Who will win? IE8 vs Firefox 3

As a disclaimer, this discussion will probably not be technical enough to satisfy the extremely passionate readers who have an opinion on one side or another.  Further, the release cycles aren’t exactly in sync - as of this writing, IE8 has a developer-focused beta 1 available, while Mozilla is nearer release with Firefox 3 now in beta 4.

I’ve had IE8’s beta1 for around a week now.  What really turns me on to IE8 is that the development team at MS is really trying to produce a next-gen browser capable of supporting standards for things like CSS 2.1 and HTML5.  MS touts IE8 as a release aimed at creating and promoting interoperability - of course we have learned that we cannot place much trust in MS press releases about how good their products are going to be or even which features they will ultimately contain.  In this case, however, I believe MS has some must-deliver goods on the table and the ultimate fate of IE’s viability hangs in the balance with this release.

Despite being the de facto browser for millions of PC users that know no better, it’s the developers who are writing these new, rich Internet multimedia technologies that are going to swing the pendulum one way or the other with IE8.  If Joe User gets random crashes and badly rendered stuff in IE8, but gold-plated mastery in Firefox, then Joe is probably going to convert.  The same is true for the converse - where people find Firefox to suck they will usually go with IE (I mean Windows users).

One interesting addition in IE8 that I want to see is the WebSlices feature.  In my beta1 I’ve gotten it to work once but it was on static text in a page that holds little value.  The point of webslices are to serve as mini-feeds that web services can implement/call and provide info back to the user without requiring the user to be in that webspace to do it.  I love this function; I want to see it work first, though, before I start throwing myself at it.

But what about Firefox 3?  First of all, unlike IE8, the Firefox project has their product requirements document publicly available on the Mozilla wiki.  Some of the interesting features I pulled from the requirements document myself:

• Integrate with Vista Parental Controls
• Revised download manager
• Support for Linux ATK (accessibility)
• Several security improvements

I guess what I mean to say is that, it’s not a rewrite-style release like IE8, so the list of features isn’t going to include a bunch of grandiose “make the Internet cooler” type requirements.  The honest truth is that IE8 is trying to catch up with and arguably surpass the capabilities of Firefox.  While Firefox does have CSS issues from time to time - especially on sites that were written specifically for IE5.5 or IE6 - its version 2 evolved from feedback about what people wanted in IE but were less likely to “get”.

Ultimately, one of these browsers will prevail.  For completely unrelated reasons, I’m going to say that Firefox is the real winner regardless of IE8’s potential successes.  Corporate America is slowly moving its desktop users away from MS platforms and onto either Macs or Linux distributions (semantics at this level).  I personally would like nothing more than to convert my laptop from Windows XP SP2 to something like K/Ubuntu or Fedora.  In the Linux space, Firefox pretty much reigns though the flavors of browsing technology begin to vary vastly into personal preference when dealing with higher computer literacy percentages; the point there is that there’s no home for IE on Linux, and little welcome for it on Mac.

I’m starting a professional blog

To all 92000 of my faithful readers,

Though the vast majority of you are actually scripts run by comment spammers that need to be castrated, I do understand that there are some humans actually tuning in to my RSS feed, and I thank you for your interest in my otherwise uneventful life.  I feel obligated to inform you that I will be spinning up a blog related to my profession, and that it will likely consume most of my blogging efforts once I put it online.  As of this writing, I do not have a host; I may or may not use wordpress because the *.wordpress.com address structure is blocked by my corporate web filter (nothing that proxify can’t solve), but I may go a different route.

Most of my readers don’t know what I do for a living; over the next month or so you’ll find out.  I will update this post with the URL once I create it.

Is Super Tuesday Really all that Super?

