Disqus - Latest Comments for JaredB

Re: Styled again at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 26 Nov 2004 21:13:42 -0000

P.S. - You may want to check how it looks in IE though - it's pretty funky. I'd start with moving the list container into the body though, as that is bound to mess things up.

Re: cha-ching at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:59:40 -0000

this, I'll blame it on you for now. But seriously, are you able to trackback to your blog from other blogs? If so, I will take a look to see if it is something in my setup.

Re: cha-ching at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 01:13:28 -0000

I just tried it again, this time using "http://www.scatteredthoughts.us/wp-trackback.php/327" (I didn't have the www in before), and it looks like it's still not working (unless it's in the moderation queue or something).

I was able to trackback within my own blog just fine.

Re: cha-ching at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 01:15:27 -0000

I love how when you use justification on your text styles and then go to a new line with a really long "word" with no spaces, it stretches the line above out - looks cool.

Re: Adversity at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 00:33:51 -0000

Wow, glad to hear that it is OK. Congratulations to both of you for bringing peace to the situation. Did he get to come home yet?

Re: Is a house something to move for. at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 00:57:13 -0000

No - don't go!

I say that of course from my own selfish viewpoint of not wanting you guys to leave....

A couple years ago, when Kinko's first started moving to Dallas, there were several opportunities for me to go, but it was always an easy "no" for me. Lots of people who did decide to go did a lot of talking about the great houses they could get out there, and the lower cost of living, etc. Maybe it's just me, but the house thing has no appeal whatsoever to me. They would tell me about this luxurious layout of the place they're looking at, and I would nod and wish them well, but in my head all I could think of was "ya, but how good is that house really, when you step outside, you're quickly reminded that YOU'RE LIVING IN TEXAS!"

But honestly those factors (housing, money, etc.) weren't even a consideration for me in that decision process. The things that mean the most to me (people - friend and family relationships, etc.) were way more important than a job. I was prepared to get laid off and take whatever work I could find, including a cut in pay, to stay here. Luckily, God made a way where that was not necessary, and even ended up providing for a much better financial situation.

It sounds like for you guys, that will be the tough part; since you have friends / family in both places, it will make the decision harder. Like I said above, just in case you're counting votes, I vote for you to stay :)

But seriously, if you do decide to go up there, maybe with all that money you'll be saving you could afford to come back down and visit for vacations, and then we could still see you guys every once in a while ('cause I'm sure as heck not going up to Idaho anytime soon!)

Re: Is a house something to move for. at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 26 Dec 2004 01:02:46 -0000

Dangit Dan, you even got me to use a smiley face!!!

P.S. - Idaho is a "red" state, just so you know... heh heh

Re: CrazyShuffle at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jan 2005 18:36:55 -0000

If they havenâ€šÃ„Ã´t sent the iWorks to you yet, canâ€šÃ„Ã´t you get a refund?

Re: URL at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 19:02:05 -0000

commercial sites, whereas .org was for non-commercial sites. That distinction quickly faded as the "average" consumer got exposed to the internet, and (thanks to commercial media bombardment) learned that web sites are at "www dot whatever dot com", so if you wanted anyone to use your site you had to also register the .com (if it was available).

Nowadays there are all kinds of TLDs, and which one you choose should be completely up to you. I'd take the above statement into account somewhat though; many people are now aware of some of the more common TLDs (.edu, .org, .net, etc.), but .us will probably still confuse many grandmothers of the world.

Re: DAve Z at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:52:30 -0000

I also check everyone's blogs, usually more than once a day. I will have to go with Dan on the comment thing though, the default blogger comments are a pain to deal with. Blogger does have a "hack" at http://tinyurl.com/4nwph that gives you a comment form right on the page (like Wordpress) and people can submit comments more easily, but it does require Javascript. I think this is what Jared W uses.

But Dave, if you read this, don't let us scare you away; I promise to stop shaking the foundations of conservatism/facism if it's too unsettling. (OK, I don't promise to stop, but I'll take it a little easier).

Re: Firefox is the best at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 16:53:36 -0000

Mental note: never let Dan borrow my USB drive.

Re: iPod Shuffled out at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 23:46:05 -0000

I knew there was something that I really hated about the iPods, but I couldn't remember what it was until now. Is that battery issue fixed in the new ones?

Re: iPod Shuffled out at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 23:48:06 -0000

But, I do have to admit that when I looked at the price on the shuffle I was pretty impressed. That's a decent price (not the cheapest, but not way out there either) for a 1GB USB drive, plus you get the MP3 functionality. I also like the lack of the fancy UI, since the iPods much touted interface didn't really impress me.

Re: iPod Shuffled out at Scattered

JaredB — Fri, 28 Jan 2005 23:49:54 -0000

Dang it, I am used to posting from my laptop, which has my name already filled in. (This really isn't an attempt to get my comment count up) You can add my name to the above two comments.

Re: In my head at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 03:02:47 -0000

I will have to check out Postal Service more.

That "Such Great Heights" song was OK, but I actually prefer the original version (Iron Wine).

Re: iPod Shuffled out at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:12:32 -0000

How come that comment above has my name on it when it wasn't from me? Dan, can you check the IP on that?

Re: In my head at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:13:42 -0000

I am pretty sure Postal Service is covering the song by Iron and Wine - am I wrong?

Re: In my head at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:21:23 -0000

Oops, my bad - you are right, it was written by Marc Hawthorne (Postal Service); Iron and Wine was the cover.

Oh, well, I still like the Iron Wine version better - it must be the hippie in me.

Re: One Click or two? at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 31 Jan 2005 13:01:29 -0000

I think this is another reason Macs kind of bug me, I am used to being able to right click. I know you can do some other workaround in the Mac OS (Option +Click, or holding down or something weird), but it isn't really the same.

I can relate to that story above though, from trying to teach my mom how to use the computer. It was hard for her to click on anything (left or right) because she moves the mouse where she wants it and then takes her hand off the mouse to push her finger down on the mouse button, which ends up causing the mouse to roll off of where she had it positioned, so the click "misses". After trying to explain this to her for a while, I think I may just get her a trackball and avoid that problem. It's funny how much we take for granted though in terms of usability.

Re: How could they do this to me? at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 24 Feb 2005 17:16:57 -0000

Maybe I will write up an article about it someday; until then it might be a fun "educational" experiment to try on your own.
P.S. - If you check the IP on this comment, you will see that I am in Amsterdam right now.

Re: This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 12:52:38 -0000

Kevin Rose: the laughing stock of true hackers everywhere.

Re: This Week’s Del.icio.us bookmarks at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:12:30 -0000

I just can't get past that lame intro to their show ("the broken") where they sit around drinking those cheap bottles of beer pretending that they're cool.

Actually, now that I think about it, I can't really think of anything very good about that show (other than on one segment where they talked about cracking WEP keys, they actually got that pretty much correct).

I can't really say anything about his other "serious" stuff (TechTV, ScreenSavers, etc.), since I've never seen those shows, but based on the show that I have seen, that's enough to write him off as a dork.

Re: Adobe To Acquire Macromedia : Gizmodo at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 18 Apr 2005 15:45:54 -0000

Cool; it would be awesome if they built in some Illustrator / Flash integration.

I wonder if they're trying to compete with Microsoft for the position of the company that has the most pirated software products. I would bet that over 80% of the installed copies of Adobe's products (and whatever the Flash studio product is called) are pirated.

Re: Google Search: FlyakiteOSX at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 19 Apr 2005 02:33:31 -0000

Be sure to include Tim's computer in the review...

Re: Flickr at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 01:38:58 -0000

Do the TOS allow the invites to be posted on ebay? If not, I wouldn't mind getting one.

This is a pretty genius plan actually; from what I hear, once you get used to using the Pro account, you would never want to go back to the basic level.

Re: Video Casting problems at Scattered

JaredB — Tue, 12 Jul 2005 02:04:00 -0000

Note to self:

Don't mention AVI to Dan (henceforth known as the "MPEG nazi") anymore...

Re: The lake at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 26 Sep 2005 18:41:24 -0000

Cool. Sorry I missed it.

BTW, is the "WiFi" free? How come you got so behind on your feeds if you had access?

Re: Fly through the clouds in your browser - MUST SEE!!

JaredB — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 22:08:01 -0000

Since when does Shockwave/Flash not run in a browser? I don't get it.

Re: Next phone

JaredB — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 14:51:07 -0000

I thouhgt you were talking about getting one that was unlocked (by a user) on ebay or something - I doubt the manufacturer supports those.

What you definitley won't get support for is anything that has to do with the phone interacting with the service provider, like the data connection not working correctly, etc.

One of the reasons I'm thinking of the t809 is that when EDGE is eventually rolled out down here the phone (and T-Mobile) will support it.

Re: SoftCE.net

JaredB — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:25:27 -0000

That's good. IE is actually pretty standards compliant, as long as you don't try to use any features or standards that are too new (like some CSS2 stuff).

PS - If you're going for compatibility, be sure to check your DOCTYPE declaration at the top of the page, because browsers (especially IE) interpret pages differently based on whether you tell it that it's HTML4, XHTML transitional, strict, etc. Oddly enough, you will get more consistent results in the application of CSS styles (between browser implementations) with XHTML, which seems kind of odd at first, but I had to learn that one the hard way.

Re: SoftCE.net

JaredB — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:27:28 -0000

PPS - When I say odd, it's not that it's odd that XHTML gives better results (because it is superior to HTML, IMHO), but I just found it odd because CSS rules are not written in XML/HTML, but it does apply them differently based on the DOCTYPE definition.

Re: HC42 DV Camera

JaredB — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 04:29:49 -0000

Good timing on this one; we are thinking about getting a DV cam. I'll probably check out some of the lower Sony HC models. Any recommendations?

Re: Lost is found. The best theory to date.

JaredB — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 19:46:46 -0000

Yeah, that was a great analysis. I read through the first 10 or so pages so far (only reading Andrew's comments).

I think the relationship to the magnetic / pole shifting stuff is pretty clear since it's been more than hinted at, and I think a lot of people (including me) were leaning towards that kind of an explanation for even some of the other things (a scientific explanation as opposed to supernatural or alien).

The collective consciousness theories are the only thing that I think may be off, but it's as good a theory as any for now.

One thing I really hope is that they never fully explain all of these points, at least not until the last episode. That is one of the great things about the series right now. Ideally they would take it maybe a couple more seasons, then start over with a new show, new story, same storytelling style and basic feel.

The other interesting thing about this speculation is that it's still an ongoing series, so the writers could theoretically change things if they want to keep people from finding the "truth".

I agree that it's not spoiler material; these are the kinds of discussions that I love, and one of the reasons that Lost is at the top of the list for TV shows for me.

Re: Google Local - Ventura

JaredB — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 19:48:27 -0000

wow, that was cool.

Re: Image tilting

JaredB — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 20:12:20 -0000

Do you have a link to an example of what you're talking about re: the tilting?

Re: Treo 650 Review

JaredB — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 01:30:02 -0000

Comparisons of the number of apps for Palm vs. Windows Mobile always reminds me of someone saying that there are a lot more apps for a classic Gameboy than for the DS.

I've owned many Palm-based PDA's, and I don't really want to bag on them, but in terms of quality applications available, I don't think this argument stands anymore. It certainly did at one time, but the WM app market has been steadily climbing for a while now, while the Palm one has been dying.

Re: Treo 650 Review

JaredB — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 19:17:08 -0000

These phones are different than the blackberry in that you just pay for the phone itself (one time charge) and then pay for whatever regular data plan they have available, there's no "extra" cost for the email, etc. since it doesn't work like the blackberry push system.

You should be able to get a decent plan for under $50, depending on how much e-mail / talking you do, unless you were talking specifically about the $50 just being for the data, then you definitely should be able to do that, since unlimited data should only cost 20-25 per month from most providers.

Re: Rootkits Head for Your BIOS

JaredB — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:22:27 -0000

Not really, this doesn't have anything to do with Windows specifically.

