Blizza Blizza

This entry has been re-written at the last moment in a completely different style and at great expense, thanks to Raena, who not only has a cool name, but knows far too much about CSS and HTML for her own good. She set me straight on uses of the BLOCKQUOTE tag, enlightened me to the glory that is Movable Type’s Search and Replace feature (hint: your blog menu, then the first link under Utilities in the sidebar), and helped with a solution for the problem of “how do I put quotes in both corners using only CSS?”

And, uh, anyone reading this blog with Internet Exploder (you know who you are), I just have this to say:

Get Firefox.

We now return to your regularly scheduled blogging.

Microsoft has agreed to obey the EU’s request not to ship a product called “Microsoft Windows Reduced Media Edition.”

Other rejected names for the new software:

• Microsoft Windows Crippled Edition™
• Microsoft Windows XPOS Edition™
• Microsoft Windows We Hate Europe Edition™
• Microsoft Windows Antitrust Solution™
• Microsoft Windows-But-No-Media Edition™
• Microsoft Windows Is Now Really Nowhere Near As Good As Mac OS For Anything Not Involving Office Edition™
• Microsoft Windows QuickTime and RealPlayer Edition™
• Microsoft Windows Lost a War to France Edition™
• Microsoft Windows Not-Quite-Full-Featured Edition™

And the number one rejected name for the new non-monopoly version of Windows…

• Mac OS

I have two puzzlers for you to take a crack at.

3 8 18 9 19 12 1 23 19 15 14 4 15 20 14 5 20

and

HINT: LAWS CENSOR.

First person to solve either one gets a cookie and an explanation.

“1337” has officially jumped the shark.

Why?

Because there is absolutely no way anything could possibly be more 1337 than reading the flash ROM of an iPod using the piezoelectric element that makes the clicking sounds when you scroll.

This is at least 42 times 1337er than the rotary cell fone. It’s all downhill from here, folks.

Heck, probably of the week, month, and maybe the coolest Mac-related thing you’ll see this year.

The Apple Commercial Archive

(via John)

I’m putting this in “humour” because it’s funny, but it’s also very very sad.

A site that claims to offer “News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters” should know better than to be suckered in by a PR campaign for tinfoil-coated ground-up rocks that claim to extend cell fone battery life.

Yes, that’s tinfoil-coated, ground-up rocks that claim to extend cell fone battery life.

Has “Jump the Shark” started covering popular Web sites yet? Because Slashdot just jumped the shark. Big time.

Back in elementary school, we studied garbage and recycling and landfills and stuff — specifically, how to reduce the amount of waste going into landfills so as to avoid having to construct new ones, because nobody wants a landfill in their backyard. (These people are called NIMBYs, for “Not In My Back Yard.”)

Well, I wouldn’t mind a landfill so much as I would mind a 2000-ton pile of burning cow manure that I’m sure smells just angelic.

All you nutjobs who are wasting your lives away protesting a woman’s right to choose might direct your energy toward wondering why a kid who unilaterally aborts his girlfriend’s baby isn’t charged with first-degree murder.

This just in…the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, has officially declared that Reptilia are no longer a sub-classification of Animalia.

Two ordinances enacted on 07 January make it illegal

to have an animal or reptile within 150 feet of a public event unless the animal or reptile is participating. It does not apply to animals or reptiles fenced inside private property near an event or to service animals.

This entry brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

There’s a fascinating article in today’s NYT about Apple Stores and the Genius Bar.

The Amateur Gourmet has managed to come up with cupcakes bearing a remarkable resemblance to the television images of a certain “wardrobe malfunction” during last year’s Super Bowl.

(via Dave Barry)

I think I speak for all your users when I say:

YOU ALL SUCK!

Cingular becomes the latest cell fone provider to disable key features of a popular handset. Sprint also did it with the Treo 650, much as Cingular has, and Verizon completely crippled the Motorola V710.

Rhetorical question: What the hell is the point of offering a feature-laden fone when you disable the features users want the most?

Maybe next time a homeless person sets a fire with a dollar’s worth of scrap lumber it won’t cost a major city 25 to 60 million dollars to fix it. That says to me there’s a serious weakness in the system. And what are they doing to fix it? They “were actually able to find enough relays left over in [their] system that [they] could salvage out of other jobs [they] had to do this work” — in an old closet, one presumes — so they can restore it to its previous vulnerable state. Brilliant.

