apollo program is mankinds greatest accomplishment, and a great source of national pride for the USA.  To listen to some, to be blunt, dipshit that doesn't understand basic physics not only deny this accomplishment but also denounce the brilliant minds that made it happen as liars and crooks, well, it's a lot to take in.  Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how stupid.

We are Living in the Future: Flash Memory

I don't even consider myself that old, but there is some technology today that is pure sci-fi despite being commonplace to the point of banality.

One such technology is flash memory.  Its super cheap and something most people barely think about.  In my phone (smartphones being another topic), I have a 128GB microSD card.  This is a tiny device the size of a small fingernail.  For comparison, a CD can store 700MB.  This tiny card can store 183 times as much data as something far larger.  This is equivalent to (almost) 2 of the LARGE spindles!  My dad has a CD changer for 100 or 150 CDs, this one tiny chip can store more than the entire thing, and that's without using compression!  CDs were considered pretty advanced not all that long ago.  They were considered to be an astronomical amount of storage until the mid 1990s.  DVDs came out in the late 1990s.  The max size of a DVD is 4.7GB * 2 sides * 2 layers, about 19GB.  That tiny SD card holds almost 7 times as much data.  And I don't believe that to be a common configuration, they are usually single side/single layer, single side/dual layer, or single layer/dual side.  IIRC, Bluray is around 50GB, although the latest may be closer to 100.  And this is fine for mass distribution, but the comparison remains.

And remember, on top of this, we are talking about a tiny, tiny, tiny, little thing, that only requires a handful of contacts and not a relatively large complicated mechanism of moving parts.  It's super fast for transfer AND for seek time.  And cheap.  At the time of this writing, it was less than $40 for a name brand!  They also have 200GB and recently 256GB, albeit for somewhat more money.

Up to the 1990s, we used VHS tapes and cassettes.  These would hold an hour or two of video or audio, and were large clunky things.  Not to mention COMPLETELY linear -- you had to fast forward or rewind to get to a specific spot.  In a video camera, you used a VHS tape holding 2 hours.  Later, they had mini DV tapes, holding 60 minutes of SD video.  These are actual impressive for the time, in that they hold like 12 or 15GB of digital data.  For these formats, you might need to buy (and carry/store/etc) several tapes for several hours of footage.  With this one card, which in case I failed to mention is tiny and cheap, I can store HOURS of HD video, higher quality than professional equipment at the time.  If I was storing VHS quality video, I'd be willing to bet I could store (at least) hundreds of hours.  AND you needed a complicated and delicate mechanical mechanism to read the tapes.

We are truly living in the future.

Top 14 Most Ridiculous Star Trek: The Next Generation Tropes

I've been re-(re-re-re-re) watching TNG lately.  One of my favorite shows of all time.  However, there are some utterly ridiculous tropes that come up now and again.  Here's a few:

1. Every Alien race speaks American English:  Of course, this is probably the most well known one.  Unless, of course you are a prominent Klingon (or possibly Romulan) guest star, and then there's like a 30% chance it will be a British accent, to give it a Shakspearian flair.
2. Most Aliens being humanoid:  They actually do attempt to explain this, so I'll let it slide.
3. Anything that affects Data identically to the rest of the crew:  This is one of the big hitters for me, and it's a totally random one.  In many situations, Data is shown to be far superior physically, and immune to that which would badly hurt humans.  He also cannot be read by telepaths (which is played as completely natural, as makes sense) and often immune to brainwashing and other psycological effects.  Except when he isn't.  There's a handful of episodes where the crew is either incapacitated or even have their bodies taken over by alien influences.  I can think of three, off the top of my head, where Data is effected identically.  Now there are instances, such as when he is summoned by Dr Soong, when HE is the only one effected, but these make perfect sense.
4. Holodeck malfunctions:  One of the earliest episodes prominently featuring the holodeck has one of these.  The program gets "stuck", and the crime drama they were participating in suddenly has deadly bullets and a real chance of death.  This one is absurd for two different ways.  One is that, if it was really a one time thing, you'd think that they'd shut down the holodeck for months or years to investigate how something that should be safe could hurt or kill (as they did with the Spaces Shuttle).  Now, it's not as bad as the Matrix, where if you die in the matrix you die in real life, but hey.  You'd think they could rig up a Raspberry Pi or something, or even a Linksys firewall, to filter out the packet types that cause the probe in your brain to automatically kill you if you die in the simulation, but hey.  Of course, in the training missions Neo undertakes, they do not actually seem to have fatal consequences either, so it clearly is possible.  Look at that, I went off on a tangent.  But it isn't even a rare thing, leading me to my next point:
5. If they were really even remotely that dangerous, why would anyone use them, regardless of how awesome they seem?  I mean, it's bad enough that it could theoretically kill you, maybe that's just the nature of the technology and they normally have numerous safegaurds in place.  However, they usually seem to get trapped inside the holodecks during these occurances, which is why it's so dangerous in the first place (they can't just leave).  For something so potentially dangerous, have they never heard of E-Stop?
6. Use of the holodecks:  Does anyone really think they would be using them to replay intricate simulations of Sherlock Holmes?  And not being on a simulated 80 foot speed boat, snorting simulated coke, surrounded by simulated and very willing bitches, in simulated Miami?  Cuz' that's what I'd do.
7. No physical disconnects of any kind:  Continuing along the line of the holodeck, there seem to be few effective physical disconnects or manual overrides.  Good luck selling any of that technology to any automotive plant -- every machine must have a way to be shut down if all else fails.  They seemed to miss this on the 'ol Enterprise.
8. Replay Attacks:  For its incredible level of advancement, The Enterprise seems painfully prone to replay attacks.  This is when someone records your login and is able to replay this and gain access.  The web, by and large IS actually resistent to this, thanks to Asymetric Encryption.  How many episodes does someone gain control of the most prominent Starship (which is quite capable as a warship) by impersonating Picard?  I bet 'ya if 'ya tried that shit on the Nimitz (or, the actual Enterprise while it was still in service), it wouldn't get you very far.
9. Data's Speed:  I must admit, when I first saw it back in the day, I was impressed just like everyone else.  Data can read books, operate computers, and do other manual tasks at an alarming rate.  Now, to be sure, most of that could be considered good design.  These days, however, it's a lot less impressive.  I can only think, why doesn't he have WiFi?  Why would he read and type when he himself is a computer based entity? 
10. Deflector dish!  The enterprises Cure-All!
11. One race per planet:  Each of which overlaps humans in some way such that a Ven diagram would have us soundly in the center.  This is explanable in that it is INCREDIBLY difficult to come up with aliens and have them be relatable, whihc is the point of Star Trek.  One race per planet (ie Klingons = Warriors, Romulans = Warmongering Facists, Feringi = duplicitous scheemers, etc).  There are a sting of earlier episodes where there are highly (to the point of being physically identical) human appearing, that have exaclty one key difference.  But more importantly, this one difference is also different to most of the other races on the show.  Yet, when confronted, they act like WE are the weird ones, even though they are the only ones that have never heard of music.
12. Deflector vs Shields:  Often used interchangalby, though Roddenburry himself considered them to be utterly different devices.
13. Meeting old Chums in the Delta Quadrant:  This is one of the biggest plot holes on Voyager.  They meet all these exotic races, which is kinda the point.  But then, 2 seasons later, they'll run into one of the old races, or worse, the same individual!  This was a fairly regular occurance on that show.  At best, Voyager had put a year or two of distance between whereever they met, and where they are now.  It doesn't matter if you are going 4 knots on an old-timey sailing vessal or 1000 times the speed of light; if every one is more or less equally matched in terms of speed (and voyager is implied to be one of the fastest ships), a year's journy is a years journey.  Unless they are stown away or following you (and this is rarely implied, it's just that they "ran into them again") you ain't gonna seem time.  Plus, unlike an ocean, space is 3 dimensional, so that makes it even more ridiculous.  Now, there are races like the Borg which can travel vastly faster, so they aren't so much of a plot hole.

Windows 8 + Classic Shell

I upgraded to using Classic Shell last night, and holy crap, what a difference.  I am still not on Win8.1 (as when I click it in the MS "store" it does nothing).

I am now experiencing Windows 8 as it should be.  So far, it's fast, stable, and features subtle but noticible improvements over Win7.  Well, it may be because this computer is so goddamned fast.  I dunno.  It now feels like a better Windows 7!

The improvements of Classic Shell are small: it adds the start button, and a very Win7esque start menu.  It has shutdown, reboot, and such.  You boot right to the desktop.  The start screen is still there, should you ever want it (and I hate to get rid of it completely; I'm sure it has things to offer).

