La tecnología hoy en día está tan avanzada... Podemos fabricar extensiones de luces navideñas que se dañan solas, sin maltrato mecánico ni de ningún otro tipo. Sin que les dé la luz del sol, ni la humedad. Sólo hace falta un almacenamiento seguro, en un lugar oscuro y seco, por un año, y ya: cables rotos, bombillos fundidos, clavijas dañadas...

Los pobres que las fabrican, los que las transportan, los que nos las venden, de algo tienen que vivir, ¿verdad? ¿de qué otra forma podríamos cumplir con las metas de crecimiento exponencial de la economía?

You know about Rule No. 34, right?

I think we need another, similar rule, the Rule No. 36

Rule No. 36: If you are angry about it, somebody else already wrote a rant about it on the Internet

For example, I don't have to complain about those annoying email signatures that appear in the messages sent from many smart phones nowadays. Somebody else already did it.

I don't have to complain about how bad have been 'The Simpsons' for the last N years. Somebody else already did it.

As a corollary, maybe I should state also that:

It is quite likely that such rant is far more structured and well-thought than that which you would have written, anyway

For example, I don't have to complain about how bad is the math education we receive, and (try to) point out what a wonderful and amusing subject can it be. Somebody else already did it.

And I don't have to yell at you to stop writing stuff like:

int my_func(...) {
    if (some_cond) {
        ...
        // lots of code
        ...
        return 1;
    } else {
        return 0;
    }
}

and replace it for the functionally equivalent, and more readable

int my_func(...) {
    if (!some_cond) {
        return 0;
    }
    ...
    // lots of code
    ...
    return 1;
}

because azul already did it, and he did it far better than if I had done it. (P.S.: look for trolls in that document

I don't even have to write about how religions, despite many of their warts, and those of the institutions representing them, can be a useful social device in many aspects, because Richard Feynman already did it, and in a far far more articulate fashion that what I could have done in a mere rant in this blog.

Now I only need to search for a proper rant about how general purpose computing will become illegal in the near future, specially because of that stupid trend of the app stores for smartphones. Programmers seem to be like musicians who can't wait for getting insane amounts of abuse from these new "software distributors".

Oh, wait, there already seem to be reasonable approximations out there to what I want. Not perfect, but are a good start.

I guess I'll wait a bit and search the web a bit more for the proper rant. Or, may the FSM forbids it, I'll have to write it.