Friday, September 23, 2005

WebProNews.com -- absolute NO idea about decent journalism!

This is the 3rd appallingly bad, unresearched article I've read on "WebProNews" in the last couple of months. Enough is enough.

Avoid WebProNews! There's absolutely nothing "pro" about it, obviously it's just a group of hacks who love the sounds of their own voices.

The linked article claims Firefox is less secure than IE due to the number of security threats logged against it at Secunia, which was greater than for IE, in the previous 6 months.

Reasons this is just garbage & that they obviously have no clue what they're talking about:
  • The blog it quoted from took its figures from Secunia. Not that WebProNews bothered to mention that, instead quoting the blogger as an official source.
  • Checking the relevant pages on Secunia for Firefox and IE, show that a fully patched Firefox is rated in the green ("Less Critical", a "2" on a scale of 1-5, 5 being the worst) while a fully patched IE is STILL rated in the RED ("Highly critical", "4" on the same 1-5 scale).
  • 19 out of 85 Secunia advisories for IE are marked as "Unpatched", while only 3 out of 23 Secunia advisories for Fx have the same status.
  • IE6 is almost FIVE YEARS OLD now. And people are still finding security faults.
  • Mozilla have fixed all critical security issues within a fortnight of their being listed, while Microsoft are still struggling to address bugs & leaks from years gone by.
  • IE is completely intertwined with the Microsoft Windows operating system (any flavour. For example, it provides the UI for Windows Explorer & the Control Panel, to name just one alternate role) such that issues with IE can allow direct access to the operating system for hackers.
  • There are soooo many more good points about Firefox than just its far better security features than IE. The security "issue" is just one small reason why people are trumpeting the benefits of Firefox. IE simply cannot match Firefox in other (read: "any other") areas. Extensibility, customisation, speed & autonomy are just a few of such factors.
  • The facts speak for themselves. I have NEVER had a virus, nor a piece of spyware/adware/trojan or other on my computer! Not a one. I have also never used IE (except when site testing), and have never used Outlook as my default email client. Related? Absolutely. It's a simple case of cause & effect, my dear Watson.
  • the WebProNews page on which this article appears (actually, any page on their site, for that matter) is 75% ads, 25% content. Shows what their motivating factors are.
There was another ZDNet article recently that summed up the situation perfectly with the following quote:
If Firefox is still coming up with double-digit exploits four years after launch, then we'll know it's as bad as IE: until then, simple headline figures are in no way sufficient to help you decide which browser is safer.
As WebProNews so perfectly indicates -- do not believe everything you read on the web.

Law Professor argues against Indonesia's draconian drug laws

Excellent article that concurs with & expands on my own opinion about the whole drugs issue going on with Indonesia.

Professor Mirko Bagaric is Head of the School of Law at Deakin University, and has extremely clearly & eloquently put forth more reasons why we, as Australians, should not be tolerating Indonesia's apparent "anti-foreigner" drugs policy.

There is a massive drugs problem in Indonesia, but their current solution will only serve to remove their islands from the list of recommended holiday locations for travellers, something that will greatly damage their already fragile economy, and worsen the whole black market drugs situation.

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Anti-Australian sentiment abounds in Indonesia

At the park with my dog last weekend, I met a guy who had recently returned from his 21st trip to Bali. He usually loves Indonesia, and has, over the years, made some firm friends on his holidays there.

This trip, however, was noticably different, with even his long-time Balinese friends exhibiting a coolness towards him, a distancing unlike they had ever shown before.

As our dogs played together, he told me about the current Anti-Australian sentiment he felt everywhere over there, and of how much it actually scared him. There is a mistrust, a new dislike of us. We, Australians, are now foreigners to the Indonesians, not close allies and neighbouring friends as our politicians try to portray.

The hostile feeling was everywhere, this man told me, from shopkeepers, to airport staff, to hotel porters.

Why is this happening? Didn't we just give this place a billion dollars?

Indonesian Police, working in tandem with street drug dealers, are targeting Australians. There have reportedly been more than a few instances of drugs being planted on innocent tourists. He himself witnessed one guy being busted over something in his back pocket that had been placed there not moments before by a disgruntled dealer. It cost the victim over $30,000 to buy his way out of jail. It's highly likely the police are feeding the drugs back to the streets, giving the dealers ammunition for their stings.