Re: DoFollow

JaredB — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 20:28:40 -0000

Yes, I think there's still a reason. The main point of nofollow is to not allow other people (not necessarily spammers) to bump up their page rank by essentially placing links to their sites in your pages.

Most spam prevention systems will usually allow a single link (especially in the author info), as long as it isn't from a known "spammer", and the content isn't too fishy. So, you could have a really dedicated site owner go around to high rank sites and actually make real comments that won't get deleted (or reported to the RBLs) as long as they seem to relate to the discussion, and therefore use the blog to push their own rank higher, when that may not be the intention of the site owner.

Re: Rootkits Head for Your BIOS

JaredB — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 02:27:38 -0000

No, just saying that this (completley theoretical at this point) vulnerability is not unique to windows, and has nothing to do with the windows software in any way.

Re: DoFollow

JaredB — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 21:10:40 -0000

I know it's not a big issue, but user self-submitted links does go against the goal of what that aspect of page ranking is trying to achieve. The idea is that someone else linked to your site and that should increase it's rank, but people posting on other sites and linking back to their own can interfere with this. This is why the nofollow attribute was born (not because of spam).

Re: DoFollow

JaredB — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 03:02:32 -0000

Ya, I know what you mean, but the better solution for that in my opinion is for the site owner to add a link themselves. WP provides the links list (or "blogroll") for this purpose. That way it is site owner initiated, rather than user initiated.

Re: MySpace

JaredB — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 22:52:18 -0000

Judging by that last comment, it would seem that the myspace culture is getting to you...

Re: The Gematriculator

JaredB — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:09:50 -0000

What the heck is this thing?

Re: NewsVine

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 01:39:02 -0000

I'm not sure if I want one or not, but I think you should make up some crazy rules to get an invite from you just to see how many people jump through the hoops...

Re: NewsVine

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:16:10 -0000

Oh yeah, I didn't catch up on my mail before posting that comment. I haven't had time to try it out yet.

Re: official lost myspace

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:17:03 -0000

Apparently not very long.

Is there some rule against this or something?

Re: Portable Cell Phone Jammer. - The Red Ferret Journal

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:21:36 -0000

You could always head to radio shack and make your own, although considering your time (labor) in addition to that parts it probably would be worth it; $70 isn't that much. Any company mass producing them could definitely make them cheaper, though, so if they catch on (legally) I predict you will see a lot of them for a lot less money.

Re: MacBook no more

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 20:22:07 -0000

He finally realized that Apple sucks. :)

Re: MacBook no more

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:08:37 -0000

I know, I was just joking.

On the subject of the G5, though, it's interesting to hear the spin on this now. They used to talk so much trash about the Intel chips when promoting the superiority of their G5s, and play the apples / oranges game in benchmarking, clock speed, etc, and now they've got Intel chips themselves.

Re: official lost myspace

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:13:18 -0000

Nevemind, looks like it's working now

Re: NewsVine

JaredB — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 22:56:34 -0000

Does this mean they are mad at you from when I got on and immediately started spamming?

Re: Textpattern or Wordpress

JaredB — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:49:22 -0000

While you could use either Wordpress or Textpattern as a basis for your CMS, I would suggest that Textpattern would be a better choice even though you have more Wordpress experience.

The primary reason is that many more people have used Textpattern for this purpose, and both the product itself *and* the support community will be much more suited to that goal. In contrast, Wordpress can be made (or extended) to probably do most of what you want too, but I have a feeling it would require more custom development than Textpattern would. (Both will always require some).

Also, while Nathan may have had success with his own implementation, I would really not recommend that in this case, since it's a pretty big undertaking, especially if you haven't done it before. Also, he was doing his (I'm assuming) as a part of his salaried position, whereas you (whether you're charging per hour or a flat rate) would have to be trying to squeeze the most value out of your time as you can, which will almost certainly require you to base your system on one of these pre-existing platforms.

Which brings us to your question of cost. If you can swing it, the way I would recommend it would be for you to charge them on a per hour basis, with a very general schedule set up front, and updated frequently (with your customers) as you make progress. This is primarily because you have no good basis on which to estimate how much time it will take you personally to do this, and therefore you have no idea what a reasonable fixed cost would be, or even a very solid idea of how many hours work you should estimate in your initial estimate.

If you try to offer them a flat rate for the project, you will inevitably run into the rule that software development projects with any degree of complexity will usually take longer than you think they will up front. This is can be due to a variety of factors on either your end or the customers, but either way it will result in you spending more of your time on it, and if you are already locked into a fixed price then the only thing you can do at that point is either renegotiate or effectively lower what you end up making on this job (averaged out to per hour of work).

It would be much better to have an agreement which includes a statement of what will be done, and an agreement to pay you per hour to get it done, provided with a realistic, educated estimate on how many hours will be involved. Then, as long as you are frequently showing sufficient progress, they will most likely be motivated to keep paying you to continue, even if it ends up taking a bit longer than you initially projected, because you will have been updating them on the schedule as you go, and they will understand the reasons for any delays that have arisen.

Of course this still requires some fairly good estimating, and my advice in this regard would be spend some (of your own*) time to get familiar with whatever platform you will be basing this on, so that at least you will have a better idea of how much work it will take once you see their requirements.

*Side note: I think it is always a bad idea to charge a client for your time learning the particular system/platform/language, etc. by building that "learning time" into part of the project (even though you would obviously not tell them this). I have seen this happen before, and it always turns out very bad.

Speaking of requirements, I'm of the opinion that the most important phase / aspect of the project is your communication with the customer, and making sure that (as much as possible) you both understand exactly what is requested and how it will be accomplished. I'm a big fan of formal development processes like RUP, but for smaller projects you certainly don't have to go overboard with the extensive planning and documentation. Just make sure that you have a firm (documented) understanding of what they are asking you to do. This includes what they say they want, as well as you explaining to them what you understand they want based on what they said, (which is often different from what they think they want) and then you go back and forth on that until you are both essentially on the same page, which you then turn into your "formal" requirements.

Re: Textpattern or Wordpress

JaredB — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:04:21 -0000

Good luck! I will check out the other post for more info.

Re: Plans for a WP CMS

JaredB — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:19:15 -0000

From the first section: yes, you can pretty easily do the varying page layouts with templates, which they can then just apply to any page they put in.

As for using a "page" (as in WP page vs. post) for the home page, there is some good info in the "using WP as a CMS" section of the codex, including a link to the a Static front page plugin, which sounds like exactly what you want.

As for managing the links section in the header, I would recommend either doing a single WP link category (which can have subcategories for nested menus) for header section links. You can customize the header to pull the links from this particular category.

Then you can alter the links calls to exclude these from the regular lists (if you want) and only show these in the header. If you wanted to get really fancy (beyond what this would allow), you could also create a special page template and embed a "page" output into the header if the simpler links list strategy wouldn't work for you.

I haven't looked at many of the changes to the admin sections in WP2 yet, but I suspect that you may have to customize this part. Shouldn't be too difficult, but it will be a bit of work. IIRC, as of 1.x versions, the user levels (1-10) were provided but the middle levels weren't really used for anything. You could pretty easily make use of this, and then write plugins to customize the admin pages to check them where necessary. Notice I said write plugins instead of altering the base WP files themselves. This is because if you make a whole bunch of changes to the actual WP admin files, you might be screwed if a big security update comes out which you will need to implement but then have to go back and rechange all those new files. With plugins all your code is in your own files, so it's much easier to maintain.

Re: Plans for a WP CMS

JaredB — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 19:19:50 -0000

Oops, messed up that link to the static front page plugin.

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 02:34:56 -0000

There's plenty of good art out there with less restrictive licenses, so I'd suggest using something else so you don't have to keep dealing with crap like that.

Re: Plans for a WP CMS

JaredB — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:44:29 -0000

That's a pretty cool one. I haven't had a chance to check out much of the WP2 stuff yet, but the switch to the role based system is a huge improvement that I wasn't aware of until now.

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 18:46:46 -0000

I figured you probably knew it, but you'd rather e-mail and ask permission from someone every time you want to do something new, I guess, just because that particular image is sooooo cool...

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 21:09:03 -0000

I get it, I was just messing with you. But seriously, you should take down the link (or remove the image) until you hear back from him, at least if you want to get on his good side.

Re: 5 Things Steve Jobs Has Misled Us About…

JaredB — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:42:08 -0000

Not sure what's going on here, but the text of this post doesn't show up when you are on this page. It still shows up on the main page view as well as the feed.

As for the link, it's a good one; especially the section on Apple's long history of double-speak regarding the Mhz discrepancies.

Oh, and one more thing: the screen does not scroll down if your window is small enough to need scrolling for the comment sidebar section, when the main section is not big enough. So if someone is using a screen that is not tall enough, they can't scroll down and submit a comment on this post. (Although now that I've commented, this page will probably be long enough not to see this bug, but make a new post with no content, and you will see the bug).

Re: 5 Things Steve Jobs Has Misled Us About…

JaredB — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:51:04 -0000

Update: the no-post-text issue appears to be happening on all asides posts, and the comment form thing seems to be jacked up on anything where your screen size is short.

Re: 5 Things Steve Jobs Has Misled Us About…

JaredB — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:53:40 -0000

For the short-screen-comment form bug, the only way people can submit comments (if this happens to them) is to tab down to the submit button and press enter (since they can't see it on the screen), or disable styles.

PS - I am using Firefox 1.5 on Windows and Linux.

Re: 5 Things Steve Jobs Has Misled Us About…

JaredB — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:04:06 -0000

I wasn't relating the two bugs in any way, other than that I noticed them at the same time.

I was just using a smaller browser window, but there could be some people out there who will run into the problem who don't have other options.

I would suggest (if you're interesting in fixing it) not using fixed positioning, but rather use javascript to adjust the positioning as the user scrolls if you really want to keep the same "fixed position" look.

Re: 5 Things Steve Jobs Has Misled Us About…

JaredB — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 15:14:33 -0000

Actually, a better fix might be to add (for that div that you have position: fixed on) the bottom: 0px attribute, so that it is fixed at the bottom of the screen, so it will always be visible. Then you might just run into it overlapping the top of the side menu if the screen is short, so you may want to put a background color on that div as well, so that it blocks out whatever it goes over...

Re: Google Map Black box

JaredB — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:26:12 -0000

Could be any number of things. Back before Google Maps was around they had black boxes on the other satellite maps sites (like terraserver, etc.), so this is not really new.

Re: Super Bowl XL Commercials on Google Video

JaredB — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:26:53 -0000

Was it just me, or did the commercials suck this year?

Re: Google Map Black box

JaredB — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 17:58:23 -0000

Yeah, it is. I checked out a few in the states that used to have black boxes on the older sat. photo sites that now don't in Google. I don't know if that's on purpose, or if Google just hasn't been asked to block those ones yet...

Re: Google Map Black box

JaredB — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 17:59:39 -0000

Google should do an easter egg where they make fake sat photos for the Lost island, where you can see certain things (the Blackrock, etc.), and you just have to find where it is.... that would be cool.

Re: My next iPod

JaredB — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:06:46 -0000

1. A software dev API, so other people could write apps to run on it.

2. I'm not sure what video formats the ipods support, but if it's only proprietary Apple ones, that should change too.

Re: Netflix Hub video

JaredB — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 22:12:52 -0000

I've said for a while that Blockbuster should combine their in-store and online rental plans, so that you can order online, then choose to either pickup at the store or get it shipped to you in the mail. Then when you're done you can either mail it back or take it back to the store and they could then immediately trigger your next one to be shipped (rather than waiting for the return by mail) or you could pick it up in the store if they had it.

I predict that this will eventually happen, and NetFlix will have to counter by partnering with other chain brick&mortar locations.

Re: Just noticed…

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 01:52:26 -0000

You like it? Is this coming from the same Nathan who criticizes non-descriptive link text for breaking Google??? Even "click here" is better than "f" or "o" or "r"...

I agree on the blind thing by the way.

Re: Just noticed…

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:38:23 -0000

Yes, I get the point of what it's about, although I don't really think it's that great of an idea since there's nothing to indicate that there are multiple links unless the user goes and mouses over all the different letters.

