Alex's Journal

Happy holidays everyone!

I’ll be gone until next year, but after I return, I’ll be posting more thoughts as usual!

– Alex

This blog entry is actually quite an interested read for anyone following Microsoft Windows.

“I have finally decided to take the plunge. Last night I upgraded my Vista desktop machine to Windows XP, and this afternoon I will be doing the same to my laptop…”

You can find the article here: http://dotnet.org.za

This is an interesting game I found:

http://eiskalt.myminicity.com

[digg=http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Why_Hillary_s_Campaign_Isn_t_Working]An interesting article I read explains why Hillary Clinton’s lead is dwindling. I can only say that I’m happy about it. Here’s a clip from it:

“What is Hillary doing wrong and what is Obama doing right?

A trip to youtube.com or to the Web site of each of the candidates shows in an instant the difference in the ads the two campaigns are running. Obama’s send goose bumps up your skin while Hillary’s leave one flat. Obama speaks and demonstrates his charisma. Hillary’s platform style is no match for the Illinois senator and most of her ads feature a voice over doing the speaking for her.

In their campaign themes, Hillary stresses her experience while Obama focuses on the need for change. Hillary seems determined to appropriate her husband’s record, while Obama mocks the idea of going back to an alternation of the Bushes and the Clintons, a latter day American Hatfields and McCoys.

Now, in desperation, Hillary and her minions are attacking Obama with shots that will only arouse voter sympathy for him and backlash against her. Hillary asks, “When did running for president become a qualification to be president?” and her aides distribute evidence that Obama wanted to run for president in kindergarten to defuse the attack that Hillary and Bill have always planned on a regal, dynastic succession. More recently, a top Hillary campaign aide spoke of the need to investigate Obama’s drug use in high school where he has admitted to using cocaine.

None of these shots are going to knock anybody out or even down, but Hillary keeps up the pattern of personal, irrelevant negative attacks.

The conclusion is obvious: neither Hillary nor her staff know how to campaign. After the Clinton re-election in 1996, they have never been tested in a competitive race. When Giuliani dropped out of the New York State Senate race and the young Congressman Rick Lazio had to enter at the last minute to try to stop Hillary’s bid, the conclusion was pre-ordained. Hillary’s re-election was a cakewalk against a totally under funded opponent. She doesn’t know how to win.

Hillary’s experience has been limited to the insider back biting of Washington where she is an expert at using her secret police — a small army of private detectives — to unearth negatives about her or Bill’s opponents. (Even former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young recently admitted that Hillary ran the effort to discredit women who might come forward and accuse Clinton of misconduct.) But, when it comes to campaigning, advertising and winning an election, these folks and this candidate don’t have a clue.”

You can find the rest of the article here: http://www.foxnews.com

[digg=http://www.digg.com/odd_stuff/w00t_is_not_a_word]This flat out sickens me:

“‘w00t,’ an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.

Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said ‘w00t’ — typically spelled with two zeros — reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.”

I really don’t think that “w00t” is a word much less should be crowned the word of the year. The direction the English language is taking due to the use of words like this I find very saddening and for a prestigious institution such as Merriam-Webster to go about promoting it is just out right disgusting.

[digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/The_Government_and_Atheism_3]An article I read this morning brought to my attention something quite alarming from my perspective. As an atheist, I didn’t realize that how much of a lack of political power atheists have. I suppose that it makes sense for public relation purposes that presidential and other high office candidates announce some sort of religious association, but at the same time, I do find it kind of troubling; especially when presidential candidates denounce atheism openly in public speeches such as Mitt Romney did.

“[Mitt] Romney recently gave a speech extolling religious liberty, decrying religious ‘tests’ for office, and invoking the faith of some of America’s founding fathers. All this, naturally, was designed to help his quest for the presidency. The speech thrilled many religious conservatives, and plenty of pundits thought it served him well politically too. But members of one minority with virtually no political success in America were left sputtering with frustration. America’s atheists and agnostics felt excluded when Mr Romney said that ‘freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom…freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.’”

