Ace on Tech

The Ballad of ‘Oklahomo’ Rep. Sally Kern

Saturday, May 31st, 2008

In an earlier post, I put up Sally Kern’s secret speech in which she bashed homosexuality high and low, describing it as a spreading disease, a death knell to her country. It caused a lot of uproar across the world and net, even on this website. I’m glad I was able to help and get the word out.

At the bottom of this post: a related video in which Sally Kern debates the world’s reaction to her [wretched] speech (Sally Kern on KFOR’s Flashpoint).
+ “Sally Kern Apologized Today” (humorous).

Related to this, the “Ballad of Sally Kern”, a poem (credits to Digital Cuttlefish), and a rather striking one at that (transcript below):

(transcript)

[musical interlude]

A legislator, Sally Kern,
Was simply voicing her concern,
But Sally Kern was unaware,
Or if she knew, she did not care,
That someone had a microphone,
So Sally Kern was not alone.

Oh, I’m not anti-gay, said Sally,
To the fifty-person rally,
But there are things you have to learn,
And who will teach us?
Sally Kern.

Sally Kern, she knows the answer,
Knows how gays are like a cancer,
Knows they’re worse than terrorists,
If Sally Kern can keep the lists.

So Sally Kern must raise her voice,
Against unhealthy lifestyle-choice,
The cost of life against God’s word,
Is clear, that people gathered, heard,
Disease and death and then you burn,
In HELL, or say Sally Kern.

Then Sally Kern,
In pure effrontery tells us gays will harm her country,
If we embrace these sinful ways, says Sally Kern,
Allowing gays to join the city council ranks,
Or work in schools, or stores or banks,
Our country would be tempting fate,
And all too soon, would be too late.

Now, such a stance may seem too stern,
But heed the words of Sally Kern,
If we let gays live right among us,
Soon, like mold or creeping fungus,
Even straights will be infected,
Sally Kern wants us protected.

The path to safety is God’s grace,
We must protect the human race,
Sally Kern just wants us pure.

Right,
Ein volk, ein reich, ein Führer…

[excerpt from Hitler's notorious speech]

Sigh.

Click-Wheel Interface Coming to Windows 7?

Monday, May 26th, 2008

It certainly seems so from the screenshots that have been popping up all over the internet lately. A lot of them are most likely souped up for conceptional purposes, but one thing certain returns steadily: the click-wheel-like interface. Usually the Windows Logo Orb is seated in the center of a wheel with numerous icons surrounding it. These images are by no means official, nor were they acknowledgded by Microsoft.

They’re certainly fancy looking, though I wonder about the practicalities of it. Translucencies in the user interface as a whole seem to be coming back, too, sometimes turning out nearly transparant, other times more opaque.

One thing is sure, Microsoft has confirmed that Windows [codenamed] ‘7′ will arrive somewhere in 2010, contrary to earlier misconceptions (that suggested next year).

Some conceptional screenshots (thanks to wepokers.blogspot.com):

More »

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Firefox 3 and 3.1 Coming Soon

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

UPDATE: Mozilla has recently decided to roll out one more Release Candidate. While this wasn’t planned, they’re doing so to make sure the final release is extremely solid. With RC2, 40 additional bugs will have been fixed. The final release date will be pushed back with approx. 5 days, though. Better safe than buggy I guess.

Firefox has been all over the news today. This is probably mostly due to the latest Release Candidate Mozilla pushed a few days ago. The third iteration of Mozilla’s flagship web browser is due no later than next month, contrary to earlier reports. It doesn’t seem likely the Firefox team will be releasing another RC build, though. But never say never, of course.

Performance boost

I’ve been using Firefox 3 since beta three and I’m having mixed feelings about it. I love the way it doesn’t gobble down hundreds of megabytes of RAM anymore. And, it’s great to see they’ve finally made the rendering engine snappier. Now, in comparison to FF3 RC1, it becomes apparent that Firefox 2’s performance was taking a snail trail beneath its baggage of (amongst others) poorly supported Javascript processing and page rendering. In addition, the numerous leaking addons made using FF2 a rather crash-prone experience.

Mozilla, in my opinion, [still] under-delivers on its promise to give Firefox a native look on every platform. There were humongous plans for a Mac version (which made its debut a couple of betas ago), a Linux version and a Vista version. As most of us know, Mozilla threw out the latter to retain Firefox’ image and online presence. Instead, they slapped out a regurgitated iteration of Firefox’ former self, i.e. Firefox 2. A big mistake.

Enhancements

An other addition worth mentioning is the dramatically improved address-bar. Much like the Spotlight on the Mac, or Instant Search in Vista, Firefox searches for previously queried or bookmarked sites as you type. If you’re the type to frequently visit certain sites, but don’t want to go through the hassle that is bookmarking (yes it is), this is a great productivity booster.

The download manager finally allows for pausing downloads. And, closing the browser won’t flush them out either. They’ll just pop right back the next instance you open your trusty browser. This feature greatly obsoletes the need for addons like ‘DownThemAll’, though the aforementioned provides more that just download management.

Protecting the young’uns

Dumb and uninitiated web surfers are now protected against the dark side of the net. Clearer certificate pages and anti-phishing/scamming warnings are in place to wane off ignorant eyes.

One of the annoyances of running an ‘unfinished’ version of Firefox - like software is ever finished - is that support for addons is completely broken. Only a few are capable of keeping up with Mozilla’s beta/RC cycle. That, and the revised addons’ underpinnings usually render the addons-window empty. While there are methods at present to get incompatible addons running again, this is not advised, since many contain deprecated and insecure code. The solution is simple, just sit it out, or plainly revert back to Firefox 2 for the time being.

Firefox 3.1 in the running

Word goes round that Mozilla has already started planning the next major update to Firefox, i.e. version 3.1. It will reportedly incorporate features that were cut from the RC1 build because they weren’t yet on par with the rest of the feature set. Most of them were nearly finished, but just didn’t meet the quality bar for broad release.

The XMLHttpRequest (XHR) API is an example of this. The RC1 release notes note that the specifications for this technology aren’t stable, nor secure enough [yet].

With Firefox 3.1, it will be the first time Mozilla rolls out two major updates to the Firefox franchise in the same year. Interesting.

Get the RC

For those interested on living on the bleeding edge (cough), Firefox 3 RC1 is available from Mozilla’s website right here. In keeping with its good tradition, this download is available in all its multi-language/platform splendor.

The Ballad of ‘Oklahomo’ Rep. Sally Kern

Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

The Ballad of ‘Oklahomo’ Rep. Sally Kern

Related Video

Click-Wheel Interface Coming to Windows 7?

Firefox 3 and 3.1 Coming Soon

Performance boost

Enhancements

Protecting the young’uns

Firefox 3.1 in the running

Get the RC