Author: dssstrkl

Yeah, I Did That

OK, I can’t really take that much credit at this point, but yeah, I did that:

Its funny, because the baby’s so little at 13 weeks that we still can’t see the sex, which is why we’re still calling him/her Jelly Bean, but there’s already so much personality evident. The Bean’s in the same position in all of these pictures because s/he refused to move. S/he was just so comfy chilling in there that s/he couldn’t be bothered to cooperate. Eventually we just got this:

No pictures, please!

This kid likes great music (ie the music Claudia and I like), doesn’t mind scary movies and chills like that:

I’m in exactly the same position right now, except with a laptop. Seriously, just how cool is that?

politics science

Leland Yee Supports Shark Extinction

Post author By dssstrkl
Post date February 14, 2011
No Comments on Leland Yee Supports Shark Extinction

I’ve never mentioned it here, but I’ve always had a thing for sharks. There’s just a certain something about them that I’ve always been attracted to. Their basic shape is so perfectly suited to their environment that its remained fairly constant for tens of millions of years. Their senses, behaviors, their massive variety, hell, even the fact that some of the few fish that have live births (as opposed to laying eggs) are sharks is just cool!

As you might gather, I find the practice of finning sharks for shark fin soup to be absolutely reprehensible. For those who don’t know or can’t be bothered to click the link, finning is the practice of “fishing” where sharks are caught and, while still alive, have their fins cut off and are then thrown overboard where the shark then suffocates and dies. This is only because shark meat isn’t nearly as valuable as the fins, so according to supply and demand, the limited space on board the fishing vessel is saved for the most valuable product.

While many countries regulate shark finning and have banned the practice of throwing the sharks overboard, these regulations are rarely, if ever, enforced. Most fishing vessels arrive in port with a far higher fin to carcass ratio than the laws allow, but no one cares. This may not seem that important, but last year, over 70 million sharks were killed for their fins.

Today (14 Feb., 2011), two California legislators have proposed a statewide ban on the sale of shark fins. Finning is already illegal in the US, as are imports of fins without the rest of the carcass. Despite that, shark fin soup is still readily available and there is a lucrative black market for fins. Banning the final product ends that and should have a major impact on the overall market.

However, CA state Senator Leland Yee has decided that this proposed law is an attack on Chinese culture and cuisine.

“I am very concerned with the plight of many shark species and the illegal shark fining trade. That is why I support the federal law that bans the practice of killing sharks only for their fins and I would support state legislation to strengthen it. I would also support legislation to create greater penalties for and enforcement of illegally killing sharks or selling any product from an endangered species.

However, the proposed state law to ban all shark fins from consumption – regardless of species or how they were fished or harvested – is the wrong approach and an unfair attack on Asian culture and cuisine. Some sharks are well-populated and many can and should be sustainably fished.

Unfortunately, this proposal is just the latest assault on Asian cultural cuisine. Last week, we had to fight a proposal at the California Fish and Game Commission that would have banned frog and turtle consumption. I had to pass legislation last year just to allow for the production of Asian rice noodles, and similar bills were needed to allow for Korean rice cakes. There have also been previous efforts to end live food markets, roasted duck, and several other cultural staples.

Rather than launch just another attack on Asian American culture, the proponents of the ban on shark fin soup should work with us to strengthen conservation efforts.”

— Statement from Yee’s office

To which I call bullshit. No one is calling on a ban of Chinese culture. No one is calling for the state to come in and close Chinese restaurants. The fact is that current conservation efforts have failed. 20 species of shark are on the Endangered Species list, tens of millions of top-level predators with a low reproductive rate are being removed from the ecosystem every year and the sale of fin soup is booming.

This isn’t about anything other than preventing the extinction of amazing animals that have been on this plant since before the dinosaurs. No species can withstand the immense pressure that overfishing places on it. We are causing this, so its up to us to stop before its too late. The fact that Leland Yee would immediately turn this straightforward conservation law into a racist attack by the government on a vulnerable minority says a lot about him.

* It should be noted that the bill was proposed by Assemblymen Paul Fong, who is of Chinese decent, and Jared Huffman, a native of Macau.