Corruption is still rife in Bali, but the Anti-Australian sentiment, brought on in the wake of Schapelle Corby's awful sentencing, is giving corrupt officials there a whole new set of targets to extort.

The linked article tells of yet another Australian busted for drugs within our neighbour's shores.

I'm almost getting used to it.

We shouldn't be getting used to it.

This latest arrest comes in the same week the Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, Imron Cotan, left our shores "disappointed and stunned" at the backlash from Australians after Schapelle Corby's verdict.
"In a way perhaps they are too emotional," he said.
No, you fool Cotan. It's because Australians are human, and unnecessary suffering is something we do not tolerate.

Illicit drugs are bad. With that we will not disagree. But unnecessary, biased cruelty and political vendettas from a country globally recognised to be almost completely broken by corruption?

Why are we tolerating that?

Google follows Microsoft's path of "Cheat first, fight it out in court later"

Google is being sued for "massive copyright infringement" by a group of authors over the search giant's unauthorised use of their published & copyrighted works on Google Print.

This reeks of Microsoft, to me. No, I'm not saying Google is Microsoft, but the duplicity with which Google is gathering up, reformatting & re-presenting stuff that doesn't belong to them reminds me of MS's dodgy tactics towards Netscape et al (i.e. any competitor) before they were officially rapped over the knuckles & told to get clean not so very long ago.

Obviously authors aren't directly competing against Google, and, should we believe the company's protestations, Google is, in fact, doing all writers a huge favour in making their works more widely accessible.

It's kinda missing the point, however, in much the same way Napster completely missed the point.

Google argues that they do give copyright holders the opportunity to withdraw their works from the database, but this is laughable, really, as stated so well by Paul Aiken, executive director of one of the plaintiff groups, the Authors Guild. From the article:
[The] offer turned longstanding precedents in copyright law upside down, requiring owners to pre-emptively protect rights rather than requiring a user to gain approval for use of a copyrighted work.
Shall be very interesting to watch where this one goes.

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Microsoft & the fishy Phishing Filter

Linked article discusses MS's new anti-phishing technology for its web browser, the so-called "Phishing Filter", which was initially due to be released with the upcoming IE7 but has been made available already as an add-on to current versions.

The main issue with this new bit of software that has privacy pundits extremely concerned is that the tool sends information about user's surfing habits back straight back to MS.

Of course, they're denying any intention of storing or using this data for anything but phishing protection purposes... but, please, this is Microsoft. The world's most popular liars.
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer and Internet privacy expert with the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, has said this is potentially “a wholesale handing over of one’s privacy to Microsoft. I would say, right now, definitely don’t use this. If you’re careful, you don’t need this.”

“There are clear financial imperatives for them to choose to make use of this information in the future and start logging it,” he said. “It is not hard to imagine the gold that could be mined out of that information.”
Phishing Filter indeed... Fishing Filter is more like it.

I would find Microsoft seriously laughable... if only they weren't so serious.

Microsoft knocking at Firefox's door

This is really exciting news! And on the flipside, it's also really scary.

We'll start with the exciting: PCWorld is reporting that Microsoft is currently in talks with the developers of both Firefox and Safari -- IE's two biggest threats in browserland -- in the hope of getting them to integrate its new identity meta-system technology, named InfoCard, into their platforms.

Why is this exciting?

Well, for one, Microsoft is formally recognising Firefox. And Mozilla, and other browsers in general. This is good. Actually, this is great; one of MS's favourite tricks is to stifle all competition with a mix of wide & varied monopolies, and multitudinous bits of proprietary garbage in previously standardised landscapes.

But this brings us neatly to the not-so-exciting part of the picture: Microsoft is yet again trying to dominate in the personal identity & security market. (Remember Microsoft's Wallet, anyone?)

Ok, ok. Yes, I am jumping to conclusions, given that InfoCard technology is potentially not even going to be in IE 7, once it is finally released. And yes, there are others playing in the security sandpit with MS on this product.

The open source scheme InfoCard is based on is a new security protocol, WS-Trust, still being developed. Sun is another contributor to the new standard, and security firms across the globe are incorporating WS-Trust compatibility into their offerings already.