As for being accessible to the blind, the rest of your blog (at least the primary parts - the posts and the comments) are accessible (from the WP default at least) as long as you haven't done anything to break it. (Ironically, Nathan's comment system is not, but I've already done enough Nathan prodding in this post).

But, since we're already on the subject, I remember you saying that about the AOL design before, but I do also remember you commenting specifically on the non-descriptive link text and it's negative (or at least ineffective) effects on search engines, both of which apply here. Links on individual letters are not "descriptive", unless you take them in context with what's around them, in which case "click here" would also be considered "descriptive". :)

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 13:57:43 -0000

Sounds like you don't have the ultimate tag warrior plugin installed....

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:00:37 -0000

Sounds like you don't have the ultimate tag warrior plugin installed....

If that's the case, and if you don't want to install that plugin for some reason, the call to the function should probably be surrounded by an "if (function_exists('function_name')) { }" block so that it doesn't try to call it if it isn't there.

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:02:30 -0000

Oops, duplicate. Hey, when I clicked submit it didn't show it being posted, and didn't clear the box over here. Then I decided to give more info, and I didn't see either of them until I refreshed....

Re: Just noticed…

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:13:02 -0000

I wasn't really complaining, the only reason I commented at all was after Nathan's, since it seemed that it contradicted what I thought he thought/said before, so I just wanted to nag him about it.

Feel free to do it if you want, I'm not going to try and talk you out of it.

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 14:15:44 -0000

So function_exists breaks if it's inside of an if_single? That's weird...

Re: Scattered4 Theme at Scattered

JaredB — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 22:18:05 -0000

You should clarify what license you want to distribute it under, to alleviate any doubt.

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 10:46:47 -0000

You should probably double check the licenses on the plugins you're bundling, since there may be some that have specific conditions regarding their deployment.

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 12:15:38 -0000

I'm sure it's probably fine (in terms of bundling them), but there may be specific license terms that you have to abide by, in terms of making it clear where you got the components from, crediting the original authors, etc. This is especially true if any of the plugin authors are using licenses like Creative Commons.

Also, in most cases, there are conditions regarding how you can redistribute it that you not only have to abide by yourself, but also have to make clear to anyone who may use your derivative's works, because those terms can carry through as part of the license agreement and apply to your end users as well.

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 14:41:21 -0000

I'm not trying to make a big deal out of it, but that was exactly my point. Assuming that you're referring to Creative Commons' "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" license, that license requires you to distribute any work based on it under the same license. Your theme (in the stylesheet) currently specifies the GPL, which does have some differences from the share-alike license.

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 16:19:13 -0000

I know it's probably no big deal, but it's kind of a pet peeve of mine: it seems like a lot of people are using various licenses for their products without really knowing or caring what they mean, in which case I don't get the point of specifying a license, other than they saw other people do it and felt like they should.

For some reason I thought that you had other plugins bundled besides this one, but I never really looked at it so I should probably just shut up.

Technically if you are including them in your download (either pre-installed or in separately zipped files) you are redistributing them and the licenses apply. No one will ever say anything about it, probably, but I just like pointing out stuff like that every now and then.

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:19:04 -0000

Yes, they do, because you are distributing them as a part of your theme, therefore making it a derivative work. Perhaps if the theme would run without modification you could get around that part of it, but you would still be redistributing their plugin, which would fall under the terms of the license.

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 21:20:51 -0000

The previous comment should say "if the theme would run without modification if they were missing the plugin.... then it might not be a derivative work"

Re: Rolling Archives

JaredB — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 23:16:58 -0000

Me neither. :)

Re: Will Apple Adopt Windows?

JaredB — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 02:17:44 -0000

How could it stay alive in the open source community unless they released the source?

Re: Iconz for iPod

JaredB — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 02:30:30 -0000

Nah, I hate pretty much all cover/case things like that (such as varying face-plates for cell phones, etc).

I have actually considered buying an iPod on and off before, but if I started seriously considering it, I would probably go out of my way to get a non-Apple MP3 player with more features and fewer restrictions. I wouldn't necessarily rule out the iPod, if I didn't find anything that I liked better overall, but I'm pretty sure that I would find something else.

For now I already have an adequate portable music player (my PDA) that I carry with me pretty much everywhere. There are drawbacks to this system, however, that have caused me to consider a separate, standalone player. One is battery life (which I'm not sure on, but I suspect that a standalone player probably gets more than my PDA), and the other is storage space (I only have 2 gigs on my PDA). I could, of course extend it with an unlimited number of extra SD or CF cards, but then that would be a pain to manage and sync.

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:17:26 -0000

If you aren't going to have anything on the sides, then why not make it variable width, just using margins/padding on the sides? That way people with bigger screens could see more.

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 22:22:55 -0000

I'm not sure what you mean by "stretched", unless you just mean that it reflows to fill the available space, which is usually the good idea if the goal is for people to read it. It's especially helpful for sight-impaired people, who can take the font size up several notches (CTRL in Firefox) to make it easier to read, but that gets annoying if the column is a fixed width in the center.

Then at the other end of the spectrum you have people with thin screens (like on portable devices - PDA's, cell phones, etc.) who will either have to do a bunch of side-scrolling or alter/disable stylesheet info in order to read it.

Not trying to talk you out of it or anything, just pointing out those kind of things in case they didn't occur to you, and to just generally be a pain.

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 00:35:16 -0000

I think you have a mistaken understanding of how you can present sidebars so that they do not do what you describe.

For a clearer perspective, take a look at my blog, which has a sidebar on the right of the main content area. The main content area will resize itself to maximize available screen real estate, while if you make the window small enough, the sidebar will drop down below the main content, not overlapping it or crowding it out.

Also, I hate to break it to you, but your stats are inaccurate when it comes to screen size. Screen size stats could only possibly be gathered via javascript, and since many small device browsers do not support javascript (or have it disabled), their screen size would never appear in your stats, so it makes sense that you haven't seen them.

There are a lot of browsers for small devices that will reformat the page for you, but there are probably just as many that won't.

But, in any event, if the issue is whether or not to have sidebars, I'd say that it's a perfectly valid artistic choice not to. You are right that this doesn't really have anything to do with fixed width, other than without sidebars it seems like accommodating a variable width layout would be that much easier.

Re: Sca4ered Theme

JaredB — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:04:25 -0000

Is it just me, or does that Polynikes link point to your theme page?

Re: Sca4ered Theme

JaredB — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 01:47:40 -0000

Then what's all this about Tony and "Polynikes"? From the text in your post, I would assume that the link that says "Polynikes" would take me to something called Ploynikes, which is maintained by someone named Tony. I don't get it.

Re: Sidebars

JaredB — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 02:03:38 -0000

Re: #1 - I wasn't trying to say that it's the only way to do it, only that you implied in your earlier comment that having a sidebar would result in it being the same size, and/or that the sidebars would "get compacted into the content on a small screen" - just saying that it shouldn't be that way if done right.

I guess if you are assuming that you want a variable sidebar width for some reason (not sure why) then that would complicate things a bit.

I'm not complaining personally about reading your site on a small device, just pointing out that some people may have problems seeing it correctly. Sure, probably more than 90% of the sites out there are poorly designed, but that's not a great reason for following suit.

Mostly I'm just curious, not really criticizing. Is there any reason why you don't like it being more than 600px wide?

Re: SoftCE.net

JaredB — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:36:31 -0000

When you say $15 / per month are you talking about per user or per client (I'm assuming you're selling this to organizations).

If it's per user, then it would seem a bit high, but it would probably be best to sell per organization anyway (which you probably are), in which case $15/month is too low (IMHO).

Any organization large enough to need a product like this should have no problem paying $50 per month for the service, $30 at a minimum. This sounds kind of funky, but if you go too low, they might not respect you as a serious service provider.

Re: SoftCE.net

JaredB — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:52:43 -0000

I guess my comments are getting moderated. If so, please delete the second one.

Re: I hate myspace but…

JaredB — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 22:07:03 -0000

Actually, it is his place to decide what goes on on the computers he takes care of. That includes the right to filter MySpace along with any other equally crappy web sites that he wants to (although it might be hard to find any in the same league as MySpace). :)

I'm not into censorship either, but MySpace can be annoying enough to make an exception. Most of the myspace pages I've seen should be blocked for bad design alone, not to mention lack of any interesting content.

But seriously, (in case you couldn't tell I was semi-joking here), no one is trying to make any decisions for you, or tell you you can't use any website that you please. He's just saying you can't go there on HIS computers. The public libraries in the area have free internet access if you really need to go explore the endless friend collections and such without your mommy looking over your shoulder, if that's what you're worried about.

Re: MacBook Pro magsafe issue

JaredB — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 00:51:03 -0000

Anoth glaring hole:

If he connected it at 8am, and returned home at 8pm to find a frozen screen indicating 33% bootup (and assuming he is correct in saying that this means it was plugged in for less than an hour), how the heck did the battery last for 11 hours with the display frozen / turned on?

Re: Web 2.0 or Star Wars Quiz

JaredB — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 01:17:59 -0000

31, yeah!

To be fair, I have been a Star Wars geek for most of my life. I suspect most of the ones I missed were either obscure characters from the new movies of Web 2.0 stuff, neither of which I care much about.

Re: Web 2.0 or Star Wars Quiz

JaredB — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 01:18:58 -0000

Oops, meant to say "... new movies OR Web 2.0 stuff... "

Re: The Legend of Zelda - Phantom Hourglass

JaredB — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:36:10 -0000

I just disable the WYSIWYG altogether anyway, because I think it's annoying.

Re: 2.1.1

JaredB — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 02:07:30 -0000

I really like the larger font size - could even go bigger, but that's what CTRL is for (in Firefox at least) if anyone wants to do that.

Thanks again for testing out that tagboard. For anyone that's interested, I think we've got the kinks mostly worked out, and I should be releasing it as soon as I find (or make) the time to write up some instructions.

Dan, I just have one question about the theme upgrade, though... where's the sidebar? :)

Re: 2.1.1

JaredB — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 02:09:34 -0000

Oops, I meant (and typed) CTRL (plus sign) - not sure why that didn't show up in that comment.

Re: iPod video

JaredB — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:37:48 -0000

I know, I'm just joking and poking fun at the "it just works" marketing campaign, as usual.

Re: New iPod

JaredB — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 13:40:07 -0000

So you're selling your dead iPod on ebay? That's great.

Re: New iPod

JaredB — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 14:54:30 -0000

Ah, I see. But then why not just pay the $30 and have them fix the one you already have, instead of buying a whole new one? I guess if you wanted to get a new one anyway that would make sense.

Re: Stupid in America

JaredB — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 03:43:14 -0000

I'm assuming that's in reference to the clip I posted a while ago on my blog, but why would calling the Chomsky clip excellent boggle the mind? Or maybe you were saying that it boggles the mind that he would watch one and not the other?

As for vouchers, I am on the fence regarding them. I could see the benefits, but I also see a lot of opportunity for abuse at the same time, and those people with less money than others still being left in the cold.

Seeing the ridiculous gimmicks that other commercial entities are willing to go through to attract customers, I shudder to think what would happen to the quality of education in some of these schools if they shift their the majority of their resources and attention into marketing instead of educating the kids.

If the education quality were really to drop significantly as a result of that kind of thing, some parents might exercise their option to pull their kids (and their funding) out and find other schools, but I have a feeling that a lot of the parents of the kids who are in the most trouble aren't paying too much attention to the quality of their kids' educations right now, so I don't know whether this would really make them start, especially when the school's new marketing department is constantly thinking up flashy, creative new ways of holding on to them as a customer.

In addition, to have serious competition would require serious alternatives to be much more widely available than they are now. For those of us who live in more densely populated areas, this may not be too big of an issue, but I would guess that a big part of the overall American population lives in places that only currently have one school nearby that is physically capable of hosting the students in that area. The startup costs to create the additional schools that would be necessary to accommodate the availability of choice that vouchers would need in order to be successful would be huge.

