Today in 1982, at this time exactly, Scott E. Fahlman invented the emoticon. He created the first emoticons, 🙂 and :-(. Their original purpose was to show which messages on a forum were serious and which were jokes, where joking messages would have 🙂 and serious ones wouldn’t. Happy birthday, :-)!
A Series of Tubes
An archive of old posts.
Tag Archives: Internet
Paper Cuts
Peter Callesen’s paper cut-outs are amazing. They are so detailed, it’s incredible. For other cool stuff like this, check out Wohba!
The following is a rant for Spraxus
This rant is written for Spraxus, a rant-based website I’m helping to develop. It’s also very true. I reserve no copyright on this rant, but Sabretooth Software does.
Internet Explorer
IE (Internet Explorer) is the Internet Browser which is made by our beloved big brother, Microsoft. This browser is the empitome of security flaws, since it is tied directly into the Windows operating system. M$, it seems, was bent on making it extremely hard if not impossible to uninstall Internet Explorer from your computer, meaning that if someone just happens to find a flaw in the rock hard security features that make up Internet Explorer (a security flaw in IE, imagine that!), they’d have almost direct access to the system files for Windows.
All of this leads Microsoft to start developing IE 7, which comes with its own virus scanner. Woo-hoo, Microsoft. A virus scanner won’t fix your security issues. IE 7 will be released as a priority download, meaning everyone using Windows XP on the internet automatically downloads it. You don’t want IE 7 and its nasty lack of menubar? Too bad, you can’t downgrade from it. What was that I said? Oh yes. lack of menubar. They’ve rearranged the window entirely to make it “simpler,” while anyone who’s been using Windows for 5 years or more will be utterly lost when the go to the top of the window to get their options and find that they aren’t there.
On top of all this, Internet Explorer is not a true internet browser. It does not comply to the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP:// ?), which states that internet browsers should display web pages as what their content-type describes them as, among many other things. This means that if a page is marked as text, it should be displayed as text. If it’s marked as a jpg, it should be displayed as a jpg, not as text. Internet Explorer does not do this. It decides for itself what the pages it displays should be displayed as, meaning if it decides to show a .jpg as text, it’s going to show you it as text.
My favorite image format, the Portable Network Graphic, or .png, doesn’t display correctly in IE. They have no transparency, whereas on Firefox they support multiple layers of transparency, allowing for cool shadows and stuff. Also, the layout engine hardly manages any CSS at all. CSS is the language of templates and website design, meaning that many-a-page look very screwed up in IE. For an example, check out www.agebuilders.org. Look at it in Firefox and then in IE and you will see what I mean.
And IE7 hasn’t fixed this problem. It is 2% more CSS-compliant than IE6. Microsoft claims that if they fix IE now, it will break half the pages in the world. While this is probably true, those pages can be fixed in the name of progress. How long are we going to be expected to wait and stand by while Microsoft stalls progress?
My conclusion: IE is extremely inferior. Don’t upgrade to IE7, download Firefox or Opera, my two favorite browsers, instead.
</rant>
Thank you Phil, you anti-alternative-spelling facist, you…
Applegeeks – Crazy Cool
The Applegeeks home page has changed. It now shows the ‘power’ logo, but shattered, with 9.4.06 under it in gray. Very cool, very l33t. I guess we can expect a new look for the comic starting with #301. Can’t wait! 😀
It’s not a big truck. It’s a SERIES OF TUBES!
I’ve renamed my blog. Obviously. Wanna know why? Here’s why.
Apparently, the internet is not what we thought it was. According to the Unite States Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the Internet is a series of tubes. Well. Um….Ok? Tubes. Right. He stated a few days ago that
An Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o’clock in the morning on Friday; I just got it yesterday . . . because it got tangled up.
and also this
The Internet isn’t something you just dump things on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes!
This was all in response to the cry out for Net Neutrality, and blatntly displays Senator Stevens’ extreme lack of knowledge about the reality of the Internet.
Then again, maybe he knows something we dont?
More Reasons Ubisoft Sucks.
Being a Myst fan, I obviously hate Ubisoft. For those who don’t know or understand why, it’s becuase they were the publishers Cyan Worlds was working for for a long time. They own the rights to Myst III, IV, and have the licences for V. They were the ones who originally published Uru Live, and pulled it’s funding when not enough people signed up for it.
They’re the ones who are responsible for what happened to Cyan Worlds in September of last year.
They have manufactured an anti-piracy program which has the ability to shut down your computer if it suspects piracy. And that means if you have the disc in one drive and are burning another disc in another drive, it will shut down your computer, potentially doing lots of damage.
This is the huge capitalist pig of a game publisher.
And on to today’s topic, their support. The support form I filled out to get help with installing Myst V on my mac (read the next post for info on that) is pretty good. They have a platform selector (with every platform they publish games on, which is virtually every one), and then a game selector, then a selector for the type of problem. I filled this out neatly, and proceeded to tell them my story and ask for help. I must have mentioned the fact that I’m trying to use their stupid patcher to get it to install on my INTEL BASED MAC at least 4 times.
I just now received a reply from them (very prompt, congrats), which was somewhat confusing. Here’s a sample.
– Updating your video drivers:
Please visit your sound, video, and 3D card manufacturer’s websites for the most recently available drivers for the components in your system.
