Many of my friends, acquaintances, and former co-workers may be shocked by this, but I agree with Lee: let’s stop talking about Windows.*
If for no other reason than that it’s the same old thing every time Microsoft releases a new version. It’s one thing if persons who have a thing or two invested in the whole usability thing rattle off the pros and cons of the latest Windows interface, but it’s a waste of time and energy to wade through the myriad blatherings by countless Macintosh enthusiasts who feel it is their duty to yet again remind everyone that Windows isn’t as good as the Mac OS.
My wife’s PC has Windows XP installed on it. (With Service Pack 2 and the numerous other patches installed, of course.) It sucks, okay? I don’t like having to dither around on it. But XP is better than Windows 2000, which has to have been the best version of Windows up to that point. No doubt after a bumpy start, Vista will be way better than XP, despite whatever usability fallacies it may suffer.
Microsoft has stolen from Apple. Apple has stolen from Microsoft. (Cool switching, anyone?) The Mac OS is still ahead of Windows in terms of design and usability. We get it. Can we stop talking endlessly about it now?
At least wait until the final product is released…
* (Please note, they’ll be shocked by the Windows part, not the agreeing with Lee part. Well, maybe some of them will be shocked by the Lee part, but likely most of them will just wonder “Who is Lee?”)
Tag: tech
The Oz has spoken.
Erik and I are of like mind when it comes to e-mail replies. Unless my reply is one sentence or less, I never top-post. After all, it is common sense to reply within the relevant portions of an e-mail, especially if the e-mail is long and/or covering multiple topics.
So if it’s common sense, it only stands to reason that millions of Internet users have been trained by Microsoft and other software vendors in to top-posting. Grrrrr….
So it looks like a week is all it took. Looking at my Contacts list in Adium, only three people are still bothering with Google Talk. Everyone’s back to AIM or .Mac on iChat.
Jon reports that Google Talk has gone live. The IM product builds on Gmail accounts and the open-source Jabber IM service.
I’m already up and running on it with AdiumX, so I guess iChat will be taking a hike, and my fun balloons won’t be used in the future. (Can anyone point me to a reasonable substitute for Adium?) If you want to jaw via Jabber courtesy of Google, use my site name at gmail dot com, but you have to have a Gmail account to play along. Let me know if you’d like an invitation via the e-mail address noted in the previous sentence.
MacDevCenter recently featured an article about ClamXav, a free virus scanner for Mac OS X. ClamXav is based on the open-source, antivirus engine ClamAV.
With the loss of Virex as an incentive for purchasing .Mac, François Joseph de Kermadec’s article convinced me to download ClamXav and give it a whirl. I now have it configured to automatically scan my home account every night at 3 AM, after it checks for the latest updates. It also will scan, in the background, any file that ends up in my downloads folder.
The app is Java-based, so it’s a little slower than I’d like on my 1 GHz PowerBook, but hey, it’s free. It does appear to be put together well, otherwise.
We have very few virii to worry about on the Macintosh side of the fence, but it never hurts to be prepared.
Secure online storage and file sharing. Eight bucks a month gets you 4 gigs. No bandwidth charges, no contract. Nifty.
[Via Todd Dominey.]
I have a soft spot for working dogs; I’ve always told my wife that if I were in law enforcement, I’d want to be a K-9 cop.
It’s important for working dogs to keep cool, as it is much harder for dogs to cool down than it is for humans. Military working dogs in Afghanistan and Iraq are especially at risk, but the Space Coast War Dog Association is working with Glacier Tek to provide Glacier’s ChillyDog cooling vest to dogs in those theaters of operation.
Regardless of how you feel about the politics of our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, remember these dogs have no say, and are just happy to do the job they were trained to do. If you can support the effort to get as many vests as possible to the dogs that need them, stop by the SCWDA web site and learn how to donate.
At least that’s what VitalSource is hoping you’ll do: buy eBooks from them in the same way people buy music from the iTunes Music Store. James Duncan Davidson just finished the new version of their client application, which looks pretty nice.
I, for one, cannot get in to the whole eBook thing. I have a few PDF-based books that I use for reference material, and I’ve read Cory Doctorow’s books in electronic format, but the latter is really because I’m unemployed and have to do what I can on the cheap. I much prefer the dead-tree edition of literature still.
Not content to rest on his laurels, Jon’s decided to start GoogleRumors.com. I also can not believe there wasn’t a site like this already.