November 2005 - Posts

The new Firefox is out

The latest version of Firefox web browser was released today, version 1.5. I'm a fan of Firefox yet am not a user. I like it because it keeps Microsoft honest. Internet Explorer is way too entrenched to ever be dethroned as the web browser of choice. I would love to use Firefox yet it is still weak compared to the Maxthon free multitabbed browser that I use (it uses the IE engine). Two things that annoy me to no end with Firefox are -

1. The way it renders fonts suck big time. No matter how I set it up the fonts it still make me feel like I'm using an old version of Netscape. Why can't they get that right? Is it the cross platform thing? It blows big time.

2. Firefox has no option to automatically open a new tab when you click on one of your Favorites or if you enter a new url in the address box. This has got to be really simple to add, why don't they add it in? That alone discourages me from using it.

I know that Firefox is open source and has a great plugin community, perhaps both of these issues I have are “plugged” with plugins. In any case good luck Firefox!!

Posted by craigg75 with 3 comment(s)
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Oily politics

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuala is sending discounted oil to poor people in Massachusetts who can't afford to heat their homes. What a fricking coup that is, wow! Sometimes politics makes for the best entertainment. All they need now is for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to get involved and you'd have the perfect triad. I hope the liberal media picks up on this, not even our president can swing a deal with our oil companies to help out the poor. Beautiful Mr. Chavez, just beautiful, I applaud thee from afar. Keep up the good work.
 
Full story here --
Posted by craigg75 with 1 comment(s)

Snapstream

My favorite software just got a major upgrade. That would be Snapstream's BeyondTV. It gives you the ability along with a tv tuner card to record tv shows and play them back, rewind live tv. It's a drop in replacement for Tivo without the monthly fees. Very sweet deal if you like to watch TV without commercials and on your time schedule. Gotta cheap computer? It's easy to convert over to what is called a PVR (Personal Video Recorder). I detailed my homebuilt rendition here. Anyway the new upgrade will now work with HDTV and can do DivX compression of shows. HDTV is something I don't buy into, the tv picture is already clear enough for me, I don't need to see the pimples on someone's face. It just seems a way for the electronic companies to increase the price of television sets and for Hollywood to better control the airwaves. DivX compression however is very nice. BeyondTV saves tv shows in mpeg2 format which can be readily copied to DVD, since that is it's native format. However the file sizes are large, around 2GB/hour. Divx can compress those files up to 10 times without significant loss in quality. In other words you can fit more shows on the hard drive now.
Posted by craigg75 with no comments
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In a perfect world

A guy bought a new fridge for his house. To get rid of his old fridge, he put it in his front yard and hung a sign on it saying, "Free to good home. You want it, you take it."

For three days, the fridge sat there without even one person looking twice at it. He eventually decided that people were skeptical about such a good deal, so he changed the sign to read, "Fridge for sale, $50."

The next day, someone stole it.

Posted by craigg75 with 1 comment(s)
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Science podcasts

Slashdot recently had a topic on podcasts that talk about science. I was amazed at how many there are out there for free. I compiled a list of them for my use and anyone else who's interested. For those who pop in here and believe in intelligent design and think angels really exist, please challenge yourself and give one of these a try -- science, it's good for the soul...

http://www.sciencefriday.com/audio/
http://www.npr.org/templates/topics/topic.php?topicId=1007&ft=2&f=1007
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/
http://www.redshiftnow.ca/report/default.aspx
http://www.mos.org/cst/article/6140/1.html
http://www.slackerastronomy.org/slack-live.xml
http://skepticality.libsyn.com/rss/
http://www.thenakedscientists.com/
http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~clgroks/
http://sciencecast.net/
http://www.twis.org/
http://www.nature.com/nature/podcast/index.html
http://science.nasa.gov/podcast.xml
http://www.universetoday.com/audio.xml
http://www.regulusastro.com/regulus/whatsup/podcast.rss
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/spaceguide/skyatnight/proginfo.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/default.htm
http://scienceweek.com/
http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?show=33
http://www.newscientist.com/podcast/
http://www.thespaceshow.com/
http://www.intellectualicebergs.org/
http://www.podcast.net/cat/74
http://www.bluejack.com/
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/mind/
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/default.htm
http://podcast.seti.org/index.xml
http://kgnu.net/audio/HowOnEarth/
http://www.christiansciencemonitor.com/scitech/index.html

Posted by craigg75 with 1 comment(s)
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