Yee’s opposition to a shark fin soup ban has nothing to with Chinese culture, nor with defending people against racism. It has everything to do with the businesses who give him money worried that they’re going to lose a profitable item. That is the kind of politician that Leland Yee is. He doesn’t give a shit about the environment, he’s in the pocket of monied special interests and is willing to disguise that by using ugly race politics.

** It should also be noted that Yee was behind California’s unconstitutional video game ban that was similar to bans that other states had enacted and which were all later struck down by the courts. Yee’s bill, when it was struck down, cost the state $324,000 in legal fees to the ESRB, in addition to its own costs.

Uncategorized

Fun Political Comment

As for the Republicans — how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead.

Ok, I totally stole that from PZ, but its a pretty awesome quote from HP Lovecraft, who despite being a fairly pathological bigot for most of his life, was completely spot on here. The quote’s from August 1936, Letter to C.L. Moore, August 1936 quoted in “H.P. Lovecraft, a Life” by S.T. Joshi, p. 574.

personal politics stoopid

Compromise

The problem with analyses like this one is that they’re missing a fundamental point:

Their answer was pretty emphatic: 78% of respondents said they thought Republicans should compromise, while 15% thought they should stick to their positions. That 78% is up from 74% two weeks earlier. When the same question is asked about Democrats, 76% say they should compromise with 17% saying they should stick to their guns.

This is where Rachel misses the boat. When 78% of poll respondents answer that Republicans should compromise and Republicans respond with “Hell, no!”, there’s a clear advantage for Democrats to say they’re open to compromise.

This seems like Politics 101 to me, and I’m a little surprised Rachel took aim at Democrats for smart messaging. Usually they’re dumb about it, but they got this one right.

When polls say that people want the parties to compromise with each other, that’s exactly what they want. The problem is both Democrats and Republicans don’t use the regular definition of “compromise.”

Both parties define “compromise” as we define “capitulate.”

The Republicans refuse to capitulate to the Democrats, while the Democrats are all too willing to capitulate to the Republicans. Just look at health care, where the Democrats started with a weak position and then gave up point after point and ended up with a corporate giveaway. Then consider the wars, offshore oil drilling, Social Security, the economy and pretty much every other issue that Democratic voters care about, and its little wonder why the Democrats are going to lose on Tuesday.

The only problem is that the only other option are the Republicans, and American voters are too stupid to understand what a teabagger-controlled Congress will mean.

Apple stoopid

On Readability

While most of the ink spilled about WWDC yesterday was about iPhone 4 and iOS, the things that interested me most were Safari 5 and Xcode 4. This is mainly because I’ve been running iOS 4 since April and there really wasn’t anything new for me there and because I’m perfectly happy with my 3GS until iPhone 5 comes out. This happiness is due in no small part because my early upgrade “discount” would make it cost $399 for me instead of the $199 for the real upgrade discount. Oh the reality of wireless economics, how they mock me. <faux outrage> How dare AT&T want to make the money that they spent on my subsidy back! </faux outrage> i think that everything that needs to be said about iPhone/iOS 4 has been said, and been said well.

Anyway, as cool as Xcode 4 is, I have to wait for it along with all the other losers who didn’t go to WWDC, which leaves me to play with Safari 5. Besides extension support and enhanced HTML5-ness, the big thing is Reader. Like everything Apple does, Reader has spawned a rather stupid controversy among people who should know better. In a nutshell, what Reader does is simple: It makes irritatingly designed websites nice and easy to read.

Much has been made over the fact that Apple says that Reader “removes annoying ads and other visual distractions from online articles.” The howling goes from hypocrisy to a weapon of mass destruction against the web. People have been complaining about adblockers for years, screaming about how they’ll bring the end of ad-supported media. This movement is so strong that Block Firefox (remember them?) is gone and blockfirefox.com is now a parked ad site.

I’m going to take the other viewpoint that adblockers aren’t the problem. In fact I feel that ads and multi-page stories themselves aren’t the problem. The problem is exactly as Apple says it: annoying ads, to which I’ll add annoying websites that break posts onto multiple pages just to get more ad views. There are ways to do advertising that are OK. There are stories that make sense as multiple pages (like any of John Siracusa’s epic OS X reviews or other long article).