Do I even need to type anything in this post? Ok, so round abouts half of the delegates to select each party’s candidate for president is up for grabs on 2/5. My state (of Colorado) is one of them; honestly I haven’t heard jack about it on either side. As a disclaimer I refuse to watch network television anymore because it is all shows about either sex, money, drugs, or crime; usually a combination of at least 2 of those. But I listen to the radio in my car, and I hear nothing. What’s more is that my city (being Denver) is hosting the damned DNC this year, and nobody is campaigning here.

Maybe I should say, “does that fact that someone comes here to campaign actually matter to me?” to which the answer is “probably not”. I don’t base my vote on who arrives at their pep rally closest to my house first. While I am a registered democrat, I really could give a rat’s ass about which party I vote for. I’m going to vote for the person with whom I can most directly identify my priorities as their priorities; right now that isn’t anyone because no one is campaigning in Colorado. Our 9 votes aren’t worth jack even though this state is always very close to 50/50 in partisan races.

So, is it really super Tuesday? Or is it just another “wake up and go to work but take 15 90 minutes off to go vote” Tuesday?

2007 Wrapup and Predictions Readback

Now that we’re here at the end of 2007, let’s take a look back at what I predicted would happen this year and see how close (or not close) I was.  Then, let’s look at my resolutions and see if I held true to any of them.

Predictions

Random thoughts

• Everyone will have exactly one birthday except people born on February 29th. No aging for you! true
• Americans will drive their cars an average of 14000 miles per family true
• Someone will try to claim a world record for yet another useless body feature (there were arm hair and eyebrow hair last year) possibly true. I need to verify

Celebrity Stuff

I’m not a huge gossip fan, but some things are irresistible — predicting the antics of our beloved celebrities is one of them.

• Jessica Simpson will get pregnant with her new husband. didn’t happen
• Eva Longoria will either get pregnant or divorced with/from Tony Parker didn’t happen (at least we don’t know if she’s pregnant)
• Tom Cruise will do something even more annoying than in 2006, possibly with Katie’s help true
• Hayden Panettiere will be rumored to be dating some diva’s husband despite being under 18. didn’t happen, but her lesbian affair comments came close.
• Miss USA 2006, Tara Conner, will be in Playboy after her reign is over. didn’t happen
• Paris Hilton will get pregnant. It’ll be a girl that ends up dating Britney’s younger son in about 10 years. didn’t happen, but she’s trying
• Angelina and Brad will adopt another baby from some third-world country true

Non-Celebrity Entertainment
Stuff that entertains us which isn’t about particular celebrities

• JK Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will become the best-selling children’s book of all time, and will be mostly read by adults 18-29. true
• Voldemort and Snape will be the 2 primary characters that die in the last HP book. this was true.  Technically Harry died as well, but he also lived.
• There will be more bad movies made than good ones “Blonde Ambition”? this was true.
• The season finale of Heroes will be an anti-climactic one that people hate.  true, because of the writer’s strike. Season 1 finale was pretty good.
• The new iPod will suck in a way where people hate it I think people like the iPod Touch.
• Nintendo’s Wii will continue to outdistance PS3 in sales, by a widening margin  very true.
• More movies will be watched via Comcast OnDemand than HBO and Showtime combined. also true. COD logged more than 1.5billion views this year.

National Affairs
These are classified as things that will happen around the country or in other countries related to US-stuff.

• At least 1000 more soldiers will be killed in action in Iraq. I’ll be having a morbid contest to let readers guess the exact total and, at the end of the year, the closest entry will win something (I need time to set this up)  true
• The President will make at least 10 more bad decisions to keep whoever the next President is from getting anything done because they’ll have to clean up his mess for 4 years. true.
• Muhammad Ali will succumb to his illness (I hate to predict death, but I see this coming). didn’t happen
• The price of gas will go back up to above $3/gal in the US for more than a month. Please understand if you’re viewing from a country where that seems cheap that the US doesn’t place much of a tax on energy and energy sources, like gasoline. Whereas in countries like Japan, energy is one of the most highly taxed things nationwide (and the cheap gas is about 110yen/liter). true; still true today

