Welcome to lrant, the page where I rant about things I hate, rave about things I like, mention quotes I like, wonder about the universe and basically write about the things I've been thinking about. Originally this page was called lokivision but I changed it since I don't have any (vision, that is). I can't see where we should be going by any means - but I can sure see lots of potholes we're running into and wrong turns we're making right here. To paraphrase a friend of mine - whatever happened to progress? Aren't we supposed to be going FORWARD??!!

Anyway, here's a list of my rant/rave/etc. topics, ordered by date from newest to oldest:

Do you have a topic you think I'd be interested in writing about? Then email me about it!

Today's rant is about proportional representation, one of the most unreasonable and illogical feminist ideas. Not that feminists are the only culprit here - this idea is also championed by minority races and cultures. Feminists are merely the loudest of those calling for it. And what am I talking about, exactly? Proportional representation is the concept that in a democratically elected government, those persons elected should proportionally represent their constituency. In practical terms, it says that if 50% of the population is female, 50% of your elected government should be female too.

Doesn't this make sense, I hear you say? In theory, it sounds great. But this is ultimately a poor solution to the problem it attempts to solve. It is true that most governments are heavy on the men's side and light on the women's side. Feminists claim that more women are needed in government to raise women's issues and to reduce the "boys' club" atmosphere of politics. Yet demanding proportional representation has no basis in logic. Suppose women are 50% of the population and 45% of the government. Do you really think that the extra 5% are necessary before women's issues can be raised?

I have no problem with the idea of more women in parliament. It makes sense for them to be further involved. However, demanding that the make up of government match the make up of the population is a useless idea. It's good for minorities to be represented; it is unnecessary and wasteful for them to be represented according to exactly how they make up the population. There are many more reasons why proportional representation is a useless idea, but (self-imposed) space limitations prevent me from going into them in detail so I'll just flash a couple past you.

If 20% of the population is left-handed, that means 20% of government members must be left-handed to properly represent the people... and that's just ridiculous. If an opening appears in a senior government position and there are 2 main contenders for the position, which should be chosen? The one with better qualifications for the job or the one that makes sure the gender balance in goverment stays exactly 50% to match the population?

Isn't it a bummer when you go to a party intending to get throughly and happily tipsy and find that none of the alcohol available is what you like?

It's a real pity that programmers writing software can't trust users in any way. You can't trust users to have an IQ greater than 5 and you can't trust users not to be malicious and nasty. Technically speaking, a program could be considered "correct" if it always produces the correct output for its input. However, it can't be considered practical (or perhaps, even "usable") unless it can also handle erroneous input. For example, a program that simply asks the user for 2 numbers and then returns the sum might be correct if it returns 8 when given 3 and 5 (a single test is very little assurance of correctness, but we'll ignore that).

However, the program also has to be able to handle the case of people telling it to add "cat" and "table" and things like that. So much time is wasted writing code to handle the case of people being stupid that could be better spent in making the code more efficient and fixing real bugs, ones that are errors on the part of the programmers. And having to write more code to handle user errors means the chance of more bugs, since writing more code means more opportunities to code an error.

Of course, errors in user input may be accidental, but they may also be very deliberate. It is an unfortunate truth that you simply can't trust user input - and I use the word "input" there very loosely. In an increasingly networked world of computers, you can't trust what remote computers say or do. As was remarked by BYTE magazine, the Internet is wising up to the fact that more people means more nasty people as well as more nice people. As a result, the "Howdy stranger" attitude that used to be the norm is being replaced by "Halt and identify yourself".

People who write network-oriented or capable software must be especially careful in trusting the remote machines. It may not be the machine it claims to be, and it may not be the user you expect. Agreed size limits, protocols and methods may not be honoured by remote software. This kind of error should, MUST, be handled without crashing, and preferably it should be handled gracefully by the software in question. Unix and Unix programmers have in times past learnt this lesson painfully...and with the discovery more recently of the bugs and weaknesses in Microsoft's Winsock TCP stack for Windows 95/NT, Microsoft is learning too. Let's hope the lesson is remembered by all.

