PCs vs. Macs

This is my take on the issue. I'm not particularly biased since I don't like Microsoft, I just don't view Apple as superiour. I watched all the Mac ads- they're pretty funny, but just a little bit slanted, so I decided a comparison would make an interesting post.

Stability: Mac OS X is more stable than Windows. That's quite obvious. But Windows has gotten a lot better in terms of stability, and while Apple would love to claim that their OS doesn't ever fail spectacularly, the programs still crash and data is still lost forever. And I haven't even had "Oshit where'd my work go!?" happen to me on Windows, but I've probably been lucky.

Security: Viruses and spyware don't afflict Macs. Make it more popular, and they will. To a far lesser extent, of course, since Windows appears to have security holes large enough to sail a battleship through, but while Windows security is improving, Mac's security can only go downhill as their popularity increases. And since I'm a fairly competent PC-user, viruses and spyware don't bother me all that much.

Those awesome nifty programs: OOO SHINY. If I had a Mac, I'd have software to edit the movies I don't film, make slideshows of the pictures I don't show off, the music I don't play, and the schedule I'll ignore. And I can use Office now, which I don't have anyways! And I can play all those games- wait, no, Dawn of War doesn't have a Mac version. But I can just boot my Macbook in PC mode! Or maybe I'll burn my money and snort the ashes, because I'm wasting the money either way. I'm sarcastic because the ads push the idea that you can run all these amazing programs, except their built-in programs aren't amazing, and to run Windows programs you need to buy Windows.

Familiarity: I'm already fairly familiar with Windows. Yes, I could learn how to use Macs, but my (admittedly limited) experience with the OS is that you can't do as much as on a PC because they don't let you mess around as much. I haven't owned a Mac, so I haven't tried doing unorthodox things, but for instance I couldn't take my music off my Ipod, which was irritating as all my music was in Berlin. (There are probably programs that do it for you, but I'd like to do it myself so I know how it works.)

Summary: Macs have advantages over PCs, but they're not worth switching to. Besides having to get used to doing things the Mac way, there are things I can't do and games I can't play. And they're more expensive (a slightly worse Macbook costs about $300 CAD more than my laptop did.) Besides, if I were really irritated with Windows, I'd switch to Linux, not Mac.

What we really need is an OS that takes all the good things from Windows, Mac, and Linux, and combines it into the OS to end all others. But that's not going to happen as neither Microsoft nor Apple would benefit, no other company could break in to the market like that, and Linux is already a product of the people but it obviously has flaws. So Windows it is, for now.

Motivation (or a lack thereof)

Update: Hahaha, the day after I wrote this I woke up when math started. I have math AFTER I have bio. I need to fix my sleep schedule (I keep sleeping through my alarms.) Btw, read the post for this to make sense.

So recently I've been missing a few bio lectures. I think I've missed 4 in the past three weeks. The problem is that they're far too fucking early, ie 8 AM, and I'm all too willing to stay up until 3 AM reading websites (like www.waiterrant.net! It's stories from the manager of a restaurant. They are good.) Or some other useless activity. Since I have to get up at 7 but usually end up awake at 8:30, I'm in a bad situation.

So what to do? Before you slap me and yell "Get more sleep, fool!" allow me to point out that I'm well aware I need more sleep, I just don't care at the time. How do I start caring? Simple, I decide what I'm going to do with my life. In case you hadn't noticed, my passions (fiery as they are) are political and environmental. Namely because we're fucking ourselves over, but that's the topic of a post to come. Since I've chosen the wrong faculty if I wanted to solve political problems, I've decided I'm going to focus my studies on environmental sciences. So I'm contemplating majoring in Chemistry with a minor in Environmental Sciences (and probably comp sci.)

Essentially, I've decided there are a few things I'm going to change in my life. First of all, I'm going to take my studies seriously, even if it's fucking bio 111, (aka the stuff I did in high school, only in less depth!) Secondly, I'm going to become more active about the issues I think are important. Finally, I'm hopefully going to go into a profession where I can make a difference to the world.

Let's see what I think in four years.

(Oh, and I'm giving vegetarianism a shot, even if it means I eat salad only sometimes. Stupid cafeteria.)

On Updating

I'll update if you guys comment. Assuming anyone reads this.