The problem is that way too many websites seem to feel that the content gets in the way of advertising. Ads that fold over the entire windows, keywords that get turned into ads that popup when you mouse over them, flash ads that play automatically, ads you have to watch before you can go to the story you want to read, ads placed into the column of text you’re trying to read, oddly-shaped text columns wrapped around the ads, etc. The other issue is with stories that get broken into multiple pages just to get more pageviews. How many times have you clicked onto the third page of a story only to find that there’s only a sentence or two there? What, they couldn’t fit that last sentence onto the second page? Oh, or when they include a few paragraphs from the previous page? That’s always fun. And the excuse that people don’t like to or don’t know to scroll is stupid. Its 2010, we’ve been scrolling on the web for over 15 years now.

Just look at this Computerworld article for an example. All of those ads for five paragraphs of text and a screenshot that in all likelihood that took less than five minutes to take, crop and upload. Scroll down and look at all of the crap next to and beneath the text. Also note that Reader doesn’t see that story as as story. It thinks that its a link page, so it doesn’t display the Reader button. That alone speaks volume.

“But what about the bandwidth? That costs money!”

Yeah sure, bandwidth isn’t free, but the content I wanted to look at weighs in at 36.8kB, including the image. That’s a whole kB more than the 35kB Google Analytics javascript that got called when I loaded the page. Now, I am aware that serving even text can add up, but let’s keep things in perspective.

After all that, here’s what people are afraid of. Random Mac user is surfing the web as usual, going to all her favorite sites, but using Reader to avoid the ads on each one, thereby depriving the site of its desperately needed ad revenue. Here’s the reality: Safari user goes to a site, gets pissed off at all the crap that makes it harder to read the content that they came to see that they click Reader simply to make their blood pressure go down.

When Apple says that they included Reader to combat annoying ads, that’s exactly true. Reader is not an assault on the ad-supported web, its an assault on shitty, user-hostile web design. If websites want not to be harmed by this, stop annoying people to the point where they’ll go to the trouble to click a button that magically makes it better.

Postscript

There will always be people who hate and are offended by all ads. These people tend to have the same characteristics of freetards (and now that I think about it, likely are freetards) and should just be ignored. Websites gotta make money, and ads help pay for it. Don’t like it? Buy a fucking subscription/pro account/whatever.

I also didn’t get into the security vulnerabilities and privacy issues that ads can introduce. Installing a flash blocker, disallowing third-party cookies and hacking your /etc/hosts file to lock out ad networks that like to silently install tracking cookies may be things that advertisers don’t like, but fuck them, I get to decide what goes on my machine, not them. There’s a reason why cops need a warrant to install a GPS tracker on my car, so why should Google or whoever get to do the same thing on my browser for free?

Adobe Apple iPhone Mac

Deja Vu

Post author By dssstrkl
Post date May 1, 2010
No Comments on Deja Vu

Recently. I’ve found the ~~incessant screaming~~ debate about and between Apple and its ban on the as-yet nonexistent mobile Flash player to be somewhat familiar. At first, I thought that it was just because its been going in since 2007 with the original iPhone announcement sans Flash. But no, we’ve had this exact same debate before, in the very recent past. In fact, its so recent, I’m surprised that it took this long for anyone to bring it back up.

Flash isn’t the first major third-party format that Apple has refused to bundle with its mobile devices. Years ago, when the only iThing was the scrollwheel iPod, we had another debate that sounded pretty similar to the one we’re having today. All you have to do is take Flash and Adobe, and replace them with WMA and Microsoft. Oh, and you can replace ~~wannabe iPhone~~ Flash developers with Real, Napster, Sandisk, Rio and a host of other names that no one gives a shit about anymore.

Back in 2003-2006, there were a host of Microsoft-supported players and services that were based on WMA. In 2004, Microsoft introduced Plays for Sure with the promise that this huge ecosystem of devices, services and software would all, well, play for sure. The same people who today are complaining about Apple’s draconian control over its own platform are the same ones who were predicting that the iPod would suffer the same fate that the Mac did in the 90’s. (Ironically, these same people are now making the same prediction about iPhone OS devices vs Android, using the same flawed reasoning.)

