A great post today from Asa (one of the Firefox developers):
A couple of months ago, Mike Danseglio, the Program Manager for the Security Solutions group at Microsoft blamed users for the Windows security nightmare, saying “there really is no patch for human stupidity.”
Nice one, Mike.
Actually, Mike, there really is no patch for that kind of blame shifting. We make software and it’s our job to make it work. Designing and building software is an extremely complex process but it is not magic and it is not only possible to make it safe, it’s a requirement.
The makers of internet connected software, primarily browsers and email programs, have created sophisticated platforms for web developers and for those who would do the user harm. Microsoft, with it’s dominance in the browser and email markets, walked away from improving that platform in 2001 and gave the bad guys half a decade — and remember, this is “Internet time”, half a decade to build ever more sophisticated attacks against users.
Check the link above for more.
or is Seasame Street nowhere near this cool anymore.
I love that they do the super-extended jam version; for some reason I just can’t see them doing that anymore - definitely not on commercial TV, and probably not even on public TV kids shows.
Also, I love how much fun Stevie Wonder always looks like he’s having when he’s playing.
As it relates to how my plugins look, my new approach (for the ones I’m getting ready to release shortly) is to make them look decent out of the box, in the default WordPress 2.0 theme, and then just add enough in the way of IDs and class names to make it as easy as possible for people to customize if they aren’t using the default theme.
My thinking on this is that I don’t really think there’s any good way to provide for many complicated style rules out of the box without making it more difficult to customize when the user does want to use an alternate theme. So, what I think the best approach might be is to make it OK (without much or any CSS) for people who are totally uncomfortable messing with their themes, and then for those who ARE into that, they may have to tweak it a little bit to make it fit, but they will have to do that on everything; that’s just part of choosing a different theme.
What do you guys think?
It should be working now; go ahead and give it a try. Let me know by commenting on this post if you run into any errors.
After a few days (or less if there’s more activity) of testing, I plan on realeasing it for everyone to use, so help me out here!
The last few weeks I’ve ironed out a schedule that has been working really well for me.
The main issue was finding time to go to the gym; mornings were no good because the pool is too crowded, and I also don’t like to go away in the evenings every night either, which I would need to in order to be consistent. During the competition, I was just waiting for the kids to go to bed and going at night, but now that summer is here they have later bedtimes.
What I’ve been doing lately is only going in to the office to work one (sometimes 1.5) days a week, and working the rest of the time either at home or Starbucks (mostly Starbucks, to avoid distractions). This allows me to be able to go to the gym in the middle of the day whenever I take a break for lunch, and just generally be more productive with my time (both actual work time and cutting out an hour of driving).
Nathan would be my first Netflix friend, but unfortunately it won’t let me accept the invitation since I used a different e-mail address for my account. So, for future reference, my netflix address is netflix@pacific22.com, if you’d like to add me as a friend.
I did manage to add one movie to my exclusively Twilight Zone queue after looking at Nathan’s: The History of Violence (which is another movie based on a comic, although they didn’t seem to publicize that fact that I remember). I wanted to see this when it was out, but never got around to it.
Well, I finally got around to moving Martha’s blog over to the new server, and I put together a new theme for her while I was at it. She actually picked one to use initially, but it was really image based and the fixed width was really annoying, so she just had me make up a new one using the same color scheme.
If you go to her blog and you still see the old theme (with comments disabled), your DNS servers probably just haven’t refreshed yet. I’m also experimenting with a few other things with her new site, so if you run into any technical issues, please let me know by posting a comment here on this post.
that Noam Chomsky would be invited to speak to a class of cadets at West Point academy? Not I, but it’s certainly a welcome surprise.
I haven’t actually watched the whole hour long video yet, since it’s in Real Video format and I don’t have that installed anywhere right now, but here’s an interesting short excerpt to whet the appetite: Noam answers the question posed by an audience member about the invasion of Iraq, and whether it was justified because of Saddam’s human rights record and/or his status as an “aggressor”.
Read More »
I managed to find a few spare minutes to fix some nagging bugs with the most recent release of my theme - specifically related to the tagboard and the syndicated content section.
I’m thinking of hiding the syndicated content display by default and/or allowing users to turn it off and have it remember their preference. What do you guys think?
RISE OF THE STUPID NETWORK - by David S. Isenberg
The Rise of the Stupid Network was originally written during a single long weekend in May 1997 by David S. Isenberg while he was an employee of AT&T Labs Research. It was officially released onto the Internet by AT&T in June 1997. … Isenberg left AT&T in January 1998. Shortly after that, AT&T asked Isenberg to remove The Rise of the Stupid Network from the isen.com website. Isenberg wanted to make AT&T happy so he took it off. (It didn’t work; AT&T is still not happy.)
This is an excellent article from an insider at the phone company, and details a lot about how the phone companies operate (and/or stagnate, as the “market” allows), and brings up many points about why net neutrality is vitally necessary (even though it obviously predates the current controversy).
It does get a little technical, which I’m sure will mean that most (if not all) of the people reading this post will not read the entire article. Of course, that’s probably exactly why net neutrality (and the internet as we know it) is likely to eventually be defeated, but in spite of that, I think it’s important to mention anyway.