Only 1455 days until Dubya is no longer President. ‘Nuff said.

Continuing the proud SEC tradition of football players being arrested for possessing large amounts of marijauana is Mississippi State offensive tackle Richard Burch. Only this time, instead of a garbage can full of the stuff, he had an ounce. C’mon, Burch, can’t you do better?

Target has yanked the Mac mini from its online store. No word on why. Suspect Apple’s elite server ninjas had something to do with it.

Dear Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News, Charlotte Observer, Miami Herald, etcetera,

Please stop asking for my name, address, birthdate, dog’s name, mother’s maiden name, step-sister’s IQ, grandfather’s shoe size, closest African-American relative, great-uncle’s time of death, arrest record, favourite book, least-favourite movie, number of pieces of junk mail I get each day, and any other so-called “demographic” information when I go to your sites in an attempt to view your online content.

I know you think that you’re going to use this information which you have absolutely no business asking for to serve me “targeted” advertisements that your marketing staff has determined I’m more likely to click on.

What your marketing staff hasn’t determined, though, is that I am using very aggressive advertisement and cookie blocking, so I will never see your ads anyway!

I find the registration how-to at the Washington Post very telling in this regard:

Ad/Pop-up Blockers

1. If you are running an ad or pop-up blocker please temporarily disable the software to test to see if the survey can be completed.

2. If you are then able to complete the registration, you should then be able to configure the ad/pop up blocker by entering an exception for www.washingtonpost.com and washingtonpost.com. Please refer to your ad/pop up blocker manual or manufacturer for the proper settings.

The Post goes on to outline a detailed, 20-step process for getting registration to work.

No one on their staff, apparently, has ever considered the fact that maybe there’s a reason so many people are using ad and pop-up blockers! (Hint: it isn’t because we enjoy going to great lengths to install them, then turn them off so we can see your site, then turn them back on, then turn them off so we can see another site five minutes later, then turn them back on, ad infinitum.)

There are literally thousands of other news sites on the Web where I can get most of your content. If you make it difficult for me to get, I’ll simply use your competition.

Enjoy your gradual slide into irrelevance.

Sincerely,

A Concerned User Who Is Really Fucking Sick Of FIve-Minute Demographic Surveys Just So He Can Read One Article

Now, if I just had $20,000 and a year of free time to build it.

*Drools*

Or, at least, an amphibious one. I wonder why they held this announcement until two weeks after the North American International Auto Show.

(via Jalopnik)

Continuing with the proud tradition of Southwest Michigan governmental Web sites sucking is the official site of the Charter Township of Oshtemo. It comes complete with Gratuitous Use of Java™, Unnecessarily Super-sized Fonts™, and Very Little Actual Useful Information™.

The City of Kalamazoo was one of Vincent Flanders’ Web Pages That Suck back in July 2003, just for the record, when it was completely infected with Wide Page Disease™ as well as Random Blocks of Ugly Colours™.

Now, from the “you’ve-won-the-award,-now-do-something-about-it” department: The City of Kalamazoo’s site has been drastically improved since then, and Vincent has a guide to the biggest Web design mistakes of 2004.

Quite possibly the only thing I’ve ever agreed with Rush Limbaugh on. Except for his last couple comments, that is.

The great outdoors is about to become wireless.

“But I thought the outdoors was wireless by its very nature,” you protest.

And that’s where you’d be wrong. California (Official State Motto: “Trying to Have our Cake and Eat it Too Since 1849”) has cut a deal with SBC to provide wireless Internet access in 85 state parks. You know, for the always-connected techno-geek who likes to unwind on El Capitàn with his laptop.

Call me dense, but I always thought the point of going camping was to get away from all that.

From Wikipedia:

Christmas tree packet

If you’re running OS X, you owe it to yourself to check out Quicksilver, which is the most amazing application launcher I’ve ever seen.

It sits in the background, doing nothing until you summon the power of this mighty genie with a simple user-configurable keystroke. You can then type a few characters and it will guess what you’re trying to find. It’s usually accurate, though this depends largely on how much you “feed” it. For instance, if I want to launch Meteorologist (which in itself is a great app, but tends to break often and require re-launching), I can just call up Quicksilver (Ctrl-Z) and then type “M-E-T-E” and boom! it picks Meteorologist as its first choice. I can then hit return to launch it.

Go download it and try it. It will change the way you work with your Mac. The OS X Finder has made great progress since the Public Beta, but as an application launcher, it can’t hold a candle to this amazing software.