Back then, there was a constant barrage of stories about how the iPod’s hardware could decode WMA, but Apple locked it down for their own (evil?) purposes. Or the fact that if some hapless Windows user ripped their CDs with Windows Media Player, they’d be confused and frustrated when they wouldn’t be able to transfer those tracks to their new iPod. Even though iTunes for Windows is able to transcode WMA files to MP3 or AAC. Of course, in 2006, Microsoft killed Plays for Sure when it introduced Zune, using Apple’s iPod (and later iPhone) model.

Oh, and about AAC. Did you know that it just isn’t that much better than WMA? Kinda sounds like the argument that HTML5 can’t replace Flash because it doesn’t do everything that Flash does. Of course those things involve stuff like slapping DRM on streaming video or installing ~~spyware~~ Flash cookies that advertisers can use to track you across multiple websites (and that you can’t remove or prevent without messing with the settings of a folder buried in your /Library folder. Something no normal user would ever even find out about, let alone do.)

Am I saying that the Flash/iPhone OS situation is exactly like the WMA/iPod issue? Of course not. But they are analogous. Both involve Apple exerting control over its platform in the face of intense pressure from industry and industry watchers. But then, as now, Apple argued that it was under no obligation to support its competitors’ technology at the expense of its own and of the open standards that it was supporting (MP3 and AAC then and HTML5, h.264 and Javascript now). Then, as now, people accused Apple of acting as a monopolist that should be forced to open up by the government, even though Apple has done nothing to prevent competitors from selling competing MP3 players.

The big difference between now and then is that the iPod was always an embedded device, whereas iPhone OS devices are computers. There wasn’t ever any real expectation that iPods would do anything other than media. The expectations of iPhones and iPads are much, much greater. I have to assume that most of these expectations are from a tiny minority of iPhone OS users, but they tend to be both vocal and influential.

I’m certain that Apple is eventually going to have to cede more of its control over the platform in the platform. In the meantime, Apple will be working to move the industry away from proprietary technology that it doesn’t control to open technology that no one controls.

Postscript

I’m not arguing that no one but Apple should have or use proprietary tech, or that Apple feels that way. Windows Phone 7 is completely proprietary to Microsoft, as is Blackberry OS to RIM, and the good parts of Android (and its web apps) are to Google. This is not a bad thing. I’m just arguing that its a good idea for any company to try to control its own destiny as much as possible. And that technologies that are cross-platform should not be owned by anyone, but controlled by everyone. Apple likes the web because it can do whatever it wants to advance the state of the art, and can adopt what others have done, at will. If this wasn’t so, then why would Apple ever have allowed such a powerful tool as WebKit into its competitors’ hands?

Adobe is as guilty of this as much as Apple, if not more so, since Apple isn’t dictating what Adobe should do with Flash, other than make it run well on Macs. People have questioned why Adobe cares so much about Flash, since it gives Flash player away for free, and makes all of its money on creative tools. Well, the answer for that should be obvious. Despite the claim that Flash is open, that’s not entirely true. Most of Flash is open, but one crucial part is not: DRM. No Flash player other than Adobe’s can use DRM Flash content. Guess who licenses that DRM to media companies? That’s right: Adobe.

Adobe desperately wants Flash on iThings so it can make money licensing Flash DRM to companies that want to stream protected video to those same iThings. I mean, how many sales of CS5 is Adobe really going to lose because Flash apps are now banned? This was never about anyone but Adobe.

Uncategorized

Has Apple Forgotten the Mac? Umm, No.

Post author By dssstrkl
Post date April 13, 2010
No Comments on Has Apple Forgotten the Mac? Umm, No.

Yay, more dumbassery from Gene Steinberg. Its yet another overly-long whine fest about how Apple is way too focused on one cash cow to the detriment of the other. I’m going to save myself the aneurysm and just respond inline.

