Randomness Part Huit

I found a bug in Firefox version 3, which I reported at Bugzilla. Really muffs up the visuals when you try to change text size on one page and it changes the text size on ALL pages. Horrific planning to implement a "new feature" at the expense of useability. Sad because it worked fine.

Adrian was sick today so we did not go skating or eat breakfast or any of the stuff. Instead, I was bored all day. That boy has more excuses than a politician in an election campaign. Still, I hope he feels better.

I went to Pep Boys and bought a steering wheel cover for my BMW X5 and also a registration and insurance card holder. Did I mention iDrive is from hell? I suppose, soon, I'll write a detailed missive as to why.

I printed out some pictures for Grandma from Flickr. I bought an Ecko shirt at the mall for a whopping $9.95 on sale. Disney Character Premier has jerseys on sale again -- Pluto IceHounds and Mickeys Marauders hockey jerseys and Stitch Invaders football jerseys all at $24.99 each but I didn't buy them. I might get the MM jersey because they had one in XL and XXL (both of which fit me in a hockey jersey) but the IceHounds were all size "M" and "L" -- didn't really pay much attention to the football jersey, though I do love Stitch.

I bought Maury a cool Wall*E present today. She doesn't like the movie, or even much animation. No accounting for taste, but since her nickname is "Mo" there was no choice but to acquire the Mo Robot Toy for her. Everyone should have a toy named after them. Even if they won't appreciate it.

I did laundry today. Walked around Office Depot where I bought one box of paper clips (vinyl coated) for my office.

If you're into Seti@Home or astronomy, please help save the Arecibo Observatory. If you enter your details you'll get a PDF with a letter all ready to sign and mail. Do it. I did.

Scooter didn't eat much yesterday or today. And she's having more trouble walking. I will keep a close eye on her. Poor kitty.

One thing I've always hated is DVD drives that adhere to the "region" code. You know where you can only play certain DVDs. Why do I care? I have a large collection of subway geek videos from the UK. I bought 'em and I want to watch them on my computer as opposed to my old LaserDisc player which doesn't check region codes. I've always flashed the firmware on my DVD drives on previous computers. Never was able to figure out on the Intel Mac. Until today. On this thread, you can read all about it. I want to give a special shout-out to Puma and the other great folks at RPC1.org who helped me figure out why I was not able to do it. Now it's done.

Various Stuff

1. No news on fraud.
2. iDrive sucks. It's the one thing about my new car that sucks ass. I really hate it more with each passing day. I like my car but not the iDrive disaster.
3. Chiropractor visit today was helpful.
4. StateFarm appears to be paying doctor's bills through July so need for lawyer is shrinking. Though someone ought to sue Progressive just 'cause they're lying assholes.
5. The "all business class" airline concept is dead. SilverJet, MaxJet, and Eos have all folded. The last one L'Avion was bought today by British Airways.
6. Continental Airlines and two employees are facing criminal charges in the fatal crash of Concorde in the year 2000. The French claim that a chunk of a Continental DC-10 hit the tyre, which burst and sent shrapnel into the Olympic engines causing the fire that brought the plane down. I really like Continental, but I'm not seeing how they'll be found innocent here. Another article is here in the NY Times (thanks Mr. Rice).
7. Fox News has done something that many other REPUTABLE organizations have fired people for. It has digitally altered photos of people who do not support their views and passed them off as otherwise. The full story on Media Matters. It was done on the decidedly un-fair and un-balanced "Fox and Friends" show. Fox News has sunk to a new low. On Wednesday, the network displayed photos that its editors had doctored of two New York Times employees -- reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Radcliffe. You can see the before-and-after evidence showing that Fox purposefully yellowed Steinberg's teeth, widened his nose and chin, and photo-shopped his ears stick out further.
8. I am going to switch to FF3 later today because the Noia Theme is finally available. I will, sadly, have to switch from Googlebar to Google Toolbar. And, worse, I will lose PrintImage but I am pleased that I can finally make the switch. Beta versions of Googlebar and Favicon Picker were found making me even happier.
9. I'm really hungry. I am no longer hungry, though what I ate was shite.
10. Good luck to Mom who had an especially bad day.
11. I went to Publix and Walgreens today because they'll be closed today.
12. I will take Grandma to breakfast tomorrow.

(EDIT: Edited 8 and added 10+)

Firefox and Politics

Virtually all Windows PCs ship with IE, giving it a 72% share of the browser market. Firefox, which is typically downloaded rather than factory installed, has a 17% market share, followed by Apple's Safari at 5%. This is a nice improvement over the old days when IE was well into the 90%. Firefox is slowly eating away at IE and that's a good thing.

