One idiot's blog

/. Excesses

Can I moderate my own post down? Wasn't that damned funny.

If You Don't Have a Sun Server, You Don't Get It

You should, of course, be using a Mozilla browser (or a KHTML browser, such as Safari) to view the Web in general. That way, when you visit the Washington Post, you will notice that some time in the last day or two, they upgraded/changed their Web server. Why do you need these advanced browsers to know this important fact? Because they give you the Favicon, without requiring you to bookmark.

I don't remember what WP had before; either the Netscape logo or that thing that looked like a Calder mobile, but I don't know off the top of my head what server uses that. Well, now it's the Sun Microsystems logo.

They could, of course, make their own Favicon and put in in place of the Sun one, but they didn't do so in the past. They must be lazy.

Language Thug

"English doesn't borrow from other languages - English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar. "

--Author Unknown

Name Your Own Browser

Wow, it's like my prayers have been answered, in a weird way. Just two days after I complained about how "Firefox" was awkward to say, I see someone has created a Mozilla/Firewhatever plugin/extension to change the name of the browser! Seen on Slashdot.

Since I actually voiced said complaint, I should probably actually download it and start using it. Any suggestions for what I should call my browser?

Weird spam

Been getting some weird spam lately. One that I got today was a list of "top 10 Ways That Life Would Be Different If Microsoft Built Cars". That was it. No link to a v!agra site, no attachment, just the list, sent from an unfamiliar AOL account. Hell, I'd have passed it on as instructed if it weren't such an old joke.

Then, yesterday (well, Thursday, still yesterday as far as I'm concerned), I got an email from "[email protected]". Here, I'll just copy it:

From: "Essential Info" Add to Address Book
Subject: What You Didn't Know About Past Presidencies
Date: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 12:36:47 -0500

Make sure you listen to this if you missed it yesterday on the radio! It reveals things about some Presidencies that you need to know before voting this year! Go to: http://www.npr.org/dmg/dmg.html?prgCode=FA&showDate=24-Mar-2004&segNum=1&NPRMediaPref=WM

The displayed URL is a blue link, but the link appears to be the same as the text, and I don't see evidence of phishing techniques. So the nefarious link that that message is trying to send me to is.... a sound/video clip from NPR. On NPR's website.

I suppose this could simply be exactly what it appears to be, spam, but with the goal not of making money for the sender, but of trying to help the sender's preferred candidate get elected. But it just seems weird; the way it was written, it was like the sender knew me. I haven't gotten any Bush spam. I do listen to NPR. Does Google provide you a way to actually send these types of messages?

I clicked on the link on a linux box or two, but I didn't have the media player for it.

What's That Browser Called Again?

It's been almost two months, but I apparently still can't bring myself to call Mozilla's slimmed-down browser "Firefox" out loud. I'm sorry, I find it's just not a good name for a piece of software.

Commonalities

Today I found another blogger who programs in Python, loves classical music, speaks Korean (though, in his case, fluently), and started his blog on January 31st (albeit a year later than my first post).

Big News -- Girlfriend/Marriage (not my own)

Thank God for long compiles; if it weren't for them, I'd never have a chance to add new entries to my blog and keep my readers up to date.

My roommate has just asked a woman out. In Korean culture, especially Korean Christian culture, when both members are over 30 (the threshold may even be a bit lower), this is the same thing as asking her to marry him. It's just too fucking weird to me. They haven't even kissed, and they've already had an appointment with their deacon -- for what I don't know exactly, spiritual guidance or whatever -- wherein the deacon pressed them to get married by the end of the year (she's pushing 35).

I started this entry on March 12, thinking I would have something profound or enlightening to add to it, but it's old news now, so time to push it out.

An Embarrassment for Kerry

Recently, Bush staff and campaign members have been repeatedly relating a recent John Kerry quote. At some point, Kerry, in reference to the "war on terrorism", said, "I don't want to use that terminology".