Once the initial costs of creating the additional schools are paid (I'm guessing via additional taxes, since the voucher money will probably have to go to functioning schools during the year[s] that the new ones are being built), another logistical problem presents itself. In order for the parents to truly have a choice in the matter (via the ability to pull their kids out and send them to another school), each of the other available schools would have to be prepared to handle the potential influx of all the students from their "competitors". If they aren't, then you've got a situation where a large group of parents may want to switch their kids to the other school and some would not be able to, so then would they really have the freedom that vouchers were intended to provide?

All that being said, I DO definitely agree that there are serious issues with our educational system in general, and who knows, maybe vouchers ARE one of the best potential solutions, even though they aren't perfect.

One of the things I always like to reference though, when we're talking about a large governmental system being run poorly (which unfortunately seems to come up a lot) is that there are more than just two simple options to remedy the situation. Continuing to pump more money into a broken system is obviously not the answer, but I don't think that automatically means that we should dump the program altogether and just leave it up to individuals to manage for themselves. Like I've said before, the fix for poor management isn't (always) NO management, it can also be BETTER management.

I think this may be one of those cases. In my mind education is one of those things that a society has an obligation to make sure is run correctly, EVEN if the parents of a particular child don't really give a crap. I think applying strict standards of success and following through with them instead of playing political games would be a necessity. I love the "no child left behind" slogan; if only the government would have the guts to actually do something about it and not just use it as a political marketing tool.

Re: Stupid in America

JaredB — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:32:57 -0000

I agree with the points about the school supplies, etc., but like I said above, the solution isn't necessarily to go to no management. Better management in this case could mean firing everyone who's there now and replacing them with a much more streamlined structure that would more efficiently get the money where it needs to go AND keep the local systems in line and up to much higher standards than they do right now.

There are all sorts of radical reformations I think are necessary in the school system in general. Like I said above, vouchers may be a good option, but I think you'd have to evaluate both the potential benefits AND drawbacks, and whether the goal of giving the parents the true choice that they would need would be achievable.

I think another big deal is the salaries that teachers make not being very attractive to people who are actually highly skilled. I think teaching salaries should be at least competitive with other "middle class" employment, so that there is more of an incentive for intelligent people to take those jobs and be better teachers. Whether that money comes from trimming the bureaucracy, raising taxes, or both I don't really care. Along with that increase, however, should also come much more accountability, and bad (or ineffective) teachers should be removed from the system.

Re: Stupid in America

JaredB — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:21:24 -0000

Same role that any federal regulatory agency would play: keeping the schools and teachers accountable to any goals set and money spent.

The reason I don't think this could only be made up of school representatives (teachers and others "closer" to the schools - I'm assuming this is what you meant by representatives) is that they would by nature have their own interests in mind, which could in some cases outweigh the needs of the students.

In addition, they would have to be detached enough from the teachers (and from local political scenes) to enforce tough policies like firing them when they're not doing their jobs.

Re: Domain Change

JaredB — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 19:53:54 -0000

No, she thought of that all by herself!

But seriously, (even though you said you didn't want to go into details), why would you want to change your domain?

Re: Domain Change

JaredB — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 01:22:45 -0000

You could have a freepressblog one if you want (in my WPMU setup), but I doubt you'd want that.

I still don't get why you would change it anyway.

Re: Domain Change

JaredB — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 13:26:20 -0000

Nah, you don't have to explain yourself at all. I knew you were skeptical about it and I can vouch for you.

If anything that was said in this thread influences what ends up happening, it was probably not going to happen anyway.

Is that vague enough?

Re: Domain Change

JaredB — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:20:33 -0000

macalicio.us is available

Re: Domain Change

JaredB — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 16:28:01 -0000

But seriously - dan.vc

Re: Domain Change

JaredB — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 20:24:55 -0000

It doesn't necessarily need a subdomain, but you could break it up by adding another dot anywhere in the first part of the domain that would result in that combination not being taken (for example: CALICIO.US is available, so you could do MA.CALICIO.US), but why add the extra dot when you could just have MACCALICIO.US? (Seems like that might be one someone might want to actually pay money to get from you someday. :)

But if you did want to stick with your name instead of apple related themes, you could also grab DANALICIO.US.

Re: Protected: Offer

JaredB — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 19:58:52 -0000

Even for $2K, it's still a good deal, even if you never get that other 50%.

So they want to keep the blog? That's kind of weird - do they want you to keep posting on it? It would seem like as soon as you get your new blog up at the new domain and everyone adjusts their links that the ranking would plummet and it would be basically worthless for them. Who knows, maybe that short term boost is worth $4K for them, but I don't see how it could be.

BTW, nice password - I'm sure it will take a determined person ages to try all the multitude of various possible car colors out there. :)

What's the deal about Brooke's name?

Re: My Blog

JaredB — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 20:01:16 -0000

Don't forget to wipe your HDs when you sell those computers.

Re: Protected: Offer

JaredB — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 21:13:49 -0000

Oh, I didn't see it until it was the car color. No, it took me two guesses.

Re: “Bush Stuns Media with S’ Word”

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 03:39:44 -0000

The slip-up is funny, but I think what left Cole shaken and trembling was the tremendously narrow-minded and one-sided view of the situation that the president expressed in the rest of his comment.

Re: Protected: Offer

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 13:38:42 -0000

I don't think it's that serious. Anyone can own the domain name "dancameron.org" - that doesn't imply that this Dan or any other Dan Cameron actually endorses the site. If they had bought the domain before he could his "name" would still be on it, but it wouldn't mean anything.

Even in this case, where he would be selling them the name and possibly the even content, once that sale goes through anything that is related to the site that evolves on that domain is completely the new owner's responsibility. It would be the same thing as if you sold a car to someone and they use it to run over somebody - it's their responsibility, even if the car had a personalized license plate with your name on it.

As for altering his content without his permission or quoting him out of context, etc. anyone could already do that now. The only difference is that they will then have control of (and responsibility for) anything that happens on his current domain. He can always put up a new blog on a different domain which people can go to for the real story, if there is some controversy.

Anyone who wants to sue him would be out of luck because he could clearly show that he didn't have control of the domain anymore after a certain date.

Also, once he does get his new site up, everyone will start changing their links over to the new site, and the traffic to the old one will gradually diminish, which is why I'm still kind of skeptical of the whole offer in the first place. Sure there will be some old references out there from the various themes, etc. he distributed, but I think that the loss from the "real" links from other blogs etc. would still give a decent cut in the search rankings for the old domain.

Re: gmail Warning

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 17:13:28 -0000

Yeah, that is pretty nice. It would be really cool if their "Gmail for domains" thing let you host the mail yourself rather than them; if they did that I would probably use it.

Re: gmail Warning

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 20:29:29 -0000

I don't think it's "crazy", but I agree that it will probably never happen. There are ways they could make it viable, but there would be too many additional support problems to make it worthwhile.

I wasn't really expecting that they would - more just pointing out why I wouldn't switch to it as my primary e-mail account.

Re: gmail Warning

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:53:13 -0000

It's not that I don't trust them - I do (at least for right now); I just don't want to get tied to a particular address that they own and I can't do what I want with.

Re: “Bush Stuns Media with S’ Word”

JaredB — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 23:59:09 -0000

He's certainly not going to listen to Cole, since he's already publicly stated that he does not read and/or listen to things from people he has already decided he disagrees with. However, it might be good if he could somehow get his hands on some unbiased material that explains both sides of the conflict. I know that's very unlikely to happen either, but it sure might help matters.

Re: Protected: Offer

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:10:10 -0000

I would care if anyone got killed, by a car or otherwise, but the fact that it used to be my car would make absolutely no difference to me. It's not that I wouldn't "care", but I certainly wouldn't feel guilty about it at all.

Also, I'm all for trying to maintain a good name, but like I said before, I'd rather just act and speak in a way that does that, and not worry about stuff that other people do since I am not responsible for it. Sure, some people may get the wrong impression if they aren't aware that the internet is full of people misquoting and sometimes defaming other people in unfair ways, but then again, real life is like that too (gossip, etc.).

There will always be people who (inadvertently or purposefully) do things to tarnish your rep, and there will also always be some people who'll believe them. You could take it really personally and try to go out and make sure everyone who might possibly get an untrue impression of you is corrected, etc. or you could just recognize that it's human nature and not loose much sleep over it.

Re: Protected: Offer

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 02:43:31 -0000

Nathan, I think I'm probably with you in agreeing that the motives of this offer are somewhat suspect, and I'd generally tend to not trust them at all. But, having said that, if they wanted to give up some cash, I don't see any reason to turn it down, provided Dan handles the exchange wisely, which I'm sure he will.

I'd also agree that money (or specifically the love of money) can definitely be trouble, and is clearly the basis of a lot of what's wrong with our society, at least in my opinion. There are all kinds of situations in life where money sometimes comes to us, and I think whether it's a blessing or a curse depends largely on our actions in the process of seeking it and afterwards, rather than the source of the money itself, be it a regular job or this kind of thing.

Re: “Bush Stuns Media with S’ Word”

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 02:47:53 -0000

I thought we were talking about Bush himself, but we can certainly expand the scope of the conversation to cover the whole administration team, including Codie (not sure if that's the appropriate abbreviation of her name, but oh well).

If she does, she sure does seem to back the administration's unquestioning loyalty to Israel and refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing on their part. Whether that means that she doesn't know what's going on or she's living in denial or hypocrisy, I wouldn't be able to say.

Re: gmail Warning

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:00:38 -0000

More dependable than what? I think gmail has a great UI and is an excellent option for people who don't want to manage their own mail servers, don't get me wrong on that point.

BUT, if you do know how to run a mail server on your own domain, I don't think GMail would necessarily be any more "dependable", especially when you factor in the reality (as you mentioned) that they could start charging you at any time. There is also the fact that they have the right to do pretty much whatever they want with the contents of your e-mail, whether you like it or not, as well as the right to restrict your use of the mail system (including the actual content of your messages) to fit within what they deem as appropriate.

Given all those concerns, I certainly understand that some may regard the benefits as outweighing the drawbacks (and some may not even really consider them serious drawbacks), which is fine with me; I'm just saying that it's not worth the trade-off for me personally.

Re: MySpace hate

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:06:48 -0000

Ouch. At least the text boxes have that solid background color so you can still actually read the words, in spite of the tiled image. What really tops it off though is the huge yellow frog imageshack ad right above the pink birthday counter thing. Maybe a blink or marquee tag here or there and you'd be set.

Re: MySpace hate

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:08:32 -0000

Oops, I just realized after re-reading that that it sounded a bit mean. Just know that I was complimenting the solid background colors in the text areas that improves the readability. Forget all the rest of my comment, because there's no easy way to explain that other than to say that I'm a jerk.

Re: OpenDNS

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 03:10:29 -0000

Looks interesting.

Re: I hate myspace but…

JaredB — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 23:51:37 -0000

"Mom", maybe you should figure out what you're talking about before you spout off and call people ignorant. I'm pretty sure the library in question is not a public library. I'm totally opposed to ANY censorship on public library computers. That's not what we're talking about here.

Re: Protected: Jared, Jason, and Nathan:

JaredB — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 21:07:59 -0000

That was funny. I don't think I want to go in and delete anything, though.

Re: Gcal.app

JaredB — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:28:15 -0000

Side note: I'd categorize IM as an anti-"GTD" app, but maybe that's just me...

Main point: so why do you worry about the minimal amount of space that the navar, etc. take up then, especially when you could just collapse them?

Not to go on and on about this; like we talked about, it's not like I really care whether you use it or not, and I'm not trying to talk you out of it - just explain why I don't think it's a very novel idea for an application.

If I wanted to do achieve the same goal (assuming I'd be OK with my primary browser crashing all the time, which I wouldn't be), I'd probably just run GCal (or whatever else) in an alternate browser (Opera, etc.) - I would have mentioned Safari, but you already said that GCal doesn't work in Safari. What's up with that, BTW?

