Mounting a Windows XP partition in Ubuntu

It was a progressive day for Alec's general linux knowledgebase. Today I finally got my distribution of lisp (clisp) to work as a shell within emacs in collaboration with slime. This is a huge boon concerning my ability to program efficiently in lisp. Something rubs me the wrong way if I have my file editor running in an entirely separate window from the terminal clisp is running in.

Secondly, I learned how to mount my Windows ntfs partition in Ubuntu. Now I can read all of my music files from my XP partition. The useful guide was tucked away in the ubuntu forums, here. At the moment Sage Francis is blasting on my speakers in a beautiful elixir of sound. Now, if only Creative would finally release Linux drivers for the X-Fi.

You have one button...

Apple is by no means the epitome of functionality. It has always been clear that Apple has viewed the PC market as "consumers are idiots, give them cute graphics to look at." Actually, it's a proud lineage of nonconformity to ISO standards and proprietary hardware. They really like reinventing the wheel so that they can selfishly retain an ignorant consumer base.

Nowadays, certain standards have won out. Macs even run off of Intel chips (essentially making them PC's which run OSX). They manufacture PC's with shiny shells, needlessly compact keyboards that make it difficult to type on, and of course that ridiculous product now lovingly referred to as the Mighty Mouse. The Mighty Mouse is something special, a quintessential example of Apple's greatest efforts in avoiding functionality at every corner.

Somewhere over the past couple decades, the two button mouse with scroll wheel has made itself the cursor controlling standard worldwide. And why not? After all, it's a good premise: one button for selection, another for secondary options, and a scroll wheel for a mouse's most common form of navigation. For the longest time Apple manufactured the disabled veteran version of this navigation item, which was a mouse with only one button.

So now, after the evolution of the market Apple has finally succomb to the two button approach! Well.. not quite. You see, putting two buttons on an Apple mouse would insinuate that somebody else's design approach was better than theirs. So what do they do? They keep the mouse with one button that has "touch sensitivity". What is "touch sensitivity"? It's AppleGeek for "We still want to make it hard for people to right click." Essentially if you lean on the button with pressure from a different angle, you get the simulation of having a second button. Why don't they just separate the piece of plastic above the two buttons? Because they're assholes, that's why.

Then, just to add insult to injury, they provide their mockery of a scroll wheel! Their is a spherical nub that appears to be some kind of sexual perversion and you're supposed to interact with it. The problem? The spherical nub is so small that it has a very small rotational axis. This means that one complete rotation only uses the slightest movement of a finger over it. This might add a level of "finesse" to someone's computer use, but in reality it's over-sensitive calibration makes it difficult to scroll with any intention whatsoever.

In ten years we may see an Apple mouse with two buttons, but I assure you that one of them will infect you with disease when you choose to use it.

"you only get one f**king button."