Today Firefox are going to overthrow the world by trying to be the most downloaded software ever. You can get Firefox3 at http://www.getfirefox.com and installing it. I had many false starts and stops when the servers crashed under the load placed on them when it rolled out just past 10am PST -- the clock ending 24 hours later at 10am PST tomorrow.

I've installed at work on the PC without incident. Sadly, I'm going to have to hold out a few days on the Mac version at home. I've downloaded it as a show of support but due to banking issues with my bank, it will be a few weeks before I can use it. Firefox3's default skin/theme is horrible beyond measure and I recommend AeroFox which is very nice (it's what I've installed until Noia is upgraded soon to work with FF3. Both are by the same guy.) And don't forgot to install your dictionary if you want automatic spell checking.

I have an RGA from WD and am working with CBL on my drive issues still. I will issue a full report when I can, and will add a glowing recommendation of CBL but I'm holding back because there's still stuff going on (but nothing bad against CBL if you're in need of recovery services).

And, lastly, from Razzie this awesome video "Why I'm voting republican."




And, for the record, as stated in an earlier post, barring a surprise entry by Colin Powell, I will be voting for Barack Obama. If you vote republican, you're buying for more years of hell for our country. It's time for a change.

Firefox Rolls On

Just a quick entry to note that Firefox has crossed the 500 million download mark. That's a half-billion downloads. Or to put it in numbers 500,000,000 downloads and counting. I hope Bill Gates sleeps well tonight.

Thanks to Jose for helping me with php includes. Soon my site will perform better and be easier to update. I am removing most tables from the site. The original index page had about a dozen nested tables -- yech. The new one has two tables: one that's two columns and one row (it includes the sidebar navigation in one column and the content in the second). The other table is in the sidebar. That's the Sponsor's box and it includes a border. I wasn't sure how to make that work. I'm sure I'll get to it.

Firefox Continues To Cause Grief at Microsoft

In an ongoing, amazing development, Firefox is clobbering Internet Explorer. It's far from the end, but there are signs all is not well in the browser department in Redmond.

Information Week's 7 April 2008 issue has the market share report for Internet Explorer.

Month	% Share
Jan 2007	88.7
March 2007	86.0
October 2007	80.1
December 2007	77.7

This just pleases me to no end. Granted, it's not just Firefox but other browsers such as Opera and Safari. But any dent in Microsoft's armour is a good thing. Every time Bill gates has stress, I lose a little of mine. When he has a bad day, I have a good one. Between Firefox and the EU, perhaps he's developing an ulcer.... :)

Oh and let's not forget Open Office. I have no idea why it won't hit critical mass: it does everything Office does and more and it can read/write Office documents just fine. We've installed it at work with no issues. Though I will admit we use Word/Excel type documents only and haven't tried the other modules except to play some Powerpoint training slides. Try it at your company. It comes in all flavours Mac, PC, UNIX, etc.

The article makes some special points "... IT departments are moving to support [Firefox] in the enterprise Web apps. That should be less than reassuring to Redmond."

The article also talks about how IE8, forthcoming soon, will break a number of web applications even though it is supposedly more standards friendly. Many non-commercial sites, such as mine, don't even test to IE specifications because they simply aren't standards. Web standards are just that: standards. IE is a collection of crap that makes writing a site to be compliant a pain. I've made sure my corporate site works with IE -- that is you can view it -- but it looks and works much better in Firefox. It makes me angry I have to do even that.

In other amusing news, Microsoft is already readying the replacement to Vista. So despite their claims, it's obviously not going as well as they'd like. No spin can fix that except to a true moron.

Firefox Fan Ruins Microsoft's Day

Any bad day for Microsoft is a good day for me. The worse the day they have, the better my day. I hate 'em -- and not just 'cause Windoze sucks more than a high-priced hooker.My dislike for Microsoft started before Windows*, I believe.

So some fan of Firefox knew Internet Explorer 7 was coming. Yes, they did. Microsoft has been trumpeting IE7 for quite some time. It's going to be out any day if not already. Yes, some intrepid fan has taken the domain name www.ie7.com and the results are beautiful. Just click on over to see. Have a nice day, Bill Gates. Have a nice day. I bet he's seething. The lawyers are sure to come, but will be powerless in this case. Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy.





* In fact, it's all about that product "QuickBasic" for the Macintosh (long since gone) in which they engaged in false advertising, admitted it, and then removed the product rather than fix it. I'm not sure I should take the credit for them withdrawing the product, and I won't but I'm sure my complain to the Washington state attorney general's office back then might have had something to do with it. But the real reason I hate them, is they promised to refund my money and they never did.

