K-Squared Ramblings

Web Browser Renaissance

The new beta of OmniWeb uses Apple’s WebCore, the Konqueror-based code used to display pages in Safari.

What makes this so interesting is that OmniWeb was the first web browser designed to really work with OS X. IIRC MS really didn’t do much to IE except add the compatibility code and change the icons.

A lot has been going on in the web browser world over the last year and a half. Sure, the Browser War has been declared over, sure, Netscape has been declared dead time and time again, but IE has been stagnating ever since it “won.” Except for bug fixes, Microsoft hasn’t released a new version of IE for the Mac in over three years, or for Windows in almost two. They’ve declared they won’t be continuing IE on the Mac at all, and there’s talk of tying future Windows versions directly to the operating system, so that you can’t upgrade IE without upgrading Windows.

With the free availability of Gecko, the rendering engine that Mozilla and Netscape use to display pages, projects to develop web browers were springing up everywhere. People were trying out crazy new ideas like tabbed browsing (not the same thing as MDI), which proved popular enough it ended up back in Mozilla, where it became the most popular feature. Now every major browser but IE has it.

Now, the same thing looks to be happening with KHTML. What started out as a way for the KDE file manager to display web pages has become a very nice web browser, and since (like Gecko) it is available under an open source license, anyone is free to develop their own browser around it. Apple built Safari on top of it, making improvements where necessary, and made it easier for other Mac applications to use the same code. OmniWeb brings the number of KHTML browsers to at least three, and I suspect more will follow.

IE will probably continue to rule the statistics as long as Microsoft controls both it and Windows, and as long as Windows remains dominant on the desktop. But the innovation has moved elsewhere, and there are at least three other major browser types out there (Gecko-based, KHTML-based, and Opera) that can display pages very well, thank you.

With luck, this may begin moving us back to a platform-neutral Web, as it was originally intended.

Yup, it’s good.

We actually did brave the line on Friday, sort of. A line of kids running out of Borders at the Block just as we were trying to get in, around 10:30. We stayed to look at the entertainment, which the adults were enjoying at least as much as the kids, and then got some coffee for the drive back. One woman seemed very optimistic about the amount of stuff she’d be able to get done while waiting–I didn’t see it, but Kelson reported that she had a thick stack of things like Divorce for Dummies piled next to her latte.

Saturday, we went on our roughly trimonthly software spree and netted about 8 relatively cool things for about 40% of the original cost. Leaving Fry’s, Kelson said, “So, where to? Home?…Food?…Borders?”

“Borders.”

Three minutes later: “Crap! We don’t have the confirmation number!”

It didn’t matter. The petite witch in the corset handed me a ticket that said “Hufflepuff 707″ with no more ID than my name. I went off and picked up the Spanish edition of Prisoner of Azkaban that I’d seen the night before, which I got for 10% off. $30 for both PdA and OotP–not bad. And I only had to be in Hufflepuff for ten minutes.

I don’t remember where I left off Saturday night, but I picked it back up over breakfast on Sunday and didn’t put it down until somewhere around page 417, when it took me half an hour to convince myself to pick it back up again. Tenth grade is hell, and I know it intimately, but it was all just hitting too close. Maybe that speaks well of JKR, maybe it says she’s beating an undead horse. All I know is it very nearly lost me.

I did finish, about dinnertime on Sunday. And sort of went whaaaaaah at the sheer monumentality of 1) the book having been written and 2) my having read it.

I’ll be going all comp-lit on it in another post. Right now, though, bed.

Always check the requirements

We have a “yours, mine and ours” set of computers at home. My system started out as a Compaq Presario in 1994 and has been upgraded piecemeal over the past decade, Katie replaced her Power Mac with a G4 last year, and we picked up an eMachine to use as a dial-up server when we moved in together. (I was going to cobble something together out of the leftover bits from my computer, but it was cheap and saved me the effort of figuring out what was working and what needed to be replaced. Plus it gave us an extra Windows system.)

I’ve been dual-booting Linux and Windows for about 5 years, and spent most of my last year in college using Linux almost exclusively. (Student housing with Ethernet. Having worked in a college computer lab for several years, I didn’t trust Windows 95 to be safe on the network.) Well, a few months after we got the eMachine, hardware problems corrupted my Windows installation. I didn’t want to “borrow” a Windows 98 install CD, I didn’t want to buy Windows Me (piece of ****), Windows 2000 was too expensive, and I really didn’t want the licensing nightmare that is XP. So I delayed, using Linux exclusively, and eventually came to the conclusion I didn’t need to reinstall Windows at all.

