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040328 12:49 Browser

Fun for geeks. Enough of that constant renaming of open source projects. A Firefox extension now lets you pick your own name:

Mozilla Firefox , the web browser formerly known as Firebird, formerly known as Phoenix, has a new extension which allows you to change the name to something palatable. The extension called Firesomething lets users change the name seen in the browser titlebar, Help menu, and About dialog, thus erradicating all traces of "Firefox" in Firefox...

040324 21:15 Society

Making a point: Oregon county bans all marriages.

Confused by the twists and turns of the US gay marriage issue, Oregon's Benton County has decided to err on the side of caution and ban all weddings.

Until the state decides who can and cannot wed, officials in the county have said no-one can marry - even heterosexual couples.

040307 16:59

040225 21:44 Service

I didn't believe it. I thought no way! I'd heard that bahn.de can give train schedule information for other countries but I didn't think it was that easy. I think it was NTK who took the piss out of the british thetrainline.com, saying that the german site was much better and far less hassle for finding info on british trains.

Well, I finally gave it a go, simply because I couldn't bear labouring through thetrainline. I didn't even bother checking for a 'british trains' link, i just typed London Heathrow and Milton Keynes into the form on their front page, pressed return and thought, 'nah, it wouldn't be that easy'. On the next page it asked me whether i wanted Terminal 1 or 2 and Milton Keynes Central or Milton Keynes City Centre. Haha! And yes, it is available in english.

While we're on the subject of the bahn.de website... they use the term 'handicapped', which is not PC in the UK but acceptable in the US.

040218 21:44 Science Fiction

The Onion interviews Arthur C. Clarke. Seriously.

O: Another favorite quote you tend to bring up in interviews is, "If there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they can't be very important gods." Can you expound on that?

ACC: [Laughs.] Well, I was rather a cynic once. But now I've combined all my beliefs into this phrase I've been circulating: "Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." It's adapted from a phrase by the British writer and scientist Richard Dawkins, who said that religion was a mind virus, an idea that infected the mind. He said that not all mind-viruses are malignant; some may even be beneficial. But many are harmful-racist theories, for instance.

O: With that quote, are you talking about religion's harm to the individual, or harm to society?

ACC: Well, look at history: religious wars, the Inquisition, the Crusades. What more do you need? It could be both, though.

[Update 040223 21:52] Here's another one from last december:

...here is another example of a familiar word which has changed its meaning completely – what would an early twentieth century mother have thought if you told her that her grandchildren would be spending most of their waking hours - at work and at play - fondling a mouse?

040211 22:15 Web development : accessibility

10.4 (include default, place-holding characters in edit boxes and text areas) is one of those WAI guidelines that I only follow because Bobby won't pass my pages otherwise. Jim Byrne shows how a tiny bit of JavaScript can provide a compromise.

040211 19:49 SciFi

Firefly fans hanging on to the tiniest of straws. No news, but those are good.

Sit tight.
All is well.
All are very busy.
Train is still on the tracks.

040211 19:39 Society

The struggling middle class:

Two researchers have found that millions of middle-income families are in deep financial trouble or only breaking even.

040211 19:19 Health

The state of health care in the States:

Like Kankiewicz, many uninsured patients end up with huge medical bills and no way of paying them. Hospitals then hound them for payment using collection agencies and lawyers, who employ such methods as filing lawsuits, slapping liens on homes, seizing bank accounts and garnishing wages to extract payments. Some hospitals now rank among America's most aggressive debt collectors.

040209 23:47 Browser

For all those who still think of it as Phoenix... you're probably glad you didn't bother learning the new name. Firebird has been renamed again. Forget the firey bird theme. It's now Firefox. Download 0.8 here.

040211 20:25 [de] Der Spiegel erklärt den Namenswechsel.

040205 23:18 Geeks

Technophiles to technophobes: Smarten up or get off the net. (NYT, reg.req.)

As MyDoom, the fastest-spreading virus ever, continues to clog e-mail in-boxes and disrupt business, the computer-savvy are becoming openly hostile toward the not-so-savvy who unwittingly play into the hands of virus writers.

[...]

For years, many self-described computer geeks seemed eager to usher outsiders onto their electronic frontier. Everyone, it seemed, had a friend or family member in the geek elite who could be summoned - often frequently - in times of computer crisis.

But as those same friends and family members are called upon again and again to save the computer incompetents from themselves, the geeks' patience is growing thin. As it does, a new kind of digital divide is opening up between populations of computer users who must coexist in the same digital world.

Get the t-shirt.

040205 18:45 War

i've been watching reruns of mash (in german. eek). it's probably one of my all-time favorite series (right after farscape naturally). it's so sad and so funny at the same time. amazing how they managed to make a comedy without degrading the experience and the realities of war. and it probably features the greatest title song of all times.

040201 17:50 Comics

yeah, me too.

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