Remember rotary fones?

Yeah, I’m just old enough. In fact, there’s one in my basement that’s just begging to be turned into a cell fone. It won’t fit in your pocket, but it’s über-cool.

(via Slashdot)

It’s a VNC client for your Mac.

Gosh, that picture looks so wrong.

The top image on the product page for the Thanko Head Massager (Japanese — are you really surprised?) is absolutely hilarious.

(via Gizmodo)

While we’re talking about weird products/inventions, can someone confirm/deny that the Angel Light isn’t just an April Fool’s prank that accidentally got published over two months early?

Erm, yeah, right.

Maybe if I had applied one of these to my Sonicare, it would still be working…

Many people have predicted that the introduction of the Mac mini would wreak havoc on the prices of used Macs.

Apparently not.

ExperCom thinks that you’re willing to sacrifice nearly 60% of your CPU speed, a good deal of graphics capability, DVD playback capability, a free copy of AppleWorks and iLife ‘05, and Apple warranty coverage and AppleCare eligibility for a $50 savings and an Iomega “Yes, three people really still use those overgrown floppies when they aren’t Clicking of Death” Zip drive.

Can I just be the first to say, “Yeah, right?”

If you do, be sure to read this excellent primer on CRTs vs. LCDs. Lots of information there, presented in a very easily digestible format. Gets the official CLN Grandmother Seal of Approval™.

(via Slashdot)

Every time Ti Cobb has to go back for another repair, I’m going to dig up another song lyric to use as a blog entry title. My challenge to you, dear readers, is to figure out what song lent its voice to this one.

Meanwhile, Ti Cobb will be getting a fourth hard drive. It seems Hitachi’s skill with the Travelstar line leaves something to be desired, as the current drive has lasted the least of any of the three thus far. The first drive lasted 26 months. The second drive lasted five. The third drive lasted less than one. At this rate, either they’ll fix the problem completely, or Ti Cobb is going to get stuck in an infinite loop of ever-more-quickly failing drives in Houston, and I won’t get it back until Apple finally gives in and gives me a PowerBook G5.

Which should be any day now.

See you all on Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully. While Ti Cobb is off to Texas, I’m off to Mankato for a job interview. *fingers crossed*

JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank

Techdirt’s article summarising the problem pretty much says it all.

In what comes as a refreshing bit of good news for anyone who is not engaging in pseudo-Christian jihad against the basic principles of science, U.S. District Court Judge Clarence Cooper ruled that stickers pushing a Creationist agenda be removed from science textbooks.

Colin Purrington has an interesting perspective:

[I]t’s really too bad the Cobb County school district, the loser in the decision, now has to pay the rather large legal fees, sucking valuable assets away from school budgets. To cover the expected revenue shortfall, and to avoid tax increases in Cobb County, perhaps Marjorie Rogers (the Creationist who started the whole mess) can extract donations from the 2,300 supporters who signed her original petition that objected to evolution instruction.

He also has a new sticker to be placed over the old one:

Please read this entire textbook before the end of the year. Due to insufficient funds, you will not have a teacher for this class. If you would like to thank somebody for this situation, please contact local Creationists, who helped bankrupt the district.

The district’s legal counsel is also being blamed (by a small legion of organised crackpots called the Discovery Institute, whose agenda, among other things, appears to be the promotion of intelligent design) for mounting an “incompetent defense.”

(Also on Slashdot)

Jason O’Grady wins the Macworld ‘05 Sour Grapes Award with this gem:

Folks, face it. The new Apple hardware is butt ugly. Was Jonthan Ive involved in these designs? Curiously, Ive was noticably absent from the promotional videos usually played during the keynote.

I know that both products have their market and that they’ll sell lots of them, but it doesn’t mean that I have to like them. Frankly, I expect more from Apple’s design team and I am extremely underwhelmed and disappointed.

Don’t be an Apple apologist! Steve has no clothes.

Gee, could this possibly have anything to do with the fact that Jason is being sued by Apple?

(From Leander Kahney’s Cult of Mac)

In a related story, Paul Kedrosky was informed by his editors that he’ll be fired if he doesn’t get his Web page views up this month.

So, of course, instead of writing something intelligent, Paul took the easy way out.

I got a really nice Sonicare toothbrush about 18 months ago. It worked great, even if it was a bit on the expensive side at $120.