I won’t be voting for Mitt Romney anytime soon from this quote alone. While he might be the first mormon presidential hopeful, his intolerance for the lack of religion is quite apparent. The article did have some good suggestions as to what atheists should do however to gain more political power:

“If these growing ranks concentrate on areas where American religiosity can do harm—over-aggressive proselytising in the armed forces, undermining science or AIDS programmes, alienating minorities at home and Muslims abroad—they could wield the sort of influence that any other minority representing 10% of the country might do…”

I would highly recommend the read to anyone interested. You can find the article here: http://www.economist.com

[digg=http://www.digg.com/2008_us_elections/Republican_Debate_on_Spanish_TV]According to Reuters,

“Republican presidential candidates stuck to their tough line against illegal immigration at a Spanish-language debate on Sunday…”

I find it absurd that the presidential candidates have to now have debates on Spanish-language TV in the US. While I am not opposed to Spanish or any foreign language (I teach German), I find the idea that American candidates for the presidency have to now have specific debates for the Spanish-speaking minority absolutely absurd. English should be a requirement when it comes to living in the US and we should now have to cater to those who refuse to learn it, but want to live here. I would have to agree with Tom Tancredo:

“…Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, refused to attend the debate because he objected to the Spanish language format.”

Again, I’m not opposed to Spanish or to Spanish-speakers being in the US, I just find the idea of catering to them because they won’t learn English ridiculous.

[digg=http://digg.com/software/Firefox_3_Beta_6]Edit: This review is for Firefox 3 Beta 1.

My first impression of Firefox 3 is quite promising. I started it up and the first thing I noticed was how much the default theme for Mac OS X has changed. The default theme had the Mac OS X unified toolbar which is the first time Firefox has had that. I can’t say exactly what it looks like in Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), as I don’t have Leopard. In Tiger (Mac OS X 10.4), however, it is the standard white unified toolbar. On the ‘Welcome to Firefox!’ page that you first see after upgrading, there is a link to download the prototype for the new default skin. I downloaded it and was pleasantly surprised to find that it turned Firefox into something that looks a lot like Safari in Leopard. It has a very clean interface with icons representing those found in Safari.

(Above: Firefox 3 Beta without (left) and with (right) the prototype for the new Safari-like skin as shown in Tiger)

The next thing I noticed when I visited Google’s homepage will make Mac users everywhere happy. Form buttons and fields finally now match the standard Mac OS X form buttons and fields. While they have their quirks and are not exactly the same as what most Mac users are used to (for examples, instead of just highlighting, the buttons also depress), they are far better than what Firefox 2 and earlier versions had.

(Above: Firefox 3 Beta sporting new buttons and forms that finally match Mac OS X)

As I dove further into the program, I found more features added to Firefox 3 other than just the aesthetic changes. Among all of the security fixes and a new version of the Gecko rendering engine that Firefox is based on, there are also new ‘toys’ or features that users can play with. One of the first things I noticed was the new “Places” menu in the bookmarks toolbar. Here you can find things such as your most frequently visited pages, recently starred pages and recently tagged pages. Starred pages and tagged pages are also new features in Firefox 3. Starring a webpage works similarly to starring an e-mail in Google’s Gmail service in that it does nothing more than give the page a mark that will allow it to stand out from the others. It doesn’t necessarily add the page to your bookmarks, but rather allows it to show up in the Starred Pages sections of the Places menu. To “star” a page, just click the new star button at the end of the address bar. Clicking the star button twice will allow you to bookmark it and also tag the page at the same time. Tagged bookmarks allows you to organize your bookmarks in a new way. Unfortunately, the only way to access your pages through tags is again through the Places menu in your bookmarks bar.

(Above: Firefox 3 Beta’s new Places menu in the bookmarks toolbar)

Another new feature I noticed, although less fun to play with, was the new “Plugins” tab in the Add-ons window. This tab allows users to much more easily manage which plugins the browser has. Plugins differ from extensions in that they add functionality to the browser “under the hood”. They are also generally created by larger companies. An example of a plugin would be Apple’s QuickTime Plugin which allows you to view QuickTime videos in your browser without having to open the separate QuickTime application.

Overall, the beta version is actually very stable. Against recommendations from Mozilla, I have been using it as my standard for a while now and haven’t really run into any major problems. I would say my biggest complaint at this point would be when I try to reorganize my bookmarks. The bookmark management window seems to have gone backwards in functionality as when I try to drag a bookmark to rearrange it, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. When I finally get the bookmark to where I want it, I have to restart Firefox before the changes will be reflected in the actual bookmarks menu. That is extremely irritating and hopefully on the list of things to fix before the final version.