From the July 1997 edition of BYTE magazine, this says it all about the so-called MMX "technology":

Let's cut to the chase. Calling MMX a technology is like describing a wood screw as a helically bifurcated affixation mechanism. MMX is simply a group of new instructions that Intel designed to perform tasks useful in multimedia applications. Intel called these instructions the MMX technology because no-one would would have cared if it simply announced "Pentium - Now with 57 new instructions!"

Do we let it just go on/
turn our backs and carry on?

- from the song How Come, How Long? by Babyface & Stevie Wonder

I'm sick of people I've met on IRC who are arrogant about their webpage design skills. And by this I don't mean that they run around shouting "I'm wonderful! I'm a legend! My webpages are better than yours!" or anything like that. I mean that these are the kind of people who are offended and insulted when you refuse to add links to their pages, or who refuse to let you design your own page. These are the people who seem shocked at the very idea someone could possibly not like their pages enough to add a link, shocked at the possiblity that their page isn't overly interesting to that particular viewer.

Now, I tend to think the lokiden pages look nice, but I am fully aware that that is just my opinion. I do not expect everyone to agree with that opinion, nor am I excessively surprised or insulted if someone does NOT agree. The green I use as a background colour is an example - I like it, but I don't expect everyone else to like it too. I don't expect everyone to be interested in my pages, nor do I expect them to add links. I don't ask people to add links to my page on theirs, but even if I did and they refused I wouldn't be particularly put out. If someone told me my pages were ugly and that they sucked, I would ask "why?". I'm arrogant in my own way, but these people who think they've created the one-size-fits-all webpages really need to get a clue.

Anyway, for the benefit of those who have been lucky enough not to fall foul of any of these people yet, be careful around people who seem to be really proud of their webpages and of their skill with HTML.

I really don't understand this grief over Diana's death. I mean, okay, yes she was a princess, and yes, she did lots of charity work...but how is her death so much more enormously tragic than the thousands of other people who die every day? How is her death so much more tragic than Richard, the husband and father of three who dies of a heart attack at forty eight? How is it more tragic than the death of whole families in countries torn by war or famine? Was she responsible for a country? No. Will that country collapse without her? No. Why is it that the famous always get laurels and the untold masses get nothing except a small notice in the corner of the local newspaper? She was respected by many for her charity work - yet she was mostly a patron for charities, a figurehead, a goodwill ambassador. It's one thing to hug a dying child in front of the cameras - it's quite another to work with the poor and destitute every day.

This is not to say Diana was a bad person. Indeed, she was no more bad than any other person, and probably genuinely cared about the issues she championed. What I don't like is the enormous attention her death received - the TV here showed reports day after day after day. The radio played tributes to her many times a day. The British public all reacted as if their favourite aunt/sister/daughter (depending on age) had died. I can't think of a single person alive today who deserves that much grief. I find it insulting in fact that so many other deserving people die every day without a murmur of attention or grief, yet Diana dies and the world stops turning for 7 days. Get a grip on yourself, people. And get things in perspective while you're at it.

Note: it's clear to me now that the old version of this rant is lost to me forever, and I am thus forced to merely rewrite it.

This month's rant is about that classic bugbear of male-female relations, the up or down status of the toilet seat. Personally, I've never understood why women are so vehement in their demands to "put the seat down!" I've asked various female friends and been told (with feeling) that if I'd ever gotten up at 3am to go to the toilet and sat down in a cold toilet that I'd understand too. Well I don't. When I get up during the night to go to the toilet, I have to check that the toilet seat is UP before using it (which reminds me of the jokes women make about the "poor aim" of men - but this from people who've demonstrated their own wonderful aiming skills by sitting on the thing... how impressive - not!).

