How pathetic am I?
So I've spent part of last night and this morning, off and on, installing Fink, FinkCommander, and X11. Why? Why, to play XGalaga, of course, the open source clone of my favorite childhood video game. Geez, you didn't think I was going to go through all that trouble to do work or anything, did you? ;-)
Server moving
The site will be going down for a bit this evening as we move the server. Should be back up some time after dinner time, CST. UPDATE, 7:30 PM CST: And we're back... Thanks for the quick move, Jim. This was just a physical move for the current server, as prep for our move to a new box in the near future.
Going out of business twice as fast
I've got to start reading more from James Lileks. Like with the previously-noted pen comment, he cracks me up: bq. Today they announce the new machines. From all I hear the new computers go up to 11, so to speak. Dual 2 ghz processors. Of course, this means the company, which is DOOMED, will now go out of business twice as fast as before.
Corporate Behavior for Dummies
- Verizon Wireless rants, raves, and whines about how the FCC regulation for wireless local number portability--letting you keep your same phone number, even when you change providers--is going to cost billions and billions of dollars. Despite the fact that the FCC regulation has been in place for years and wireless providers have chosen to ignore it, since the FCC has failed to enforce it.
- Take the FCC to court over the issue!
- After the court rules against you, give in and announce that you're going to lead the industry and everyone should copy you, because by Zeus, you're doing what's best for the customer. (But only after being forced to...)
Isn't technology cool?
- Buy the Baby Einstein CD set. (Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and Bach)
- Rip all 4 CDs to MP3 with iTunes.
- Copy all 4 sets of MP3s to your iPod.
- Now you can use your Aiwa noise-canceling headphones plugged in to the iPod and situated on the wife's abdomen to let your developing little son listen to the classics, proven to beneficially stimulate neural development.
Self-branding for the road
So how far would you go to promote your own personal brand? Some people nab custom license plates to slap on their vehicles in their respective states. Thanks to the Acme License Maker, now you too can experiment with self-branding for your personal transport. (Please bear in mind that I do not know the rules for number of characters allowed in the states shown.) For instance, I could get:
John Trever, Alburquerque, New Mexico, 19 June 2003Microsoft comes full circle with IE
Marc Marshall brings up the excellent point that Microsoft has come full circle with regard to Internet Explorer. His is the last post in Macintouch's Browser Future report for today:
The bottom line in this situation is this: For the past several years, Microsoft gave away a free browser to kill the competition, and succeeded. Now, they have stopped development of their standalone product, and are giving people exactly three choices to get their "standard" product: 1) Buy Windows. 2) Use MSN for Internet access. 3) Pay them $10/month or $80 per year. No free options, no free upgrades.
The price is higher than Opera or Omni's paid competition, and you don't have a free option, and you have an ongoing fee. In fact, if MS starts charging annual licensing for Windows, there will be no lifetime-licence-purchasable version of IE. This sounds like exactly the sort of consumer hostile situation that monopolies create, and governments are supposed to protect us from. Now that they've pretty much saturated the market, Microsoft has been scrambling on how to consistently generate revenue. They have long discussed subscription software licensing, and this situation with IE appears to be the first shot across the bow. Unfortunately, I do not forsee the mass sheep of Windows and IE/Mac users torpedoing the Microsoft Bismarck any time soon.
