The official GAFCON Statement has been released; read it in full here. The Washington Times has a good summary from George Conger here.
It’s far too late for analysis now – more this afternoon (Sunday).
RocknRolla Trailer
The trailer for Guy Richie’s new film RocknRolla is online… and it looks pretty kickass, too! I love Guy’s work, and this like it could kick as much ass as Lock, Stock and Snatch!
Check it out here!
Goodbye, Bill!
As you might know, today is Bill Gates’ last day as a full-time employee of Microsoft. It’s kind of… odd in a way. Although many feared him and many more hated him, Bill Gates was always there. And, in a very real sense, he was Microsoft. It’s almost as if Paul McCartney left the Beatles or something!
Anyway, in honor of Bill’s departure, eWeek magazine has created this list of the 10 Best and 10 Worst Microsoft products over the years. I read the list and agree with a few of their choices and disagree with others… so much so that I made my own list of the 10 best and 10 worst Microsoft products:
10 BEST MICROSOFT PRODUCTS
1) Windows XP – Sure, Windows XP had a number of security holes and incompatibilities over the years. But it fully completed Microsoft’s vision of a unified desktop operating system, a dream that began with Windows 2000. And, over the years, Windows XP became a stable and reliable platform for PCs.
2) Windows Server 2003 – What Windows XP did for the desktop, Windows Server 2003 did for the server. Compared to any of its predecessors, Server 2003 is secure, stable, and easy as pie to use. In fact, it’s almost… beautiful, man!
3) Office 2007 – Office 97 was one of the most successful office suites ever… so successful, in fact, that it became the standard UI for all office suites since. Except for Office 2007. With this version of Office, Microsoft introduced the “ribbon” toolbar – which is absolutely awesome (once you get the hang of it). Not to be overlooked is the change in document formats, too. While many have complained about the switch from DOC to DOCX, the new format is so small and convenient that it’s simply too good not to use.
4) Exchange Server 2003 – If you ever had to administer Exchange 5.5, you’ll know why Exchange 2003 makes this list. It’s (mostly) secure out of the box, easy to implement and maintain, and it… just works. When Exchange falls down it’s still a huge pain in the ass to fix, but thankfully, Exchange 2003 doesn’t crash anywhere near as often as 5.5 or 2000.
5) Visual Studio .NET – I’m not a programmer, but I’ve heard programmers rave about VS .NET. In fact, I hear that a lot.
VICTORY in Virginia!
A couple of months ago, a Virginia judge ruled in favor of 11 Episcopal parishes that wanted to break away from the Diocese of Virginia. The churches wanted to leave the Episcopal Church and become part of the “Anglican District of Virginia”, a part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a mission of the (Anglican) Church of Nigeria. At that time, the judge ruled that Virginia’s “Division Statute” (Virginia Code § 57-9) did apply to those church’s efforts efforts to keep their property.
This morning, the judge issued a further ruling which upheld the constitutionality of the statute. Here’s a (delicious) excerpt from the ruling:
this Court finds their arguments unpersuasive, not least because their arguments are predicated in no small measure on a characterization of this Court’s April 3rd opinion that bears only a passing resemblance to the opinion itself.
Read all about it here.
From the Wayback Machine
Hey – remember that really cool into that HBO used back in the early 80s? The one that flew over the city and eventually ran into the glowing “starburst” HBO logo?
Did you know that the intro video took over three months to film, and was done almost completely with models?
Check out this short “Making Of” documentary from YouTube’ it’s really worth the 10 minutes!
Happy Birthday Mindy Kaling!
Mindy Kaling – the writer\producer of The Office who also appears as “Kelly Kapoor” on the show – is 29 years old today! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KELLY!
Enjoy this video in her honor:
George Carlin: RIP
From Yahoo News:
George Carlin, the dean of counterculture comedians whose biting insights on life and language were immortalized in his “Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV” routine, died of heart failure Sunday. He was 71.
Carlin, who had a history of heart trouble, went into St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica on Sunday afternoon complaining of chest pain and died later that evening, said his publicist, Jeff Abraham. He had performed as recently as last weekend at the Orleans Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas.
“He was a genius and I will miss him dearly,” Jack Burns, who was the other half of a comedy duo with Carlin in the early 1960s, told The Associated Press.
Forcing Firefox Extension Compatibility
As you probably know, Firefox 3.0 was released this week. The good news about the upgarde is that the new version rocks: Firefox 3 has a slew of new features, performance enhancements, and is even less of a memory hog than precious versions! The bad news about the upgrade is that it breaks thousands of extensions (plug-ins that add functionality to Firefox, tweak the interface, and\or overcome some of Firefox’s annoyances).
But just because Firefox 3 says that an particular extension is “not compatible with Firefox 3”, that doesn’t mean it won’t work. In fact, many 2.x extensions will work just fine under Firefox 3 – you just need to turn off Firefox’s compatibility check:
1) Type “about”config” (without the quotes) into Firefox’s address bar. You will then see a screen warning you not to muck about with the settings; click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to continue.
