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Don’t Even Go There

I keep giving Firefox and Chrome (and even Safari–heck, I even give Internet Exploder the occasional opportunity to redeem itself!) a shot at my eyeballs, and they all consistently fall short, so don’t even go there.

It’s cross platform, so you have little excuse to keep using the kludgy, clumsy, dumbed-down browsers touted by sell-out tech writers and icognoscenti that require all kinds of add-ons just to almost reach Opera’s basic functionality. It used to frustrate the daylights out of me to work on someone else’s machine and be forced to use an antiquated, kludgy, insecure, clumsy, dumbed-down browser that didn’t even have built-in mouse gesturing, but now I carry a thumb drive with Opera Portable, so I don’t have to put up with other folks’ lack of good sense. *heh* Sadly, Opera Portable is still in version 10.51, but that’s not so very bad, since the 10.52 version I’m running (Build 3347) is a beta–a rock solid beta but still not an official release.

One of the less important new things (well, since 10.51) is the “O” tab in the “Tabs” bar that allows accessing most of what used to be in the menu bar by default. It allows those folks who’ve been seduced by the dumbed-down Chrome interface to have a less “cluttered” view, but still allows folks like me who like having a LOT of information and ready manipulations available to invoke the more informative menu bar.

But little things like making transitions easier for folks used to using a dumb browser are just lil candy sprinkles. The real improvements (even over 10.51) are in security and speed–particularly the java engine. Just download it and give it a run at your eyeballs.

BTW, not using Opera Mobile on your smartphone? Think the iPhone/Safari combo is top dog? Maybe not. (When my youngest nephew got his new Wii, several years ago, he was pleasantly surprised it came with an offer for a free web browser. Opera. And I stopped being surprised years ago that IBM/Lenovo included an imbedded version of Opera in a preboot environment. Just sayin’.)

BTW, brief not-very-techie note: Yes, Opera does seem to use “a lot of memory”. But note that the image above shows I have 30 tabs open. *heh* About average, especially since the first 10 are ALWAYS open and “pinned” so they cannot be accidentally closed. And “a lot of memory”–currently somewhere around 100MB with those 30 tabs open–is a relative term on a modern computer with 4-8GB of physical memory.

BTW#2–a not-at-all-techie note: My install of Opera looks a tad different to what you may download and install for reasons other than my affection for the more informative Menu Bar; I have for years skinned whatever installation of Opera I may have on Windows computers or on Linux or BSD computers differently so that I remember which OS I am browsing in. Yes, the OS makes that little difference (apart from how the scrollwheel works in Linux, but that’d be a whole post in itself). The “skin” in the graphic above is the current version of Tobs Theater Paper (TTT-Paper 7.2).

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Obama’s Pet Gerbil

The Ø! has a powerful deterrent against those who might seek legal means to depose his unconstitutional reign. This is what we’d get if The Ø! were removed from office:

Now, doesn’t that send chills of outright dread down your spine? A politician with the intelligence of a brain damaged gerbil and the ethics of a rabid squirrel in the oval office. A chilling prospect.

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Apple Straitjacket? Yep.

I’ve often referred to the “Apple Straitjacket” (or sometimes, in a rush, misspelled as “straightjacket”–my bad :-)), meaning the artificial limitations Apple places on users of its products. Here’s some unintentional “damning-with-faint-praise” in an article on the iPhad from a writer who thinks that’s just dandy:

…none of the hardware in the iPad pushes the leading edge of design, it just does what it needs to do,” [RapidRepair CEO Aaron] Vronko said. “If you look at the Motorola Droid or Google’s Nexus One—which both have 512MB of memory—they’re pushing the edge of what hardware’s currently available. They want to make sure their devices can take on whatever people decide to throw at them, whereas Apple sits back and says, ‘What do we want this device to be able to do?'”

Exactly. While other companies have a desire to accommodate users needs and desires, Apple seeks to define users “needs” as whatever IT wants a user to “need”. (Sounds like The Ø! and his ilk, doesn’t it?) Straitjacket.

*feh* One more reason to mock Apple.

And another: note this evidence of planned obsolescence for the iPhad’s of early adopters:

One interesting bit, he said, was a section near the top of the iPad, near the light sensor. “I’d say that’s definitely designed to host a camera, [likely in a future model] six months or so from now,” Vronko said.

