Crinoid!

Posted by Eric

I had the good fortune a few weekends ago to be invited on a fossil gathering outing in Dixon IL. The quarry we were in was just loaded with fossils – you pretty much couldn’t turn around without finding something.

This is a close-up photo of one of my favorite specimens. A crinoid crown, about 45mm in length. The imaged was Photoshopped a bit to make the fossil stand out. In the lower right corner, somewhat out of focus, you can make out a smaller version of the same sort of critter.

crinoid

Update – the gentleman who took me along on this outing has provided me with the specific details of this fossil:

  • Cupulocrinus gracilis
  • Phylum: Echinoderma
  • Class: Crinoidea
  • Location: Dixon, IL
  • Period: Ordovician
  • Group: Platteville
  • Formation: Mifflin

About the only piece of that information I could have worked out on my own was the location, and that’s only because I managed to stay awake long enough on that very early Sunday morning to see the welcome sign as we passed through town 🙂

Now I have to go figure out what that other stuff means. Ordovician, for starters, means this little fellow is 443 to 490 million years old. How cool is that?

How To Behave Like A Wanker

Posted by Eric

I check the website www.BitsDuJour.com most days, just keeping an eye out for good deals on useful software. For example, the excellent backup tool AJC Active Backup is available there from time to time for under twenty bucks, and a lot of the software offered on BitsDuJour is worth at least a look. A nice feature is that they have a blog-ish format where people can ask questions or make comments on the software, and the software authors can respond.

Last week they offered DiskMagik, a hard drive defragmentation tool from Rose City Software. There are quite a few defragmenting tools out there, and one person asked a question:

While it is true that defragmentation is necessary, what I really wonder is the feautres in your software DiskMagik. I have installed the ffollowing software:

http://www.Defraggler.com
http://www.iobit.com/iobitsmartdefrag.html

Now both the softwares are free.

So I would like to know what are the advantages of your software that gives me an idea to buy it.

Pretty reasonable question. There are free alternatives, some of them very well respected. Defraggler, for example, is from the same people who make CCleaner, which is a great system cleaning tool.

Rose City software developer and CEO Joseph Burke answered:

There are freeware options for most software today. Developers from Third World countries flood the market with knockoffs. If you wish to trust the integrity of your system to an unproven freeware product because you cannot afford a few bucks for really good trusted software, that is your choice.

Ouch! Let’s see, in one paragraph he insults freeware, third world developers, and the person asking the question! And he completely failed to actually answer the question or offer any reasons why his software is worth paying for.

Turns out that the people who check BitsDuJour don’t suffer fools gladly. Joseph Burke was quickly taken to task for his attitude. One respondent pointed out that some of the best applications on the market are freeware, and listed a number of well-known examples. Another pointed out that the two freeware defraggers in the original question are from London and Hong Kong (both cities will no doubt be surprised to discover that they’re in the third world).

Now, most people who are trying to attract customers would realize they’d made a mistake, and try to fix it. Not good old Joseph Burke though, no sir. He barreled on ahead with another post:

Look be my guest… use garbage freeware with zero support or backup and risk your system. Unlike you jokers, I have have spent thousands of hours working with programmers from China, India and Russia and I *know* how much junk comes out of those countries (and many others as well) and just how many bugs there are. […] If I valued my time at just $5 an hour which is probably what you do, I have read morealready wasted more time than the $15. If you cannot afford $15 for a piece of software you obviously don’t use your computer for anything much more than computer games and are not a customer of Rose City Software, not are you worth wasting our time conversing with on message boards.

Jinkies. Zoinks. Wowie. Ooof. Etc. Will I be buying anything from Rose City Software? No, no I don’t think so. Ever.

You know what’s kind of ironic? Rose City Software has a page of freeware that they recommend as interesting. I wonder if they mean ‘interesting’ in the ‘knock-off garbage’ sense of the word?

Addendum… See the juicy goodness for yourself HERE.

Ah, Higher Education

Posted by Eric

A good friend of mine has decided to return to college for another degree, this time in the EMT/Paramedic field. She has begun taking the required introductory classes, and emailed me this question that appeared on a recent test…

You arrive on the scene of an auto accident. You start emergency care and notice bystanders are starting to crowd and observe. What would be the one thing that an observer would remember about this accident?

A) your shirt was wrinkled
B) the number of ambulances
C) the order of ambulances
D) the color of the ambulances

Yes, this is for real. This question actually appeared on a college level test for a class on emergency medical care. I don’t know about anyone else, but I seriously doubt I’d remember any of the given choices. I’d be looking at the damaged cars, or the injured people. And I think if I was paying actual money to take this class, I’d have to speak up and point out that this is a stupid question (my friend who took the test did that – good for her!)

Care to take a stab at what the “correct” answer is? Hint – it would only make sense if this were a class on how to dress like a grown-up. If that isn’t hint enough, try this – what is the dumbest possible answer to this very stupid question?