2) Right-click in the list of preferences and choose New > Boolean. In the “Preference Name” box, type the words “extensions.checkCompatibility” (again, without the quotes) and click “OK”. In the “Enter Boolean Value” box, select FALSE.
3) Close all Firefox windows and restart the browser.
You will now be able to install any extension in Firefox 3 (or, if you upgraded from Firefox 2.x, you may activate any previous extensions that were disabled by the 3.0 upgrade).
Again, this doesn’t mean that the extension will actually work – Download Manager Tweak and Clone Window failed horribly on my 3.0 installation, while Save Image In Folder (my all-time favorite extension after AdblockPlus) works just fine.
The “Business Fax” in Outlook
Over the years, people have levelled thousands of complaints against Microsoft Outlook. To Microsoft’s credit, they have listened to their customers, slowly but surely fixing bugs and interface annoyances over the years. However, a few of these “annoyances” remain, and none is more annoying to some people than the “Business Fax” number being listed in the Outlook Address Book.
Here’s the issue in a nutshell: if you open a new email in Outlook and click the “To:”, “CC:” or “BCC:” buttons on the email, you’ll be presented with a list of email addresses and “Business Fax” numbers from the selected Address Book.
For most people, these “Business Fax” numbers just get in the way. If they’re sending out a mass email, they can’t just select all the addresses in the list, as sending an email to a Business Fax address makes Outlook (and\or Exchange) throw a hissy fit. And it’s easily to accidentally click on “Bob Smith (Business Fax)” instead of “Bob Smith (Email)” and end up sending Bob… nothing.
You might ask why Business Fax numbers even appear in the Outlook Address Book in the first place. That’s because many companies have fax servers – a computer with one or more fax modems installed. Instead of walking across an office to a fax machine, you can simply send a fax over your local network to a fax server, which then sends it out. Microsoft Exchange (and other third-party software programs) have integrated fax servers with Outlook, so if your company has Exchange and a fax server, you can easily fax someone simply by creating a new email, addressing it to a “Business Fax” address, attaching a Word or Excel document (if desired) and sending it on to Exchange, which then forwards it on to the fax server. It’s quite handy, actually.
But for people that don’t have a fax server, it’s a pain to have to sift through fax number when sending an email. Thankfully, though, there’s a simple workaround: just put a letter (any letter, although I use “F”) in front of any “Business Fax” number entries (e.g. change Bob Smith Enterprise’s “Business Fax” entry from “704-555-1212” to “F704-555-1212”).
This will prevent the “Business Fax” numbers from appearing in the Address Book, but you will still be able to view the numbers in Outlook’s “Business Card” view (and, as you might guess, you can also see the information by opening the Contact).
Life On Mars US Leaks, Sucks
The first episode of the American remake of Life On Mars has leaked to the Internet… and it sucks, but not for the reasons you might expect.
But first… a brief recap from Wikipedia: “Life On Mars tells the story of DCI Sam Tyler of the Greater Manchester Police, who, after being hit by a car in 2006, finds himself in the year 1973. There, he works for Manchester and Salford Police CID as a DI under DCI Gene Hunt. Over the course of the series, Tyler faces various culture clashes, most frequently regarding the differences between his modern approach to policing and the more traditional methods of his colleagues. Mixing the genres of science fiction and police procedural, the series centres around the ambiguity concerning Tyler’s predicament: it is unclear whether he is insane, in a coma, or if he really has travelled back in time”.
The original British series was incredible television, perhaps my favorite TV show of all time. My stomach turned when I heard that ABC was interested in an American remake of the show. I was conflicted: on the one hand, I didn’t want my favorite TV show “ruined” by a crappy American remake; on the other hand, I was happy that millions of people might be exposed to the awesomeness of the Life On Mars story.
So when the first episode leaked online a few days ago, I eagerly downloaded it… only to have major mixed feelings about the U.S. version of the show.
Have you ever been to Disney World? EPCOT? Disneyland? Disney does an incredible job at copying things, down to the seemingly last tiny detail. Many people have gone to the World Showcase at EPCOT and, in the heat of the Florida sun, almost convinced themselves that they’re really in England or Mexico or Japan. But yet, they’re something just “off” about the whole thing. Like Uncanny Valley, there’s just something that’s not quite right about the World Showcase. Even though most people could almost convince themselves that they’re in England… something isn’t quite right. It’s not the obvious stuff – the heat, the crowds of people speaking in American accents. There’s just an indefinable something that lets you know you’re looking at a forgery – a well made forgery, mind you – instead of the “real deal”.
And that’s exactly what the American Life On Mars is like. It’s a Disney-fied version of the original series. Although I have several specific complaints about the American version (which I’ll get to in a minute), there’s just something about the new version that simply doesn’t add up.
I guess my first specific complaint is about the CGI cityscapes. Look at the picture above… is it not 100% completely obvious that this person is standing in front of a green screen? The halination – the halo that appears around “real” people when they’re inserted into a digital landscape – is simply awful. It looks so bad, in fact, that it completely pulls you out of the story. There’s nothing worse than being completely immersed in a show, only to be jarred back into reality by awful CGI.