Unfortunately, there are very few commercial games written for Linux. Now I’m not much of a gamer, but I do enjoy RPGs, turned-based strategy, and the occasional FPS, and No Windows meant No Might and Magic. Read the rest of this entry »

One more day!!!!

It’s really too bad we’re not planning on braving the crowds of kids to go wait for Order of the Phoenix tonight. My hair’s really got its Hermione on.

New Blog Software

The B2 /Cafelog project is evolving into WordPress. I finally got around to updating the software, and I’ve run into a few problems with some of my customizations. Mainly there’s no “On This Page” list on the sidebar, but if you notice anything else odd or broken-looking, comment on it here!

Back to Space!

It seems NASA is hoping to resume shuttle flights by December 18.

Interestingly, this is one day after the release of Return of the King. Coincidence? … Yeah, probably.

On one hand, I’m glad we’ll be back in space soon. Even if it takes until next year, at least they’re trying to get going again before we lose too much momentum. On the other hand, I’ve heard nothing about plans to design a replacement launch vehicle - something the manned space program desperately needs.

A Better Voting System

For several years now (before the 2000 Presidential election, but even more strongly after that), I’ve been of the opinion that allowing people to mark a 1st, 2nd and 3rd choice on each ballot would effectively resolve the “lesser of two evils” problem that limits us to the Republicans and Democrats as the only viable political parties.

(For the record, since I was first eligible to vote, I’ve registered with a “decline to state” affiliation because I prefer to be associated with neither right-wing wackos nor left-wing wackos. I usually consider myself a moderate, but in today’s political climate what I consider moderate looks extremely liberal by comparison.)

The last two big elections, Bush vs. Gore for President and Davis vs. Simon for California governor, were both cases where I didn’t particularly like one candidate but really disliked the other. Read the rest of this entry »

Scary Thing #43

So I let work push me into taking a permanent disability rating class. (Which you probably knew if you’ve read my rating on Lindsey.) It’s pretty math-heavy, but most of it is relatively simple. We had a math quiz a few days in, to which I forgot to bring a calculator and ended up doing all the problems by hand. I still got 100% and managed to correct the answer key on one problem.

Today we had the first midterm. I had a calculator, but the damn thing wouldn’t turn on, so I ended up doing the math by hand again. This ended up including wacked-out fractions, decimal long division, and other time-consuming processes. Everybody else had calculators, presumably ones that worked. And I was still the second person out of there.

They’ll probably all incinerate me with looks next week. But at least I’ll die smug.

Who’s really responsible for spreading viruses?

My dad forwarded me an opinion piece from the eWeek newsletter called Idiocy Imperils the Web. Jim Rapoza argues that - especially by now - people should really have figured out not to click on unknown attachments. My favorite quote: “Most people figure out that if they keep grabbing the electric fence, they’ll get a shock every time.”

I’ve thought along these lines for several years now. Once the first two waves of high-profile email viruses hit, it was time for people to wise up. Instead we have a variation on the classic joke:

Three guys walk into a bar. You’d think the third one would have ducked.

Except it’s more like “Ten guys walk into a bar. You’d think the third, fourth, fifth…”

Although I’m also reminded of a quote from Jakob Neilsen’s “Alertbox” usability column from April 1996:

The fact that the Internet doubles every year implies that at any time half of the users will have been on the net for less than a year. In other words, we are doomed to have 50 percent novice users for the foreseeable future.

This has, of course, slowed down since 1996 - recent statistics show Internet growth in the US has dropped to 5% - but it seems very unlikely that newbies can account for all - or even most - of the virus spreaders.

Yes, the responsibility rests ultimately on the jerks who write these things - but they wouldn’t be able to get anywhere without the idiots who click on them.

Probably a virus, but I love the name

A gem from the mail server logs:

An attachment of type application/octet-stream, named Shortcut to Die_Terrorists_Die_VCD[1].mpg.lnk was defanged.

Oh, that’s just wrong…

It just sounds way too ranchy.

Nice of them to schedule it…

There’s the Hundred Years’ War, the Thirty Years’ War, the Six-Day War, and now the Two-Hour War.

Proof that not everyone knows which way is up