The biggest improvement is the following: M-EFFING boot and resume!  I haven't timed the boot formally, but it is probably in the low 10s range.  Resume?  Holy shit, the resume!  It's around 2 seconds!  Less than, even.  It's tabletesque (phoneesque?)  You open the lid and BAM -- space needle graphic asking for your login!  Win7 was passably fast for boot and resume, but this freaking nails it!!

I've always wanted the resume to be this fast.  They simply keep memory alive, why shouldn't it be?  All you are doing is reenabling the CPU.  I am sure there are numerous, numerous reasons (mostly hardware I suspect, rescanning and redetecting) that make this far more difficult than it sounds.  They were content to have it take 8 to 10 seconds on decent hardware and leaving it at that.  The smartphone and tablet era, with their low second resume times, have lead the PC industry to duplicate this feat.  And I think it's exactly what it should of and could have been for a while, they were just content with the slow resumes.

Think of this.  My new laptop boots nearly as fast as the last one resumes (which was already passably fast).  It resumes as fast as a tablet, in 1 to 2 seconds!

So anyway, about that new computer

Might as well get this out there as well.  I just got a new computer.  I love it.  It has a ludicrous amount of memory, i7 Haswell processor, fancy GPU, non glossy display, fairly decent sound with a subwoofer (!) which I haven't really put through it's paces yet.  Plus it's fairly thin and light (not the thinnnest or lightest, but this is a serious desktop replacement here, and it still holds it's own).  It's absurdity in a portable, folding form.  I feel like I am in the future using it.

Windows 8 (not 8.1 yet):
See previous post about the dumbass start screen.
Aside from that, it seems really competent.  Really similar to Windows 7, with all the stuff windows 7 had (well, except for that little thing in the lower left).

Microsoft: What the Hell were you thinking with windows 8???

I'm sure I'm the 1,000,000th person to say this.  Maybe I get a 1 millionth bitcher prize?

Seriously though, my main complaint is the stupid Start screen nonsense.  It's not the fact that it exists at all, as something you can get to and view.  It may even be useful in some situations, although probably way better suited to a tablet than a laptop.

The thing that is utterly, horrifyingly brain dead is how they took a shit on 20 years of convention.  It's not the mere existence of the start screen, it's the fact that they removed the conventional way of doing it by idiotic fiat.  The start menu and start button are probably one of the best examples of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".  Some cringe that it's "been the same for 20 years".  But guess what?  Not only did it work, but it was a simple, non glamorous way to both start and shutdown the machine.  There wasn't any improvement to be made there.  It's like trying to improve a tire by making some drastically, fundamentally different design than a round rubber bag of air.  Sure, substantial advances have been made in the nuances of how a tire works, but it still is a round rubber thing that your car sits on.

Then, they force it down your throat, in this holier than thou "try it, you'll love it" attitude.  You can't disable it, you can't go back to the way it's always been done.  And, after practically everyone complains, they don't quietly put it back in.  You have nothing to lose by doing this, you aren't saving face.  People already think you are wrong, there's nothing to save.

There's no real advantage in the new way.
There are several disatvantages:

• It changes a simple, fundamental way people have been doing things for years for no real reason and no real advantage (see above).
• It's less convenient
• It's more confusing -- you must mentally manage the two concepts of "desktop" and "start screen"
• Pretty much the single reason I am writing this: it's not obvious how to shutdown!

I was reluctant to buy a computer because of Windows 8.  My reluctance seems to have been well warranted.

All this comes from a self proclaimed "Microsoft Apologist" -- mostly from reading Raymond Chen's excellent blog, and also from developing Windows software.

Microsoft is clearly worried about the market changes going on now, and they should be.  With Apple and Google now being a serious threat.  I cannot believe how well chrombooks are selling, btw.  People don't go out and buy a computer that almost certainly is MS based anymore.  But the answer to that is not to make a fundamental (and frankly stupid) change in their main product.  They have to tread carefully, and realize that there is a REASON people are leaving them, a lot not even due to them but to user stupidity.  People that stay stay because they like and are used to MS products.  People who leave are sick of them, and making your product worse isn't going to bring them back.  They got Windows 7 so right, so I don't get what this is about.

So anyway, I'm gonna install 8.1 and see how that goes.  And also the Classic Shell addon.