Sports
Sports-related predictions

• USC will be the NCAA football pre-season #1 team next season this was true
• My beloved Georgia Bulldogs will win the SEC championship and will finish the season in the top 5. they did not win the conference but they are the #5 team
• The Super Bowl will be won by either the Broncos or the Chargers, and preferably the Broncos. probably false 
• The Yankees will not win the World Series despite their payroll true; the Red Sox won.
• Mark McGwire will be on the Hall of Fame ballot but not get elected because of the whole performance enhancers issue (though Mark only took andro, which was legal when he took it). If I had a vote, he’d be in. true
• Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron’s record, then he’ll sit out and whine about his knee the rest of the season he did break the record, but then he platooned
• Brett Favre will retire but still have the hunger for the game didn’t happen
• The Broncos will trade/cut/waive Jake Plummer true

Resolutions
I won’t make many, because I hate being held to my word if it’s convenient:

1. Of the 60% of resolutions I am serious about, 90% will be broken by March 31. At least 1 will hold until at least July 1.
2. Continue to prognosticate things that may happen.
3. Drink as much as I feel is appropriate for a situation.
4. 5000 hits on this blog!
5. Complete masters program.
6. Get a lunch date with Erin Andrews and Rachel Nichols. half true; I had lunch with Erin Andrews in July.
7. Get a lunch date with Nora Zehetner.  didn’t happen

Does Santa Claus exist? Of course!

update: I posted this last year; I’m reposting it for 2007.
update: I made very minor updates to this post on 12/28/06
(Most of this historical information is from Wikipedia)

Around 350AD, a Greek Orthodox bishop of Myra in Asia Minor named Nikolaos, now called Hagios Nikolaos died. In Greek, Hagios Nikolaos means “Saint Nicholas”. Nicholas was famous for his generous gifts to the poor, in particular presenting the three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian with dowries so that they would not have to become prostitutes. He was born at Patara, province of Lycia, Asia Minor. He was very religious from an early age and devoted his life entirely to Christianity.

In Europe (more precisely the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Germany) he is still portrayed as a bearded bishop in canonical robes. (the canonical robes of ancient Greek Orthodox bishops where what color? Yes, red). The relics of St. Nicholas were transported to Bari in southern Italy by some enterprising Italian merchants; a basilica was constructed in 1087 to house them and the area became a pilgrimage site for the devout. Saint Nicholas became revered by many as the patron saint of seamen, merchants, archers, children, prostitutes, pharmacists, lawyers, pawnbrokers, prisoners, the city of Amsterdam and of Russia.

WordPress’ own Parallel Divergence is running an article on how Google Earth killed Santa. I thoroughly enjoy their take on how kids are smarter than parents think these days. In reply, I must say that Santa not only lived, but he is already dead (and somewhat thankfully not at the hands of Google Earth). It’s the spirit of the Greek Orthodox saint we know as Santa Claus which lives on today. It’s just unfortunate that Americans bastardize it in such a grandiose fashion.

Is this what I tell my kids? Absolutely. Why spoil their minds with known lies when the truth about Santa Claus is so much easier to explain? I hear all you soccer moms right now spouting off under your breath about how ridiculous it sounds to teach kids that Santa Claus is dead. Let me ask you people something: Why is Santa Claus a part of Christmas? I bet you don’t know the answer. He lived nearly 4 centuries after your Jesus of Nazareth, yet we so rampantly (and don’t get my wheels spinning on this side subject) spend billions of dollars (nearly 500 billion in 2005) between the fourth Friday in November and December 24th in hopes to somehow satisfy our kids’ needs mindlessly while not remembering the 2 main things happening on December 25th. Attention soccer moms: What are the 2 things celebrated on Christmas Day? I bet you don’t know the answer. I bet Bible-thumping Laura Mallory doesn’t even know the answer. If you do know the answer, why are you out spending an average of $816 on gifts?