Head on over to the main base for all this exciting development, SourceID, and we find a couple of extremely pertinent quotes from Bruce Schneier, security guru, featured on the home page:
In the cryptography world, we consider open source necessary for good security; we have for decades. Public security is always more secure than proprietary security. It's true for cryptographic algorithms, security protocols, and security source code. For us, open source isn't just a business model; it's smart engineering practice.
So what is Microsoft doing in the mix then?

CNET's Top 10 Products list places Firefox at #5

Another accolade for the best web browser on the planet, Firefox, this time coming in at Number 5 on CNET's list of the Top Ten Products they've seen in their ten years of operation.

Others on the list included both the Apple iPod (#1) and the Apple iMac (#8), the original Napster (#4), ubiquitous search giant Google (#3), and TiVo (#2), a product we've not yet seen here in Australia, but which most of us (females, at least) know about thanks to Miranda on Sex & The City.

Firefox should have been higher, IMHO, but that's probably due the fact that I use it every single da... actually, nah, it's due to the fact that it's a bloody brilliant piece of software!

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Is Microsoft getting scared?

Tech site BetaNews is first out of the box this week with an article about MS's recent announcement that they are going to be following the tried-and-true methodology of one of the most enduringly popular and successful pieces of web software around, the Apache Web server. Microsoft will be introducing modules and XML config files into their ever-evolving-yet-never-really-improving IIS server software, a concession to the stability and durability of some of Apache's greatest features.

Yet another of their largest products conceding somewhat to the force of the open source world. Is Microsoft starting to get scared?

The resurrection of IE from the grave was one of the first surprising indications that MS are watching the growing popularity of their free competitors (in this case, the brilliant Firefox web browser), and other concessions have slowly but surely been following, not least of which is the new MS Office Open XML file format.

Is this a case of Microsoft backing down on their "we are all you need" style of marketing, trying hastily to grab back some of their disgruntled ex-customers who have jumped ship for more open, compatible and cheap products?

More interesting commentary about the BetaNews article on the wonderful Slashdot.

Michelle Leslie's to face 15 years jail... or just 3 months

All over the news last night was splashed the fact that Michelle Leslie could potentially get 15 years jail for one of the two charges she may face in relation to her recent drug bust.

What I've just read, however, seems to indicate she may, instead, be out in 3 months.

Sydney's Daily Telegraph newspaper reports that:
For those who are users of the drug, the maximum is only three months jail.
Michelle's blood test results came back positive, indicating she had already consumed at least one tablet of ecstasy, so this seems to be the obvious line her defence team should follow -- that she is an ecstasy user.

Clearly her original lawyers (who were abrubtly sacked soon after she was arrested) had this in mind when they announced she was addicted to the drug. (Which she has since denied.) Maybe, indeed, this is the line she should take. Who cares what sort of record that leaves about her in Bali? No one is going to hold that against her back here. We see far worse than a casual ecstasy user on a daily basis right across the world. Some even make it to cult hero status. (To whit: Jason Donovan, Michael Hutchence, Ozzie Osbourne...)

Whatever she does decide to do, the absolutely insane Indonesian legal system still blows my mind. Surely, then, this "users get 3 months, tops" rule makes getting out of jail a no-brainer for any drug dealer: just ensure they pop a pill or two themselves each time they start their daily sales push to avoid any lengthy convictions.

It's ridiculous and completely laughable.

I had a comment recently from someone annoyed with my critical remarks about Michelle Leslie, and to a point, I can understand this person's grievance. Pre-judging anyone is a pretty harsh thing to do, and I kinda did do that. (Kinda being the operative word. Oh, it's not a word? Awww... but yous know wot oi mean, doncha.)

Unfortunately, however, for Michelle -- and anyone else who tries to proclaim her innocence -- the blood tests prove that she had, indeed, already had some of the drug when she was caught. So, dear commenter, I say yet again: Michelle Leslie is an idiot. To do that in Bali, after everything Schapelle has been going through, is foolish -- at the very least.

That said, to be up for a possible 15 years for such a small sin (given the prevalence of drugs in our society, and the prevalence of more serious drug-related crime and the like in my very suburb, dear old St Kilda)... well, yeah. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Not even an idiot.

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

eBay to Acquire Skype

$2.6 billion shmackerooo's, baby, and that's just the beginning.

