Category Archives: Link/News

Say no to Variable Pricing

ICANN is  hearing a proposal to charge variable prices for domain names. This has to stop before it starts. How are they going to determine a price? What’s the fair market price of something? Does it depend on how many whois queries there are? Someobody will just slam that, driving up the price. Is it arbitrary?

Look at Ken McCarthy’s blog for more info.

Linux Reality Check part 2

Scoble has a great commentary on the state of Linux fonts. It’s something I never thought about much before, but now that he’s brought it up, I realize that poor font quality is something I’ve definitely suffered through when I did actively use Linux.

It’s just another example of one the seemingly-minor-but-actually-major issues facing Linux. It’s amazing how much effort must be expended in order to implement so many things we take for granted.

Linux Reality Check

Over at Slashdot, Fedora Project Leader Max Spevack responds to some frank question about the Fedora project.

He talks about a number of topics:

  1. Unified package managers across distros
  2. Propritetary drivers
  3. Differences in Linux over time
  4. Fedora’s biggest weakness
  5. Threat of Vista
  6. inclusion of NTFS driver in kernel
  7. Wacky package dependencies
  8. a few others…

What his article demontrates to me is that Linux is going through some growing pains and that the community is realizing the difficulties that Apple and Microsoft have already dealt with in their own ways.

For example,

I guess the “problem” with package managers is that they are so integral to the rest of a distro that it’s a major endeavor to switch them. One reason is that a switch of that kind would break the upgrade chain.

Welcome to the real world of computing. Upgrading, advancing, improving are all important issues for real users using their computers. The only reason we still use the x86 architecture is backward compatibility. The only reason Windows has universal marketshare is that it works with basically everything ever written.

Another fundamental issue:

In terms of getting people to use Linux instead of proprietary operating systems — I think that battle is best fought in the world of people who are new to computers. People will tend to be loyal to the first thing that *just works* and doesn’t cause them pain. Making that first experience for people a Linux one as opposed to a proprietary one — that’s the challenge.

How true. It’s been a while since I’ve installed Linux, but my memories of it were not all that pleasant. It worked well enough, I suppose, but it certainly isn’t as polished or streamlined as it should be. MS and Apple are still years ahead of Linux in this regard.

Alexandria, Virginia has RSS Feeds available

My city of Alexandria, VA has a couple of RSS feeds available. They’re not much quite yet (DASH bus service notifications and city press releases), but there is the promise of more.

 What I’d like to see next? Daily crime reports and history and recreation news.

Alexandria also has a very impressive collection of online GIS applications that give you multiple views of the city.

It’s nice to see towns becoming more technologically adept, especially with their communications options. I already get some city news via e-mail, but I would prefer RSS.

Qumana

I think, however, that I like Qumana better. The WYSIWYG is nice. Seems easier to use. I don’t need a lot of advanced features. It works simply and well. I’m not sure what I think of the drop-pad, however. It doesn’t really support how I typically write posts, but perhaps I can make some use of it. For now, I’ll probably just turn it off.

Overall, I think I’ll stick with this for at least a while.

w.bloggar

I’m out various offline blog editors. Currently I’m using w.bloggar. I’m not sure what I think of it. WYSIWYG is really a nice thing to have in an editor, but the ability to see the HTML is useful too. Probably the best editor I’ve used is Dreamweaver’s split-pane HTML/WYSIWYG interface, which allows you to view and edit either one simultaneously.

Also, their forums are filled with so much spam to be nearly unusable.

I’ll give it a try for a while and see how I like it. I really need to be blogging more…

Bose headphones

I received many wonderful gifts for my birthday, but these in particular have helped me at work in a way nothing else has.

I listen to music constantly as a program–it helps me concentrate and eliminates all other distractions. 

They really do work as well as I expected–maybe even better. I work in a pretty noisy environment–the hum of airconditioning, computers, and people is constant. These take it all away. I don’t get ear fatigue because the volume is lower than I usually had it, and the cuffs fit around the ears, not on them. The A/C sound is completely gone, and people sound like they’re far away, even if talking right next to me. I’ve heard things in many songs that I’ve never heard before, especially at the end of some tracks when the last vibrations of an instrument are fading out–you can hear every last bit, and it’s wonderful!

 

Windows Media Player 11

The best media player just got better.

At work, I just downloaded the new version of Windows Media Player 11 in beta. From what little I’ve used it, it’s a HUGE improvement.

One potential thing I slightly miss is that I can’t view albums in the left-hand “browser” and the tracks in the right-hand “content” view. This allowed me to easily move tracks to differently-named albums during editing. But maybe there is a way to do it, or a completely different technique altogether that works just as well.

Also, the readme notes that there are potential problems with IE7 Beta 2, which I have at home. I’ll give it a try anyway and blog my results.

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