I assumed from day one (correctly, it turns out) that it used Ni-Cd batteries, and as a result, I was very conscientious in its charging to ensure no “memory” effect developed. I took all the standard precautions for Ni-Cd batteries: don’t keep it on the charger constantly, only charge it when it’s fully run down, etc.

Despite my best efforts, the batteries died completely — as in, the toothbrush was rendered completely useless — after 18 months. It won’t charge, it won’t power up, it won’t do anything. It just sits there like a nice, heavy, $120 lump of white plastic.

Sonicare’s engineers, in their quest for maximum profit, designed the toothbrush in two halves, to be ultrasonically welded together. This completely removes any possibility that the batteries could be replaced without destroying the toothbrush. It would have cost at most another dollar per brush to screw the two halves together instead, making the batteries replaceable and preventing this $120 item from being a $120 disposable, toxic paperweight.

The extreme toxic effects of cadmium are widely known. Nickel, while less toxic than cadmium, also has no place in a landfill. Extensive recycling efforts are in place to prevent any more Ni-Cd batteries from ending up in landfills, yet Sonicare has chosen to shirk any responsibility and designed their toothbrushes in a manner extremely unconducive to recycling.

Boo-hiss, Sonicare. Shame on you for such a poor design, and shame on you for putting profits ahead of corporate responsibility.

US gives up search for Iraq WMD

‘Nuff said.

Kirin, the Japanese brewer, has hypothesized the ancient Egyptian methods of brewing beer.

They also have a recipe if you’d like to try it at home. (Kiddies, not unless you’re 21!)

If only I had huge sterile pots to brew this in, I’d like to try it. It sounds interesting.

Techdirt is running a very interesting article claiming a computer hacker under investigation by the Secret Service hacked T-Mobile’s Sidekick database so that he could track the Secret Service’s movements and plans.

Scary stuff, especially if you’re a T-Mobile Sidekick user.

From a six-year-old opinion piece about Skyline Chili:

That insouciant PC, made giddy by a new microchip, is dancing around to the most excruciatingly awful, synth-minimal version of “I Feel Pretty” — the great song from “West Side Story” — you could ever imagine.

(Thanks, Eric.)

From someone who must be a confessed Apple Hater:

All you need is an iPod and a Post-It™ note!

Apple Lovers can check their flames at the door. It’s a freakin’ joke, people.

(All from Gizmodo)

Leading off the morning’s MWSF coverage (Surprise! You didn’t know we were covering it, did you?) is this entry, from the now-i-can-store-all-my-klingon-battle-dildos-in-style department:

The TrestleHub by PressureDrop

(From Gizmodo)

Andrew Fisher, a 20-year-old Nebraskan, is selling advertising space on his forehead on eBay.

(From Slashdot)

In honour of the events of 08 January, 1815, I give the world a Wikipedia entry on The Battle of New Orleans, the 1959 Johnny Horton song that topped the charts and won the Grammy for Song of the Year.

According to yesterday’s edition of All Things Considered on NPR, 08 January used to be a national holiday on par with the Fourth of July. I think we need to bring this back. You know you all want the day off of work!

Needless to say, The Battle of New Orleans is the Song of the Day.

My apologies to those of you who have tried to sign in and comment with your TypeKey ID. I had unknowingly set it up without ever entering the blog URL in my TypeKey account, so it wasn’t working. This is fixed now.

Lee Bennett writes:

My dear AWS Convergence Technologies, Inc. friends, it is you who are mistaken. Unless you’ve grown a conscience for the more recent versions, I know people who’ve actively tracked WeatherBug sending unnecessary data to remote servers.

His blog entry was inspired by the eWeek story “WeatherBug Miffed at Microsoft‚Äôs Spyware Classification”, which details a company (that happens to have a lot of lawyers) that now has a beef with Microsoft, whose recent beta release of its upcoming anti-spyware application (which Microsoft, in turn, acquired with the rest of Giant) labels WeatherBug as “adware.”

Which is true.

But WeatherBug’s parent company, AWS, has taken issue with this, as you might expect. The twist here is that AWS has AOL on their side, since WeatherBug ships with the PC version of AOL Instant Messenger. AWS — and AOL — are now pressuring Microsoft to change their anti-spyware software so as not to flag WeatherBug. An AOL official is even quoted as saying, “The vast majority of anti-spyware providers do not consider WeatherBug to be spyware, including Aluria, our own anti-spyware provider.”

