Quote of the Day [6.07.08]

broderic on June 7, 2008

“You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life.”

Henry Cabot Lodge

Link of the Day [6.07.08]

broderic on June 7, 2008

With the proliferation of electronic devices, you may not know what to do with old, infrequently used components. It’s best to recycle them, but it’s tough to get to the dump to do so. Best Buy announced that they are doing electronics recycling at their stores. And there’s always a Best Buy around (there’s one down the road from me). You bring them your old computers, televisions and appliances and they will recycle it for you. It may cost a fee though, but it’s worth it for not having that junk clutter your house and clutter the dump.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080603-best-buy-test-drives-new-electronics-recycling-initiative.html

InternetExplorer 7 is ugly

broderic on June 6, 2008

At work, I upgraded to the latest Micrsoft browser for the tabbed browsing. I must say using it daily that it is the worst looking piece of software I am unfortunately using.

The tabs don’t look right. They’re flush against the content of the browser box. They don’t stand out enough to tell which tab you’re browsing.

What’s with the swap of the application menus and the location bar? Is that a Vista thing and is that pretty retarded?

What’s with that toolbar for home, print and rss field? It looks lonely out there like its waiting to be used in an Office toolbar.

Why are the back buttons round, but the refresh and stop buttons square?

What is wrong with the people in Redmond? Is this the best they can do?

The Union label

broderic on June 6, 2008

This is a post from around June 2005 which I never posted either because it is incomplete or I forgot. Or maybe I got bloggered and was unable to post but never came back to it. Anywhoo enjoy!

BoingBoing points out a Wired article about game coders wanting to support the voice actors in there quest for royalties from recording vocals for games only if they can get a slice of the profits too. I say fooey on them.

The main thing about the actors is that they have a union to back them up. They have the clout with many other unions to help them in on this. What does the game coder have?

Maybe if game coders would think about unionizing they may have some leverage to ask for royalties as well. But if they keep the “To each his own” philosophy then, screw ’em.

Now, I am not saying that they don’t deserve any royalties. As a programmer/software engineer myself I support getting paid. They do the most amazing work and don’t get credit for it. But what gets me is the libertarian like politics that pervade the software industry.

Keynote a-bingo!

broderic on June 5, 2008

The fine folks at ArsTechnica have just released their official 2008 WWDC keynote bingo cards. Get them while they’re hot.

Steve Job’s keynote will probably hit a few of these right off the bat and I think that someone is going to call out bingo in the hall.

While the game is cool and all the poster created for it is awesome. It’s a tweak on the infamous Wired article of ten years ago.

Apple on the ropes

Wired advocated for dismantling Apple then. Yet, here we are today and the company is at the vanguard of personal computing and electronic gadgets. Ha! Ha! And it would look like the keynot will introduce even more cool gadgets that’ll have the rest of the world trying to catch up. Good luck!