August 2004

What is needed in OS X web browsers

August 17, 2004

I'm experimenting with OmniWeb 5. It is a great web browser. It occurs to me though, as I'm still unable to read my bank statements with anything but Internet Explorer, and the older statements are n PDF format that the OS X web browsers need to be able to display PDF inline. Why can't they? PDF rendering is built right in to the OS... Is it a webKit shortcoming? Wherever the issue lies it should be addressed sooner rather than later.

Court refuses to hear case again

August 16, 2004

The 9th circuit court is refusing to reconsider its May decision upholding Oregon's assisted suicide law. The refusal follows a ruling in May by a three-judge panel of the court that upheld the law in Oregon v. Ashcroft. Stemming from Oregon voters' passage of the Death with Dignity Act the case pits state's rights to make their own laws against the Bush Administration's attempt to further regulate every aspect of a person's life from pre-conception to post-mortem.

Apple Remote Desktop 2.0 crashes when you click scanner

August 16, 2004

I've been battling an annoying problem with Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) where it crashes when you click on the "scanner" icon to run a scan of the network. Several searches had been unproductive until I found this article in the knowledgebase today. The thing is that even though it has "crashes" in the title a search for crash and the ARD product won't show it. Once you click scanner you have just a second when the program opens to move it back to "master list"... but that is a tiresome work around.

So the hint says you can only have 29 network ports in your active configurations. This means you can't have more than 5 "locations" set in network preferences because there are some ports (internal modem) that even if you don't use you can't delete.

UNLV Rebel Yell has an RSS feed

August 15, 2004

As we head back to school I took the time to check out the RSS feed for the Rebel Yell, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

The Empty Seats

August 15, 2004

Ressell Beattie says of the Atlanta Olympics, "They lied to us horribly." He describes the early hype about the need to get tickets early. I don't know about Sydney but I know that the same kinds of deception were in evidence in Los Angeles in 1984.

I wonder if the seats won't be empty in the form of poor television ratings for the NBC record setting poor performance. Part of the problem, at least, seems to be NBC would rather cover those things that are easy to cover. This focus on what's easy treats us to hours of rowing coverage every day. Expanding coverage to more channels hasn't made the coverage any better. Instead the viewer is given more hours a day of the same thing that would be on a single channel. When it comes to events that are more difficult to cover, like equestrian eventing, viewers are limited to a few seconds of nationalistic coverage. Almost as much time was devoted to riders saying "hi mom" as it was to the total time spent actually showing the dressage portion of eventing.

RSS could have saved the day

August 15, 2004

Among the worthless stories on NBC tonight was a note about the failure (again) of the system that is to provide scores and results to the print media pool at the Olympics. We'll skip the question of where the bloggers are for the moment, but a quick look at the official website of the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games shows RSS could have gone a long way to easing the problems. Wouldn't it be great to have a feed for each of the sports areas that are already on the schedule and result pages.

What should have happened is that there should have been an RSS system in place to offer results feeds to the print press and the world alike. Viewers at home could skip the repetitious hours of watching rowing crews navigate straight down the lane, or bypass the unbelievably bad coverage of the Russian men's gymnastics team (which only showed their mistakes) and could instead get what they are interested in. Oh, yes, we would have missed the description on CNBC about the server being a sink holding the scores and the drain is not big enough to get them out to the print media.

Is it defective?

August 14, 2004

Dave Winer's Thinkpad has developed a fracture. He wonders if it has to do with airport security and the beating it has taken. I've traveled with my laptop quite a bit and not had similar problems. My Thinkpad was terribly built and just felt flimsy but weighed a ton. Dave, I'd take it back for warranty service this shouldn't happen.

Not so impressive

August 13, 2004

Watching the opening ceremonies of the Athens Olympics. NBC's coverage is less than impressive. It seems that in Salt Lake we were treated to a lot more coverage and a lot fewer commercials. It might have been a very impressive presentation but we'll never know as NBC chose to cut away all too frequently. They are also not at all friendly to folks (like us) with a DVR... Many of the blocks are 7 hours in length, making it very difficult to catch the parts viewers are interested in. For example if you want to see a softball game tomorrow morning you're in for taping a 7-hour block. One can hope

Intelligence Officials: Iran Battling U.S. In Iraq

August 13, 2004

Rumor Control has some particularly disturbing news. According to senior intelligence sources Iran has made a strategic decision to confront American forces in Iraq. Iran, having been labeled by the Bush Administration as a part of the Axis of Evil is taking a page from the US playbook and instead of waiting for an inevitable conflict have begun helping the Shi'a forces in Iraq. There is also a suggestion that the US is behind murder charges against one time Pentagon ally Ahmed Chalabi. Chalabi is now said to be working for the Iran

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