Here’s some advice: go back and get in your Yukon, your Suburban, your Lexus SUV, and go to the mall (and learn how to park those damn hogs properly). Go stand in line at Starbucks and order the cafe mocha halfsoy halfskim nowhip nofoam (more commands than a linux boot prompt). Go over to R.E.I and try on all the newest goose down vests and argue with your little snobby kids about which shade of lavender better matches your skis and your Dooney & Bourke handbag. Go spend all your husband’s money on stuff your mindlessly disobedient kid is going to use for 10 minutes and then dismiss as stupid because you have no idea what he likes. If this is you, then do us a favor and don’t have any more kids. All we need is another generation of soccer moms.

Yes, I tell my children that Santa Claus is a Christian saint who lived and died in the 4th century and was generous to the poor (what do you mean you haven’t taught your kids about death?); I tell my boys that Christmas should remind them what it means to be generous to others who have less than they do; I tell my children that any gifts they get any time of the year are a result of their own generosity, and so they should try to give whenever possible. What I do not tell my children is that Santa Claus brings them presents, because it’s a lie; I do not lead them to believe that they must obey my every command for an entire year or they will get nothing, because that’s a lie; I do not let my children get disillusioned by fairy tales of some fat man in a red suit flying through the sky with a herd of reindeer delivering gifts to every kid in the world in about a 10 hour span, because it’s a lie (and also because this gift exchange is not on 12/25 all over the world, if you think it is, please stop thinking).

In summary, yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. It’s unfortunate, though, that you will probably never know the real truth because your parents are probably too stupid to know.

BCS Playoffs - 2007 Matchups

Let’s assume for a minute that the NCAA’s FBS, that would be the organization formerly known as Division 1-A, were to institute a playoff system with this years teams.  And just for laughs let’s say it’s a 16-team tournament even though the top 10 teams are the only “BCS bowl” team under the current hokey-ass, lamefied system.  Using that bracket as a basis (go to ESPN if you can’t visualize a 16-team bracket), let’s look at what the matchups would be and which one would be the “best”.  Also, yell loudly when you spot a “bad” game in any round.

First Round:
1 Ohio State vs 16 Tennessee
8 Kansas vs 9 West Virginia

5 Georgia vs 12 Florida
4 Oklahoma vs 13 Illinois (I’m yelling loudly)

3 Virginia Tech vs 14 Boston College
6 Missouri vs 11 Arizona State

7 USC vs 10 Hawaii
2 LSU vs 15 Clemson

The best matchup in this round, if you ask me, is USC vs Hawaii.  I’m tempted to say it’s UGA versus Florida in a rematch of the annual world’s largest cocktail party, but honestly Florida should be scared of UGA right now.  So no, USC vs Hawaii.  We’re talking about Petey Carroll and his pretty boy JD Bootylicious with all that offense taking on Juniper Jones and Colt 45 Brennan and all their offense.  Neither team really does well on defense - yeah, ok USC at least fields 11 capable athletes, but let’s face it that their defense is the reason they’re not in the top 3.

Best chance for an upset:  Arizona State over Missouri in my book.  Though it’s not really an upset, I think WV would take out Kansas as well.  My picks are in bold.

Second Round:
1 Ohio State vs 9 West Virginia
5 Georgia vs 4 Oklahoma
3 Virginia Tech vs 11 Arizona State
7 USC vs 2 LSU

The best game in this round, and probably the best matchup you are going to get out of these teams, is Georgia vs Oklahoma.  Face facts folks, at the end of the 2007 season, Oklahoma is scary good - Georgia is omfg scary good.  Let’s also realize that Georgia was 1 triple overtime Tennessee game versus Kentucky away from being in the SEC title game against LSU, whom they would have taken behind the woodshed and been ranked #1 or #2 at the end of the season - frankly I think they are the hottest team in college football right now - maybe they weren’t for the whole season, but for right now, they are executing with the most horsepower.  But what makes this matchup so great is that Oklahoma is the true #2 team in my opinion.  OU got lots of dap for winning the Big 12 with pollsters, but found themselves at #4 regardless.  Sadly, only one team can move forward, and I’m picking Georgia in a close, physical battle.