None of the Bush supporters actually expects any of the electorate to change their vote because one candidate doesn't like to call it a "war", but there is still a good reason to bring that quote up as often as possible: Kerry's use of the term "terminology".

George W. Bush, long ridiculed for his use of the word "nucular", and such half-witted neologisms as "misunderestimate", sees a threat in the normally well-spoken Kerry. The Massachussetts senator, while known for seeming to flip-flop on war issues, has continually shown a firm grasp on English usage and grammar, a trait that is of increasing importance to American voters. But Kerry's use of the word "terminology" (which denotes a general set of words in a field, rather than an specific word) instead of the correct "term", has proven a stroke of luck for Republican strategists, who hope to reap an electoral windfall in an election between the President and the ordained Democratic presidential candidate.

However, while English usage is high on American voters' list of concerns, it's still the subject no one wants to talk about, a status once occupied by gay marriage. Thus, members of the Bush campaign staff (George Bush, Richard Cheney, and most of the rest of the cabinet) have been careful not to refer to the actual misuse, instead giving the quote a lot of air time while presenting it as an indication of Kerry's unconcern for national security.

"[Bush and his supporters] know Americans don't really believe that the thought expressed in that quote reflects poorly on Kerry," said Bob Schmertz, an armchair analyst at Charlestowne North. "What they want is for that term, 'terminology', to grate and grate against voters' ears until Kerry's use of English is brought down, in the public's mind, to Bush's level." This approach, if effective, would eliminate one of Kerry's key advantages and, if Bush himself manages to clean up his own act, make Bush actually appear stronger in this area, given American voters' short-lived memory, he said.

"The best thing the Kerry could do on this front would be to induce Bush to talk as often as possible about nuclear weapons. It is doubtful that Bush will be able to fix his pronunciation on that word. But when doing so, Kerry will have to remember not to correct his opponent, otherwise it will probably backfire."

More UnReal Expectations

Here's another gem from it, in the "Exhibit A" section, which covers subscription services I don't plan to subscribe to.

You understand and agree that cancellation of your subscription is your sole right and remedy with respect to any dispute with RN. This includes, but is not limited to [...]

Note the use of the word "any", without any attempt to restrict it to disputes regarding RN's delivery of services, billing, etc. So I could write a nice, hairy bit of code, put it on the Web under the GPL, and RealNetworks could grab it and put it in their DRM software, because I clicked in agreement that my only recourse in *any* dispute with them is to cancel my subscription to their service (which I would never get, anyway).

I also printed out the HTML version of the license agreement. It's 12 pages.

A Real Outrage

I was just reading through the license agreement for Real Media Player 10 beta. I had gotten through items 1-15, grudgingly accepting everything I read, all the stuff about not circumventing the DRM, not using any of the plugin components in any way except in Real Player itself, indemnifying Real Networks for this and that, etc., etc. But when I got to the arbitration and jurisdiction part, I just couldn't stand it.

a) Arbitration & Jurisdiction. You and RN agree that the exclusive remedy for all disputes and claims relating in any way to, or arising out of, this Agreement, the Software or Services, or your use of the Software or Services shall be final and binding arbitration. The arbitration shall be conducted under the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association ("AAA") and AAA's Supplementary Procedures for Consumer Related Disputes ("AAA Consumer Rules"). The arbitration shall take place in the State of Washington.

So if Real Networks wants to sue me for putting content I downloaded with their software onto my company intranet, they can make me fly to Washington (State, that is; D.C. I could handle) and I have no access to the Federal, State or Local court system to safeguard my rights? Do I get any say in who the arbiter (or whatever they're called) is?

The bit about arbitration goes on to say that I can't join in a class-action lawsuit, and that no prior judgements in arbitration cases can be used or referred to (though surely their lawyers will have access to all that information and be better able to hone their strategies).

Why don't they just add a clause saying "you agree to bend over and let yourself be raped by a RealNetworks employee if he finds you attractive, and you may not call the police or otherwise attempt to prevent him from fulfilling his desires." Most people don't read the licenses, and would click "I Agree" anyway.

