64 bit video

Flash is A11Y hostile, and as such, web designers who use it should be required to have both arms, both legs, both ears, and both eyes removed before being allowed to design another website.

But there is another problem with flash as well. It is not cross-platform. Flash is stuck in a 32 bit world. A world that died in the previous century. Technology that is more than a decade out of date. The only people that use 32 bit operating systems are people that run virii that masquarade as trojans that masquerade as operating systems.


The image below is of the page at http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10_64bit.html.



Which is why FLOCK, a so-called social browser, fails to cut it as a social experience:



Whilst Minefield almost passes that test:



As does Namoroka:



Epiphany doesn't have any issues:



Galeon displays the same error message as firefox:



It is hardly surprising that Konqueror exhibits the same failure to display flash:



And for those of you who want to torture your ears, listening to what to has to have been one the worst songs to ever come out of Bulawayo, it can be found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWDAPFU19GI .

Thunderbird

Today, I concluded that there is no way that I can accept Thunderbird as having anything that even remotely resembles an email client.

It is, at best, a toy for people who never receive email. A category that I am not in.

A pity, because that means that there are no email clients for Linux that use a GUI.

Thunderbird bugs

Way back in 2006 I filed a bug report for Thunderbird using the mozilla bugzilla.

Today it was closed due to insufficient information.
What they wanted was a copy of the logs that Thunderbird generates.

Between the fact that I turn Thunderbird logging off, and that my workaround consists of either doing everything sequentially, or using different email clients to retrieve email, I did not have the logs they requested.

I was under the impression that the bug report was closed years ago, as "will not fix". One of the developers told me that the described scenario is outside of the design specifications for Thunderbird. As such, Thunderbird is not a suitable email client for me, and the patch I requested is not suitable for including in Thunderbird.

I am at a complete loss as to how having log files --- any log files --- would help them code the requested patch. Especially since the parameters are provided in the original bug report.

And people wonder why I don't recommend Thunderbird, on the basis that it does not retrieve email.

Thunderbird 3.1

In installed Thunderbird 3.1 yesterday.

Bad idea. Very bad idea.
The default is to retrieve email via IMAP, not POP3.
Yuck.
The only good thing is that I didn't install it on my main system.

I'm not sure what I'll use, when I migrate to Ubuntu 10.10

Oracle

Between the contents of Harry J Foxwell's presentation on Oracle Solaris, and OpenSolaris, available from http://www.eecis.udel.edu/~bmiller/DE-OSUG/Oracle-Sun.pdf, and the announcement by the OpenSolaris Foundation that it will dissolve if Oracle doesn't nominate a contact person by 15 August (announcement is at http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/OpenSolaris-governing-board-threatens-dissolution-1037134.html), I've concluded that Oracle has conceded the front office, desktop, and the low end back office to Microsoft.

As to why Oracle wants to waste its two billion dollar acquisition of Sun is anybody's guess.

####

Update: The OpenSolaris Foundation resigned en masse on 23 August 2010.
(http://wiki.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/2010_08_23_OGB_Agenda)

McAfee: False and Misleading Advertising, or run of the mill scam operation?

I uninstalled Mcafee Security on my laptop today.

My three year subscription to Mcafee Security, that started 8 December 2009, expired on 7 April 2010.

Since the laptop was advertised as having a three year subscription to Mcafee Security, I'm not sure whether to blame McAfee,QVC, Dell, or all three for a written claim that is obviously false. (The software packaging claims three years. When it was being peddled on QVC, it was also claimed that it would be a three year subscription.)

The two big questions are:
* Do I send a courtesy copy to the registered agent for Dell, McAfee, and QVC, of the letter I'll be sending the Pennsylvania Attorney-General, California Attorney-General, and Texas Attorney-General;
* Do I walk down to small claims court, and file a claim for US$175, for three year AV/Security coverage that I purchase from Kaspersky , since MCafee did not honour the three year AV subscription that was included with my laptop, and as such, I have no assurance that they will honour any future subscriptions I purchase. (For the record, this is my second encounter with McAfee not honouring subscriptions for their AV software.)

I sent three emails through their online form, and two emails to the address that sent me notices that my subscription expired/was going to expire, to no avail.

Christian Ethics

Usage of a product is an explicit endorsement of that product and an implicit, if not explicit endorsement of the company that created the product.

As such, is it ethical, and moral for a Christian to use any products from Microsoft?

Microsoft has been convicted of violating two of the Ten Commandments.

Almost as disturbing is Microsoft's announcement that they intend to violate two more of the Ten Commandments.

I'll grant that Contemporary American Christianity and both the Two Commandments of the New Testament, and the Ten Commandments (any of the three sets in the Tanakh, and two sets in the New Testament) are mutually exclusive.