Eid-ul-Adha: Celebrating an Obscenity

Today is the Muslim feast of Eid-ul-Adha.  This celebrates an event in both the Jewish / Christian and Islamic mythologies.  You can read it in Genesis 22 or Surah 37.  It's not for the squeamish.

Basically, God told Abraham  (or Ibrahim)  to sacrifice his son Isaac  (or Ishmael),  to prove he loved God more than even his own family.

So 'Bram told God in no uncertain terms to fuck off, and spent the rest of his days as a happy humanist, right?

This year, I will definitely remember my mother's birthday

This year, I will definitely remember my mother's birthday.  For she was born on the 8 June, one year I am not allowed to mention.

That is also the last day anything is going to make sense, ever.

Ransomware (no, not that sort)

Yes, there is malicious software out there that encrypts files on your computer and directs you to a web page where, for a fee, you can buy the decryption key.  Or just restore from a recent backup  (you do make backups, right?)  But that's not what I'm here to talk about tonight.

Closed-source software vendors are holding their customers to ransom.  If you don't buy the latest version of their products, you won't be able to read anyone else's documents if they have upgraded to the latest version.  But what is especially galling is where electronically-identical hardware appliances have features enabled or disabled purely by software.

What I Wore #1

I wore an outfit for work yesterday that just made me feel enormously sexy!  This is me trying to strike a provocative pose over the pool table:

I have decided, I am going to take full advantage of the relaxed Friday dress code to explore sexy ......

Why would you Pay More and Get Less?

Open Source software comes with the freedom to inspect its internals and make modifications, the better to suit the way you work.

Proprietary software usually does not include such freedoms -- and usually has to be paid for.

So, serious question:  Why would anyone choose to pay good money for Proprietary software, when Open Source alternatives are available on so much more favourable terms?

The Great Taxi Rip-Off

Last night I travelled in a taxi.  Among the table of fares was the following:

First mile £3.00
Each subsequent 146 yards £0.10

I asked the driver how many yards were in a mile  (which I think is not an unreasonable question:  if it's on the sign in his cab, he ought to know),  and he did not know.  Therefore, there is a meaningless disconnect between the figures:  If I don't know how many yards there are in a mile, then I can't know how many 146-yard units there are in a mile, and therefore I can't work out how much I should be paying.

Now, if it had read something like

First kilometre £2.00
Each subsequent 100 metres £0.10

then the correlation between distance travelled and amount paid would have been nice and obvious.  Because there's a clue right in the name that tells you exactly how many metres are in a kilometre.   Even if it was something like "Each subsequent 114.3 metres £0.10", the sum would still be possible -- though I might need a calculator, if  needed better precision than "about 9p for 100 metres".

I am convinced that this is another example of rip-off Britain, if we are actively prevented from working out independently how much we should be paying for a journey and instead have to trust the meter.

This time, it even looks like Perl!

I said before that my first attempt to get controlling the Raspberry Pi's GPIO pins from Perl looked ugly.  This time, I've added some methods to my JKLMwiringPi package, in an attempt to make the program look more like Perl.