Posts from — April 2004

I always like to read about windows users’ experiences with Firefox and Thunderbird. I read a couple of new articles about a someone’s converstion, and thought I’d share them:
Article 1
Article 2

Among the Microsoft ads, you’ll find a pretty good explanation about what this guy likes about the browser and mail client. He’s not a programmer or anything, too. I guess once in a while, those weaselly IT magazines come out with something good.

Anyway, I’m sick of seeing so many Internet Explorer users in my web site logs. I don’t care if you’re not a “technical” user, I can even walk you through an install if you want. I’ve introduced dozens of people to it, and only one person hasn’t been completely impressed.

What do I have against IE? Why not just let people use something that I think isn’t as good? This article by the Web Standards Project explains it pretty well. For the sake of the Internet, use a modern, actively developed browser.

Please.

So, I discovered that some rapscallion planted a piece of cake on a plate with a fork in our doorway (inside the apartment). Who would have done this? I have no idea.

Perhaps a secret admirer, Tyler suggests Vicki… anything is possible. Maybe it’s poisoned. Perhaps someone is trying to lure Bombard to the bright outdoors. They should have tried a trail of pop tarts.

Very strange.

The best part is, nobody is going to pick up the cake and throw it away, we’re all going to just keep walking around it.

I’ve generally refrained from getting angry about technology topics on my journal, but I got lured in for an exception.

Slashdot recently linked to this article which discusses one commentator’s experience trying to get a mainstream sound card to work in linux.

First of all, he’s correct on one point: hardware support in linux is generally not good (but is improving, not that he mentioned that). He seems to think this is some sort of huge flaw in linux, though, and I don’t see the logic in that. Does he think that linux programmers are incapably of writing drivers for sound cards? Too lazy? The truth is that the hardware manufacturers generally don’t release specs to free software programmers, so they have to reverse engineer a lot. This is very time consuming and wasteful. Notable exception to this is Creative (sound blaster) which releases open source drivers. This is why I’m a loyal customer, but I digress.

As I said, his point is largely correct, but he makes it in the most boneheaded ways. Example: “Distro ‘XYZ’ even costs roughly as much as a Windows XP upgrade, which suggests to me that it should be judged by the same standards”. This is a stupid statement. I might spend the same amount of money on a gallon of milk and a greeting card, but I don’t judge them by the same criteria. A linux distribution offers many things that a copy of windows doesn’t (and vice versa). A distro encompasses a large variety of software packages (multiple office suites, email clients, instant messengers, endless amounts of text editors, programming environments, lots of desktop games, etc). I’m not saying one is worth more than the other, but you’re getting different things.

Another fun quote: ” I can see where a new operating system might require new hardware, but why should a new operating system require old hardware?”. Well, maybe if you investigated the problem at all, say contacting someone who develops the linux sound system, you’d understand why this might be. (I explained the reason above… reverse engineering again).

He goes on to expand the point to meet his word count for the day, making the classic faux-insightful point that linux cost money + a ton of time. Yeah, this is true, just as it is with everything. How many hours did I spend learning windows? Sure, if I already know something, it it’s easy to learn.

The oddest part is where he lists the distributions. A very strange list. He includes slackware, debian, and gentoo (among the hardest modern, common operating systems to install) but not red hat or mandrake, two of the most popular, especially for new users. If he didn’t know that linux had bad support for sound, how did he know enough to install gentoo? I’ve tried that before and it’s HARD. I don’t think someone who believes that ALSA (the new linux sound system) allows you to “get around the need for many different sound drivers” could do a respectable job at installing these operating systems.

Alright, I’m almost done. I’m not trying to make excuses for linux. He’s right, linux sound support is bad and it can be a pain to set up with some perfectly fine cards (on tyler’s computer, for example). He just draws bad conclusions and doesn’t analyze the problem at all, and it makes me upset, because I know there are thousands of people out there who will read that and believe it because they see it on a respectable web site. Boy, I sure hate those IT professional magazines, they get me mad every time I read them.

