Archive for January, 2006
State of The Union
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
While I watch a rather weak democratic rebuttal to the State of the Union I’m reading over the speech. The pundits were saying (and for some reason are now claiming) that Bush needed to come out appeasing the left. Apparently there were two speeches, because as far as I could tell, Bush didn’t come out kissing ass, he came out swinging fists. It’s the same in your face, I’m right, your wrong, that got him elected to two terms – no to backing down on terrorism, no to isolationism, no to protectionism, no to big government, yes to Democracy in the Middle East, yes to social security reform, yes to tax cuts, yes to health care reform, yes to technological innovation, yes to the Patriot Act, yes to supporting the troops. Bush also made a camouflaged claim – the recent strengthening of religious undertones in American life have benefited by helping to push crime down, decrease drug use, bring fewer abortions and lower teen pregnancy. I’m sure the religious right enjoyed that hat tip.
The democrats said, hmm, “insufficient body armor in Iraq!” The rest was, well, rather clouded. Just out of curiosity, who made the mistake of choosing Tim Kaine to follow Bush? The Democrats seem so clueless when it comes to the American Psyche. Scary. They should have chosen Biden. Is this the same democratic party that brought us Clinton? Nope. This is the Democratic Party that brought us Kerry. Enough said.
On a side note, was I hearing things or was Hillary screaming and yelling a lot during the speech?
UPDATE:
On CNN Nancy Pelosi is getting grilled By Cooper on Iraq, and it aint pretty. Defeat on this, stop that, Iraq isn’t working because we need to train troops that won’t turn on our own troops? Huh? Who are these people? Who do they represent?
A little later: a good point gets made – Bush glossed over Katrina. He should have stood up and taken blame for that during the speech. Kudos to CNN for bringing that up.
IE 7 in the Wild
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
The final beta before release of IE 7.0 is out today for public consumption. I think we can pretty much write Firefox off for now – this IE release is solid, I haven’t found a single issue with it yet. A few things I’m totally digging:
1) In general, feature for feature, IE is now on par with Firefox. The big difference, IE’s user interface blows Firefox out of the water in terms of look and feel.
2) Built in search toolbar – took a while, but I finally have built in search without having to install one of the many search engine search toolbars which use up way too much screen real-estate.
3) Favorites – In terms usability, the new favorites management drop-down panel in IE surpasses Firefox’s traditional favorites side panel by a mile.
4) Toolbar and Menu screen usage – a picture says it all:
IE provides more space for browsing, even with toolbars installed since the toolbars land up in the open space above the links. Firefox requires toolbars to band up below the address bar. That’s so old school. 
Microsoft also managed to combine two menu bars into one, and through new user interface widgets, render the traditional file menu obsolete. Slick. Of course you can still bring the old file menu up to access advanced features, through a neat Alt show and hide feature. I dig this feature the most.
In general, I’m not convinced Firefox is more secure than Internet Explorer, so that selling point isn’t going to fly on this blog. With IE 7.0 now matching and in some cases surpassing Firefox’s current features, combined with a slick new user interface, I’m not seeing any compelling reasons for keeping Firefox around on my desktop.
Microsoft Monitor has a good review as well. I’m surprised though, in reading all of the reviews, how nobody has picked up on the new screen space. PC World even criticized them for doing it. DOH!
Tuesday, January 31st, 2006
Yesterday was a special event for Bloom County fans out there. As I’ve previously mentioned on my old Spaces blog, Yahoo Comics has been re-running the old strip from the start. Yesterday the first strip featuring Opus showed up. It only gets better from here, I can’t wait for the intro of Oliver Wendell Jones and the Banana PC Jr. 6000.
What does VeriSign do?
Monday, January 30th, 2006
I’m often asked what my employer, VeriSign does. Sometimes it’s tough to explain. Red Herring has an excellent article that boils it down nicely. I even learned something new about the company I work for from it – I had no idea how much of the cellular switching and sms traffic we handle, it’s over 50%.
Fate
Friday, January 27th, 2006
Fate rocks. I’m a big believer in it. It’s one of those funny forces of nature that has the amazing ability to put ‘under construction’ signs here, a fully seated bar there, and can somehow make sure your gas tank is right about at that point where your pretty sure you just can’t make it that far. So you end up someplace you never would have expected, a place where fate shines through.
If you don’t feel you’ve been dealt the best hand in life, maybe you made the mistake of driving around that construction sign so you could keep going in the direction you were headed. Next time I’d suggest you just go with the flow, it might just get you someplace you never expected – the place your really want to be.
Dare to be Different
Friday, January 27th, 2006
I had no idea about this until Scoble posted it on his blog today. Dare Obasanjo is the son of Olusegun Obasanjo, the president of Nigeria. How does the son of the president of Nigeria end up working at Microsoft developing cool web apps and regularly epousing all things XML? I have no idea, but I think it’s cool!
Political Software
Friday, January 27th, 2006
“I also don’t necessarily like DRM myself,” Torvalds wrote. “But…I’m an ‘Oppenheimer,’ and I refuse to play politics with Linux, and I think you can use Linux for whatever you want to–which very much includes things I don’t necessarily personally approve of.”
I like this guy.
Microsoft Earnings
Friday, January 27th, 2006
A few tidbits I picked out of Microsoft Monitor’s assessment that I found interesting:
- sold 1.5 million Xbox 360′s (sold 900,000 in the US, 500,000 in Europe and 100,000 in Japan)
- Server and Tools revenue grew by 14 percent led by SQL server 2005
- MSN revenue shrank due to the transition from Yahoo! to adCenter. Advertising revenue was $40 million.
Overall, MS had one hell of a quarter. They are currently adding 1 Billion in cash every month to their coffers and overall are growing at 1/Google per year. 
F*ck It’s Cold!
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
Classic Lewis Black. (Language NSFW) It’s a little dated but still hillarious.
The Networked Car
Wednesday, January 25th, 2006
For some reason this morning I woke up thinking about mp3 interfaces to automotive audio equipment. I’ve been kicking around the idea of blowing $150.00 for an mp3 interface to my BMW Z4, but I’m not exactly happy with the interface BMW offers. For one thing, it only interfaces to one of my two mp3 players. (the Nano.) Secondly, it’s a complete hack on BMW’s part – the adapter tricks the car audio equipment into thinking the mp3 player is an optional CD changer. With this comes a number of drawbacks, most notably the lack of album and song information displayed on the digital display of the car stereo. Anyway I figured this has to be temporary, the automotive and consumer electronics industries must be working on some sort of standardized interface for doing something like this. Turns out the automotive industry is deeply involved in this, and they aren’t just thinking about mp3 players. They are thinking of something known as the “fully networked car”. The gist – give your car standardized interfaces and over the long term wireless capabilities with the ability to communicate with wireless networks and devices. Some of this stuff is pretty lofty, but the good news is, people are working on solving the problem. In the mean time I’ll just have to figure out a way to remember CD 5, track 136 is Stairway to Heaven. Hopefully on my next lease, I won’t have too.
