Wallpaper from Houghi (click image above
to enlarge; non-lossy PNG version)

HECK out some three-dimensional Web browsers. None of the three is said to obviate the need for Opera, Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or even rusty Internet Explorer. The pages that are filled with screenshots, however, leave plenty of place for imagination. Technologies like XGL/Compiz, as well as DirectX support in Vista, will make it all possible. The contribution of the third dimension is very mere though, which is where proper yet pseudo 3-D displays come into play.

‘Satanic’ day is marked today as “666″ our calendars will indicate. It is not quite so often that a date such as this is reached. It may take another 100 years, as a matter of fact and, even then, a zero will be lost (2006 becomes 2106).

So, enjoy Devil’s Day! Just don’t be mischievous!!

Season of the playful penguins from Oyonale

IBM have gradually become a close ally of Linux, as well as Open Source in general. Among the exciting news for Linux, heaps of which have flooded the mainstream in recent weeks/month:

IBM Challenges Microsoft With $300 Million Ad Campaign

At the center of the new migration initiative under Move2Lotus is “Migrate to the Penguin.” IBM is introducing a limited time only rebate program for eligible IBM Software Resellers who move customers from Microsoft Exchange to Lotus Notes and Domino on Linux collaboration offerings.

Source: technewsworld.com

That’s 1,000,000 articles in one encyclopedia

After the arrival of Wikipedia for the iPod, a compact disc, or a memory stick, comes yet another important milstone:

The Wikimedia Foundation announced today the creation of the 1,000,000th article in the English language edition of Wikipedia. The article is about the Jordanhill railway station in Scotland, and it was started by Wikipedia contributor Ewan Macdonald. Wikipedia is a free, multilingual, online encyclopedia with 3.3 million articles under development in more than 125 languages.

Related items: Wikipedia Statistics, Wikipedia Introduces New Restrictions

VER the past few years I have come to loathe telephones. At first, it was just plain disdain for cellular communication. That kind of disdain dates back to the day when it was first introduced to in the public sector (as opposed to prestigious businesses). More recently, I decided to disconnect my phone or refuse to answer, having already avoided giving out my numbers. Snail mail likewise, but it’s an entirely different topic, which I will attempt to steer away from.

Why have I chosen to abstain from verbal communication that is job-related? For starters, electronic form saves space. I tend to scan every important paper anyway, but it is not searchable and it is time-consuming to acquire a copy. It is also difficult to file sensibly.

Moving on to a major pitfall of telephone-based comminication, negotiating tasks over the telephone is not efficient in terms of time. Moreover, nothing is logged in textual form, despite the rapid and rich communication, which is vocal. On top of that, vocal output from streams of consciousness is unorganised. It is the flawed way of talking, which results in serialisation of improperly-correlated ideas. In practice, this means that TODO lists that are agreed upon over the phone will be unpolished and badly written.

One more important issue is uncertainty and inaccuracies. I am inclined to prefer E-mail as it can be re-polished before the point of despatch. It can also looked at as a reference later. It can be duplicated, even forwarded to other people without any effort. Think about an E-mail containing “I spoke to Fred Bloggs yesterday and he said that…” versus just a forwarding of some mail within seconds.

Finally, to balance this discussion and give an opposite viewpoint, research suggests that textual communication can be damaging to relationships between peers. It conceals sensible tone and manner and adds tremendously to ambiguity.

According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I’ve only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they’ve correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

Can Google and Microsoft ever walk hand-in-hand?

UMEROUS notes have accumulated on my Palm, so I decided to publish them in a logical (not necessarily chronological) order. The notes are all associated with questionable practices and controversial moves, which have been embraced by the Internet’s largest forces, putting Yahoo aside for the most past.

We all wish to gaze into the crystal ball and see what Google comes up with. Moreover, Google remain the centre of attention to many of the media sources. This happened for a reason. Public opinion is rather negative when it comes to Microsoft, primarily due to their shady past and unethical paths, which involve misuse of their monopoly in desktop computing, including a customer lock-in strategy. Then come Google, which seem like a Luddite to Microsoft who perceive Google as their giant threat. Many eyes look at up Google as if it was the knight on the white horse — the one to save the world from a vicious ruler.

The reasons to dislike Microsoft do not only involve exploitation of their monopoly-like state-of-affairs. Microsoft’s CEO once made some derogatory statements about competing operating systems. In reference to Linux he once said “are you going to trust some guy from China?”. It is not just midleading, but also racist and disrespectful. It also comes to show lack of sportsmanship in this competition over the operating systems market. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft used similar types of FUD in reference to Google, saying it would disappear within 5 years. That was a couple of years ago and, ever since, Microsoft have only played catch-up on the Internet, merely copying everything from Google. If controversies ever arises (as in the case of book scanning), the will stipulates that Microsoft will embroil their counterparts into the very same mess, detracting them from victory. Aggressiveness and deep pockets remain in Microsoft’s valued arsenal.

Apart from Trojans, spyware and viruses, I see no real motion in Microsoft Windows. Neither do most existing Windows user, who begin to glance elsewhere. Even when properly protected, the platform has many critical flaws and suffers from the saturation of nagware (homonym of nagger), which we also know as shareware or freeware. Any alternative can be rather pricy. To make matters worse, large quantities (intentional storage room vocabulary) of computers are made captureable from afar. Zombie networks (or BotNets) are constantly being formed. Suddenly, a seemingly harmless and innocent existence of an O/S — one with hijacking vulnerabilities and viral complications — can attack and bring down large Web sites. The flaws are simply infectious. They hurt the entire Web, which is unacceptable.

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Separating ham and spam

RE you familiar with the misfortunate ordeals where you must cope with uninvited mail from a solicited source? What happens when this recurs, as in the case of getting mail that is directly or indirectly bound to a ‘newsletter’? Such newsletters are often hard to unsubscribe from.

I typically just bin such messages automatically rather than bothering to unsubscribe. Why? Experience suggests that it is the easier solution. Some companies voluntarily ‘decide’ to subscribe you and make unsubscription paths difficult and/or poorly tested. Call that “aggressive” if you will. Such messages ought to go to spam@your_domain, which can be emptied every day/week/month after a quick eye glance. Filtering based on headers is a true friend in such circumstances and, if done properly, no false positives (improper spam detection applied to real messages) should follow.

I do not like the idea the idea of re-directing mail to dev/null (i.e. deleting it immediately). Some people whom I know actually do that without hesitation; they particularly enjoy saving files under /dev/null as there is infinite free space there! The thought of something going amiss without the recipient’s awareness (perhaps a false positive) is worrisome. I tend to worry too much. I even check at queue of my BoxTrapper (Challenge/Response filter) at the end of each month, only to find merely nothing which is of use, among heaps of junk. That said, Challenge/Response filters have a few problems. On my domains, there are 5 accounts that which are protected by Apache’s BoxTrapper and merely all messages that get trapped are spam that refuses to verify its genuineness. So why should one bother? I still bother; I just punish no-one but myself.

Related item: Genuine Uninvited Mail