I’m feeling really stressed about stuff lately (being the last two days). I’ve noticed that it’s started to get to me. Other people have noticed I’ve been acting more frustrated with things, too. The 216 project is really hard because there are a lot of people involved, and only a handful know what they’re doing. I’m involved with that through work and class, so I have to spend a ton of time on it. There’s no way we’re going to make the monday deadline. Not to mention being booked with band, kky, and other homeworks and projects. I don’t feel like I need a day off, I just need more time.

Tomorrow is going to be very difficult… I pretty much need to be “on” all day accomplishing things, and if anything extra comes up, I won’t be able to accomplish it.

Now for the homework…

A new issue of the Crypo-gram newsletter is out. I like reading Bruce Schneier’s work. The newsletter deals with security, mostly around computers, but it’s very readable and informative for non-technical audiences. I wish more people read it because there are so many misconceptions about security that everyone believes.

Read! Subscribe! Think!

I installed outlook express on my laptop to help emily send out an email for band. I tried to go in with an open mind, but looking back, it frustrates me that people bother to use that program. In order to open an LDIF attachment, I had to turn off the security protection on attachments. Why would it think that a text-based address book file is a security threat?Retarded. Importing was a pain. There’s “import address book” and “import other address book”. It’s not clear which belongs to which format, and I’ll ignore the arrogance implied by these options. Then when we import, it just dumps all the addresses into the main contacts list, mixing them with all the old stuff. This makes it really inconvenient to import contacts into a mailing list.

One thing that I did like was that it asked me if I wanted a secure IMAP session when I was setting up my account (instead of having to go into the settings later).

I’m pretty sure they’re not actively developing outlook express anymore (pre-longhorn), just like internet explorer is stagnating. Too bad for those users who only use the defaults.

Anyway, thunderbird has been quite good to me.

The 8 ball officially decrees “Outlook (Express) not so good”.

We had the first “official” Midweek Midnights tonight. This means going to Waffle House at midnight on Tuesday night, which will hopefully become a tradition.

Randy, Sanket, Sarah, Pete, Gen, Andrew, Mike, Doug, Emily B, Tyler, Chris Waldenburg, and I were in attendance. The waffles were good and I got my own seat in the car this time.

It’s always good to take breaks from procrastinating.

Going back a bit, Pete, Chris Castelli and I went to Denny’s yesterday morning at 5:45 or so (after I finished my projects). It was a good trip, even though we were very tired and they didn’t have any sort of regular sandwich roll.

Well, I finished my 201 and 302 assignments for tonight. Neither was great, but they’re done. I’m going to Denny’s with Pete and Chris Castelli now.. ought to be a good time. Yes, I’m stupid. Gotta make tomorrow a challenge…

I’m feeling overwhelmed right now. I didn’t do much work over the weekend, and I have two projects in the next two days (both of which need to get done tomorrow night).
I got farther than I expected on my language recognizer tonight (using flex and bison). It recognizes all the samples given with the assignment, so it’s almost done. I need to do a homework-type portion of the project then I’ll be done. The ECE 201 homework needs to get done, too, and I haven’t started.

The thing is, I feel like I have to get this stuff done and I don’t have enough time, but I don’t have much I can get out of tomorrow. I have a couple of important meetings, symphonic band that I missed last week, linguistics that I missed on wednesday, and compiler that I can’t miss because of the project. I also have to register for classes.

I still owe Kym a newsletter article, and I feel bad that I keep pushing it back, but I doubt I’ll get it done tomorrow either.

Although I’m stressed, things are generally going well.

Time for some sleep.

Went to the jazz concert tonight with dan, randy, and sarah. Bill Warfield’s band is excellent, I really enjoyed the performance. Jazz is so much better live.

I’ve been watching the Kill Bill Vol. 2 trailer a lot today, I’m really excited to see it at some point next weekend (if I can find the time).

Lots to get done tomorrow. Happy Easter.