Firefox Rocks Again

(This bit from 4-29-05)
Yeah, I've posted about Firefox before. However, today it reached an amazing milestone. 50 Million Downloads. Yeah, can you believe that?

For several years, IE has commanded in excess of 95% share of the web browser market despite the fact it sucks more than a nymphomaniac in heat (this applies across all platforms). All the other browsers combined shared the remaining 5%. Sad and paltry. The sole competition was Netscape which languished after AOL bought it. Mozilla was nice, but it was bloated to the point many people eschewed it.

Now Firefox, (version 1.0.4 is out now) in under a year of official release, is now over 8% of the market share alone and should be at 10% within a month or so. Their logo is "take back the web" and if you haven't at least tried it, do so. Not only will you be able to have a better browsing experience with far less security holes, but you will have the added side bonus of telling Microsoft to shove it up their collective arses.




The above image is a composite animated GIF I made using several of the better taglines. Steal it if you will.

Better yet (this edited bit added 5-12-05)
Microsoft's Share of Browser Market Slips: May 12, 2005 2:21 PM EDT

NEW YORK - Microsoft Corp.'s share of the U.S. browser market has slipped below 90 percent as the Firefox browser continues to grow in popularity, according to independent tracking by WebSideStory. Firefox had a 6.8 percent share as of April 29, an increase from 3.0 percent since WebSideStory began tracking Firefox separately in October. Microsoft's Internet Explorer share was 89 percent, a drop from 95 percent in June.

The figures are for all operating systems combined. On computers running Microsoft's Windows, Internet Explorer has a 91 percent share, down from 97 percent in June. Outside the United States, Germany is among the leading adopters of Firefox, with a 23 percent share, compared with 69 percent for Internet Explorer. "They just seem to be averse to Microsoft products and really interested relatively in these open-source products," said Geoff Johnston, a WebSideStory analyst.

Also (this edited bit from Cnet added 5-13-05)
IBM is encouraging its employees to use Firefox, aiding the open-source Web browser's quest to chip away at Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Computer Things That Vex Me

1. Firefox got rid of my favourite Mozilla feature. Mozilla had many flaws that Firefox does not, but it could give me a pop-up window when my favourite sites were updated. Many go months without a change. I miss that feature. Any way to make it happen on Firefox Mac?

2. I use MacLink Plus to convert WordPerfect Mac (OS-9) to MS Word for OS-X. For many documents the printed results are, well, just wrong. It's no secret that MS Word blows chunks, but there's no other alternative. I know it's not the conversion process because MS Word in OS-9 could read WP files and it couldn't print them correctly either. (The bug occurs in documents with columns or mixed justifications on one line).

3. I still can't convert my Claris Resolve documents to any OS-X spreadsheet easily. I can load them one at a time, save them in a very, very old Excel format and then load them into the new Excel and re-save them. The resulting document does preserve my formulae, but the formatting is mostly lost. Claris Resolve rocks. The thing is, AppleWorks spreadsheet is a stripped down version of Resolve (which is actually Informix Wingz* in disguise). So it should be easy, but it isn't.

4. I couldn't print from OS-9 and my driver wouldn't install in OS-9 because you have to boot in OS-9 to install the OS-9 version. Well, I got pissed today and found that if you do a "get info" on the file hidden inside the package, there's a check-box to force the program to boot in OS-9. It intalled and I can print again.

I claim another victory in the "one person at a time campaign" -- my friend Jan is very happy with his new Mac and is dumping his last remaining PC. He has thanked me numerous times and is wondering why he didn't listen to me years ago. Now, he's just converted his parents to the world of the Mac. Make a difference: find some one, and convert them. Save another soul from the dark side.

Lastly, if anyone has solutions to any of the computer issues above that vex me, I'd appreciate them.

-- E


* And Informix Wingz is a version of a very, very old PC program called "Smart" and while we're at it, Excel is derived from an old Apple II program called Microsoft Multiplan. True fact. Little known.

Boogers, Blogs, and Browsers

Don't you just hate when my subject line in unrelated to the contents of the post? Should I stop? I'll take opinions on that. I'm back to Firefox. Happily, it now works with my bank's site. They didn't fix Firefox, so they must have fixed my bank's site. That was why I went back to Mozilla, in case you cared. I like Firefox so much better. You should all switch Right Now.

And, better yet, Firefox now has an add-on like the Google-bar. So that's fixed too. Life is good in the browser world. Firefox will work with all platforms: Mac, Linux, and PC. So you've got no excuse.

-- Eric