Computers & Internet

by DyRE:

It wasn’t directly to give people a faster Internet connection but I think it was created because of some geek’s sister. See, this sister, she had a very active social life. Whenever she was home, she got phone calls out the wazoo. She wasn’t home much though, because her callers usually invited her somewhere. She was popular.

She had a very active social life.

She was popular.

Then her geeky little brother, who was petrified of social physical interaction, started going online via a dial-up connection… all the time. Soon this girl never got any calls because the line was always busy. Her parents didn’t want to pay for another phone line and she couldn’t afford one herself. Luckily, her father was a some sort of technician at [insert phone or cable company name here]. One day, he was brooding over his recent troubles concerning his daughter’s attempt to dismantle the computer to find which part was the modem and beat his son with it. As he contemplated this situation, he inadvertantly began staring at the phone line. Or the cable TV line. Whichever came first (DSL or cable modems). Suddenly, the idea hit him and he rushed off to the company offices to present this new high speed idea to his superiors. All of them having one popular child and one geeky child themselves thought it was wonderful. Thus, the phone line was free (until the girl began getting calls again) and the bandwidth was used like nobody’s business… and all were happy.

The end.

I honestly wouldn’t be suprised if thats how it actually happened. [originally posted at 4degreez.com]

I recently purchased a veritable plethora of computer hardware in an attempt to build my dream machine. Ars Technica was an invaluable resource for my efforts, especially their system recommendations and how-to guides. Not to mention their weblog, which is a great source for current tech news and information. Tom’s Hardware Guide also provided some in-depth wisdom and reviews. For price comparisons, I used pricewatch.com, streetprices.com, and pricecombat.com. Another good find was jcshopper, a decent store with very good prices ($57 PC133 256MB SDRAM!). Thanks also to grenville, Four Degreez, and DyRE for all their help! Soon I’ll be able to break the chains of my 200Mhz oppression! For those who are interested, I posted my purchases on the infamous Kaedrin Forum.

Amazon.com’s Honor System, a way for Web sites to receive payments from readers, is slowly taking hold. In all honesty, while I see the motivation for having such a thing and am enthusiastic about using it, I don’t see how that sort of system could really support a website. First, when given the choice, most people won’t pay. Second, even when people do pay, they aren’t likely to keep paying. That’s why you see Metafilter making $600 in a day, then practically nothing for the next month. If you wish to prove me wrong, feel free to donate to the Kaedrin Honor System Page (or go here to find other options for supporting Kaedrin:)! It will be much appreciated!

5:30 PM: More thoughts – It would be great if Amazon was able to incorperate some of its other functionality into the Honor System. For instance, allow visitors to review the website, or the ability to create lists of themed websites. Amazon could potentially parlay the Honor System into becoming a major portal site (even recommending sites for you based on what sites you’ve rated and visited), and given Amazon’s rediculous commission system, its in their best interest to have people donating as much money as possible! Granted, the system could be abused, but I think Amazon has a lot to gain from integrating the Honor System with reviews and recommendations. Just my 2 cents.

Filepile.org is the latest creation of Andre; quite a good idea from a man who seems to have a lot of them… Does anyone remember the old filepile? It was a Blogger-like content management system that you could use to organize files alphabetically. It showed potential, but I don’t think anyone used it for anything exciting (including myself; I believe I considered using it for the imaginary archive)

Another nifty creation I recently encountered is this. Type in a domain and you get all the <!– comments –> present on the page. Fascinating, indeed. (try megnut; it seems she has something to say after all)

The Day The Browser Died, a tragic shortcoming of Netscape 4.x. CSS is a wonderful technology, in part because it fails gracefully (at least, its supposed to) in browsers that don’t support it. Except Netscape. Netscape tends to crash when you use CSS. I recently encountered this problem with these very pages. I seem to have fixed the problem (it had to do with the padding property being applied to a table cell), but that’s no excuse for Netscape’s failure.

I like Netscape. Really, I do. And you know what, as you can see in the follow up article at A List Apart, Netscape has been really cooperative with this bug. Netscape has been a consistant innovative force on the internet. However, their 4.x browser has become an embarassment, and 6.0, though standards compliant and faster, isn’t what is could have been (I look forward to future releases).

I apologize to anyone who still can’t view this site in Netscape, and I beg of you to consider switching over to IE (or better yet Opera). That is, if you can even get to this page to read it.

I’ve been trying to take a more novel approach recently, but I find the urge to spread some quickly growing memes is overcoming my good senses. I apologize in advance if this is the millionth time you’ve seen these links:)

First comes a cool Avatar maker called storTrooper. Its a nifty little java applet that lets you choose a body and clothes for a virtual representation of yourself (an avatar, if you will). I made a rather bland one (on your right), but you can make an outrageous one fairly easily. If you buy it you get lots of other clothes and styles to choose from (including the goth collection), and it would make a great supplement to a virtual community site like 4degreez, letting users goof around with their appearances…

Second is IT. What is IT? It’s IT. Actually, no one knows what IT is, but IT will change the world. Some good coverage and commentary on IT can be found at Boing Boing. IT is the invention of 49-year-old scientist Dean Kamen, and IT is also code named Ginger. Of course, everyone’s intrigued, including metafilter and slashdot visitors (of course). Some think it is a revolutionary form of transportation, or perhaps an infinite energy source. Steve Jobs thinks cities will be built around IT. Can IT stay a secret for long? I don’t think so. We’ll know what it is soon enough; no one can keep something that is supposedly this big a secret. Until then, IT is an intriguing mystery…

I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming…

Why do browser companies continue to forge blindly ahead with more and more new features when they haven’t even implemented existing standards correctly? Why can’t they follow the standards process? Good questions. The answer is that browsers do, in fact, follow the standards process! The problem is that browsers are encouraged to innovate, to make up new (proprietary) features and technologies. They then act as a test market for the W3C, who evaluate the new features and observe how they work in the “real” world. They then make recommendations based on their findings. But when they change their specifications, the browsers are left in a lose-lose situation. This article will give you the rest of the low down in an objective manner. Its a frustrating situation, from every angle, and this sort of complex problem has no easy answer. I hope, for everyone’s sake, that the process is tightened a bit so that emerging technologies can flourish. On a side note, I wonder how much an open source browser like mozilla could contribute to the standards process without having to officially release a non-standards compliant browser…

The computer versus television: I don’t watch TV anymore. The hours wasted in front of the tv screen are now wasted in front of the computer monitor. Sure, I’ll throw the TV on for episodes of the Simpsons or the occasional X-Files (or possibly a Flyers game), but I’m usually doing something on the computer as well. TV just isn’t a priority anymore and I’ve noticed similar trends with those around me. Why is that? I think its because of the control you have over the web (or your computer in general). You can look up whatever you want, whenever you want, and even display it how you want. TV rigidly forces you to adhere to their schedule, while the internet gives you the power. The internet also provides a creative outlet and interactivity, things TV lacks. The internet is a much more social activity than watching the tube, and the Television industry needs to refocus its efforts if its going to regain its once lofty status…

Someone has figured out how to use the 3d shooter Doom as a tool for system administration. Doom creates a new metaphor for process management: Each process can be a monster, and the machines can be represented by a series of rooms. Killing a process corresponds to killing a monster. How very clever. [via usr/bin/girl]

This is an interesting tool that you can use to help you find keywords for your site. Type in a keyword and you can find related searches that include your term, as well as how many times that term was searched on last month. Wery useful.