Sad to see idol Chris Sligh go

I had never watched American Idol until this season (seriously, not even a single episode); I thought I was too old for that. But this kid Chris Sligh caught my attention. I think he has a (surprisingly) full rockish voice, good stage posture and some witty sense of humor. I thought he would have gone all the way and I am sorry to see him voted off. He might have slipped a teeny bit in one place but otherwise I think his Tuesday performance was great. I didn't notice any rhythmic problem. I really think all those comments were just due to Gwen Stephanie's remark. He was invited on Jay Leno last night, prompted me to visit his web site. There was some unexpectedly deep stuff about racism on his blog. This kid's okay, I hope we get to see more of him in the future.

My Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 face off

Simple, IE7 wins. I share a home computer with a family memeber with weak eye sight. I set resolution to high (on XP, resolution is a machine wide setting), and zoom in IE7. Firefox's only choice is to increase the font size, which screws up web pages' layouts, everybody knows mixing scalable and non-scalable elements is disastrous.

Resizing fonts is not an accessibility choice in Firefox because most web pages won't layout correctly as a result , IE7's page zoom solves the problem

Now that that's settled, let's move on to talk about the 1,000,000 reviews out there that place Firefox as the winner, for the wrong reasons, it's amazing what idiots are giving advices out there; take CNET's for example:

Installation: CNET complains about lengthy download time of IE, without taking into account that IE installation includes system files upgrade. And I'd like to know what browser they use to download Firefox when you don't have Firefox in the first place.

Look and community: Apparently Peter didn't know middle click closes a tab on previous versions Firefox, that tells you how much these folks know about browsers. But that aside, while IE has 95% browser market share, it's baffling Elsa thinks Firefox has a community edge.

Tabbed browsing: If this in itself is a category, where are the talks about the more important components, like rendering engine? And read Peter's review, he gave Firefox higher score because he thinks something can be done with add-on on Firefox, but not on IE. The fact is, everything can be done (with or without add-on), it's software!

Cool new features: Rafe, page zoom is not some fancy little flourishes, it's called accessibility, it's paramount for people with weak eyes. On the other hand, I am confused by the need of a spell checker.

Security and performance: Again, it's sickening that Tabbed browsing is its own category, while security and performance are lumped together. Security is my day job so I know alittle about it. My advise to Peter and Elsa is: if you don't know security, shut up, don't embarrase yourself (Rafe actually has the good sense to admit ignorance) Elsa placed bets on reputation, hello? While praising IE about choice of phishing filters, still ended up giving higher score for Firefox. Phishing is all these people talk about, apparently they all lack fundamental knowledge of security.

My turn on security: If you think Firefox is more secure, ask yourself if you ever noticed Firefox download page is not https (no authentication)? Sure the install binary is signed, but did you ever check? And if you ask me what's the difference right there and then I know you don't know much about security: Because installing a downloaded Firefox without checking the installer's digital signature means you may be installing a hacked version of Firefox (it's easy to hack because it is open source, after all), which jepardizes all your online purchases and e-bankings. IE does not have the same problem becuase IE uses the system's certificate store and those ceritificates and IE itself come from physical media. In all fairness, IE did have more exploited vulnerabilities recorded in the past; but my point is, most (not all) people who think Firefox is more secure don't know what they are talking about.

My turn on performance: On my laptop (a 2GHz machine) the 2 browsers have no difference in performance. But on my home machine, which is a Pentium III 550MHz, IE is consistently 20% faster than Firefox. So for those who say Firefox performs better, I'd like to see a demo.

My turn to vent: My grief is about how people with no domain knowledge on a certain topic, blindly make assertions and accusations base solely on hearsay or baseless personal preferences; in otherwords, because it appears geeky to support open source and feels good to bash Microsoft. It's fine to be a novice if you want to comment on usability of a piece of software; but if you are to give plausible advice about something, say security aspects of a browser, you better know something about https, social engineering, malware vulnerability exploits etc; otherwise you just come off lame and repulsive.

I was going to go into the "Linux is better" myth, but I guess I am just too tired from this whole nonsense...

Security Camera

I've always wanted a security camera installed at my front porch. But the problem is I've to drill through the wall, run the wires, etc, the hassle, you know. Then I came across these fake cameras, not a bad idea for less than $10, assuming the bad guys are gonna notice it of course...

Ultra mega super Mac is here

That ultra super fast all in one does everything Mac has finally arrived.... more info here.

DRM losing out? I believe Apple for a change

Ever wonder how the menu item "Deauthorize computer" in iTunes works? I've never figured that out because I don't purchase music from iTunes - didn't want to get locked down on a device (not to mention, I am not a fan of iTunes). (De)authorizing a computer for purchased music never made sense to me because I've always thought iTunes/iPod's DRM FairPlay was like its rival Play for sure where music devices (like the Zens) are tracked as well - the distributer can control what songs you can play on these devices, for how long, or how many of these devices can play a purchased song... until I came a cross this article today, explains everything.

What's interesting is that it also explains why Steve Jobs' claim of support of DRM-free music on iTunes is credible. It has never been about locking people down to Apple's device, in this case, the iPod.


I'm old fashion in this regard. I buy used CDs, rip high bit rate for PC and my higher capacity iPod, low bit rate for my Shuffle for long trips (cause the Shuffle has excellent battery life), so I hardly ever purchase downloads; and when I do, they always let me burn it back to a CD even when they are DRM protected. So I still don't understand what's the point.

I wish I was on the list to be saved

They have saved the cheerleader, they are going save the world, but what about me! I can't stand the thought of having to wait till April 23rd to see the next episode of Heroes.

The show deserves every bit of the success it enjoys, a fine example of master story telling of plots filled with surprises and twists strung together by an extraordinarily rich set of intriguing characters. I especially appreciate the show's use of visuals to convey the storyline; like early on when Parkman walked into a crime scene and saw a frozen dead body with the top of her head cut off, the viewer could immediately make the connection to the image of Issac lying on the floor as seen by Hiro. Or when HGR instructed the Haitian where to shoot him, I couldn't help but start thinking if faking others' deaths was how he had got away with all the dirty deeds imposed on him. I mean, show and not tell, no lame dialogues needed, just let the viewer's imagination run wild.

Jack Coleman's performance is fantastic with those glasses and that cynical smirk. I've read conflicting rumors on the web. Some say season 2 will have a whole new group of heroes, while others advertise that Tim Kring had decided to keep a few familiar faces in the next season. I sure hope we will get to see more of Jack Coleman, Adrian Pasdar and Masi Oka.

Jack Coleman's potrait of HRG in NBC's Heroes

I told you so

Apple bashing time again.

This time, Apple has allegedly used its influence to have a YouTube video removed; a video reportedly showing an iPhone interface implemented on a Pocket PC, something I wrote about in a previous post.

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