The beta is available in several different languages and is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. If you are interested in trying it, you can find it as a free download on Mozilla’s website here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html

Edit: This review is for Firefox 3 Beta 1.

[digg=http://www.digg.com/political_opinion/Hillary_Clinton_Booed]I will start off by saying that I very strongly dislike Hillary Clinton. I didn’t like Bill Clinton when he was in office and I think his wife is even worse than he was. Not only do I disagree with a large amount of her policies, but it seems to me that she is unable to stick to a single position about an issue. How long did it take before she finally said something about her stance on the immigrant driver’s license issue in New York? And the scary part is is that we still don’t really know what her stance is. Of course that is just one example.

Today in Iowa, Clinton was booed by the audience at an event that she was due to participate in with her fellow Democratic running mates. According to CNN,

“An audience of progressive activists booed Senator Hillary Clinton today…Clinton was asked whether ‘giv(ing) undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship” would be a priority in her first hundred days as President. Clinton told the audience “comprehensive immigration reform will be a high priority for me.’ That response elicited boos – and no applause. Asked again whether she’d take up the issue in her first hundred days she said, ‘Well you’ve got to get the Congress to pass the legislation in order for the President to do as much as possible, which I will do.’ That was met by still more loud boos.”

Yet another very vague non-commital statement from Clinton. Saying that “immigration reform will be a high priority for me” does not even answer the question, much less tell us what her stance on the issue is. No wonder they booed. Giving unclear answers and avoiding tough situations is what Clinton has done since the beginning of her campaign. That to me is quite scary. Because of the current mess that the United States finds itself in, the next president is going to be put in a very tough position from the moment they take oath. I would really hate to have an undecided president who avoids tough positions in office. That to me just seems like a horrible idea.

[digg=http://digg.com/world_news/The_Teddy_Bear_Prophet]This really isn’t the typical entry I like to write, but I have a pretty strong opinion about it that I would like to share.

By now, I’m sure a lot of people have heard about the British teacher who was accused of insulting islam and the islamic prophet in Sudan. If not, the basic premise of what happened is that she let a child in one of her classes name a teddy bear Mohammed. The child said that he chose the name because it was also his name and he wanted to name the teddy bear after himself. The problem is that that also just so happens to be the name of the religion’s prophet. If you would like more details, you can read more about it here, but you won’t need them for what I’m about to rant about.

I should first say that I have nothing against islam or those who practise it. The problem I do have, however, is with the ridiculousness with which it is sometimes practised. The extremism sometimes goes too far and in today’s global society, that just doesn’t work. I understand that there are extremists in every religion out there, but for whatever reason, islam seems to have the most or at least the ‘loudest’. I find it absolutely ridiculous that someone in today’s world can still be arrested for allowing a child to name their teddy bear after themselves and consequently, in this case, after the islamic prophet.

Even more ridiculous is the Sudanese reaction to the whole thing. Other than the arrest itself and the whole principle of it, I think the Sudanese government has actually been extremely fair in only sentencing the British teacher to 15 days in jail followed by immediate deportation rather than the other options of 40 lashes (which in itself is quite archaic), 1 year in prison, a hefty fine or any combination of those. What I find to be ridiculous is the reaction the Sudanese people in general have had. Following, the teacher’s arrest, protesters protested with swords and drums in the streets calling on the Sudanese government to execute the teacher by firing squad for the insult to the religion. That kind of archaic thinking has to stop if a country wants to progress and modernize.

If I were in an islam-governed country at the moment, I would most likely be arrested, prosecuted and possibly executed for writing an article such as this. That I also find absurd.

Aside from just islam, religions in general need to evolve and modernize. In today’s world, people are educated and informed and can thusly make their decisions as to what they believe based how they see things. When religions try to convert you to their own religion or try to influence society as a whole, this is backwards thinking. If someone converts to a religion because they agree with what it teaches, then that is one thing, but trying to force it onto other people is no longer going to work the way it would have in the past.

Again, let me re-emphasize that I don’t have anything against islam or the people who quietly practise the religion. I just get really irritated by the extremism with which it is often practised in countries such as Sudan.

I know there are going to be a lot of people who disagree with me, but let’s hear your opinion on this situation anyway. I’m interested to see how other people view it.