Re: v10.5

JaredB — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 03:45:42 -0000

I don't think you should insult the intelligence of average users like that... :)

As for that podcast link, just in case there's any confusion, this was a different set of people than those other ones I mentioned before on my blog. The two they were interviewing on this show also did mention a lot of drawbacks to Apple's products, but they are in addition to the others I mentioned before.

[Podcast reference explanation: Dan's talking about episode 150 of the Linux Link Tech Show, which is one of my favorite podcasts at the moment. The shows are usually around two hours long, but are very enjoyable (to me at least). They get a lot of great interviews with leading people in the Linux / Free Software community, yet also do a very relaxed and "unprofessional" show, which I like.]

Regarding open source software, that's a pretty broad brush you're using there. There are plenty of open source applications that are the market leaders (Apache being the primary example) and also plenty of desktop open source products that are enjoying increasingly rapid user adoption daily (Firefox). When you say "quality", I think that's a bit vague, since there are a lot of factors (some objective, some subjective) that go into one's assessment of "quality" of software.

I'm assuming for the sake of discussion that we're talking about the readiness of the public to embrace Linux on the desktop, as a replacement to MS or OSX. I'd agree that that transition will probably take a while, and I'm really not expecting it to happen overnight. HOWEVER, I think that at this point the hurdles are mainly marketing / perception related, rather than technical (other than hardware driver support, which I think is the only significant technical disadvantage). In almost every other area, the Linux platform is making such quick strides (take XGL for example, which hasn't been around that long at all) towards overtaking Apple and MS that it is only a matter of time before most features you could ever want in an operating system will be done better by the open source community.

Like I said before, hopefully the lock-in strategies and other anti-freedom initiatives of the proprietary vendors will only serve to push people towards freedom that much quicker, but I think the day will eventually come.

Re: Gcal.app

JaredB — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:31:35 -0000

1. Then Gcal is deficient

2. Not on my computer. If I hide those other toolbars in one window they are still there in the others. I can send you a screenshot if you really want.

Re: v10.5

JaredB — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 13:51:57 -0000

No, it wasn't the same guys. The guys I posted about on my blog were from the Geek Nights podcast. This show was the Linux Link Tech Show, and they were interviewing the guys that do the "Linux Action Show" and are long-time Apple developers and users. All three sets of guys are totally different and separate. Despite what you may think, there are quite a few people who are VERY familiar with Apple and have been for a long time who also don't really like Apple, so it's not a very big coincidence.

Re: market leaders - so you're saying that Apache (running on Linux) isn't a market leader, eh?

I don't think that Firefox works worse on Linux. When I use it it seems to work very well; I can say for sure that it doesn't "crash constantly". :)

All those types of apps are coming along pretty nicely. Off the top of my head, Digicam is a decent photo manager, and apps like Kino for video editing look pretty promising.

The great thing about the open source community is that there are a whole bunch of these projects out there, some of which will continue to progress and eventually overtake any commercial offerings you can think of. Even better, if they can make them work the way they (or any given group of target users) want them to, rather than waiting around for Apple to dictate to them the way that they should do something (use a particular application, etc.), and if anyone doesn't like an aspect of a program, they can branch off and change it, which will never (and can never) happen with Apple or Microsoft.

Also, down the road when they want to export the content (images, music, metadata) of whatever they put into these programs into a new data storage format (if they did decide to switch programs) they wouldn't be totally screwed like they would with Apple's (and others) proprietary, lock-in based storage systems.

Re: v10.5

JaredB — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:05:35 -0000

No, maybe YOU didn't read my comment. I didn't ever say that those programs WERE on par with their commercial equivalents right NOW, I said they would EVENTUALLY be.

I'm not too familiar with iPhoto, but from what I've heard you can't extract back out all the organizational metadata that you put into it. The pictures (I would guess) are just images on your drive, but I'm talking about the additional info that these programs capture, which is what provides their value. If it's stored in an open database format, or even completely exportable via XML (or similar) then that's fine, but from what I've heard it isn't.

Re: Bush Vs Bush

JaredB — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:26:09 -0000

That was pretty funny. I loved the "nation building" part.

Re: Gcal.app

JaredB — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:34:32 -0000

Good luck with that.

I have used Gcal. As far as that goes, I don't have a lot of use for calendars other than that which pretty much any calendar application can fulfill, so I don't have a strong preference about any of them.

I'm not saying that it's not good as far as it's capabilities as a calendar application, but if it ONLY supports Firefox then that puts it squarely in the SUCK category in my opinion, along with all the various IE only sites out there.

But I don't want to get into bashing Gcal on this thread. My original point was just to make fun of dumb applications, which I think I've succeeded in as far as Gcal.app goes. I don't think I'll have too much more to say on this subject, at least until this genius comes out with G.app.

I can see it now: "a revolutionary new search application that lets you run Google search in it's own window". Sure it will be a minor annoyance not to be able to follow any of the result links, but it sure will be awesome for people with buggy installations of Firefox that crash on them all the time. :)

Re: Gcal.app

JaredB — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 02:32:02 -0000

Re: "beta" - That's no excuse for a company like Google to only support one browser; doesn't fly in my book. A site designed with proper web standards will work in most major browsers on the market today. If such a site did want to offer bleeding edge functionality that was ONLY possible in Firefox (which I can't think of any that GCal would be using), it should gracefully degrade on other standards compliant browsers or else it is broken as far as I'm concerned.

Re: the rest of the comment - um... no.

Re: Raids

JaredB — Sun, 13 Aug 2006 17:15:09 -0000

Should have seen that one coming.

Re: FB DIMM RAM is expensive

JaredB — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 01:47:18 -0000

Still seems pretty pricey to me. What are the realistic performance gains for FB ram? It seems like they would have to be pretty substantial to make it worthwhile. As you can tell, I don't know much about FB ram; just curious to see where the requirement for using it came from and too lazy to find out for myself.

Re: A better way to organize photos?

JaredB — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 02:02:28 -0000

Google often does "tech preview" type posts on their blog that look similar to that one, while they're in the process of developing the thing they're talking about.

One thing I didn't see was any hints that they would want to offer these enhancements withing their web based product. I would think they would have mentioned that if they were going to do it, but that just makes it sound like they want to improve the existing (local client based) Picasa app to include better searching.

Ideally, I'd love to have an improved local interface (like the new Picasa if it did incorporate those changes) that allowed you to then publish that data to a web site (preferably being able to choose whether to use your own hosting space or their servers). I might be OK with only being able to use their servers if (like you said) they increased the storage space quite a bit, but now this has me thinking of looking around for something that already does this, but that stores the data in an open manner.

Re: A better way to organize photos?

JaredB — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 12:47:45 -0000

Hmm, it will be interesting to see what they do then. So far their model for Picasa (from what I've seen) is to keep the advanced functionality on the client, and just use the "web albums" for sharing. I think that it would be more challenging to implement the kinds of things they're talking about in their web application, but that's not to say they wouldn't do it. I just tend to think that since they specifically mentioned finding and sorting pictures on your computer as opposed to the web that the desktop client is their target for this functionality.

Re: FB DIMM RAM is expensive

JaredB — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 13:01:21 -0000

I figured that it was something like that; moving to the next generation, etc. I still wonder whether it is worth it today, though, in terms of real-world performance improvements. If it means getting 4GB for ~$400 instead of $1100, I would be willing to live without the new RAM, I would think.

In terms of being out of date quickly, I don't think I really buy into that whole philosophy. I guess with Apple, it's a different case since they don't come out with new system components as often, but usually for PCs the memory that a given processor/MB supports will be around and available for as long (or longer) than the processor, so if one is out of date the other probably is as well. But then again, I don't have a problem with old computers either - as long as it does what you need it to do it isn't obsolete, so it's only a challenge when you try to go back later (as you've said) and buy upgrades for a system that isn't as widely supported anymore.

Re: http://dancameron.org/asides/1394

JaredB — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 02:16:48 -0000

I'm only using 7% on mine...

Re: http://dancameron.org/asides/1394

JaredB — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 03:39:39 -0000

Yes, I don't use it as my primary account. I doubt there are very many people at all using anywhere near the limit. I'm sure there are some who are storing a bunch of files, etc., but it almost seems like there's no real point to the size limits. Does anyone actually need more than 1GB for their mail right now?

Don't get me started on the beta rant...

Re: http://dancameron.org/asides/1394

JaredB — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 04:35:21 -0000

If he's going to use up the remaining 66% of his account in a few months he's going to have to dramatically increase his rate of consumption, assuming he's had it for longer than you, which is at least two years.

Don't get me wrong, I do think it's an OK idea as a marketing technique, I was mostly just commenting about how most people will never use it, and those that do (with some exceptions, like the one you mentioned) probably don't do it in a useful way.

Re: TYTHYLs Unite

JaredB — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 13:09:13 -0000

Yeah, if I ever did sign up to do a TV reality/game show (which I don't think I would), it would be Survivor, since I think that's still by far the best one, at least that I've seen or heard of.

Re: TYTHYLs Unite

JaredB — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:20:29 -0000

I'm not saying it wouldn't be fun, just that it's not worth the gamble of taking what I assume would be a large amount of time off of work, etc. Maybe I will watch the show, though - it sounds interesting.

I haven't seen the show, so I don't know how much they focus on or exploit the negative aspects of your character; different reality shows do this to different degrees. I think what Nathan's referring to is that the editors' jobs are to produce a show that gets ratings, which usually ends up meaning that they will pick out all the most controversial and otherwise attention-getting (often negative) things that you say or do, sometimes out of context, in order to make an "interesting" show, and you end up having no say on how they portray you in the end.

Re: Protected: idancameron (password=my car color)

JaredB — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 20:04:02 -0000

Do you get ad revenue that's partially based on page views or only when people click those ads?

If you get money from page views, it seems like you might still loose some money if you offered the ad free version to your most frequent readers. I for one don't mind a small amount of non-intrusive advertising; it just gets mentally filtered out, and I don't even read it. If it gets really annoying I'll just adblock it, so it all works out in the end.

As for the technical details, you could definitely write a plugin that filters out certain posts based on whatever you want (category / tag, etc.), and there are hooks for both the regular page views and the rss feeds (there may even be one that works for both already).

It does seem kind of funny though that your .org site will be the one with ads and your .com one will be ad free. :)

Re: Protected: idancameron (password=my car color)

JaredB — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 20:09:25 -0000

PS - forgot about this before, but your big problem will be trying to run the two different domains from the same database (assuming that's what you're talking about doing). One thing I don't particularly like about the wordpress software is that it does internally use that domain name to form URLs for linking and redirecting, and it doesn't support two different ones out of the box.

I think in order to do that it would require heavy modification, way more than I would ever think was worth it. It would be a lot easier just to run the two domains on two different DBs and then write a script that syncs the posts and comments from one into the other.

Re: Protected: idancameron (password=my car color)

JaredB — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 13:26:01 -0000

Good thinking - I forgot that you could just point separate installs to a different options table.

Why was that last comment blank?

Re: Windows

JaredB — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 00:49:19 -0000

How do you spell "whaaa" as in whining? :)

How many security updates do you have to install when you install a five year old version of OSX? Oh, wait, I forgot that with Apple you have to *buy* a new OS version every year to keep up to date. My bad.

As for drivers, considering the fact that there are SO many more products that require drivers that are available for XP, it's no wonder that Apple has a pretty easy time providing out of the box support for the limited subset of things they actually support. For windows, though, I've never bought any hardware that requires a driver that didn't come with a disk with that driver on it; doesn't seem too hard to me.

Re: Windows

JaredB — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 18:34:13 -0000

Do they still offer free updates to all previous OSX versions? (I have no idea) If so, then I have no problem with them also coming out with new versions that you have to pay for. If they don't offer free updates to those other OSX versions, then I'd have a problem with having to buy new versions that often to keep up with security.

When people buy "new" Windows machines, they're generally up do date as well. I will give you that the restarts are annoying, but it's not that big of a hassle unless you are working with a freshly installed copy and going back and installing all the previous updates from the last 5 years. But, for technically qualified people like you, you should have a fairly up to date backup image of your system at all times anyway, so that should never be an issue. Also, non-technical people who don't do that are also much less likely to be reinstalling Windows on their own very often (if ever).

