Month: June 2006

I’ve been reluctant to begin using Opera 9, partly because it’s still in beta and partly because i have so much invested in Opera 8.54.

Invested? Yeh, all my passwords and usernames (neatly encrypted so that no one I’ve yet discovered knows of a way to recover them if lost–hence a hardcopy backup of alla that data–*heh*) stored in the Wand.dat file. All my email. All my RSS & Atom feeds. You get the picture.

But still, it’s not a MessySoft beta. All reports have it as very,very stable. And I’ve used the Opera 9 beta on a coupla different Linux distros. Besides, importing alla that data, well, there just has to be a way.

So… I’ve made the switch. Installed it into a new folder (already had an older beta that I’ve not used a lot). Imported all my data. Actually, not that hard, and it probably would have done it with no effort on my part if I’d installed it over my old Opera.

Some niggling lil quirks. Like keyboard shortcuts. *sigh* The Opera programmers gave in to the Firefox app’s keyboard shortcuts on a few behaviors. I was not pleased to find ctrl+d for “Paste and Go” missing. And ctrl+n opened a new browser window instead of opening a new tab, as I’d become used to for the past five or six years.

Sooo…

Tools>Preferences>
Advanced>Shortcuts

Opened the Keyboard shortcuts, added ctrl+d and told Opera what I wanted it to do. Edited ctrl+n to do what I want. Saved it and I’m now a happy camper.

Mail is still slick, just a lil slicker. Page loading is still snappy. My fav Opera skin’s been updated, and it’s much nicer than it was before. All-in-all, a pretty neat experience so far.

And only one very slightly buggy behavior (Opera 9 seems to be rally picky about some java compliance problems. Applets that are not-so-compliant are likely to only partly work… *heh* If you could hear my bad Billy Crystal immitation, you’d get the Princess bride reference.)

From the Opera website,

Opera 9 Beta 2 includes Widgets, content blocker and BitTorrent…

And more.

Versions are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS/2 and QNX.

And Opera 8 is available for your phone, Pocket PC, and a wide array of other devices. In fact, Opera makes its income off all the other devices (phones, etc.) it is used on, and the computer browser is just an offshoot of all that, now.

Minor Update: detailed (and I do mean detailed) User Prefs can be defined pretty easily, if you can access the user prefs page, which is kinda buried… and for good reason. You can royally screw up your install if you do really wonky things. but… OK, bookmark this and use it if you want:

opera:config

Most of the things found there can be accessed directly via Tools>Preferences, but not in the detail that the above link will offer.

Open trackback post. I’m mulling over a coupla “thinkpost” assignments, so just link to this post with some good stuff of your own and track back, OK?

If you want to host your own linkfests, check out

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

The topic is:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.

…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Also stated as,

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy is that in any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control, so that those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.

*heh*

Throwing a monkey wrench into Das Buros via Conservative Cat, Blue Star Chronicles(Ouch!), Basil’s Blog, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, and Is It Just Me?

Hugh asked for a response (in comments here) to some folks rhapsodizing about Macs over at Diane’s Stuff, at her rant about Internet Exploder. I can think of a lot of responses, but here’s a repeat of something I said when commenting on the Apple Imac Dual core INTEL PC,

Let me be clear: the Mac OS is fine… for Great Aunt Tilly. After all, since it is the ultimate “training wheels” OS, it does prevent people from easily messing about in its innards and doing wild things to screw it up. Which also means it is inordinately difficult to get anything done any way EXCEPT “the Mac way”. Amusing—and true—story. Was once part of a small office where each of us used our own computers at work. Right. Very small office. I had a coworker—a devoted Macrophile who had run the all-Mac computer lab in college—who was constantly coming to me and asking to borrow the use of my computer to do things he was unable to do with his Mac. Yeh, largely the result of being the only Macuser in the office and needing to manipulate PC files, a task never quite as easy [on a Mac] as Apple claims. He also continually complained that my PC was too hard to use because it didn’t do things the way he was used to… on his Mac. Each time, I’d show him how to do things: “See? Just push this little button on the CDROM drive. You don’t have to drag the CD to the trash bin… ” “Your CDROM drive has a button?!?!? Amazing!” etc. *sigh* Inflexible, almost unteachable. Mac user. Needed his “training wheels” OS. Never “got” it that I liked doing some things at a command line (still do). Windows ain’t all that great, but at least it’s not like using a computer while wearing a straightjacket.