Just more reason to

Take a stand against vanity, conceit, and the cult of personality. Don’t be fooled by purveyors of dumbed-down, locked-down, semi-functional pieces of planned obsolescence. Computers and electronic devices are tools, not fashion accessories. They do not define who you are or what group you belong to. Any company or culture that insists otherwise is deeply creepy. Apple haters unite!

And more from another source:

You won’t hear much about price elasticity from the first wave of iPad buyers. They will buy the iTurd if Steve Jobs creates it. Apple, however, is targeting the masses. And the masses think in terms of opportunity costs. [As though I really needed to add the emPHAsis *heh*]

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One of those minor disappointments in life…

…compounded by another, even more minor, but nearly as irritating. While reading along in a book by an author I have come to expect to be fairly literate, published by a company that has usually competent editors, I read, “Here, here” in a context that called for “Hear, hear.”

Now, I know that sort of phrase is subject to one of the common classes of typos, and I have even–momentarily–typed “Hear, here” before *heh-heh* 🙂 But really. *sigh* The author, one of the proof readers or the editor ought to have caught that.

(Sadly, this video, which ought to be a brief introduction to the differences between “here” and “hear”–as a way of leading into the etymology of the expression “Hear, hear”– contains a comma splice in the introduction to “here” that is inexcusable in a video purporting to be English instruction. *sigh*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5xDvkk-qxA)

A decent explanation of “Hear, hear!” is here, hear?

Of course, there is one small problem in the explanation linked above. It introduces another expression that most folks have just not bothered to understand: “exception that proves the rule”–;-) Perhaps a slightly better–for not having “exception that proves the rule”–explanation is here-here.

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Nice Brew!

While I have another couple of gallons of beer bottle conditioning, I decided to branch out a bit and try a Sam Adams pilsner, Noble Pils. Very nice. Hopsy bitterness balanced with a nice, rich maltiness. The flowery aromas aren’t as accessible, since it has such a small head (which disappears quickly, leaving no lacing whatsoever), but it’s still a nice accompaniment to a meal. Very nice stuff, and a reminder of the validity of Ben Franklin’s observation that, “Beer is evidence that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

🙂

It’s one of Sam Adams'[ seasonals, so expect it to disappear from store shelves soon.

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Easter

“He is not here; He is risen.”

Cruci-fix

A springtime day; a windy hill:
A man had come to die.
Torture done, the crowd grew still:
He breathed out one last sigh.

Prince of life; Creator-Son–
Died on Calv’ry’s tree:
Lord of all creation,
Crucified for me!

Then all the shadowed sway of earth
Groaned aloud in pain–
That God, who came in humble birth,
Had died for mankind’s gain.

Prince of life; Creator-Son–
Died on Calv’ry’s tree:
Lord of all creation,
Crucified for me!

But as the heav’ns in darkness raged
And oceans foamed and roared,
Christ, the Son, would not be caged,
So, from death’s prison soared.

Prince of Life; Creator-Son:
Victorious, the battle’s won.

©1993 David W. Needham

And yes, I know it was not for me alone, but given the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep, were I alone in need, He’d have done the same.

Now, THAT is but one of many critical differences between Christianity and another religion that shall go unnamed.

Continue reading “Easter”

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Send These to Congress

Do you think if we sent a raft of these to Congress we could keep the “idjit congresscritters” busy enough to get ’em out of our hair for a while?

It’s worth a shot…

Note plans and instructions here showing how you too can make The World’s Most Useless Machine.

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Gagamaggot

Things like the “Seventh Generation” ad I just saw (while watching HGTV) just make me want to puke. The ad promoted “Seventh Generation” chemical cleaners as not being “chemicals”. Assinine. Of course their products are chemicals. For example, according to the company’s own (required by law) Material Safety Data Sheet on its Chlorine Free Bleach, it contains “Cosmetic Grade (whatever that is) Peroxide” and as anyone not “educated” in public schools in the past quarter of a century knows, peroxide is a chemical. And a poisonous chemical that is a dangerous eye irritant as well. (Do note: some miseducated in public schools correct some of public school’s–A.K.A., “prisons for kids”–flaws with autodidacticism and so know that companies like “Seventh Generation” are bloviating, putrescent liars.)

Ditto for the rest of the “Seventh Generation” so-called “non-chemical” chemicals.

Companies like this depend on an enstupiated, illiterate public to survive. I say, kill such companies off, if for nothing else their dishonesty and concerted efforts to further lobotomize an enstupiated population of sheeple.