You know that sales of new Macs are increasing at a speedy pace, generally faster than the rest of the PC industry. You also know that Apple’s mobile platform has long since surpassed the Mac in terms of total user base. With 80 million and counting, against roughly 30 million folks owning Macs, you might see reason for Apple to care less about the computing platform that made it famous

Granted, I’m sure there’s a bit more profit margin in a 64GB 3G iPad than an entry-level Mac Mini, but let’s face it: Apple makes an assload of money from selling Macs, and most of the Macs they sell are nice, profitable Macbooks. Hell, after today’s refresh, I’m saving all my pennies for a new top of the line Core i7 15″ Macbook Pro. You can’t tell me that Apple cares less about that than the 16GB 3GS I bought or the 32GB iPad I plan to buy this summer.

Also consider how Apple has promoted new Mac hardware. Pretty much all recent upgrades have been announced with simple press releases, even the iMac, said to be the hottest desktop computer in years. At the same time, Apple’s mobile platform and even the iPod both earn special media events, where the press is invited to San Francisco or Apple’s campus in Cupertino to get personal treatment and even time to get hands-on experience with the new hardware.

The new Pros got a chipset upgrade. Its a big deal for me, since I’m rocking a first-gen Core Duo Macbook Pro from 2006. One of the reasons I buy Macs is their lasting power. But get real, a CPU revision that everyone knew was coming doesn’t warrant a special event, especially not five days after the last one. Besides, its not like Apple doesn’t hold a week-long party to get everyone acquainted with its new cats.

All right, it’s true that new versions of the Mac OS also get the full treatment. Then again, special demonstrations plus lots of WWDC sessions are essential to help developers learn about new features and updates to Apple’s development environment. No way to avoid that.

So what are bitching about? Snowy isn’t even a year old and Leopard got two WWDCs.

Now in the wake of the unveiling of iPhone 4.0, there are reports that Apple has put off Mac OS 10.7 in order to allocate more developers to work on the mobile platform upgrade. Of course, it’s not that anyone outside of Apple can know for sure. There may be loads of reasons for a presumed delay, if one exists, and perhaps it’s just to give Apple more time to devise a load of sexy new features and make sure they are fully integrated into the existing OS structure.

Dude, 10.6 came out on August 29, 2009. Today is April 13, 2010. Snow Leopard is less than seven months old. OS X releases tend to hang around for 18-24 months, so fucking RELAX! This year’s WWDC will most likely focus on Snowy, iPhone OS 4 and iPad. I’m expecting that 10.7 LOLcat is going to include a bunch of UIKit, which will unify some OS X conventions between platforms. Remember, the iPhone OS and the Mac OS are both based on the same underlying OS. Hell, 10.6 already has a bunch of iPhone tech in it.

It’s not as if you actually need a new version of Mac OS X. Snow Leopard is still pretty new in the scheme of things, and the vast majority of apps still don’t support the most important new features, such as better performance with multicore processors and harnessing the power of advanced graphics chips.

That’s why new hardware always comes with custom OS builds that take advantage of new hardware. Always, at least since I bought my first New World Mac (12″ Powerbook that’s still alive and well) in 2002. Unless you’re arguing that Apple should release a general update that gives my 2006 laptop support for features it doesn’t now, nor will ever have?

Even the enhanced 64-bit support hasn’t lit much of a fire when it comes to companies who build the software that takes best advantage of accessing more system memory. In the forthcoming Adobe’s Creative Suite 5, out of over a dozen apps in the various production packages, only three —Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects — are listed as providing 64-bit support. Then again, I doubt Adobe could offer any reasonable excuse if these high-power apps didn’t gain that capability with this revision, since the Mac was bypassed in CS4. At that time, by the way, Adobe’s excuse was that Apple just completed its Intel migration, and thus there wasn’t enough time to take advantage of Apple’s revised development tools. Then again, Adobe does a lot of cross-platform stuff, and didn’t Steve Jobs poke holes into that approach because he regards the results as “sub-standard”?