I did a review of the major media corp purchases recently & discovered that they're all buying stuff, all the time. Big companies swallowing up the small companies, with Yahoo, Google, Microsoft & CNET leading the way.

For today, however, this is the big one. Wonder what eBay's intentions are here, and if they, too, are planning to compete for global desktop/IM/VoIP/search/blog/marketplace domination?

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Bashir's latest lie

Ooooo... this makes my blood boil.

Bashir wants to be swapped from jail to hospital, due to "a sore back".

If they even consider it.... man, who knows what Australia will do in return?

Listen to Bashir at your own peril, Indonesia.

The Age Reader Surveys: Leslie & Bush down, Corby still up

The Melbourne newspaper The Age has regular reader polls, which I've only just learned of today, and they're rather interesting.

Current question: "Has the New Orleans disaster permanently stained George Bush's presidency?" A resounding 88% say Yes.

Past polls include, recently, 75% saying NO to "Should Australia lobby to help Michelle Leslie?" confirming my belief that her case is nothing like Schapelle Corby's, and she deserves whatever punishment she gets.

On the other hand, in June 73% said they "had not changed their mind about Schapelle's innocence", with past polls indicating the majority of us believe she IS innocent, and has not been helped enough by the government.

We still need to fight for Schapelle -- do not stop doing that! -- and her own strength should be marvelled at, too, as she tries to make the best of the sickening situation she is in.

Beauty begins at 30

I turned 33 last weekend and, I must say, I feel fantastic -- physically, mentally and even spiritually.

And my feelings are backed by a recent survey of 1356 women which found that 50% believed a woman was most beautiful in her 30s, not her 20s.

Only 28% picked their 20's.

There are probably many reasons for this, besides the popularity of glamourous tv shows such as Desperate Housewives, starring the rather gorgeous Eva Longoria.

Factors such as the progress of the beauty & fashion industries mean that we are no longer "dried up" at 30, & instead we are living longer, having less children, getting married older, doing a lot more -- keeping more active, staying healthier & just generally enjoying life on a much bigger scale.

Of course, I wasn't around when my mum was 30 -- actually, I think I may have been a twinkle in her eye at that point -- but the freedom & liberation from many of the traditional constraints and expectations that used to be put on women in her day quite simply give us more life, and more chances to enjoy life, these days.

The ridiculousness and frivolity of some of the 20-something stars who grab the limelight whenever the can (think Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohen, Tara Reid, et al) also adds weight to the fact that there is beauty in maturity, not in the excesses of one's 20's.

Yay being 30! I'm loving it.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Future of IE 7 = A long, slow, well-overdue death

Jose Francisco has written a lengthy article for XPSource this week, summarising the main points to come out of a recent MS-organised online chat that centred around IE7.

And it's a real hoot.

You've really gotta love the way these MS guys think, ignoring the bleeding obvious, trying to drum up excitement about things the rest of us are all well & truly used to by now, and just generally living in their own little fantasy land. They do their best to assume a position of superiority over other browsers by weaving a spell of quasi-mystery and big expectations, which is really most amusing to read.

The main "facts" (quote unquote) about the upcoming IE7 have already done the rounds of the web, with nothing new here. In short, IE7 will drop ActiveX support, will include an anti-phishing tool, won't work on Windows 2000 and will have tabbed browsing. It will also be dropping Java from its installation bundle (but, I'm assuming, will still support it), won't have custom skins or styling, will not be optional in Win Vista, will not work at all on a Mac, and will no longer include the planned download manager, because, the developers hasten to add:

“It is not “too hard”, we just are not able to implement a download manager with the level of high quality that we want in the timeframe of this release.”

In other words, it's too hard for them.

(Firefox, on the other hand, has been including an excellent, inbuilt download manager since the very early days, plus there are over 30 individual extensions available that add additional tools for this task and/or allow Firefox to interface with other popular 3rd-party download managers, such as wget, Download Accelerator Plus, GetRight, and the online download app, DownloadStudio).

The only truly interesting comment from the article was that there's a potential new UI to be unveiled in the next IE7 beta. Maybe. (Oooo -- the mystery! The excitement!)

Hey, did you know that Firefox has hundreds of themes, UI enhancements and customisable bits & bobs you can use right now?