The Good With the Bad

Scriptygoddess linked to this 404 Handler (which requires PHP). I don't need a 404 handler, but I noticed one point about this site worthy of praise, and one worthy of a sarcastic comment, both in the trailer of the page (presumably on every page in the site). The good part is the first sentence: "Copyright 1999-2004 [email protected] (take off mypants to email me)". The guy must have carefully crafted his domain name just so he could make that little pun, but more power to him. My sarcastic comment is about the second line, "This page looks best in every browser." I would change it to "This page looks lame in every browser." ESR's "any browser" homepage is looking a lot better than when I first saw him advertising his page as W3C-compliant or whatever he was doing, but it's still nothing to shout about. I don't think I've ever seen a well-designed site that crows about being viewable with any browser on the front page, although some sites (the touchy-feely, open-sourcey ones mostly) try very, very hard and get pretty close AFAICT.

OMFGanesh

I was just leafing through my freshly arrived Newsweek, and I was reading the feature on the South Asians making waves in the U.S. Norah Jones... is the daughter of Ravi Shankar!!!

Why haven't I heard this before? And when's she gonna do some Indian music, like the Beatles did?

Feel the Love

When a blogger reads this blog entry from Wil Wheaton, wherein a hot chick, sight unseen, walks by him and says, "I love your website", he (said blogger) is hit with two strong emotions: one, self-satisfaction. This blogging, it is indeed a worthwhile thing. Chicks dig it. And two, jealousy. Hey, Wil Wheaton gets kudos, but what about ME? Jealousy always wins, of course. But I'm going to try to be bigger than that, and enjoy that sense of validation. But it would be so much better if that praise were for me.

So how about it, dear readers? How about a little love for your favorite Idiot?

호랑이에 대해서 말하면...

The above is what I remember as the Korean equivalent of "speak of the devil".

Just last night as I was going to bed, I was thinking about the time when my sisters and I were all working on a joint e-mail to one of my sister's e-mail boyfriends, and I, like an idiot, forgot I was editing my text in Mozilla and not pico or emacs, and hit Ctrl+W to do whatever it was I wanted it to do. I don't remember what I was trying to do -- clearly it was either to search for a word or to cut the highlighted portion of the text, and NOT to make the browser window that contained our half-hour's worth of creative labor vanish. The funny part about that incident was, one of my sisters said, "well, Bob's a computer whiz, he'll figure out how to recover it". Ummm... no. Well anyway, I was thinking about that incident, and that made me think, as I have often thought before, "you know, browsers should really have a prompt that warns you before closing a window if you have typed something in it."

Today, I find out the upcoming version of the Epiphany web browser for GNOME has a prompt that warns you before closing a window if you have typed something in it. This is a Good Thing. Would be nice if the Mozilla folks would do that.

Attention, Neighbor

I regret to inform you that Howard Dean has dropped out of the presidential race for 2004. Now, he may well run again in 2008, if this election turns out badly, but I'm pretty sure your Howard Dean yard signs will have worn out by then, so you might as well take them down, or possibly replace them with signs for someone who is actually still in the race.

Just a suggestion, but hey, I don't claim to fully live in reality either.

Compile/test cycle

I'm doing the usual edit/compile/test cycle, so while stuff is compiling, I'll do some updates.

I'm going to get farmed out to Suitland for 3 months. This is pretty unequivocally a Bad Thing. I'll be helping with bug fixes for a hacked-up, bastardized version of what we call the Unix Viewer.

No Career Advancement

We call this thing the Unix Viewer because we also have a Windows Viewer. Of course, everyone wants the Windows Viewer, because anything on Windows is automatically easier and friendlier than anything that could possibly be created for Unix, and Bill Gates and the Bush administration are part of an insidious conspiracy to kill Unix by spreading these lies and putting fluorine in our water, Bush doesn't drink water from the tap, nosirree, and it's not because of the lead, either, and meanwhile SCO and IBM...