Yeah, sure. Because its not like Apple hasn’t been begging Adobe and Microsoft to use Cocoa since 1998 or anything. Neither company supported native Intel hardware until they had to, and neither made the switch to Cocoa until Apple killed 64-bit Carbon. That’s hardly Apple’s fault. As for Adobe’s cross-platform stance: CS4 is ass on both Windows and OS X. It ignores UI conventions for both platforms in favor of its own. It ignores standard OS key commands on both platforms. Adobe’s security is crap and it makes updates (and installation) far more difficult than they should be. And people wonder why Apple doesn’t want Adobe to have any control over the iPhone platform.

When it comes to Mac hardware, it’s not as if speed bump upgrades have been coming at a fever pitch. On the other hand, Tuesday morning’s MacBook Pro upgrade — a step that vindicates the pithy email from Steve Jobs telling a customer not to worry about the long delay since the last refresh of this model — does indicate that Apple is still in the business of delivering compelling upgrades.

Why would Apple update hardware at a “fever pitch?” That wouldn’t make people nervous about buying Macs because something new is always around the corner or anything. Kinda like how Droid owners who paid $200 weren’t at all pissed about the Nexus One or the fact that the Droid could be had at Amazon for $50 two months later? And the rumors that Intel was having trouble delivering Arrandale and Clarksfield chips couldn’t possibly be true, especially considering the lack of such chips showing up elsewhere?

Although the announcement arrived in press release form, in keeping with their recent posture, it does offer the promise of up to 50% faster performance. The graphic chip dilemma, the response to the conflict with NVIDIA and Intel over the former’s license to build integrated graphics for the latter, was resolved in possibly a less satisfactory fashion. Basic graphics are now handled by an Intel HD Graphics chip, with the option of using the discrete NVIDIA GT 330M when you need superior performance.

So what was Apple supposed to do about that? Intel changed its licensing scheme, which forced crappy Intel integrated graphics on everyone using Core iX chipsets. Apple did exactly what everyone expected them to, which was pretty much the only thing they could have done.

As with the previous model, pricing for the cheapest MacBook Pro starts at $1,199. The 17-inch version, the only one containing an ExpressCard/34 slot, lists for $2,299. Battery life is estimated at eight to nine hours, due to the greater power efficiencies of the new parts.

I have an expresscard in my port. Its a card reader for my SD cards. Just for some perspective, I tend to spend between $2000-$2500 on my laptops, which last me for around four years. I expect to spend around $2200 on my next machine. In 2002, that $2500 got me a 12″ Powerbook with a 32GB HDD, 640MB RAM and 866MHz PPC chip. This year, $2200 will get me a 15″ Macbook Pro with a 2.66 Core i7, 4GB RAM and a 500GB HDD. Plus all the extra goodies that unibodies have. Not too shabby.

Now as to the OS itself, remember that Apple exists to make a profit, not to upgrade its personal computer operating system on a fixed timeframe. That upgrades comes when they decide that they can provide value in a new version, perhaps sell lots of upgrades and, more to the point, push out more Macs that take better advantage of the new features. If sales are moving along at a good clip, and Mac users aren’t filling Apple’s Feedback pages with loads of complaints about a long-in-the-tooth operating system, I suppose there’s no real incentive for them to move forward any faster.

It. Has. Been. SEVEN MONTHS. Since Snow Leopard shipped. Apple ships new major OS releases when it has enough new APIs ready and in good enough shape for public consumption. Developers are still learning how to use the goodies in 10.6. I can just imagine the howls from everybody if Apple tried to ship 10.7 this year. “Apple’s screwing users for charging for a new OS again!” “Apple’s screwing developers be dumping too much on them!”

Then again, maybe the rumors about a delay in 10.7 are just that — rumors. Maybe Apple is working full steam ahead on getting the new version out according to an internal timetable that, of course, we know nothing about. Yes, it’s true Apple delayed Leopard’s arrival to finish the first iPhone OS, but don’t assume history is about to repeat itself.

Rational people shouldn’t be expecting to hear anything about 10.7 until next year. Even if we do hear about 10.7 at this WWDC, it’ll likely involve a vaporware presentation about new major features, but there won’t be any beta or new code. 10.7 won’t be “late” at all, even if there’s no new information at all this year. While I’m at it, when’s Windows 8 shipping?

iPhone personal stoopid

Opera Mini

I tried Opera Mini for about an hour yesterday and deleted it after. Despite what a lot of reviews say, its a terrible, terrible browser. I can only assume that the great reviews on the popular sites are only testing Opera on their own popular sites and other popular sites that already exist in Opera’s server cache.