And that pretty much sums up my response to the Mac vs. PC wars. With the Intel Macs now available and Apple making it easier to run Windows (NOT just Windows apps) on Macs, the PC-Mac war really has ended with the 5% market share Macs surrendering.

There’ll always be a niche market for Macs, and rightly so. But the Intel-based Macs (which folks had running Windows in no time, inspite of Apple’s attempts to prevent that at first) and Apple’s software solution allowing dualk boots, now, between Mac OSX and Windows, the recent Mac ads on TV strike me as particularly silly. Especially since the representations in those ads a that Wintel computers are crippled and Wintel users are clueless, while Mac computers “just work” and Mac users are “with it” fly in the face of the facts.

I don’t need Macs on my home network, but my Wintel and Linux compouters all coexist happily, no snags, no hassles. Wireless additions, ad hoc? As long as they have the security key, sure. Peripherals? A couple of minor examples should suffice to lay the ads’ lies to rest:

1.) No name crapola digital camera. Plugged into USB on an “old” (8-year-old mobo/CPU, etc. Nearly 6-year old Win2K) computer and it just worked. Downloaded photos in Irfanview (FREE) and away I went.
2.) Took an old (maybe 7 years) scanner down to my son’s WinXP computer and plugged it in. Manufacturer has even phased it out of “life”. WinXP recognized it and popped up asking if I wanted to scan something, with the diualog allowing a scan right then and there.

Will any of these computers automagically recognize an iPod device? We’ll never know, since I’ll never have somethiung so straightjacketed by proprietary formats as an iPod. But for just any old interface/peripheral I want to plug in, an autosearch of Microsoft’s online repository of drivers (if there isn’t a standard driver built in that’ll work) almost always results in just plugging the stuff in and going on about my business.

Can folks screw that easy process up? Sure. And I’d suggest that folks who are too dumb or lazy or technophobic to click the default prompts (if asked to) probably do need the training wheels a Mac offers. (Of course there are fairly smart, hard-working technophiles who use Macs, too, cos their area of interest or work pretty much insists they use niche software made for Macs.)

In closing… *heh* here’s a parody of an earlier round of Apple commercials (coupla years ago), filmed by a Mac user, who, well, let’s take the words of the site currently hosting the video:

Ok, a few points…
First, EVERYTHING in the parody actually happened. Second, we don’t hate Macs. And finally, Hunter [Cressall], the guy in the spot, uses a Mac professionally so he’s tired of being called a Windows apologist. Hunter would like to point out that he still owns two working Apple IIe ‘s and has used Macs in one incarnation or another since 1982. He hastens to add ‘Nyaa’.

And from the comments section on the page linked above, Hunter Cressall responds to a Macrophilliac with,

…there isn’t anyone more Mac than I am. I just don’t like their advertising campaign which claims that just because one embeds a Unix kernel under a redundant operating system that such an operating system is uncrashable. We edit HD broadcast television. You want a dead Mac? Give us twenty minutes and a deadline.

Since I haven’t yet asked about hosting the video myself, and I want to honor Hunter Cressall’s copyrights, here’s the link to view it yourself:

Apple Ad Parody

Oh, and crashing computers? I typically leave my Win2K comps on 24X7, absent really bad storms or a hardware install that requires opening the case. Windows/software crashes? Maybe a couple of times a year. But it does still happen.

And I can have as many mouse buttons as I want.

🙂

Romeocat has a coupla great timewasters posted. Go on over to Cathouse Chat and check out Diet Coke and Mentos

Go on, gitcherself over there!

Only scifi readers will catch the meme in the post title. Maybe this would be better:

Kaboom? There was one! Said to have comparable explosive power to the Hiroshima bomb.