Heh. ;)

Some other choice quotes:
Jessep Bangham:
"All in all, there will always be people who prefer certain browsers (there are still hundreds of thousands of people who choose AOL) but we are sure that by the time of release we will have a far more feature rich application than Firefox can offer."
So let's get this straight: They're not going to include a download manager, nor themes, nor a modifiable UI, yet it's still going to be "more feature rich application than Firefox". Oh man, you gotta love it.

And, talking about the threat of Firefox...
Dave Massey:
"Dude, They may have that number of downloads but that is very different from having that number of users. Recent stats actually show Firefox growth has slowed and is even declining. We’re looking forward to supplying a great user experience in IE7."
Y'know, there are a heap of stats around for people to select from, and I guess if they look hard enough, those MS folk will probably find something to support their claims. Unfortunately for them, however, I can also find many stats to support the opposing claim that, in fact, Firefox usage is still increasing.

So, which stats will you listen to? Well, I can answer that one -- none of them. Because you're already using Firefox, and don't need any prickly statistics to tell you just how good it really is, do you now? ;)

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

The Yarra River, Melbourne

Yes, it really is that dirty.

Barneys hates Angelina

The gorgeous, pink Team Aniston babydoll tee I ordered on eBay recently arrived in the mail today, and it is utterly superb.

Equally superb is the info we find on Ted's column from a coupla weeks ago:
"We hate her."
--Barneys New York sales clerk, regarding Angelina Jolie
Oh yes! Read Ted for the reasons. I'm just glad at least some Americans have sense.

Monday, September 05, 2005

Bad Americanisms: Care Less 2

I was going to blog Ted Casablanca's The Awful Truth column this week for a different reason... ok, you're right, I'm still gonna do that, but let's stop for a moment to count the grammatical errors/Americanisms... yet again.

Same pitiful problem as mentioned earlier today:
Lori, Boise, Idaho:
In the end, I'm sure all three parties care less what I think.
I mean, come ON, people. The sentence doesn't even make sense!

Could not care less, Lori. Could not!

You are right about one thing, honey, we don't care what you think, but we do care that your uneducated remark actually makes it verbatim onto a popular web site.

Who do we blame here? Lori, her English teacher, Ted Casablanca, or E! Online?

So many Americans with no clue... such a big country, so much power... Scary, isn't it?

The Difference Between A Looter And A Finder

Just a direct link to something you all need to see.

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is giving plenty of opportunities for ugly, racist reporting.

Link via A Socialite's Life.

Americanisms... ruining English everywhere

The Superficial is one of my fave gossip sites, and I guess I shouldn't be expecting perfect sentence formation from any online gossip rag, but generally they don't do too bad a job.

This recent article, however, contains one of my pet hates:
The attendant had no idea and could have really cared less.
The phrase is "could NOT have cared less". Not "could have cared less", which actually indicates the attendant was indeed a fair bit more strung out than they're attempting to portray.

The only people I know who regularly get this wrong are Americans. Is it mere laziness? Or is there actually a true lessening of intelligence once we cross the seas into Yankie land?

Sheesh. Learn it, people, or leave it alone.

Another reason to use Firefox -- BugMeNot

BugMeNot is one of the gazillion wonderful little extensions you can add to your Firefox installation to make your net surfing experience even better.

Ever followed a link to an online news story, and instead been presented with something like the following?
Pain the ass, really, all those news sites wanting your details before they'll let you read their stuff.

Get around such annoyances quickly & easily with the BugMeNot extension:
  1. Right-click in one of the "Registered Members Log In Here" fields.
  2. Select "BugMeNot" in the context menu that appears.
  3. You will automatically be logged in & taken to the news story, with details provided by BugMeNot's growing database of fake rego details.
  4. If the details provided by BugMeNot don't work, you'll remain on the log in page, so repeat Steps 1 & 2 until you get a valid log in.
The BugMeNot service also provides a web site where you can do a manual search of their database, but you will need to type in the site's url & copy suggested login details between the sites yourself. So if you ain't using Firefox yet, you're not completely out in the cold, but it's just a heckuva lot easier to bypass compulsory rego's using BugMeNot with Firefox!

So, now, what are you waiting for?

Chief Justice Doyle is wrong

An interview with South Australia's Chief Justice John Doyle in Adelaide's Sunday Mail this week has stirred mixed feelings in me.