The problem is, I like to go to many sites that aren’t very popular and aren’t caches by Opera. In these cases, OM renders much slower than Safari and it looks like shit. The text is illegible and the CSS is totally broken.

For example, here’s this blog in Safari:

And again in Opera:

Completely asstastic. I have no idea why people were excited about this trash. In addition to the horrible rendering, its clear that Opera isn’t a real iPhone app. It has serious usability issues beyond its primary function. When scrolling, there’s no momentum, no bounce at the ends and no bounce to the top when you tap the menu. These things are included for free in UITextviews or UIWebviews. That’s why the crap browser that you can put into any iPhone app after about ten minutes of work is better than Opera.

I can’t believe that Apple approved this for any reason other than to a) demonstrate just how good Safari really is and b) to remove one more thing that the blogtards can scream about. It certainly wasn’t for the quality or utility of the app.

personal

Bullshit

This is why you shouldn’t use any machine that you don’t control. Its not only the worst kind of spyware, but its an amazing breach of trust. After that, how could you trust any of these people with your children again? Who knows what kind of information they’ve harvested or if they like to watch kids getting dressed, undressed or fucking? I hope the family wins, and the school administration gets fired or, even better, prison time for that.

What this means is that I’ll never, ever accept a school-issued computer for my children. Frankly, I’ll never give them a machine that I don’t own and have all the rights to do whatever I please with.

Google personal

Buzz Off!

Like most power users of the web, I find myself waist-deep in Google’s ecosystem. I have a bunch of Gmail accounts, I use YouTube, Reader, Voice, Calendar, Maps, Earth and of course, search. This hasn’t been too much of a problem for me, since its been mostly a symbiotic relationship. I get access to a bunch of free services, and Google gets user data that it can sell to advertisers. I just want to point out that of all web advertising, I find Google’s to be the least intrusive and by far the most tolerable. Hell, I didn’t even notice the Gmail ads until someone pointed out that they were there. I understand my relationship with Google, and its not one of vendor customer.

After this whole issue with Buzz, however, I’m seriously starting to rethink that relationship. Its not just the horrible privacy implications or the half-assed backtracking they’re doing, its the fact that they just decided to shove this new thing down our throats. I’m not worried about the privacy of my dssstrkl Google account, since its a public persona. Its not what I use to communicate with family, work or government. But that’s still not the point. I like using services that I find interesting. I’m not at all interested in having companies decide that I need to use what they tell me to use.

Additionally, while Google talks the talk about the open web, Google itself is notoriously closed. Letters became less interesting when I discovered that the real reason no one had made a great Gmail-optimized IMAP client is because Google won’t allow it. The Google Android apps are all closed source. In fact, none of Google’s web apps are truly open, and their TOS prohibit scraping. While I laugh at people who cry about how Apple is trying to become like Microsoft because of Flash or the App Store, I’m much more concerned about Google.

Google owns a bit too much of my web experience, especially the sensitive parts, like my email or physical location. I’ve turned off Buzz, which is useless and irritating, but for the first time, I’m thinking about the rest. I hate Google contacts and have to constantly fight with it. The fact that Google insists on controlling my contact list and is of the opinion that “People Who Email Me” is the same as “My Contacts” and gives little or no control drives me insane. Google’s lack of respect for my control over my contacts list is one of the reasons why I have no interest in Android. Regardless of what Google thinks, “People I Email” is not the same as “My Contacts,” and “People I Call” sure as hell isn’t the same, either.

Google really seems like they’re more and more interested in keeping me stuck in their ecosystem all the time. I’m not particularly interested in Google or its ecosystem. I just want good services that improve my web experience. Google’s insistence on control is starting to hurt that experience. I think it might be time to excise Google from everything but search (maybe even that). Its been a while since I’ve set up a personal server, but the hassle might definitely be worth it to get back control.