Category: Uncategorized

Safari, Apple’s new web browser

Apple this week released Safari (well, public beta), a new OS X web browser based on the KHTML layout engine. I’m a big fan of Chimera, but Chimera has bugs, so I was eager at first to try out the new browser. After spending 15 minutes with the Safari browser tho I have to admit I was a little under-impressed.

* For one, Safari doesn’t even really look like an OS X application. It uses the dreaded Quicktime brushed-steel appearance theme, so it looks dark and dreary, which is in pretty stark contrast with the rest of the OS.

* Second, I love tabbed browsing. I got really used to that in Chimera. In MacOS X, (well, the mac in general) window management is a nusaince. Tabbed browsing solved many of my browser window headaches. I don’t know if I’ll be able to live without it.

Time will tell if I’ll be able to make the jump over to Safari. In the meantime, it does appear to be slightly faster and it renders several pages correctly that weren’t rendering correctly in Chimera.

dontlink.com

I just became aware of a cool blog that tracks “stupid linking polices” imposed across the ‘net. Telling someone they can’t link to your webpage is like saying they can’t use the ISBN number on your book, reference a specific paragraph in an article you wrote, or something else equally idiotic. The American Cancer Society even says that you can’t link to their page. I can see a middle school student having problems with this:

Student: In 1997, xx million people died of cancer worldwide.

Teacher: Excuse me, but where did you get this fact?

Student: I’m sorry, I can’t tell you, I would be violating their terms and conditions set forth on their website.

Teacher: Ever heard of “plagarism” young man?!? You get an F.

I’m linking to the law.com headlines page just to spite their Terms and Conditions. Ooops! Did I just link again? Sue me. 🙂

“Better to control and regulate human cloning than to try to ban it“

An article in The Economist about the ethical arguments of human cloning. I couldn’t agree more with the closing arguments:

To ban all cloning research, therapeutic as well as reproductive, as America proposes, is certainly a mistake… an indefinite ban on cloning research could have worse consequences than careful regulation… The goal of policy should be to ensure that research on cloning is conducted by those who know most about it, and about how to develop the technology, rather than by amateurs.

As the Transhumanists like to say, the future is coming whether you want it or not. It’s better to regulate and accept it than to fear it. I, personally, don’t want to live in a Do Androids Dream Electric Sheap future where people illegally obtain body clones and cybernetic modifcations underground from under-qualified doctors and experimentors.

Roger Ebert’s Review of Bowling for Columbine

Not only an insightful review, I found this last comment worthy of quoting:

The movie is rated R, so that the Columbine killers would have been protected from the “violent images,” mostly of themselves. The MPAA continues its policy of banning teenagers from those films they most need to see. What utopian world do the flywheels of the ratings board think they are protecting?

That’s pretty interesting coming from someone who is so important to the movie industry.

US Postal Service Experiments

A hilarous account of various attempts to mail non-traditional items through the Postal Service, including an unwrapped football, $20 bill in clear plastic case, and a small bag with a toy inside that yelled, “LET ME OUT!! HELP! LET ME OUT OF HERE!!”

God bless our postal carriers! 🙂

Bowling for Columbine

I saw Michael Moore’s latest flick at the local cinema last night. Good movie. GOOD movie. Go see it now.

The movie is done in a documentary style, and explores the question, “Why is America so violent?” Go see it now.

“When you buy drugs, you support terrorism…”

Seen the TV ads? They’ve been going strong since September 11th. I had a good laugh when I first saw them, I honestly thought it was a joke until I saw the “anti-drug” logo on the bottom on the screen. I thought: “How on Earth could drug money get into the hands people who blow up buildings? Do the militias (Montana Freemen, Arizona Vipers, etc.) run drug cartels or something? I thought Al Queda got their money from oil riches? This is the worst attempt at proganda I’ve ever witnessed!”

Well it all makes sense now. I just found an excerpt from the 2002 US Partiot Act that clears everything up:

criminals and terrorists use the same criminal networks and organizations to “Market” illegal-drugs; both participate in and have an interest in world criminal activity.

It goes on to explain that anyone or any organization that acts like a terrorist or terrorist organization can be treated as one under the Act.

So by redifining what terrorism is, that is how they make the stretch that buying drugs supports terrorism. Ahh, this is truely finely crafted propoganda!!! 🙂

I liked the ads better when they were more truthful: “doing drugs fries your brain.” :-/

Creative Commons

I just became aware of this project Creative Commons that is an effort to create a new type Copyright symbol, (CC). By putting (CC) on your work it means that you are explicitly telling others that it is OK to create certain types of derivative works of your original. Under current Copyright law, a work is assumed to be copyrighted whether you say so or not. This has created nightmares for Djs, musicians, artists, authors, etc. who want permission to include snippets or derivative works of other’s work in their own– Basically you need a lawyer to figure it out. (CC) sounds like a great idea. I think I’ll make all of my music (CC).

There’s a great flash animation here that explains everything.

Consumer Technology Bill of Rights

Good stuff! Link

OS X 10.2 Rocks

1) I have Visual Studio .NET on DVD. 2) My PC doesn’t have a DVD player. 3) My TiBook has a DVD player. 4) My TiBook has OS X 10.2 with smb support.

“Ah hah!” One small change to /etc/smb.conf:

[volumes]

path = /Volumes

read only = yes

comment = Mounted Volumes

Yeah, 10.2 rocks.