Weird about the drivers - I've never seen that. Any decent hardware manufacturer will provide drivers with their products that will work, in addition to having a web site where you can go and get updated drivers even if you don't have the CD. I've never used hardware where this wasn't the case, but even if it were, it would be the fault of the manufacturer of that device, not Windows.

You may be correct about them being "easier", at least in some people's perception; that's just not a huge selling point in my mind, because I think most modern operating systems are easy enough for the average user that it doesn't really matter.

Re: FairUse4WM + Yahoo! Unlimited

JaredB — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 19:56:45 -0000

The point is that if they have changes that break the implementations on the player devices, they (just like any company) will have to publish firmware updates, which are not automated, and are a pain for consumers to deal with. The fact that they're one company doesn't make it much easier than if MS gives the changed code to the various manufacturers that implement their DRM in their devices and have them handle publishing new firmware. Any delays that would be due to the coordination of all the vendors would be negligible compared to the delays (for any company, including Apple) in getting users to actually update their devices.

Re: GarageSale

JaredB — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 19:57:56 -0000

:)

Yeah, I wouldn't think anyone would use that kind of application either, but apparently they do.

Re: GarageSale

JaredB — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 23:57:30 -0000

What makes Google Calendar an application but not ebay?

Re: FairUse4WM + Yahoo! Unlimited

JaredB — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 00:04:02 -0000

Yeah, I wasn't aware that iTunes will automatically update the firmware on the iPod, if that's the case (which I'm still not clear on, based on what you said above).

My main point was that Microsoft doesn't have to do it, the device manufacturers do, once Microsoft gives them the code. Will it be a slower process compared to a closed and automated system? Sure, it probably will, not that I'm in a hurry to get more restrictions added to my device.

What I'm hoping is that Apple really jumps the gun (like it looks like they're leaning towards doing) and tries to lock down the DRM even tighter, because there are still enough alternatives out there that people can abandon Apple in favor of less restrictive systems.

Re: Windows

JaredB — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 00:22:57 -0000

If you do backups correctly, they are a much better option than reinstalling from scratch. The registry bog down does not hapen if you are always updating and backing up clean images. If catching up on the patches is so much of a pain for you, then you could always back up more frequently. You also should be running in a secure manner that will prevent you from getting rootkits, spyware, etc.

Regarding drivers not working because of security updates: I've never seen that happen. IF it ever has, I'd suspect that it's probably due to the driver manufacturers relying on undocumented or buggy features in their original design, because MS is generally pretty good at providing compatibility with their documented interfaces. At least it isn't like the problem Apple developers have when Apple decides to change their APIs, because Apple legally prohibits you from linking and including working versions of the components you need in with your system. So, not only does Apple break apps, they make it impossible to code in such a way that they won't be broken. The Linux Action Show (episode 7, I believe) goes into this issue in more detail, if you're interested.

I'd agree that most modern Linux distros (or at least the ones I've used) do make it pretty easy to setup. You will really see the kinds of hardware issues that you're talking about with Windows even moreso on Linux, but that just goes back to my point that I don't think that's a show-stopper, and I'd still recommend most people use Linux over Windows or Apple.

On systems with more standard or mainstream hardware, both Linux and Windows will probably autodetect and run most hardware you put in there. Any "non-standard" or oddball stuff will probably still come with a CD with Windows drivers on it, and probably be unsupported by Apple and Linux, so then you have to evalutate and find an alternative product that works with whatever operating system you choose, or find people in the various developer communities who are working on unofficial drivers and use those.

Re: GarageSale

JaredB — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 17:54:30 -0000

What's it going to take for what? I'm mostly just making a joke about how lame of an idea I still think gCal is. As silly as it would be to wrap up ebay (or any other web site/application) in a locked in browser window is exactly why I think gCal is cheesy.

There are lots of applications (desktop and/or web based) that have a lot of pages/screens, so the distinction between applications and web sites can be a bit blurry.

Re: Windows

JaredB — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:07:37 -0000

Backups: have fun reinstalling Windows and re-downloading the same old drivers again and again. :)

Both the pro and anti Mac crowds can be pretty crazy, and while I certainly fall into the anti camp, it's not like I deny that they have anything good to offer. Just because I point out some inaccuracies in criticisms of Windows doesn't necessarily mean I'm a MS apologist or a mac basher, though. I've always said that I think they make a very good product (hardware, at least).

I have heard some interesting comments recently from quite a few long-time mac users / developers (like the one I referenced in my last comment), which I just find interesting, so I bring them up occasionally. On that same show I referenced, they go into the negative aspects of the "mac culture" quite a bit, which is a whole other subject, which I didn't want to bring up since it seems a bit off topic.

I'm not trying to convince you to use Windows or not to use Apple, because that isn't going to happen, nor do I have any interest in making it happen. The comments I made in this post were totally on topic, since the whole point of this post was you talking about issues that you perceive with the Windows process and contrasting it to that of the Mac. I'll avoid commenting on posts that you write about those issues, if that's what you want.

Re: FairUse4WM + Yahoo! Unlimited

JaredB — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:11:43 -0000

The last statement was a reference to stuff like this, which hopefully will wake people up to how restrictive a well implemented DRM scheme can be, in time to choose not to support companies who implement such systems.

Re: GarageSale

JaredB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:03:34 -0000

I wasn't trying to look for faults in your comments, I just didn't know what you meant by "what's it going to take...". I guess if the goal is to convince me that it's not lame, you'd have to bring up something that makes it useful that I haven't already considered before, and considering the simplicity of this application, I'm not sure if there are any more details of that nature.

Hopefully it came across that I (of course) don't think it would be a good idea to wrap eBay inside a pseudo-browser "application" either; I was just using that to poke fun at gCal.

Not to get too deep into the whole gCal debate again, but a "better solution" to me would be to just run Google Calendar in whatever browser you normally use. If that browser is so badly jacked up that it's crashing all the time then you have bigger problems that would need to be fixed.

Like I said before, I won't try to talk you out of it, but I still reserve the right to laugh about it since I still think it's a bit silly.

Re: Windows

JaredB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:21:47 -0000

Re: backups - I never suggested weekly backups at any point in time that I can remember.

Interesting how you assume that all the info that I know about Apple is collected from "two podcasts", a "few articles", and limited personal experience. Not sure how you came to that conclusion, but you'd be incorrect.

Do I use OSX daily, or even with any regularity at all? No, but then again, I rarely criticize the operating system itself. Most of my criticisms of Apple are regarding their business practices and policies, whether technical or otherwise. This type of evaluation does not depend on me having in-depth personal experience in using their products, any more than not shopping at Walmart would disqualify me from criticizing the way they run their business, or pointing out that slavery is jacked up even though I've never owned a slave.

You could feel free to discuss anything you want, including programming languages, and I wouldn't dismiss your opinion about one of them on the basis of your experience at all. A person can form an opinion about something that they do not have a full and complete knowledge of; it happens all the time. They may even be correct, where a person with more knowledge or experience could be incorrect. I occasionally form these kinds of opinions with Apple, and am certainly willing to accept the fact that I could be wrong in any of my assumptions. I can't think of a time recently where that has happened, at least not in a way that affects the point I'm making, but when it does I think I usually own up to it in as humble a manner as possible (hopefully).

Re: FairUse4WM + Yahoo! Unlimited

JaredB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:30:23 -0000

I think the main big deal is that this is the first time (at least that I've heard of) that parts of albums sold on iTunes are being truly locked in to only being playable on Apple products - you can't burn to a CD, etc.

I think it's a conscious cooperation between Apple and Sony to move towards this kind of enforcement of the limited use of the songs you buy. I could be wrong, of course, and whose idea it was, we may never know, but as Nathan mentioned, all 14 tracks are available on the CD that Sony publishes.

Re: Battlestar Galactica: The Story So Far

JaredB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 02:35:21 -0000

Seems a little hard to believe, but maybe I just wasn't aware if BG had that aspect of mystery behind it.

I'm sure it's a great show, at least according to everything I've heard, but I'm guessing it's too different from Lost to really make those kinds of comparisons.

Re: Windows

JaredB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:10:58 -0000

I don't think I'm too interested in using it, though. I did download it and set it up in VMWare, but I quickly deleted it afterwards, because it doesn't really offer me anything that I can't already do in other operating systems that I prefer.

As for business practices, I don't see MS as being worse than Apple. I think we've covered this argument enough before, though.

I'm not sure what a "complete decision" really means, but I'm OK with my opinion of Apple right now. I've tried OSX all that I really care to for now, and it hasn't impressed me. That's not to say I don't give it a fair shake, just that there's no compelling reason for me to spend time looking into it further right now.

Maybe once they release Leopard I'll give it another look and check out all the "innovative" new features, like Virtual Desktops. Or I could just look at Linux distros that have had virtual desktops for nearly a decade. :) "Break out those copy machines", as Apple said last year.

At least in Leopard they've improved on the Volume Shadow Copy technique for a versioning filesystem (which MS has had available for a while now) by adding application integration to it. I'll give them kudos for that one, unless they refuse to open it app to use by other developers in an open manner, or course.

Re: GarageSale

JaredB — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 22:18:01 -0000

OK; as long as you're happy using it, I won't try to rain on your parade.

Re: Registry

JaredB — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:21:47 -0000

Hmm, I don't remember with 2005, since I haven't installed that very many times. It would stand to reason, though, that they would want to make insecure choices more difficult to make, in an effort to produce out a more secure (by default) product. They always face all kinds of complaints like this every time they try to do it, but I think it's a move in the right direction, since people will complain either way (too hard to configure vs. not secure by default).

Do I "like" the registry? I don't know. I would certainly prefer a better (more open) storage system for the configuration data, and stricter management / enforcement of how things are added and removed from it (which I'm sure would only garner more complaints), but I think it does serve its purpose.

Like I said above, one thing that it makes very easy is deploying complex changes to application settings (in addition to relatively simple ones like this) to a large group of computers at once, without manually (either locally or remotely) having to do anything on any of the individual target machines.

Re: Windows

JaredB — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:28:07 -0000

I think I could (and do, whenever I use it) use and view OSX objectively. I'm not sure what would indicate that I wouldn't. Like I said before, I don't have too many criticisms of the OS itself- I think it's technically pretty good. I've only just said that I haven't seen or heard of anything that would compel me to switch to it. I don't think that means I'm not being objective.

Sorry if those came off as condescending; I couldn't resist throwing in those last few jabs about Apple's idea of innovation (usually putting a nicer UI on stuff that's been around in one form or another), after I heard that line about the guy last year telling Microsoft to get out their copy machines. It's all in good fun.

Re: Oh great…

JaredB — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:28:09 -0000

Screenshots or more details? It's funnier for the rest of us when we know what happened... :)

Re: Oh great…

JaredB — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 14:39:22 -0000

Oops, I posted this before I saw Nathan's post on his blog. Sounds like you got off easy. What made you notice? I think he should have made himself an admin without changing your account (at least initially), then maybe you wouldn't have caught it as early...

Re: XAMPP on IntelMacs

JaredB — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 01:47:26 -0000

Apple should borrow another feature from Linux - package managers. Then you could install Apache, MySQL, and PHP / Perl in a matter of seconds / minutes. Maybe they already have this and I just don't know about it. If so, I'd recommend going that route rather than XAMPP.

I probably should have read and responded to this when you first posted it, but does what you (Dan) described in this post mean that XAMPP (on the Mac, at least) does not support mod_rewrite? If so, does that jack with your permalink settings when you're testing WP blogs in it?

Re: Today’s Apple announcement

JaredB — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 13:42:18 -0000

It was a joke; I don't actually think they'll do it, nor do I really know anything about this device.

At the same time, I wouldn't be completely surprised if they did try something like this, though. Evidence of Apple's behavior suggests to me that iTunes only plays MP3s because MP3 was a widely adopted standard by a significant enough number of consumers (and device manufacturers) that they could not ignore it. I don't think you could make the same statement today about video file formats.