Record meteorite hit Norway

As Wednesday morning dawned, northern Norway was hit with an impact comparable to the atomic bomb used on Hiroshima.

Peter Bruvold witnessed the meteorite streaking across the night sky.

The map shows the meteorite’s direction of fall (the arrow) and the possible impact area over Troms and Finnmark counties.

At around 2:05 a.m. on Wednesday, residents of the northern part of Troms and the western areas of Finnmark could clearly see a ball of fire taking several seconds to travel across the sky.

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!”

“This is simply exceptional. I cannot imagine that we have had such a powerful meteorite impact in Norway in modern times. If the meteorite was as large as it seems to have been, we can compare it to the Hiroshima bomb. Of course the meteorite is not radioactive, but in explosive force we may be able to compare it to the (atomic) bomb,” Røed Ødegaard said.

The astronomer believes the meteorite was a giant rock and probably the largest known to have struck Norway.

“The record was the Alta meteorite that landed in 1904. That one was 90 kilos (198 lbs) but we think the meteorite that landed Wednesday was considerably larger,” Røed Ødegaard said, and urged members of the public who saw the object or may have found remnants to contact the Institute of Astrophysics.

Yeh… “exceptional” is the word I’d use. Nah. I’ll stick with the Chicken Little quote.

h.t. to a Chaos Manor Musings reader… and a tip o’ the tam to Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven for the “Lucifer’s Hammer” meme.

Practicing “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!” at TMH’s Bacon Bits.

Although stats are a concern running way toward the back of the pack, my “once-in-a-while” check of TTLB earlier this week has turned into a once-a-day thing because of the weird discrepancies displayed on its pages relating to twc. Since this is definitely not a general interest topic for readers of these pages (after all, most of y’all care deeply about google page rankings, TTLB and Technorati rankings and such… as deeply as I do, which is not much at all :-)), so if you’re at all interested… Continue reading “Blogeeky Stuff—more on “the silly stats game””

This is an Open Trackback Alliance post. All weekend long, link to this post in one of your own and then track back. more below the “diet”.

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This guy must have been on the same wavelength as Jerry Pournelle, who tried this diet for one day a week many years ago as a grad student…

” I know a diet on which you can eat all you want as often as you want, so long as you eat only the one thing: Purina Monkey Chow.”—Jerry Pournelle

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As I said, this is an open trackback post open all weekend long. Link to this post and then track back. If you want to host your own linkfests, check out

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at Linkfest Haven.

Absolutely. He was the self proclaimed leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. He was acknowledged as such by Osama Bin Ladin and Zawahiri. If instead Al Qaeda had successfully killed our President, or even a top general in Iraq like General Casey it would be a major coup for them and a serious blow to us. So the same is true when we successfully kill their general in the theatre and one of his top lieutenants. Not to mention the 17 other safe houses coalition forces raided successfully today. Just imagine 17 separate Al Qaeda attacks in one day. 17 US soldiers captured in different parts of Iraq on one day.

Make no mistake this is a major blow.

Some are already saying others will rise to take his place. No doubt they will. Until our enemy realizes the fight is hopeless they will continue but for now they are shaken.

More than anything I know this was a major blow to Al Qaeda and a major victory for the Iraqi people, the new Iraqi government, the United States, and coalition forces because of a post my friend at Treasure of Baghdad just put up titled The Thousand-Miles Road Starts with One Step: Continue reading “Does Zarqawis Death Matter?”

I’ve avoided writing about the Haditha situation (Marines accused–mostly by the far left–of “atrocities” in Haditha last November in an incident that was under active investigation by the military long before any Mass Media Podpeople whistles blew). I’ve done so because others are doing a fine job of handling the situation. Michael Yon, though, has outdone the best of the blogosphere and responsible traditional media with Hijacking Haditha.

Just read it.

You might also read Rick’s post at The Real Ugly American pointing to and commenting on an American Thinker Piece. Given the facts presented there, one might almost think Dan Rather’s behind the Haditha massacre story… I’ll not link directly to the American Thinker piece, cos I’d rather you licked up the link from Rick and read his comments as well.