Talking about the problems we face when trying to deal appropriately with individual judge's non-approved actions, Doyle said a formal complaints system has been suggested a few times in the last decade, but the suggestion has yet to be acted upon, leaving him, in his position as Chief Justice in Adelaide, unable to do anything except give the misbehaving judge a good talking-to.

This seems wrong to me. Judges are human, therefore they are not perfect, so some sort of procedure allowing for complaints, at the very least, or, better yet, punishment of bar offenders seems necessary to me.

On other matters, Doyle said:
Government interference could lead to a system where judges were continually being told what to do by political leaders or powerful institutions.
True. The government is run by politicians, with power and greed often being motivating factors. Some will seek out this power at any cost, with lying not out of the question. Whatever gets the votes. In general, politicians are not people we should be blindly trusting.

Judges, on the other hand, have studied the law, and this is their job -- to know that law, our laws, and ensure they are applied fairly and as is right. Listening to a bunch of power-hungry vote chasers is obviously not something judges should be doing.

Cool. I'm with Doyle up to that point, but unfortunately some of his other comments indicate he, too, is unduly influenced by the media.

Take this quote:
Schapelle Corby had received overwhelming media attention because she is photogenic.
Bah! What garbage. Look at Michelle "Instant-Islam" Lee. She's a model, therefore gorgeous by definition, and her case isn't generating anywhere near the attention Schapelle's did (and for good reason).

Look, too, at the last big drugs case that rocked Australia -- Chambers & Barlow, almost 20 years ago now. They were male; they were not "photogenic"; they were guilty. Yet Australians reacted to their death sentences with overwhelming force, all the same.

Schapelle is not getting sympathy because she is pretty. Nor is she getting sympathy because her family make good copy.

Schapelle Corby is getting sympathy because it is patently obvious she is not guilty, yet 20 years of her life have been taken from her. Originally, there was the very real possibility she would lose her life. Thankfully, this did not happen, yet her situation is still appalling.

When an average Australian who has scrimped & saved for a holiday abroad takes said holiday, only to be locked up the moment she gets off the plane, then, Justice Doyle, there will always be sympathy and empassioned support. We are Australian, this person is one of us, she is a mate.

Looks have nothing to do with it -- but even if, for a moment, we look at that part of the story, where has the most information & sensationalism about her beauty come from?

The Indonesian press, not the Australian. Reporting from the two sides has been vastly different, one calling her the "Ganja Queen", the other calling for her freedom. There is a world of difference between the printed perspectives there.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

New page for Schapelle-related posts

My growing list of posts relating to Schapelle Corby was taking over my sidebar here, so I've decided to create a page of links to these posts instead. For those who are following Schapelle ordeal, all new articles will be added to the top of the new page's list when they're published.

Check it now & stick it in yer bookmarks: http://miinx.blogspot.com/2005/09/schapelle-corby.html

Schapelle Corby

Schapelle Corby is a 28-year old Australian woman who has been sharing a small cell with 8 other women in one of Bali's worst prisons -- Kerobokan, also housing the Bali bombers -- since October, 2004. She has been charged & found guilty of importing 4.1 kg of marijuana inside an unlocked boogie bag, and is now serving 20 years in the Balinese jail.

Along with most other Australians, I believe Schapelle Corby is most definitely innocent and her imprisonment, and the situation she is in, is simply horrific.

This page lists all the posts I have written on this blog that relate to Schapelle's plight. Check back to this page for Schapelle-related Miinx updates.

CalliGrapher 8 is out -- and it rocks

My beloved Toshiba e800 Pocket PC just gets better & better these days, with more sensational software available than I can poke a thulu at.

One PPC-development company, PhatWare, makes a range of fantastic products, including the PhatPad, brilliant for quick scribbled notes & drawings, and PhatNotes, a note-taking and note-managing application. My favourite product of theirs, however, is by far the essential CalliGrapher.

CalliGrapher is predominantly used for handwriting recognition & for that it is simply brilliant -- accurate, fast & highly customisable. However, the program also allows creation of macros for all sorts of things via its PenCommand Scripting Language, giving you user-friendly menus to add in actions such as mouse-clicks, button presses, program & file starting & management, and basically anything else you can think of doing with your PPC.

