bertramonline’s posterous

She really is something.

Internet Explorer 6 launches. The entire Internet (minus the three Opera users) adopts the new-and-shiny Microsoft browser. In the eight (8) long, soul-destroying years since, users have been mostly oblivious to the pain and misery that Microsoft has brought upon senior Internet architects and lowly website designers alike.

For 8 years, a vast percentage of the Internet's user base have been accruing malware and useless toolbars. Today, even after the invention of Firefox, Safari and Chrome, and the updates of Internet Explorer 7 and 8, a full TWENTY THREE PERCENT of the Internet still uses IE6!

23%! And Microsoft are to blame! History took a turn for the worse when IE6 was fatefully included as the default browser in Windows XP. Couple in the fact that it was made available for both Windows 95 and 98, and the huge number of Internet and corporate Intranet web apps that were developed in the past decade with only IE6 compatibility in mind... and you can see why IE6 and its antiquated, creaking, non-standard and insecure rendering engine still reigns supreme.

But that's all about to change. Hopefully. Microsoft is now advertising their IE8 browser as a direct competitor to its grunting, hairy-hobo, spyware-ridden predecessor. Touting better security and neat new features like Web Slices, Microsoft are hoping to shift those steadfast 23% to their new browser.

It won't work of course. Most of those IE6 users are enterprise or corporate users that are tied down due bespoke software or useless IT directors. It's not like Microsoft can force IE6 to update automatically. But it sure is nice to see them making an effort.

Making the World's Knowledge Computable

Today's Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. Enter your question or calculation and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and a growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing... More about Wolfram|Alpha »

Kewl.

Can you imagine an America without a strong middle class? If you can, would it still be America as we know it?

Today, one in five Americans is unemployed, underemployed or just plain out of work. One in nine families can't make the minimum payment on their credit cards. One in eight mortgages is in default or foreclosure. One in eight Americans is on food stamps. More than 120,000 families are filing for bankruptcy every month. The economic crisis has wiped more than $5 trillion from pensions and savings, has left family balance sheets upside down, and threatens to put ten million homeowners out on the street.

Out in the real world, of course, this is hardly news...

A former Arizona school district employee is accused of using school computers in an experiment to find space aliens, costing the worker his job and the district more than $1 million. Schools officials say Brad Niesluchowski, who was Higley Unified School District's information technology director, downloaded free software on district computers in 2000. The program, known as SETI(at)home, uses Internet-connected computers worldwide to analyze radio telescope data in an experiment to find extraterrestrial intelligence.

But Superintendent Denise Birdwell told the East Valley Tribune that the program also bogged down the district's system and interfered with technology use in classrooms. Birdwell said it will take more than $1 million to fix the problem, including removal of the SETI software. She says police are conducting a broader investigation.

How come nobody is allowed to talk about immigration? This is the question constantly asked by the right-wing press and mainstream politicians of all parties in the UK. And, yet, it seems to me, no subject is covered more by the right-wing press and mainstream media in the UK.

But, Bob, as you probably now: the right-wingers love nothing better than to have their victimization cake while munching it with a vengeance. Across the North Sea in both directions.

Some seriously nice pictures.

Religion is a hypothesis.

Religion is a hypothesis about how the world works, and why it is the way it is. Religion is the hypothesis that the world is the way it is, at least in part, because of immaterial beings or forces that act on the material world.