Re: Lost Secrets

JaredB — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 02:24:53 -0000

I actually like the style (color balance, etc.); my only gripe would be that it's not focused enough on content, because there are so many links / metadata that are prominent at the same level as the posts that the main content doesn't stand out as much, making everything kind of blend together.

I also like the look of the transparent overlay at the bottom of the post entries on the main page, that's a pretty cool effect.

Re: M$ Zune

JaredB — Thu, 21 Sep 2006 01:57:55 -0000

Man, it's too bad your superior product seems to crash so much. It's especially odd, since I have several computers which run "inferior" operating systems that never crash.

Re: M$ Zune

JaredB — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 01:00:29 -0000

Somehow I don't think it's Firefox's fault either. I've been using it for a long time and it doesn't crash my machines... maybe you just do some funky web surfing :)

Re: M$ Zune

JaredB — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:28:19 -0000

Nah, unfortunately I still need to use Windows as my primary OS. I have both on here, but I'm using XP more than Linux right now.

Did you change back to the .org URL by default again?

Re: New iPod

JaredB — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:33:11 -0000

When are we having that intervention again?

Re: iScattered2

JaredB — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 03:35:01 -0000

I really like everything about it that I've seen so far. Good job.

Re: M$ Zune

JaredB — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 15:55:16 -0000

Yeah, I did forget that.

Re: iScattered2

JaredB — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 16:03:49 -0000

I like the padding in the comment area. Why does the search box need to be fixed position?

Are you doing the transparent sides using png graphics or css opacity? Either way, I think your best bet would be to use conditional comments to provide special CSS rules for IE to override those things that won't work there. IE doesn't support transparency in PNGs, but it will support opacity using a different technique than the standard (see prototype's opacity methods for a good example of this).

Re: iScattered2

JaredB — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 13:21:18 -0000

I never said I don't like conditionals, I said I don't like hacks, which the underscore thing is. Hacks rely on browser bugs (using one bug to work around another), and bugs are eventually fixed over time.

Conditional comments are an intentional feature that won't break as the various browsers evolve. The underscore hack will eventually break, because eventually that bug will be fixed, and your site may break overnight as people apply patches. Of course, you could luck out and have them fix both the bugs (the original one you're working around AND the one you're using to fix it) in the same patch release, but that's not exactly reliable, especially in this case.

Re: iScattered2

JaredB — Sun, 24 Sep 2006 23:43:06 -0000

If you're into that, it's fine, I'd just rather not write buggy code, especially not on purpose.

As for ease of maintenance, I'd much rather have one primary CSS file which contains the valid CSS for browsers that correctly adhere to the standards, and then one additional file that also contains valid CSS rules that override the rules in the other one for a specific browser that you know is bad.

That way all your CSS is valid, and you don't have to worry about how some lesser known browser will react to the bugs you're putting in.

For me it basically comes down to coding to standards vs. coding to particular versions of particular browsers. When you do the former, you have CSS that will work on any browser (even ones that haven't been invented yet). When you code towards particular browsers you have a short list of browsers (and versions) you know your site will work on (as long as they don't change things), and then you will never know how it will look on browsers that you don't test beforehand, and you will always have to juggle a big list of all the browsers you haven't tested and decide whether it's worth testing them.

Sure, the conditional comment workaround could also be seen as not coding to standards, but at least it gives you a standards compliant way to handle a workaround for the only browser that isn't standards compliant enough that's worth implementing workarounds for (because of it's market share).

Re: Heroes

JaredB — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 16:19:39 -0000

Hey, can you guys stop posting about cool new shows that I now need to check out? :)

Re: Heroes

JaredB — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 11:56:56 -0000

Well, I have to confess that I still haven't actually watched any of them, but they all sound good. At least now that I have my MythTV set up it makes it a lot easier to catch up on shows like this, because I can just bittorrent the whole season(s) right onto my box and watch it there, without burning, streaming, re-encoding, etc. Now I just have to find the time to watch them.

Re: Heroes

JaredB — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 12:35:56 -0000

Ah, but media center and iTV don't even come close to doing all the cool stuff that Myth does. :) As for the capture card, I don't think I need another one, unless I want to record two shows at once, which never happens for me.

Jason has a good point, though. I almost never watch real-time TV, and with everything pretty much available online (one way or another) there's almost no point in having cable.

Re: http://dancameron.org/asides/1394

JaredB — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 23:14:22 -0000

I wonder if you'll be the first person to use up all their GMail space.

Re: The Departed

JaredB — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 18:50:59 -0000

Yeah, plus the cast will draw a lot of people too. I'll see almost anything with Jack Nicholson (unless it's a romantic comedy like that one he did a while back), and most movies Matt Damon is in are usually pretty good too.

Re: Media Temple (gs) Hosting

JaredB — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:05:01 -0000

I think I'll hold off until your sites stop going down every few weeks... :)

Re: Media Temple (gs) Hosting

JaredB — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 18:15:21 -0000

Yeah, hopefully they will. I've heard a lot of great things about MT around the web in the last few years, so hopefully this is just growing pains. Once this service is around and stable for a while, it will definitely be a top contender.

Re: Quicksilver Tutorial

JaredB — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 02:46:52 -0000

Rather than arguing about how Windows does have programs that do everything shown in that video, or joking about how the configuration of this tool seems to take away from the "just works" simplicity of OSX, I'll take a different route and bag on their web site. The first icon link in the middle of the main page is broken.

:)

Re: Kuo on Maher

JaredB — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 03:28:54 -0000

I commented on the BBlogs issue over there.

Regarding the actual subject, I loved a lot of Kuo's points in the video, and might be interested in reading the book. The only downside I saw was I think Maher comes off as a little too aggressive to persuade anyone with an opposing viewpoint to actually listen instead of getting defensive, which I think can be self defeating.

Re: Wii vs. 360

JaredB — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 21:50:53 -0000

Well, I don't think it's purely speculation or marketing hype either, though. Of course, "fun" is a very subjective term and will vary greatly between different people, but I'd say that history has shown (for me at least) that Nintendo systems have way more "fun" games, and I mean "more" in terms of quality and quantity.

Good graphics don't really impress me much; there are lots of great looking games out there that just aren't fun, and there are lots of really fun games where the graphics don't matter at all. As far as I'm concerned, the Gamecube has good enough graphics right now to keep making great games that are better than newer systems. Of course, the Wii will only improve on that, but it isn't a major selling point for me. Add to that the fact that ALL the previous incarnations of Nintendo games will be playable on it, and I don't think the other systems can even compete in the area of a quality game library.

We have a drawer full of good, fun Gamecube games, and only a couple PS2 games that are not also available on the Gamecube. We don't have any version of the X-Box, but from what I've heard that system isn't exactly known for their vast library of great games, it's known for a few very good ones. Like I said, I'm sure this assessment will vary between different people, so I'm not trying to talk anyone into anything or whatever.

I guess it depends on what type of game you're into too. For example, first person shooters are getting a bit stale, so if the only difference between the latest and greatest in that genre is basically the same as all the others but with more advanced graphics, I'm not interested (not that I ever was too interested in that type of game anyway, but you get my point).

Re: Car Troubles p2

JaredB — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 02:45:23 -0000

How much would your car be worth right now, if it worked?

I think you've got to take that into consideration, as well as the fact (or I guess just hunch) that other things will probably start breaking as it gets older - not to be negative, but in my experience once you start having these kinds of serious issues they seem to start to snowball.

I guess the other thing is whether you still owe on it, since that will factor into your break even calculation even if you decide not to fix it.

Re: Car Troubles p2

JaredB — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 16:58:24 -0000

Right. I was just asking whether you still owed since you'll still have to pay that off either way, which could become a factor when you're evaluating new loan rates, etc. - like you said.

Re: Microsoft’s Xbox Live Video

JaredB — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 21:36:35 -0000

Why do you think ABC and Disney won't ever do it? Because of their current deal with Apple?

Re: Microsoft’s Xbox Live Video

JaredB — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 01:15:19 -0000

Hmm, I didn't think he had that important of a role in Disney. Of course, he is on the board, and Disney did buy one of his companies (talk about conflict of interest), but I don't think that means he has any degree of ownership of Disney itself, other than just having a strong business relationship.

I think that if one of these distribution methods (even the MS one) were to become overwhelmingly dominant (like iTunes is for music) that Disney would probably allow their movies and ABC shows to get a piece of that pie. I'm sure Jobs would try to stop it, but I don't think he has that level of influence with Disney, unless they signed some kind of exclusive contract with them or something.

Re: Microsoft’s Xbox Live Video

JaredB — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:42:36 -0000

Right, but that doesn't mean he has a controlling interest. The largest *single* shareholder could hold a percentage of the company that's still in the single digits, but just bigger than any other individual's share. Being on the board is probably a bigger deal, but that still doesn't mean that he gets to make decisions like keeping Disney/ABC away from Microsoft. He can (and I'm sure he will) argue for that position, but he can't stop it from happening if the company determines it's in their best interest.

Re: digg

JaredB — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:05:01 -0000

Heh; I won't comment about digg, but as for the actual story (the Watchmen movie) I'm still a bit nervous about this one.

I think that in some ways it's much easier to make a good Superman / Batman / Spider-man movie adaptation than it would be for a book like Watchmen. I don't even think it's about sticking as closely as possible to the original comic stories as much as it's about capturing the feel and / or message of the movies.

For superhero films (like those I mentioned above), they are meant to be fun fantasy stories, so the movies don't really have to strictly stick to the basis of the books, as long as they have the same feel or "spirit" of the characters they are based on. Furthermore, these days a lot of even those super hero books have much deeper plots and storytelling, and those aspects will probably not make it into the movie adaptations, but for those movies I'm OK with that.

Alan Moore's Watchmen is a different story, though. While I think the most recent adaption of one of his other stories (V for Vendetta) went very well in my opinion, I'm not sure the same translation methods will apply to Watchmen. The V movie conveyed the basic underlying theme of the book well, even though the details were changed quite a bit in some places (and Moore himself whined about it), and it still lacked some of the depth of the book. So, again, I'm OK with details changing as long as it doesn't change the point of the story.

The main thing I think will be different in Watchmen is that the presentation format (comic books) was a much more integral part of the story telling process than it was with V. The way I see it, V was a great story that happened to be told in the comic book (or "sequential art" - to be fancy) format. Watchmen (IMHO) was much more deliberate about how panels were laid out on the page, and how they related to the other panels that you can see at the same time, etc. This is something that I'm not sure movies can successfully reproduce. The only real example I can think of in this regard would be Sin City, which I would consider to be the only comic movie that maintained that type of visual storytelling / presentation format across the translation into film.

I guess the other aspect I'm worried about is that V stuck with dealing with one primary moral / philosophical (or whatever) issue, while Watchmen raises all kinds of questions about the overall human experience, ends justifying the means, "good" and "evil" motivations and misunderstandings, etc. I think this broader base will make it difficult to adapt (or stuff) into a couple hour movie, and I think trying to make it fit anyway might end up making it worse.

Of course, I'll still see it and hope for the best. This project has been talked about forever (way before they started on V), and it keeps getting canceled / delayed for whatever reason. I suspect that the difficulties in translation I mentioned above are part of the reason for that, because in the end the movie studios have to release a movie that they believe will be a popular hit, which is the rub because to accomplish that goal they will probably have to chop it up and/or dumb it down quite a bit.

Re: Media Temple (gs) Hosting

JaredB — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 03:59:19 -0000

Ouch

Re: Outage = Media Temple Grid Server Suckage

JaredB — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:51:01 -0000

I've been using a VPS on Spry for quite a while now without any issues. They're pretty cheap and I've got unlimited bandwidth. They just re-launched their VPS packages, though, and I haven't checked out the new plans.

Re: iPhone

JaredB — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 02:44:35 -0000

Yeah, or maybe Apple will realize how childish they're acting about stuff like this and get over it. I know that won't happen (and I would have loved to see the look on Steve's face when he caught wind of this story), but it's unfortunate that they think being secretive does anything for them other than making it more likely for leaks like this to happen.