Kerry mum on Cape wind farm
Presidential hopeful John Kerry is running around the country talking about renewable energy, like wind and solar power, proposing we get 20% of all our energy from renewable sources by 2020. He calls it "Twenty by '20," or something to that effect. Yeah, I suppose that's something I could get behind. Having seen the big wind farm at South Point on the Big Island of Hawai'i (the southernmost tip of the United States, and quite a windy locale), I think that if there's a suitable windy location, yeah, put up a wind farm. It won't provide all of the energy a population might need, but it would certainly help. But will the Senator bow to the liberal elite on the proposed Camp Wind windmill farm on Horseshoe Shoal, seven miles off Nantucket Island? Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard residents are complaining that the wind farm will ruin their respective views. Awwww, po' wittle ewitists. They whine and complain about getting away from fossil fuel consumption, but when offered the chance to do so in their own backyard, they don't want it because it's not aesthetically pleasing. Seems someone wants to have it both ways. Myron Ebell, of the free-market environmental think tank, Competitive Enterprise Institute: bq. "People think if you live in the right area you don't have to put up with anything. Well, where are they going to get their energy? From little squirrels in wheels?" (Thanks, Rick)
Mailsmith 2.0 arrives
Bare Bones has released v2.0 of my favorite email client. Major kudos to Michael for getting SpamSieve bundled with all Mailsmith 2.0 purchases (before 31 July 2003). Speaking of which, SpamSieve 1.3.1 has been released. Seems to be a bit faster to me, and I like the new script addition that sends a piece of mail directly to the Trash when I mark it as spam. (I have the Mailsmith filter that SpamSieve's script uses set to send spam to the Trash; others have a spam folder, so your mileage may vary.) If you're already using both of these products, here's the kicker regarding Mailsmith 2.0: it features direct integration with SpamSieve! No more scripts or filters! Rock on, Michael! Way to go!
IE6 gives me hives
Ok, not really, but it's really ticking me off. Why is it that my site validates as XHTML 1.0 Trans, validates as CSS2, looks perfectly fine in Safari, Camino, even IE5/Mac, yet looks like complete dung in IE6? I know, I know, IE6 doesn't fully support the CSS2 spec, yet, so I'm sure that's playing a huge role. I suppose I could drop it to CSS1, but I'd rather be posting than fiddling with making the site look exactly the same in Microsloth's stupid Windows browser. In Microsucks' defense, there are some font issues with the site in Firebird, but at least pages scroll properly in that browser. I haven't tried Opera for Windows yet.
Good riddance, IE, part III
Speaking of the dress-code-aware genius that is Dan Benjamin (is that enough, Dan?), he offers up some delectable food for thought on the discontinuation of standalone IE development for the Mac. I say standalone, because it seems that IE will continue on in MSN for Mac OS X. Zeldman sums it all up rather well.
From here, as it has for several weeks now, it looks like a period of technological stasis and dormancy yawns ahead. Undoubtedly the less popular browsers will continue to improve. They may even gain in market share. But few of us will be able to take advantage of their sophisticated standards support if most of the market continues to use an unchanged year 2000 browser.
But enough, and enough, and enough. We are glad of the latest versions of Opera, Mozilla, Konqueror, Safari, and Omniweb. But on this grey and rainy day, this news of a kind of death brings no warmth. To Tantek and Jimmy and their colleagues on the IE/Mac team: for what you achieved on behalf of web standards and usability, much respect. When it arrived, IE5/Mac was the standard for web browsers. It shamed Netscape. Complacency and stagnant development, however, have left it behind technologically. Zeldman mentions reasons people switched from IE to Camino or Safari; I switched for all the reasons he discusses, including that it's one less Microsoft application on my system. There are choices people, and they're better than the "standard."
DNS Primer
If you've ever been interested in how your email gets from your computer to someone else's, or how your browser knows how to load up a web site, you need to read Dan Benjamin's excellent DNS primer at MacDevCenter. It's geared toward Mac OS X users, but anyone can learn the basics of DNS, IP addresses, routing, and all that other techie stuff that makes the Internet work, boiled down in to simply terms by Mr. Benjamin (of Hivelogic/Hiveware fame). Oh, and hire this dress-code-aware guy, if you have the need. Too much talent to not be getting paid well by someone, somewhere.
New jobs for friends!
It's been a good couple of weeks for friends of the 'phisch. Steve landed a programming job with DirecTV's billing company in Charlotte, NC, and Richard is now a sysadmin with Standard & Poor's in Boston. Congrats, amigos! I hope you both have long, happy, healthy, and wealthy careers with your new employers!
