From Kotaku.com on the Wiimote candy dispenser:

Priceless...

Tags: humor, quotes, quoteoftheweek

The week didn't go by too badly. I am glad it's Friday though. I've spent the last two days at work trying to work out IBM's Rational Performance Tester. I tell you, to download and install it, was a trick and a half. However, once installed, it's actually relatively simple to operate. It appears to be based off Eclipse, the open source Java IDE (now supporting C, C++, and PHP as well). I'm not the biggest fan of Eclipse but the interface seems to do well for this program.

I got myself a nice Phillips 5.1 surround system for my TV and it sounds BEAUTIFUL...just need to get some speaker stands and figure out how to get the on screen display to work and it will be perfect for me.

Anyway, last night, was of course poker night. Small gathering this time, Brian, Tim, and myself.  It was still fun. Ended up going up $5. Brian now probably considers me the riverboat captain, or a river rat as his last hand he paired 10s, I paired 9s.  Then the river gave me a flush Ace high.  So I was quite happy, particularly since I was fluctuating most of the game.  Pretty much got myself up to $15 and based on the time and me not wanting to press my luck, I bought out, which Tim was more than happy to oblige as he needed to get home too. Poker this weekend sounds good...anyone interested?

Tags: poker, work

Microsoft has been having antitrust issues with the European Union for a while now and has paid some pretty hefty fines. Now they may have more issues coming. Opera, makers of the Opera Web Browser have filed an antitrust compaint with the EU against Microsoft complaining about Internet Explorer. As many know, every Windows installation comes with Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE6 with XP and IE7 with Vista). Opera is complaining that by bundling IE with Windows, Microsoft is hindering the ability for consumers to choose what browser to use. At the very least, Opera wants Microsoft to include other browsers into Windows. Opera also complains about Internet Explorer's lack of following standards causes undue hardship for web development.

Asking the EU to pressure Microsoft to unbundle IE from Windows does not come without precedent. The EU has already forced Microsoft to provide a version of Windows that does not include Windows Media Player. The version was called Windows XP Edition N. Despite the antitrust ruling and the release of Edition N, it didn't really sell well as the version of XP with WMP was the same price. Technically, taking Windows Media Player out of Windows is seemingly simpler than taking IE off. IE is tied in closely with XP as many applications within Windows seem to use it as well. Windows, Microsoft, and Office Update all require Internet Explorer to function, so unbundling IE from Windows seems to be trickier than simply removing it from the install. So that would pretty much leave installing alternative browsers with XP. For those tech-savvy enough, that might work, but I'm sure if Microsoft does that, then they will probably make IE the default browser which would probably mean the non-tech people probably won't realize the difference and only use the default browser, which in this case would be IE.

Opera's second complaint though is definitely a valid one. If anyone has done any real web development, they probably know how difficult making a website look the same across the browsers can be. While Safari, Firefox, and Opera tend to be pretty easy, Internet Explorer really becomes hardball. I can say from personal experience that making my website show up properly across the browsers tended to be a headache.  I remember the first version of my site, it looked fine in all but IE. Forcing Microsoft to follow the web standards would be a good idea, but sadly, I don't see it happening anytime soon which sucks.

In the end, I don't know how much Opera and the EU are going to be able to accomplish.  I want to see them succeed, but the reality of the situation is much more complicated than it should have to be.

Opera files antitrust complaint with the EU [opera.com]

Tags: opera, eu, microsoft, links, antitrust, news

After thinking about things and reading comments about the Ogg removal from HTML5 specs, I don't think I'm as upset as I used to be. Yes corporations managed to weasel their way in and pressure the W3C to remove the Ogg format from HTML5, most likely to keep up their own DRM, but I think there's more to it than that. 

One, nothing is preventing Ogg from being used as an object embedded in a website, simply put having Ogg in the spec never forced any format to be used.  This leads to another thought. The spec never forced any format to be used. So Ogg could have been included in the spec and Nokia could still use their DRM-laden formats. From what I believe and I think, the Ogg inclusion in the HTML5 spec only provided for a media format to be easily included into websites. This in itself is not bad at all, but I guess threatened Nokia and Apple enough to want it removed. I'm unsure as to what effect removing Ogg from the final spec will do, but it'd be interesting to wait and see what turns out. It's early enough that for all we know Ogg may sneak its way back in...but I'm not holding my breath.

Tags: w3c, ogg, html

NASA's THEMIS satellite, launched less than 8 months ago has discovered some interesting findings regarding the Northern Lights or Aurora Borealis. The energy traveled twice as fast as anyone previously thought, traveling about 400 miles in a minute.  I wish I could move that fast.  THEMIS also discovered that the Earth's magnetic field appears to be linked to the sun by what appear to be magnetic ropes.  These ropes seem to originating in the Magnetosphere and are seemingly almost as wide as Earth itself.

I have been fortunate and have seen the Northern Lights at two points in my life.  Both times canoeing up in the wilderness of Canada. The sight is nothing short of breathtaking.  The pictures you see can't even begin to grasp how beautiful they are.  Sadly for me, living right outside Philadelphia, it is seemingly impossible to see the Northern Lights from here.  On a clear night up there though, I could see thousands upon thousands of stars, the Milky Way, and of course the Northern Lights.

Northern Lights Race Across the Sky [Space.com]

Tags: astronomy, nasa, northernlights, news, links