Uh, duh. Of course AOL’s anti-spyware product isn’t going to flag another AOL product (or in this case, sort of a “brand partner”) as spyware.

And pretty soon, it appears, neither will Microsoft’s.

This raises a disturbing issue: at what price can the “this software is safe” label be bought? How many lawyers does it take to designate a rank, festering spyware application “perfectly-safe-to-run-this-on-your-grandma’s-computer”-ware? I realise that the vast majority of true problem apps are written by shady organisations without crack legal teams, but this sets a disturbing precedent. Why, now, should anyone trust any spyware removal tool from a large corporation? Who’s to say it isn’t intentionally overlooking its own spyware, or its partners’ spyware?

Furthermore, in light of various recent and not-so-recent high-profile hacks of various consumer databases, I don’t trust anyone, whether they’re “legitimately” collecting the data or not, to keep personal information about me secure. And by God, I will do everything I can to prevent any entity that doesn’t need data about me — this includes you, AMS — from getting it.

This whole mess also makes me very glad that, for the sake of my PC-using friends out there, there are reasonably independent third-party vendors of software for finding and removing spyware.

Setting: A generic conference room in Corporate America. Two Hands and a Head are seated at a large table.

Head: I’ve called you here today because I want to make a very important introduction. Right Hand, I want you to meet Left Hand.

Right Hand: Glad to meet you!

Left Hand: Charmed, i’m sure. So, where do you work?

Right Hand: Oh, I work at Microsoft.

Left Hand: Really? What a co-inkly-dink! So do I!

Hands begin an animated discussion about their jobs. Scene fades to black, and a corporate-sounding voice says, “Despite this dramatic introduction, the Right Hand still doesn’t know what the Left Hand is doing.

Update (2129 07 January 2005): Microsoft, as I anticipated, has edited the photo linked above. The image below is the original.

Those of you who don’t browse MacSurfer probably haven’t seen my latest article on SchwarzTech.

Chris Lawson shares his thoughts on the state of the Mac Web and lets you in on a little secret that PC Magazine and Ziff-Davis don’t want you to know…

I imagine this will ruffle quite a few feathers in the community; that’s what it’s supposed to do. I’m not so much trying to piss people off as make them think about what they’re publishing. Just because it mentions the Mac doesn’t mean it’s worth linking to, which Michael Alderete really hammers home in his post published over at MacInTouch (and kudos to Ric for at least paying lip service to the ideas I’ve outlined in my article):

John Dvorak is a “shock jock” columnist. He’s not particularly interested in getting anything right — he’s interested in getting a reaction. That’s why he picks on the Mac so often. He knows that Mac users will rise up to defend their platform, guaranteeing a ton of mentions around the web, irate responses in blogs, and vigorous letters to the editor…and a whole lot more traffic to his columns, improving his standing with his editors and publishers, and thus compensation.

The worst thing any Mac user can do to John Dvorak is ignore him. Even though we know he’s wrong, and provably wrong, it’s actually better to just let it go.

From BoingBoing comes this gem:

CNN “Crossfire” host Carlson to stop hurting America

(via Meerkat, via Boston Eric)

An Indonesian man has been found alive approximately 160 km west of Banda Aceh, at the northern tip of Sumatra. He had survived eight days on a raft of coconut trees and other wooden debris, drinking rainwater and eating coconuts he had reportedly cracked open with a doorknob.

The entire site has a new colour scheme, in case you didn’t notice, and I’ve finally fixed the Movable Type bug that was causing XHTML validation to fail. For you other MT-3.x users, it’s a problem in the following four files (paths and BBEdit line numbers quoted from the MT-3.14 Upgrade package):

/lib/MT/App/CMS.pm; Line 4699
/lib/MT/default-templates.pl; Line 367
/lib/MT/Template:Context.pm; Line 1182
/tmpl/cms/reload_opener.tmpl; Line 3

Each SCRIPT tag should have language="javascript" replaced by type="text/javascript". If you’re feeling particularly ambitious, and since the LANGUAGE attribute has been deprecated, you can go through the entire MT Upgrade package and remove the rest of the language="javascript" attributes as well.

I have contacted Six Apart with this information, and hopefully the next release of Movable Type will fix the problem.

I’ve also upgraded the sidebar boxes to an Aqua window look instead of the ill-fitting dotted-border theme. Enjoy!