Internet Warfare

If you’ve ever had the misfortune to observe digg comments, you’re likely to have seen this one. What happens is that someone usually talks about something interesting coming out, say a conversation view in the mail client Evolution. Since this is an interesting thing to only users of Evolution, and since it’s a pretty cool feature to have in a mail client, there’s probably someone who’s thought about this before and lamented the fact that Evolution favours the Threaded mode over a Gmail-style conversation feature and who will be thrilled that such a feature is on the way.

This person is likely to say something along the lines, I’ve been waiting for this since I started using Evolution! That’s awesome!. To any normal person, that’s an okay response, but to the self-important brain-deficient nerds who inhabit digg this is a sign that that person needs to Get out more!. Here’s an example of the view:

To the contrary, I have a lot of passion and I would likely consider myself a geek (love open source/free software, Debian GNU/Linux, web development, Perl, etc.). But some people on Digg just crack me up. It’s almost as if they want to pretend that nothing in their life matters and they want to yell from the rooftops, “I’m a motherfucking geek and I have absolutely no life outside of software.” It just gets repetitive after a while.

Notice the eager attempt to be recognised as ‘one of the crowd’ and the desire to portray oneself as being above such unimportant things. At first, I wanted to explain that people don’t give up everything to wait for something like that to happen, but then I recognised the cry for attention and decided to ignore it. This is just a shout out to everyone who doesn’t say stuff like this in jest. It’s also a poor excuse to have a third post on the blog.

A common argument on places like Digg and Slashdot is over the price of Apple’s Macbooks. Typically, an Apple fan will say that any laptop with the same specifications as the Macbook will cost as much or more. This is worth checking to see if it is true. This won’t be complete unless I check every single 13″ laptop out there, so I went out there and checked the specifications on the Dell XPS M1330, the Apple Macbook, the HP dv2700t (14.1″)and tx2000z (12″), the Gateway C-141XL ,and the Sager NP2092 (14.1″, I haven’t listed it, nearly identical to the Gateway C-141XL). It wasn’t easy for me to find how to customise Clevo laptops on the website so I didn’t bother. These were the specifications I chose:

• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 Ghz T8300
• 4Gb RAM (2×2GB)
• 250 GB 5400rpm
• No extra software
• No additional warranty. Default 1 year parts and labour.
• Except for the Macbook, all laptops had discrete graphics. The Macbook has Intel GMA X3100 integrated graphics and no option to choose discrete graphics.

And the results are as follows:

As you can see, the Dell XPS M1330 beats the socks off the Macbook on features alone (discounting the services because they’re bundled and I have no clue how much the equivalent cost on the Mac). I hope that ends the argument. Interestingly, the Macbook is actually close to what the cost of a similarly featured laptop would have cost back when this particular iteration was first released. They just refuse to adjust prices when the cost of components go down. If you want to be price-gouged or if you want the OS X operating system, then pay the extra.

And the final word on all things that have caused conflict shall be mine, for Truth and Justice are my servants. Fact’s shining blade will sever disingenuous comments from their place in forum threads, and Logic’s toe will crush the pitiful whimperings of fools prone to fallacious calumny.

And then, just for kicks, I’ll massacre the English language.