Best upset chance: West Virginia destroys Ohio State in a laugher.

Semifinals:
9 West Virginia vs 5 Georgia
3 Virginia Tech vs 2 LSU

I just raved about UGA, so I’ll talk about why VT will beat LSU.  It’s because of Les Miles and his general inability to manage a game; in this match he’s going to do something boneheaded and it’s going to cost his hard-working team the game.  Not to discredit VT, because they are going to put points on the board vs LSU’s mediocre secondary and “hey he breathed on me so throw a flag” mentality.  This team may be spouting about “we were only 2x 3OT losses away from being undefeated”, but at that point, a loss is a loss - if you’re a good enough team, win the game in four quarters and keep your panties on your waist whining about triple overtime.  if your defense could hold a goal line, they wouldn’t have lost either game anyway.  I’ve got VT over LSU somewhere in the 31-20 range.

Championship Game:
5 Georgia vs 3 Virginia Tech

Yes, so it comes down to this for all the hypothetical marbles you want to throw into the circle.  As I already said, Georgia is omfg scary good right now.  Like cakerockstheparty said in such eloquent words, the dawgs are “out for blood”, Turnbull A.C.’s be damned.  I’ve got them taking this tournament against VT in a game somewhere around 27-23 - a close one.

So, if you’re a Georgia fan, let me hear some love! 

Will college football ever see a playoff? Yes.  Will we be old, crotchety men shaking our canes at the TV by then? Maybe.

Technorati Tags: BCS,NCAA,football,college football,Georgia,UGA,sports

Heroes Season 2 Episode 1 is awesome

I will openly admit that here one full day before air, I have just finished watching the season premiere of Heroes.  I am a big fan of the show and watched the UK series “Heroes Unmasked” in the off time to get some deeper knowledge of the characters and the people who play them.

If you loved season 1, and if this premiere is anything towards how this season is going to go, this show is only getting better.  You’ll love the premiere; of course it’s like season 1 where you always have questions at the end of the episode.

No spoilers until after Monday night; sorry.  I wouldn’t want to do that

A little AFK Time

To my loyal readers,

I’m going to Tokyo in the morning to retrieve the rest of my family from their summer escapade.  I expect to return around the end of next week; I’m sure I’ll have plenty to talk about when I return.

Cheers

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix movie tickets sold out

Yes, that’s right. No, not nationwide silly. But here in Denver, at the theater I prefer to visit for movies of this .. well, magnitude.. tickets for the first day’s complete showings of the coming movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix sold through online presales sites and from the box office itself are now completely gone.

What does this mean? Well, first of all it means (I hope) that there won’t be a block-wrapping line of freaks who both 1) love the story in a fanatical way and 2) don’t understand the concept of advance purchasing. Long gone, I hope, are the Star Wars: Episode III Times Square lines thanks to folks like Fandango, who will serve you up an online will call ticket with the quicks as long as you pay an extra dollar. And let’s face it, what’s $1 versus the $12 you already are paying, but so that you don’t have to stand in line hoping to get tickets. You’ll spend $4 on a drink and $6 for popcorn, on average, so don’t be miffed away by a $1 convenience charge.

And, yes, I have my tickets.

The Harry Potter:Deathly Hallows Leak. Vrai ou Faux?

All who visit this page looking for info on the HP:DH leak should visit this post instead for info on a *verified leak of the book.  The spoiler described in this post has been confirmed as a fake and it is completely inaccurate. You’re still welcome to read this post if you wish for pure comic relief, but understand that the spoiler listed in this post does not have any of the facts correct; in fact, I can verify that they are all incorrect.  Maybe that is a spoiler in and of itself

If you are looking for answers to lingering questions that should be answered in HP:DH, then you should visit this post beginning July 21st (there are currently questions, but no answers).