Major video chipset manufacturers web sites:http://www.nvidia.com – GeForce/TNT/Riva/Vanta/Etc models
http://www.ati.com – Radeon/Rage Pro/Rage 128 Pro/Etc models
http://www.3dfx.com – All Voodoo model cards
http://www.s3graphics.com – All Savage model cards
http://www.matrox.com – G200/G400 modelsOnce you have downloaded and installed these drivers according to the manufacturer’s suggestions then follow the next step.
– Updating your Directx:
Download and install DirectX from http://www.microsoft.com/directx. For more help with this, please search the Ubi Soft Database for how to update drivers.– Please check to see if there is a patch available for your game at http://support.ubi.com/patches.php
This is ridiculous, because my software updater automagically updates my drivers (all of them). That’s a link to www.MICROSOFT.com, the guys who make WINDOWS?! Oh wait, theres a patch available! Oh that’s right, THE PATCH IS WHAT I’M COMPLAINING ABOUT. Another sample:
– Try running the game from the executable
Instead of starting the game from the start menu or the Autorun menu, try running the game from the executable file in the game’s installation directory.– Close all programs running in the background
To do this in XP:
Go to the Start menu, and choose Run. Delete anything on the Open line that you’ll find there, and type in the work MSCONFIG. Click on OK, and that will bring up a program called the System Configuration Utility.Look down the list of startup items (not the tab labeled Startup), and choose Selective Startup (if it is not already selected). If you don’t see this, make sure you’ve clicked on General, near the top of the window. Once you’ve chosen Selective Startup, uncheck ‘Load Startup Items’, and leave ‘Process System.INI file’ and ‘Process Win.INI file’ checked. Once you’re done here, click OK, and let it reboot your computer.
Look at that. Last time I checked, Mac OS X does not have an Autorun menu. Last time I checked, there is no Start Menu or an option called Run to choose. Last time I checked, Process System.INI and Process Win.INI didn’t exist on my computer, and last time I checked I WAS RUNNING OS X 10.4.7, NOT WINDOWS XP, YOU STUPID MORONS!
I read the e-mail carefully, and not once does it mention Mac OS X.
Crazymazing
This page is crazymazing. Crazy and amazing. It’s a photo mosaic app, but it’s never-ending. Every image is used with other images to make one larger image, but the image itself is made out of tinier images which are made out of tinier images and so on…It does an amazing job of it, but it tends to repeat images too often, and it even uses an image to make a larger version of the same image, which is cheap. Still, it is amazing.
Agebuilder.org Update
*Phew* After one day, forum.agebuilder.org and www.agebuilder.org are back online, with no hackers or malware present. I would recommend a virus scan on your computer anyway, especially if you’re using IE. 😉
Agebuilder.org Hacked!
Agebuilder.org, the hub of Age Creation for Uru, has been hacked…again. This time, the site has been given a .exe malware file that auto-downloads when you visit the site, so DO NOT VISIT AGEBUILDER.ORG! Thankfully no posts or wiki info were lost, but the site is currently inaccessible to anyone who doesn’t want a virus.
I’m an admin there, so I feel responsible, but there are multiple people working on it now, and I’ll hinder more than I’ll help.
This seems to be a trend now. This is the second hack against Agebuilder.org, plus the DJC was hacked not long ago and of course COBBS lost everything a year ago. There has been an increase of spambots as well. People seem to be plotting against the Myst community…:(
Anime Boston
I went to Anime Boston with my friend Darth Imperios (no, not his real name :P) today, to check out what was there. He waited through the (then) 20-minute line to get a pass (you “need” a pass to get in, read on to find out why it’s “really”), then payed the $30 for an all-day one. Then after a bit of mishap finding eachother, we met up and went to check out the line for me to buy a pass…
…Which I would have done, had the line not been snaking through a ballroom then going out the hallway and snaking through two mid-sized ballrooms. We didn’t even get to the end of the line before deciding it wasn’t worth it. So we went back to the exhibition hall.
At the hall, we found a few things. One, about 75% of the people there were cosplaying, and about 90% were either a character from Naruto or Final Fantasy. Second, we found out that we were actually in the “Artists’ Alley,” not the exhibition hall. Finally, we found out that there were no guards checking passes to get into the Artists’ Alley, so we both got in and started looking around for AppleGeeks, who said they were there.
We spent about 10 minutes just looking around for them, because they didn’t have a big sign or anything. Finally DI pulls out his map that he got with the pass (he also got a free 14 day trial of WoW) and we look for them on that. We finally realize that we’re standing right next to their table, so we turn around and buy some merch. We had a short conversation (“Hey, can we get some shirts?” “Yeah, $20 each.” “Cool.”) and left nervously. I also got an awesome Hawk Bandana. 😀
We stopped at the next table over for me to buy a Kindom Hearts Sora necklace (the crown on a chain) and for DI to buy a Naruto high criminal headband. We looked around some other areas of the place, but most of them had guards out front checking passes, so DI went in to scope them out then reported back to me. Eventually my mom (who was with us) went to get us autographs from Hawk and Ananth (I was too shy to go myself…they’re my idols), and came back with two signed drawings for us!
She then convinced us to go talk to them, which we did…but hardly at all. (them: “Hey guys!” us: “Hey” (mom: “They wanted to thank you in person”) us: “Thanks so much!” them: “No problem,” then we shuffled away nervously.) I almost died. 😛
The rest was relatively uneventful, other than DI going into the merch store next to the Alley (the Alley was a broom closet compared to this place…), and emerged 30 minutes later plus one Naruto sleeping cap. It’s kinda geeky, but the same could be said for my shwag (which by this point also included a Heartless logo tee shirt), I guess.
Yeah, my name is Max…shhh…