What's even worse is there is absolutely no point to keeping this particular product a secret. Everyone has expected Apple to produce this device for at least a couple years, so any confirmation that it will happen should come as no surprise whatsoever. It's not like they're losing their competitive advantage either by letting the idea out of the bag, since it's nothing that every company hasn't already thought about.

Re: IE 7

JaredB — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 02:53:06 -0000

It's all about conditional comments - down with hacks!

Re: IE 7

JaredB — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 12:23:49 -0000

Seems like it would be a lot easier to just have one additional file to manage IE specific settings all in one place which only gets applied to IE (by specific version number or ranges of versions if you want). I don't see how it's hard to add a link to another CSS file; it's a one line change in your template.

Having hacks sprinkled throughout your primary CSS file is a much bigger issue for me, for a lot of reasons I've mentioned before (unintended consequences in other browsers, lack of forward compatibility, etc.)

As for having javascript write the style to the page, that would work too, but then you would be requiring users to have javascript enabled, which some may not, especially in IE with the related security issues that keep pooping up.

Re: No Wii = The B

JaredB — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 03:00:04 -0000

I should be able to set up all your regular stuff, so you can just plug in your camera and whatever else you need when you get there.

Re: IE 7

JaredB — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 03:06:42 -0000

Sure, it definitely sucks, but for now I think any web developer that wants to make their work accessible to the general public pretty much has to support IE, so I think it's a good idea to do it "right" - meaning, of course, the way I think it should be done. :)

Re: IE 7

JaredB — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 17:51:05 -0000

You could always do browser detection (at least of this nature - what version of IE they're running) at the server side without requiring any javascript, but the technique I'm talking about is conditional comments.

As described in that link, it's a mechanism (officially supported by IE as opposed to hacks) which allows you to add stuff to the page inside specially formatted HTML comments, so that all other browsers will ignore it and IE will pick it up. You can use this to reliably put script or CSS (or links to script/CSS files) that will only ever be read by the version of Internet Explorer that you're targeting.

The great thing is that it doesn't require anything special (javascript or non-standard / "hacked" CSS), and it is automatically ignored by all other browsers.

Re: IE 7

JaredB — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 13:55:05 -0000

I don't think I talked about conditional comments in that original discussion. It might have been before I was aware of them. I do think it's OK to use this technique, since it's an intended feature that is guaranteed not to break in other standards compliant browsers, and it's forwards compatible, meaning you can write a workaround for IE 6 and below that won't get jacked up when people start using IE7.

Re: eBay - ps3

JaredB — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 21:42:07 -0000

First - Dave, re: eBay I wouldn't know much, since I've never personally sold anything on eBay. Martha has sold a lot and has an excellent rating, and I'm pretty sure Dan has sold quite a lot of tech stuff there, so he'd probably be the best one to answer. One thing I can tell you is that there is an eBay France site (ebay.fr), but I don't know whether it's legit and it's all in French anyway so it's not much use to me. I'd recommend just going with the standard eBay.com - the audience is almost guaranteed to be orders of magnitude larger (and still includes international visitors) which means that you'd probably get a better price on whatever you're selling.

As for the assesment of the short term future (Wii taking the lead and then PS3 overtaking them after a year or so), I've said it before and I'll say it again - I think it all depends on the games; specifically whether they're fun or not, not the graphics quality, etc. A secondary factor could be living room media integration stuff (like the XBox does).

As for HD and/or next gen DVD (blue ray, etc), I don't think the general public could care less about either. A very small percentage of the public even has a TV capable of viewing HD content (whether it's from a game or a DVD). Maybe people who are more into TV than I am would disagree, but HD is still too expensive for my tastes. Sure it's nice, but not worth the money in my book.

Re: How To Login From an Internet Cafe Without Worrying About Keyloggers

JaredB — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 12:29:47 -0000

But copy/paste from what? If you aren't typing in any passwords on that system you would have to have them in an unencrypted file on a portable drive (USB or whatever). Then you have even bigger problems to worry about than keyloggers.

There are apps out there (similar to keyloggers but even easier to write and distribute) that will copy the contents of any files on such a portable drive and store them (or send them over the network) for later perusal. There are also ones that will dump the contents of the clipboard any time something new is added. That, especially in combination with a keylogger, would (I think) render the copy/paste technique insecure.

Even the technique described here has its issues. They basically recommend switching the focus to something else and typing random gibberish characters in between typing your password, and going back and forth. I think they need to test this on more keyloggers, though, because I've personally seen ones that (in addition to recording raw text) will record any time you switch focus to any other element on the screen, and identify it by name (which every text box, form field, etc. will have, as far as the OS is concerned).

Basically, the summary is that there is almost no good way to be safe on a system you don't own. I have to get the kids breakfast right now, but I'll come back later and write my proposal on a system which I think would work very well for public access like this. I'll either comment here or post it on my blog and trackback.

Re: How To Login From an Internet Cafe Without Worrying About Keyloggers

JaredB — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:37:57 -0000

Good point, I didn't think about that, but it might be difficult to find some of the more obscure characters, unless I guess you have a page somewhere that just has every character already out there, copy/paste ready.

Re: The Office deleted scenes

JaredB — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:45:15 -0000

Cool, I will have to check that out.

On a related (but seriously depressing) note, I just saw this on youtube today.

Re: Wii vs. 360

JaredB — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 03:28:49 -0000

Nah. Grahpics? Sure, technically, but most people don't care. Gameplay? Again, for most people (kids and adults alike who aren't interested in games like Gears of War and Halo) I don't see any advantage with the X-Box.

Granted, a lot of the Wii games are simple, but for many people that's what makes a fun game. Wii sports comes with an assortment of very simple sports games. The games themselves would be mediocre if not for the revolutionary new control style, which WILL draw in a lot of people to this system, just from what I've seen personally and heard so far.

Relatively few people in our society are obsessed with gaming enough to dedicate hours of time into a game with a large story behind it and lots of detailed strategy and tactics to learn. I know there are a lot of hard-core gamers, but I'm talking about in the context of the larger general population, they are still few.

If a system can reach into a bigger cut of that general population, they will easily win this contest, and from what I've seen and experienced, the Wii is the perfect candidate for that.

Re: I hate myspace but…

JaredB — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 03:34:00 -0000

Is this GWB trying to start more WMD rumors?

Re: Search Everything Wordpress Plugin at Scattered

JaredB — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 21:25:15 -0000

full site index, I'd suggest just directing your searches to Google, and limiting the results to only those found on your site. That's what I do for my blog. They just started a new service where you can further customize (style, etc) this kind of thing to make it appear more integrated into your site.

The nice part about doing that is that Google will already index everything in your site for you, regardless of whether the content came from a post, a comment, or a plugin.

The only downside would be the delay in accurate results depending on how often Google crawls your blog and updates its indexes, but I don't see any other way of truly getting everything, unless you wrote your own type of "spider" component that would maintain your own index of your site on a more frequent basis than Google does and then have a plugin go against that.

Re: Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect

JaredB — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 22:32:16 -0000

Yeah, now you can give Google access not only to all your conversations, but your passwords to other accounts as well!

Re: Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect

JaredB — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 03:10:28 -0000

Not unless you're already e-mailing and/or forwarding them to (or through) your gmail account.

Re: Uh Oh, Gmail Just Got Perfect

JaredB — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 23:40:17 -0000

It's not the brilliant yet good intentioned employees who currently work at Google that you have to worry about, so much as the fact that that kind of data is all stored in one place, which makes it a prime target for people who aren't as interested in preserving your privacy.

These could be "bad apple" employees or people not officially / legitimately affiliated with Google at all who find some way to access the information, at any point in the present OR in the future. Google might be a great company today (by most accounts they are), but there's no guarantee what they'll be like in the next ten years.

Re: Ultimate Tag Plugin for Wordpress at Scattered

JaredB — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:37:18 -0000

Isn't the oldest post always going to be the same exact post, or are you saying that out of the X number of posts currently visible on the page, keep moving the one currently on the bottom to the top, so it cycles through?

Re: How to manually hardlink

JaredB — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:37:47 -0000

Oh, yeah. I think you told me about that, actually. I forgot.

Re: 1080p Does Matter

JaredB — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 03:10:07 -0000

After looking more closely at the graph (and adding a vertical line @ 42" for clarity), it looks to me like 42" intersects with 1080 (the red line) at about 6 feet, and is in "becoming noticeable" territory at about 7.5.

Assuming the data in that article is correct, it doesn't seem that the human eye (even if you did have really good vision) is capable of perceiving those differences in resolution at 9 or ten feet, so it isn't really a matter of preference as far as that goes.

That being said, I'm sure there are probably lots of other differences in color, saturation, etc. between different content sources, and I would propose that perhaps the varying content you are comparing is of differing quality in those areas as well (not just resolution). In other words, the Prison Break content may "look better" than Lost for reasons other than just resolution.

In any event, you and Jason definitely know a lot more than I do about all that HD stuff. I do know that for me, if I ever do eventually want to get an HD TV, I will definitely pay a lot of attention to those other aspects of picture quality and clarity (such as the ones you mentioned). According to this article, I won't pay much attention to resolution, since I plan to do most of my viewing from around 10 feet away, and I'd probably even go less than 42" if possible.

Re: Wii with Mii

JaredB — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 22:43:44 -0000

I'm just waiting for the Wii network exploit that lets you steal other people's points if you know their Wii code, now that you've published yours.

Re: Atheism 2.0

JaredB — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 00:41:31 -0000

Yeah, I'm going to start using roman numerals and see if it catches on.

Re: VMs

JaredB — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 15:29:51 -0000

As far as I know, it's only Linux as the host OS for the 3.0 version.

Re: Google â€œTipsâ€ Pulled?

JaredB — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 21:53:11 -0000

Vindication is sweet.

Re: Zelda

JaredB — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 23:05:22 -0000

Christian just finished the game.

Re: Apple notebooks vs. “PC” laptops

JaredB — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 14:10:44 -0000

Probably people with laptops that don't want to buy two computers.

I wasn't going to comment on this one, but I though I should just to let you know that your permalinks for this post are screwed up, but the others seem fine.

The links in the comments feed (as well as your "Activity" section) start with http://dancameron.org//845 instead of http://dancameron.org/general/845

Re: Apple notebooks vs. “PC” laptops

JaredB — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 15:19:14 -0000

Lots of laptops (specifically the higher end ones you mentioned above) have graphics cards that are good enough to handle most of the games that are out. Paired with an external monitor, I don't see why they wouldn't be just as good as desktop machines.

If I were into gaming, I doubt I'd buy a whole separate computer when a laptop suits all my other needs, I'd be much more likely to just get a laptop that could handle it.

I guess the main advantage of desktop machines for gamers is that they're easier to upgrade, since games usually push the limits of the hardware and any laptop you buy now may not be able to play next years games as well as an upgraded desktop could. But, as far as it relates to this discussion, I don't think that makes much difference since you'd have that problem regardless of whether the laptop is a PC or a Mac.

Re: iPhone

JaredB — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:24:58 -0000

Yeah, I guess you would need quite a bit more storage space if you're going to watch a lot of video. I've never been into portable video (at least in an iPod size device) so that wouldn't be a big deal for me.

The installing your own apps thing would be a huge deal for me, though. IMHO, "the best internet tablet" must allow you to install other apps on it, aside from just a web browser (ssh, VPN client, etc.)

Re: TV Redux

JaredB — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 15:29:58 -0000

Myth can capture HD as long as it gets it from somewhere; so yes, if you wanted to record HD yourself you would need an HD tuner and receiver still.

However, you and I (and everyone else) know there are plenty of other options for getting most HD shows you'd want onto your MythBox, often within an hour or so of when they air live.

Re: Steve Jobs knows best

JaredB — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 19:17:46 -0000

I don't think he's referring to network congestion, since Cingular all kids of phones on their networks, many of which can run custom apps (like Dan said).

No, this is just Steve spreading more FUD. Either he actually believes what he's saying is true and therefore has a horrible handle on technology (at least for someone in his position), or he knows he's outright lying to people and hoping they believe him.