Okay, I’ve been using the new Firefox 2.0 release for a few days now, and I have to say that I disagree with what many people have been saying about it. Right now, Firefox has around 13% of the browser market, and the big question is: does FF2 have enough to continue to win over new users, especially given Microsoft’s new IE7? I think so.
Beyond improved performance and security, plus the elimination of memory leak problems and a few known bugs, the main draw to FF2 would be the new features.
The first big thing for me was spell check. You have no idea how cool it is until you try it–trust me. Spell something wrong in an online form and it’s underlined in red. You can then right click on it and choose from a list of possible corrections, just like in an office application. Here’s a screen shot of it in action.
Another big improvement for me was an auto-complete feature for the built-in search. This works much like Google complete, and it’s a big help.
What everyone has been talking about, however, is the RSS integration. When you navigate to a page that contains an RSS feed, the RSS icon lights up. You can then choose to follow the feed with either live bookmarks or with your favorite online reader. I don’t use RSS much, myself, so I can’t really judge how helpful it is, but it seems like an improvement to me. Read more…
Maher Arar is a 34-year-old wireless technology consultant. He was born in Syria and came to Canada with his family at the age of 17. He became a Canadian citizen in 1991. On Sept. 26, 2002, while in transit in New York’s JFK airport when returning home from a vacation, Arar was detained by US officials and interrogated about alleged links to al-Qaeda. Twelve days later, he was chained, shackled and flown to Syria, where he was held in a tiny “grave-like” cell for ten months and ten days before he was moved to a better cell in a different prison. In Syria, he was beaten, tortured and forced to make a false confession.
I saw this article, written by Reginald V. Finley, and I found it really interesting. Basically, it shows everything that’s wrong with blind faith, as the callers described had no reason to believe the author was an actual psychic other than they wanted it to be true–it gave them comfort. Also, and probably more interesting, is that it shows this from the point-of-view of someone consciously manipulating others by using their faith against them, in this case for money.
It tells the story of someone who worked as a telephone psychic. He tells of the callers he had, and how easy they were to manipulate into staying on the line, leading to more profit for him.
While some who believe in god don’t believe in psychics, almost all who believe in psychics believe in god. This parallel isn’t surprising, as both require the suspension of reason in favor of the comfort of blind faith.
I was taken aback on how amazingly gullible and ignorant these people were. I received calls ranging from the curious to the suicidal, from the depressed to the malign, from young to old. No one seemed immune. Over 75% of callers were female and 50% of those were over the age of 55. It gets worse. A startling 95% of my callers made insinuations, and some overtly, that they believe in a god. My first thought, ” Then why are you calling me? The Bible explicitly forbids this behavior.” Also, over 95% of my callers truly believed that I was psychic. Some even made reference to God giving me this ability as a gift, and that I should use it often.
From the transcript: I stand by what I said. I take back none of what I said. I wouldn’t rephrase it any differently. It is what I believe; it is what I think. It is what I have found to be true.
It is completely disgusting to think that people actually listen to this guy, but this response isn’t exactly unexpected. Conservatives need to keep issues such as this in the abstract; Michael J. Fox put a face on stem cell research, and they don’t know what to do. Luckily, even many Republicans are admitting that Limbaugh went a bit over the edge with this one.
Perhaps he was upset because Fox was getting pills and he wasn’t.
Well, K2 wasn’t working well with my host, 1and1 (they’re complete crap), so I decided to change it up a bit. This is a much simpler and more elegant design, plus it validates in XHTML (last time I checked).
Anyway, you probably noticed that I’ve been posting rather erratically lately. As always, I have lots of excuses ready, so here we go: my comcast high speed Internet access was very slow this week, and I have no idea why; my domain name for frenicweb.com expired and their control panel didn’t work well with Firefox, so my attempts to renew it have all failed so far (they want me to wait another 24 hours before I can try again); I had homework to do, and lots of it; and, of course, I was too busy customizing my blog’s layout (google adsense support, css, alignment, etc) to actually write anything for my blog.
But all that’s beside the point. I’m updating it now, aren’t I? This is my second update today!
From MSNBC: Former Enron Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling, the most vilified figure from the financial scandal of the decade, was sentenced Monday to 24 years and four months in the harshest sentence yet in the case that arose from the energy trading giant’s collapse.
Hooray! Finally we get something a little more appropriate.
Skilling was convicted in May on 19 counts of fraud, conspiracy, insider trading and lying to auditors.
Thousands of people’s lives were seriously affected by the Enron collapse, and all those responsible deserve what they get (and, in most cases, much worse).
Prosecutors have also asked that Skilling turn over nearly $183 million, which they claim he pocketed while at Enron. The U.S. government had divided that amount between Skilling and Lay. But Lay’s death has left that amount solely with Skilling.
During his trial, Skilling listed his remaining assets as including a $5 million mansion in Houston, a $350,000 condo in Dallas, a Mercedes Benz, two Land Rovers and nearly $50 million in stocks and bonds frozen by the government.
