More dumb computer tales, plus comics
Well, today's Dumb Computer Tale is about the Palm Emulator (POSE), which
is used by Palm Developers so they don't risk buggering up their poor leetle
palm-top widgets. Now, here we are, cheerfully developing a package that
will allow people with Palm VII's to access our yummy web site over the
wireless network. So that we don't run up the boss's wireless bill, we
run the emulator. All should clearly be good and happy - the emulator should
pretend that it's making the wireless calls while actually just emulating
them via the magic of TCP/IP.
Except it's not.
This puzzles me for a bit. I go peering through the documentation for a
while, and can find no mention of anything I need to do. I go looking for
the error, yet can find nothing in the Palm Emulator FAQ, documentation,
et cetera. Finally, at long last, I find the explanation of what's wrong,
buried in a FAQ file for something else entirely. It turns out there's
an option that needs to be set in a buried preferences screen, "Emulate
NetLib calls as TCP/IP" (for those of you who just glazed over, in other
words "pretend to use the normal palm lookups while really just using the
internet connection on your computer"). This option defaults to 'off'. There
are no other connection options.
Now... someone, somewhere, really needs to be kicked in the head. Here
they are, distributing a product which DEFAULTS TO NOT FUNCTIONING. Nowhere
in the documentation that's easily available is the necessary magic
explained. So, not only are they too lazy to recompile the source with
"product will work once installed" set to true, or whatever, they're too
lazy to bother putting much effort into helping you get the darn thing
working.
Pikers! Pikers, the lot of them!
Oh well. Works fine now. Wonder if it'll run Lode Runner...
And now, this week's comics.
- Transmetropolitan #32 - Spider "Bastard!" Jerusalem gets snippy at the
current President's cheerful stomping over the constitution and the rule of
law, as well as the fact that the police are getting to try out their riot
tanks. But with the President slapping "D-Notices" on anything critical,
what's an evil journalist to do? Well, even in the future, there's always
the Internet...
- Iron Man #26 - Tony Stark gets punched in the nose by random people,
covers a basketball in nanites, and fights "won't-someone-please-kill-him"
villain Whiplash. Also, has his secret identity exposed after passing out
in his armor. Oops. Especially amusing is that they spent an entire
double-sized annual ret-conning having pretty much the whole world know
Iron Man's secret ID, only to have it promptly exposed again. Make up yer
minds!
- New Warriors #7 - Third string heroine Turbo falls in love with
fourth-string villain Firestrike, and vice versa. Mayhem ensues, Firestrike
gives up a life of crime to help the New Warriors thwart the evil scheme he
was taking part in, as well as helping them capture his own former allies.
All because of his true love for Turbo, who, feeling rather peeved that she
fell for someone evil, promptly turns him in to the law anyway. Bitch.
- Punisher #1 - The last Punisher mini-series had him as some kind of
angelic avenger thingie, possibly due to the writer getting a bad dose of
drugs. Now, Garth "Preacher" Ennis takes a more traditional look at the
character, which means you get to see the Punisher killing criminals in
surly ways. Cheap, violent entertainment.
And, lastly, more mp3's we've been alerted to be Alert Reader Peg,
who pointed out the musician Logan Whitehurst. There's just so much to choose from!
I recommend "Surfing in Hell", "Why don't they call it art?" or "Monkeys are
bad people", myself. Alternately, try "Farkle!" for some good ol'-fashioned
ad parody.
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