Getting back on track, men check whether the seat is up before using the toilet so I really don't see why the women can't do the same before planting their rears on it. The ridiculous thing is that women who castigate men for leaving the seat up often tell them off for being selfish and not thinking of others. Well excuse me, but sheer common sense tells you that you should check the toilet before using it, so why must it be left in the DOWN position? This is purely selfishness on the part of the women (the very thing they're accusing the men of) and a little bit of laziness too. Personally I can't see what the big problem is, I certainly don't demand that the toilet seat be left up for the times that *I* get up at night to go to the toilet. If it's down, I lift it up and if it's already up I don't need to do anything, there's hardly a hassle involved.

It wouldn't be so bad if the women at least admitted they were just being selfish and that they have no rational reason why the seat should be left down rather than up, but they castigate men for being selfish and lazy when they're being just that by demanding the seat be left in the down position.

Windows 95 is a stupid name for a piece of software that, contrary to popular opinion, is pretty good for something that maintains remarkable compatibility with real mode DOS applications and drivers, as well as 16-bit Windows programs. Sure, it's less stable, but it's a hell of a lot more compatible than OS/2. And which one is more popular? Sure, MS marketed it to hell (and back) but if it didn't run old DOS drivers and so on, it wouldn't be half as successful a product would it? If you want better stability and security, then go for another OS - OS/2 (another stupid name!), Linux, Windows NT etc. If you're happy with the apps (read: games) you run, use Windows 95. Better yet, use more than one of these, since you have different priorities at different times.

If you don't like Windows 95, don't use it! If you don't like any OS, don't use it. No-one's forcing you to use it. There are heaps of alternatives, most of them better at some things and worse at others (mainly ease of use and support for diversity of hardware).

To all the people on Usenet arguing over their OSs and their platforms - forget it, it's an OS not a religion. The fundamental truth you people don't seem to know - or more likely, know but choose not to remember - is that no OS is best for everybody. Most broadly this can be seen in the way some people prefer a command line interface and some people people prefer a GUI. There are various technical aspects you can argue endlessly, but some things are just not worth it. If you've ever seen or participated in one of those flame wars, you'd know that you can't change your opponent's minds anyway, so why bother?

Well today's rant is about the stupid names people give software. Foremost villain is Microsoft - with great names like "Bob", "Word", and most recently of course, "Windows 95". I mean, give me a break! I'm not a dumb idiot you know! Wow, what a complex name: "Word". Hmm, wonder what it means? Lotus had it right when they called their word processor "Ami Pro", although now they've followed everyone else and decided to rename it "Word Pro". Funny how the 3 big word processors are named, isn't it? Word, Word Pro and WordPerfect. What a strange game of oneupmanship on a name... Calling a word processor "Word" indeed - you might as well name your child "Person".

This brings me now to Windows 95 - supposedly called that since "people were having trouble working out what version of Windows was the latest". Well, duh, firstly, why bother bringing out a version called "Windows for Workgroups 3.11" then? Somehow, they would have been better off just calling it "Windows 3.11". If someone is too dumb to work out which is the most recent version (gee, just ring up a store and ask them...) then they probably couldn't work out how to buy software anyway!

But the most annoying of all things in software names is an exclamation mark. It is really pointless, is only applicable when the name is written, and then looks stupid by having punctuation in the middle of a sentence which belongs at the end. It is confusing to have it at the end of a sentence too - should I put in the full stop too? eg. "I do not want Microsoft Plus!." It looks ridiculous. Microsoft is not the only guilty party here - there are others, like Act! from Symantec. These are stupid names - punctuation does not belong in a name, it exists to separate and distinguish words and sentences.

Feel free to email me if you want to agree/disagree/correct/comment on any of my rants, but no flames please - constructive argument only.

All text and images © 1997 by loki. No part of this document may be used or quoted in any way on published media (newspaper, magazine, book), radio, or television without the prior e-mailed consent of the author. This document may be transferred freely in electronic form as long as it remains unchanged, this notice is retained and the author is notified.