Oh, sorry. The Unix viewer. Right. Ahem. No one these days really buys the Unix viewer, and my manager has indicated that he wants to stop supporting it completely. So I get to spend 3 months working on not merely a product that has no future at our company, but a forked, customized version at that.

"Well, you'll be honing your skills in whatever technology the Unix Viewer is using, right?" Motif, baby. I can recognize a Motif widget from 200 yards, which is about as close as I'd prefer to get to one. That's one ugly-ass toolkit. Call it "the Unix standard" all you want, I think very few people these days, even in the commercial world, are starting any new projects with Motif. What are they using? I don't know... Java, probably mostly, Tk, and I believe it's possible to use both GTK and Qt for proprietary software. It certainly would be nice to get better at any of those -- well, with the possible exception of Tk, which is even uglier than Motif under Unix. But no, I'm going to become the local expert in Motif, for the 6 more months that we maintain this product, and then, whoops, there go 6 months and part of my brain used up, for nothing, while the CORBA guys get better and better at CORBA and the system that will live on.

More Crap

This new place is about twice as far away from home as my regular work place. Mind you, for this area, I live ridiculously close to work, so it's not going to make my commute more than a half hour. That is, the driving part of the commute. I haven't been there, but I understand that the parking lots out there are the size of Delaware, and if you don't get there early (which I won't), it makes a huge difference in how far you have to walk. What's more, because of the New World Order, there are only one or two doors you can use to enter the building, so you have to walk another mile and a half once inside. And of course, I won't have my dual-boot computer, and God knows what else I'll have to deal with for being away from my home station.

Bleaaahhhh. I've actually been writing this post for two days, so I'm just going to put it up now.

MT Bug?

Of course, I'm still running Movable Type 2.64, and there's a 2.661 out, as well as a 3.0 alpha, but anyway I seem to have found a bug in it. If you put HTML in a comment, and you break your tag up into two separate lines, it closes off that tag at the end of the first line. So if I enter a comment like:

Try <a
href="http://slashdot.org/">Zoloft</a>

Then the HTML that will be generated will actually be

Try <a />
href="http://slashdot.org/">Zoloft</a>

and of course the link won't work.

At which point the astute reader would ask, "well, why are you allowing HTML in your comments anyway? The only people who ever post comments are spammers and you with your stupid responses to them." To which I respond, "Shut up! It's my blog, MINE, MINE, MINE!"

This post will serve primarily to provide a place to try testing comments.

More Bad Websites

You'd think a guy who knows about the PNG image format would be cool enough to make sure his personal/professional home page works in Mozilla. You know you're in trouble when you see:

IE = document.all ? 1:0;
NN = document.layers ? 1:0;

followed shortly by

myLayer[0]=(NN) ? document.MFX0 : document.all.MFX0.style;

Sigh. Can't even find out how to contact him, so he'll just have to suffer ridicule on my blog. Wonder if I can reach him through this link.

Abusrd Ethics

Yay! My company finally has an ethics policy!

OK, on to the serious stuff. After the preamble about why we need one, it has the list of shalt-nots. The first one I see that I have a problem with is:

• Seek personal advantage from any person or company through your work functions, duties or responsibilities;

OK, what is "personal advantage"? Does that mean I can't, say, make friends with my co-workers and meet them outside work for ultimate? I know that's not an obvious financial advantage, but it would most likely improve the quality of my life.

I'm sure I could come up with more examples of acts that should be perfectly reasonable and not harmful to the company or to shareholders that would vioate this absurdly broad and vague rule, but I don't feel like spending a long time on this post today :-)

IE slammed in WP

Rob Pegoraro gives one of the most even-handed (read, "saying what I want him to say") treatment of the latest Windows-based bugaboo to fear in this Washington Post article. Notable quote: "(I've yet to see any reports of Mac or Linux browser hijacks.)"; also, he takes the time to say that one way to avoid the Internet Explorer maladies is, duh, don't use IE, and he recommends (what else) Mozilla, as well as Firebird^H^H^H^Hfox.