Latest look for retrophisch.com
As I mentioned previously, I've been working on a site redesign. I decided today to take it live. (You can ignore the links in the archived post; they're flip-flopped now.) The entire site does not, at this time, reflect what you see here on the main page. I had planned to wait until it did to switch over, but at this rate, if I continued to wait, it would be a long one. So here it is, hope you like. If you hate it and just have to see the site the way it was (and updated just like the main page), click on the Retrolook tab above and enjoy. Not that those of you who stop by regularly really care; I know you're reading with NetNewsWire anyway. :)
Good riddance, IE, part deux
This morning, Microsoft released a slightly-updated version of IE for Mac OS X, version 5.2.3. While no future development is planned, Microsoft will update this last version of IE as needed. I hope Ric doesn't mind my copying this from today's Macintouch, but he doesn't provide a permanent link to this story:
Clint McIntosh summarized the issues of Microsoft dropping Internet Explorer development for the Mac (something the company also has done on the Windows platform):
Microsoft is saying that they can't do as good of a job as Apple of integrating the browser with the MacOS as a a reason they are halting development of Internet Explorer and that Safari is an excellent browser even in this public beta stage. BUT there is a serious problem ahead of us Mac users that deals with browser detection at many sites.
Many sites that rely on security or on compatibility do a browser check when you first try to view their pages. They usually make sure you are running MSIE 5.x or higher or even Netscape 4.x and higher. I've found that a lot of site developers don't even realize that there are many more browsers other than IE and Netscape--either that or they just don't care.
I've already found quite a few sites that don't work at all with Safari such as my online banking through SouthTrust bank. I've written to the webmasters of those sites that aren't Safari friendly but the standard answer I get back is "Our site only works with Internet explorer and netscape."
Using iCab's ability to identify itself as another browser, I've found that there is no technical reason for the limitation to IE and Netscape. They just do browser checks and see that you are using something other than IE and Netscape they deny you access. I'm not a fan of Microsoft but I do use IE on those occasions when I just can't get a page to work with any other browser. Netscape 7 is just too slow and bloated for my liking and it still doesn't work on a lot of sites where Netscape 4.x works flawlessly.
I've tried and compared the features of iCab, Opera, OmniWeb and others. They all have their good points, but Safari wins out overall. If Safari is going to be a suitable replacement for MSIE, Apple is going to have to either change the identifier to pretend it is IE or they are going to have to market the hell out of Safari to get the name known out there as a major player AND they are going to have to beef up a lot of the compatibility issues before they finalize it as a 1.0 release. There's also the issue of browser plugins, but that's another story.
Tigers first to leave Omaha
The LSU baseball team is swept for only the second time in all of its College World Series appearances, and their season is over. The Tigers dropped their losers' bracket game to South Carolina yesterday, 11-10. LSU came back from a 6-0 deficit in the 1st inning to take the lead. But Coach Smoke Laval left reliever Jason Determann in an inning too long, and it cost the Tigers severely. The Tigers had a two-run lead going in to the bottom of the 8th, when the Gamecocks blew through a tired Determann's pitching to take a one-run lead they held on to through the top of the ninth for the win. The Tigers had a great run: they finish the season 45-22-1, and this loss is only their first in seven tries against an SEC foe in the CWS. They were the regular season SEC Champions, and runner-up in the SEC Tournament.
More blogging coverage
Business Week Online has a good article on the growing pervasiveness of weblogs, and what they mean to mass media and consumers. I like Nick Denton's term of "open-source media."
Good riddance, IE
No more Internet Explorer for Macintosh. No more standalone Internet Explorer on Windows. I cannot tell you how heart-broken I am to hear this.
Test driving
So this weekend my bride and I took some big baby steps. Furniture was purchased. Items were registered. And strollers were test-driven through the aisles of the local Babies R Us. I knew having a kid was going to be a lot of fun...