Because otherwise I'll assume no one does.

The Corporation

The Corporation, by Joel Bakan, is probably my favourite political book. As the name implies, it has to do with corporations. And the reason I like it so much is because I think its message is hugely important. So I'm going to explain the book, and maybe you'll agree. Maybe you'll even read it.

Corporations are publicly-traded companies that have no owner, they have shareholders and a CEO that runs the company. Their legal responsibility is to produce profit for the shareholders- if the CEO does anything to reduce profit, he may be fired or sued. Bakan's argument is that corporations are psychopaths, acting only in their own interest. In the movie, The Corporation, they keep an actual checklist of actions that corporations take that correspond to the FBI's list of psychopathic actions.

And it's true. The only time they care about the environment, or their employees, or any of the problems they cause, is when it could damage their sales. If you take a company like The Body Shop, whose whole business practice is based on not using animal-testing and being ethical, and it becomes incorporated, then that company will start to cut corners and maybe test on animals a little. Which it was found guilty of doing. And quite often they don't break their code of ethics, they break the law, for the simple reason is that by doing so, the profit they earn will be greater than the fine.

This is obviously a huge problem as corporations are immensely powerful (more than half of the world's 100 largest economies are corporations) and have a huge, often damaging effect on our lives. Bakan offers a few solutions to this problem. There are two sources of change: consumers, and voters. Yes, it's true that consumers can elect not to buy from companies unless they behave ethically, but not only are corporations still likely to break the law and act damagingly when they can get away with it, but this style of voting with your dollar is flawed. This is because it means that richer people have a greater voice than the poor, and also excludes the companies that we don't buy from (mining, anyone?) or can't stop buying from. The other way is to convince politicians to enact harsher fees on breaking the law and to rephrase the roles of corporations so that profit is not their only goal. This has the problem that lobbyists are an effective and legal way to raise profits, so anti-corporation legislation is hard to pass.

In any case, I feel that if corporations had to bear responsibility for the environmental and social damage they cause, the world would have many less problems than it currently does. So long as corporations destroy the environment, coerce weaker governments into allowing corporations to have their way, and deal with dictatorships (legitimizing those corrupt governments), creating any kind of positive change will be a challenge indeed.

(Oh, and I didn't go to that STAND meeting. Oh well, I'll do my own research.)

Punk and I

Two things. First, I'm planning to write in this a whole lot more often (which means they're not appearing in Facebook anymore, as I don't feel like spamming your news feed with my notes and because it appears here so having it be there as well is just silly.) This is the newest one because for the other two I had trouble figuring out what I wanted to say, so they were sitting around as drafts for quite a while.

Secondly, my elucidating title says this post is about punk. Specifically about my personal connection to it. For starters, I'm not punk. I don't know all that much good punk, and I'm not part of the culture. I can respect punk culture and its principles, and like some punk music, but that doesn't make me punk. The reason for this post is that I've been listening to a fair bit of punk recently.

Oh, and before I get into this, the people who dress punk, listen to Yellowcard or Switchfoot, or shop at Hot Topic, are not punk. If you dress like you dress and listen to what you do because you want to be different or because it's cool, you're not punk. I believe that punks dress like punks because they don't want society to dictate to them what to wear. If you hate the government because they're corporate lackeys, hate the corporation because they don't care about the people, and hate the police because they do the government's dirty work, you're probably punk. You might just be anti-government. Because the most important part of punk music's not that it's angry, fast, and often offensive, it's that it's like that because it's political, and that's what you're supposed to take away. Which is pretty rare among music genres- emo, techno, rock, and indie don't usually have political messages.

Or so I think. Because I'm not punk, I'm not in the scene and I don't know a lot of music, so I might be misguided. I do listen to the music and can agree with its anticorporate message, for a reason that I should probably have made the focus of every post I've ever written, and that I'll probably write about tomorrow. I don't want to get a piercing, wear a denim jacket with patches from my favourite bands, and I don't hate the police. I'm also not very angry (and I think James is pretty rare as being mellow, from what I can remember of him.) So if it weren't for the fact that I could agree with a lot of what punk music says, and that I don't pretend to be the least bit punk, I'd feel like a huge poser for liking it.