If you want to see what raucous this alleged leak has caused, you can get it straight from the horse’s mouth on InSecure.org. Or you can keep reading to figure out what this is about.

A supposed hacker going by the alias Gabriel posted on a mailing list that InSecure hosts that he’d successfully hacked into a computer at Bloomsbury and gotten his hands on a copy of the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows which is due in stores and in pre-order drop shipments in just under a month. The claim is that a standard email backdoor link was successful. In his post to the mailing list, entitled “Harry Potter 0day”, he proceeds to dictate what, if true, would be a huge spoiler for the entire plot of the story and would kill the ending altogether.

So, understanding that security in both the US and UK publishing houses is about as tight as Fort Knox these days, what do you think the odds are that some unwitting Bloomsbury employee would not only have a copy of the manuscript on their machine, but would also have it on an Internet-facing computer that a malicious email could infect? I actually own a BS button, and I think I just pushed it.

JKR herself has said that only very, very few people are entitled to pre-reading her books in this series — those would be executives at Bloomsbury and Scholastic, as well as artists like possibly Madame Grandpre who paints the covers for the US editions. With the publishing of the book, which will be the best-selling childrens book of all time, being less than a month away, the wildness of the theories about what will happen grows exponentially almost daily. Is this spoiler being posted out on the Internet the real thing? Or is it another not-so-elaborate hoax in the bucket of so many which have plagued anything as popular as Harry Potter lore.

At the bottom of this post, I am copying the context of the message verbatim. It will be white text like my background so if you don’t care to even entertain this spoiler that may or may not be true (it’s on par with reading one of my many theories) you aren’t forced to do so.

Thoughts? HP:DH leaked -> vrai ou faux?

SPOILER WARNING: BELOW THIS LINE IS THE CONTEXT OF AN ALLEGED LEAK INVOLVING THE PLOT AT THE END OF HP:DH. HIGHLIGHT BELOW THIS LINE IF YOU CARE TO READ. DON’T IF YOU DON’T. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED; NO REFUNDS.

Harry Potter 0day

* This message: [ Message body ] [ More options ]
* Related messages: [ Next message ] [ Previous message ] [ Next in thread ] [ Replies ]

From: go harry
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:23:45 +0800

************************************************************
* Harry Potter 0day
*
************************************************************

Dear my brothers,

Voldemort killed Hermione. Yes, that’s true. And we knew that 2 days ago.

This is the end of the not yet published (someone could call that 0day) book

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .

At the end of the story Hagrid was killed by Snape in the attempt of ambush Hermione and Ron.
Ron and Hermione flees in privet drive but Voldermort, surprising them, engaged a magical duel with Ron and Hermione.

Voldemort attacked trough the imperius curse and Hermione, to protect the life of Ron fight hardly for more than 6 pages and then finally die.
(boring, very boring… it’s always the same story!)

Then, to make a long story short, Harry came up, killed all the bad guys and Hogwarts against became a good place to stay and have fun.

Ah, i missed one important information about Draco Malfoy, he started to create Horcrux (for fun and profit!).
The end.
************************************************************
END SPOILER. BEGIN MINDLESS BANTER FROM POSTER

Yes, we did it.
We did it by following the precious words of the great Pope Benedict XVI when he still was Cardinal Josepth Ratzinger.
He explained why Harry Potter bring the youngs of our earth to Neo Paganism faith.

So we make this spoiler to make reading of the upcoming book useless and boring.

The attack strategy was the easiest one.
The usual milw0rm downloaded exploit delivered by email/click-on-the-link/open-browser/click-on-this-animated-icon/back-connect to some employee of Bloomsbury Publishing, the company that’s behind the Harry crap.

It’s amazing to see how much people inside the company have copies and drafts of this book.
Curiosity killed the cat.

Who kill curiosity?