More new features in version 8 include the WritePad, a supercharged-version of a kinda more traditional-style writing area, and extensions to the AutoCorrector functionality that enable you to use it like I do -- which is not how it was intended, but which I think is superb for speeding up text entry. The AutoCorrector list comes pre-configured with some common spelling mistakes & hard-to-write words that it will fix on-the-fly for you, however, as my spelling ain't too bad, this was a bit useless to me.

So I've been changing my AutoCorrector list into a kinda shorthand list: I write a couple of letters, and AutoCorrector changes them automatically into the word or phrase I've set it to be. For example:
  • abt becomes about
  • acct becomes account
  • acctd becomes accounted
  • acctg becomes accounting
  • etc
I am increasing my AutoCorrector list's vocab daily, and this all ties in with the personal shorthand language I've been using myself for notetaking ever since my school days. Who needs a text entry pad when you can write a whole sentence with just a couple of quick letter combo's!

PhatWare have been beta testing the CalliGrapher software over the last couple of months via a public beta testing program, so I joined this to primarily let them know about my usage of the AutoCorrector, as well as point out a few bugs. (I am a picky wench, which helps for testing stuff!) I expected that would be the end of it for my involvement, however I was ecstatic to be notified that not only have they decided to incorporate some of my suggestions, they were giving me a free copy for my input. Yay!! Thanks, Stan at PhatWare. :)

So, PPC owners, go check it out -- CalliGrapher 8 is out now.

Another bogus Microsoft RSS claim

This article is a complete crock!!

There are so many incorrect points in David Utter's September 2nd article on WebProNews.com, entitled "MSN Claims First With RSS Search", that it's laughable. And then some.

Yahoo! **DOES** do an RSS/XML search, it's available via their Advanced Search page. (Check the File Format option.)

Amazon's A9 search engine also allows searching of RSS but calls it "blog search".

On top of these, there are also many good RSS search engines that have been around for a while, such as NewsIsFree, CompleteRSS, SearchForRSS, or Syndic8.

Additionally, many RSS aggregators, such as Bloglines, also offer an RSS or blog search.

So -- MSN are by no means the first. Them renaming RSS search with their own terms is also not a first on a couple of levels: other companies also have already developed & are using their own proprietary terms for feed searches; and Microsoft are notorious for renaming stuff that's already been around the block a dozen times, so it ain't a first to that end either.

So, I say again: What a crock!!

Shocking journalism. If that's what it is. Friends, do not believe everything you read -- especially when it comes to Microsoft!

Or Scientology. ;)

Friday, September 02, 2005

MSNBC.com journo's need re-schooling

Ok, maybe I'm being harsh.

But honestly:
"The feud supposedly started when Lohan learns that Duff is dating her ex-sweetie, singer Aaron Carter."
Apart from blinding brilliance of the battling bulemics who star in said story, we actually have three different tenses battling it out in the above sentence alone.

Shame, MSNBC, shame.

What do Microsoft actually do these days?

Seems to me like they must have more people in their scheduling and planning departments than developers in the trenches these days.

That's the only way I can account for the latest "release date" leaked for "Windows Vista", as they're calling it -- the same new OS that was originally to be released... hmm, let's see, was it last year? or the year before? ;)

Perhaps they're extending it again to allow all those other important new employees more time to do their jobs. You know, the ones they've glued ear-to-wall over at Google. Unlike the rest of MS-ville, those spies employees are really busy.

Kenya vs. Indonesia

...or should I say, "up to three years and four months" versus "death by firing squad"?

You selfish, selfish man, Mr McKay. Using Schapelle's plight as justification for your own political demands -- it's sickening.

Get your facts straight, too, before you next take to attacking others in need. No QC was sent. No one else has been helped. Schapelle hardly received any help, either. Talk is cheap, and our government loves to do that.

And finally, Mr McKay, please, please stop confusing media interest with government action.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Microsoft certifies itself -- and Firefox doesn't like it

I've chuckled at this a few times, decided today to share my mirth:
This is the alert message I get when I visit the IEBlog with Firefox, due, I'm guessing, to the fact that Microsoft issues its own security certificate, when possibly it's not authorised to do so. Firefox does not like that. ;)
Of course, one must wonder about the need to secure the IEBlog anyway. It's not like it's passing anything unique or of critical importance down the line, certainly nothing that should need securing.

A better suggestion would be to secure the rest of the net from IE -- now that's security I'd like to see.