Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

I personally find this trend disturbing.

Claria and WhenU are making the case that their adware programs don’t resort to illegal tactics, such as exploiting security holes, to install themselves. And though this software can be annoying, adware developers argue that merely being listed in an anti-spyware scanner’s database tarnishes a company’s reputation by linking its relatively benign adware application with far more harmful and intrusive spyware programs.

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Google just launched their “Summer of Code“. To bad the Mozilla Foundation isn’t participating, I would have joined in if it was. Would have been a good chance to get some extra cash while enhancing the reporter tool, and perhaps taking on another project. I’m suprised considering GoogleFox ;-). Perhaps they’ll join.

Anyway, really cool of Google to do. An awesome way to give back to open source (the project gets $500 per participant), and encourage students to contribute to open source.

This is a rather interesting short article on users perception of security as it relates to the choices in internet browsers conducted by Opera.

More proof that more work is needed. That statistic proves the “firefox has reached it’s maximum penetration” people wrong. 49% don’t even know browsers have an impact on their security. That means they obviously didn’t hear of the reasons to switch to Firefox. Security has been a #1 reason.

Oh yea, we broke 60,000,000 (60 Million for the number dyslexic).

If your mother looked like a pregant hooker, your likely to have a small weener. Or at least that’s what a new study [sell your soul registration] concludes.

Baby boys are far more likely to have smaller, less developed genitals if their mothers had high levels of chemicals commonly found in cosmetics, detergents, medicines and plastics, a study released Friday said.

So it’s not in relation to the size of the shoe, but the appearance of the mother during pregancy. Got it? Hot mom, little manhood.

Yea, this is silly weener humor, but face it: it’s funny.

Some people are always finding new excuses. Now for the next study on why some female body parts are bigger than others. That’s where the real useful science comes in!

Earlier this week it seemed Apple could switch to Intel. Now apparantly Microsoft has ported at least part of their kernel to the PowerPC architecture. A Windows 2000 derivative ported to the PowerPC architecture. This stuff must really hurt Billy Gates.

I reviewed the first release a few weeks ago, so here’s a followup.

The Good

• New ad format is rather nice having it in the window (and scrolls away), much less intrusive. Provided no flash or java ads are used (slow for scrolling, and sound).
• Address Book feature isn’t all over the place anymore. I, like many don’t want AIM as my PIM. It’s not prompting for info all over the place. That’s good.
• Get Buddy Info just shows away message and profile… much better. Would like to see status, online time, idle time, and Capabilities.
• Buddy alerts are back. Wouldn’t mind selecting my own wav file though.

The Bad

• UI even slower (sometimes artifacts when windows do something, like when you click the invite button in an IM window). No idea why. But it kinda stinks.
• UI will occasionally freeze for up to 1 minute at a time.
• Sign on is extremely slow. Over 30 seconds for 3 screennames.
• Easy access to add Name or Nickname without so many clicks (going into the address card). Aliasing should be easy to get to.
• If your going to have this whole address card thing. At least use info from the profiles where available, and let the user override it if they so desire. No point in typing in what a buddy already gave. Perhaps make it permission based, so if I’m on my buddy’s buddy list (say that 5 times fast), I get their full info. If I’m not on their list, I get more anonymous info (name, country for example).
• Still no ability to merge screennames rather than display 1 buddy list on top of another. IMHO if a group exists in multiple SN’s, smush them together in the UI. If a buddy appears in there twice, only show it once.
• GIF buddy icons are rendering with all sorts of uglyness right now.
• Font size should be +/- (point size is rather silly except in document usage). IMHO the only reason to change size is emphasis. +/- is more practical.
• Buddy events popups are too big and ugly. The old 5.9 ones were much more candid. IMHO this is even a place for transparancy to play in. They are distracting, and in the way. “Buddy FooBar Signed On” is only a few characters, no need for all that space.
• Still no secure IM support.
• Still no auto sign on, remember password stuff.

The Summary
Is it usable? IMHO not really. It’s a demo at best. There are some improvements (congrats to Justin and co-workers), but it’s going to take more before it’s usable. Then more to be good. In a short time some things have resolved, so they are improving. But it’s not at the point where I would pick it as my default client. It’s still GAIM, AIM 5.9 well before. But again, it did improve, so perhaps not all hope is lost ;-).

See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)
- George W. Bush [Source] emphasis mine.

That pretty much sums it up rather well. I guess honesty does occasionally show it’s face.

[Hat tip Fark]