The Duke’s Mind

Hah, I will never look at the Firefox logo the same way again:

A giant fox with his tail on fire attacking the earth. That’s the stuff of nightmares.

Risking to be called an annoying stereotypical Firefox user, here’s the, uhm, showdown.

I was just watching the webcast of Macworld 2005 and was blown away. I don’t expect anything less from a good Jobs keynote, but since there have been some disappointments in the past (mostly due to false rumours), I looked forward to this one with a bit of caution. Based on past experiences, I decided to avoid reading any theories about what might be announced at Macworld - Which I didn’t succeed in completely. You can’t surf the web in the days leading up to an Apple keynote without stumbling across some tidbit of speculation. So I was expecting a cheap headless Mac and a flash-based iPod. Both were delivered.

After the keynote, I of course had to share my enthusiasm about the coolness of Apple with everyone I encountered. A friend asked me why I care so much. This is roughly what I told her:

Because they [=Apple] still show what great design in both software and hardware can and should be. Because they’re still the number one flattered-by-being-copied-or-badly-imitated computer company in existence (Well, not only with computers anymore: See all the iPod rip-offs). Because they still know how to get the competition on their feet, even though they’ve been leading, in terms of market share, a humble life in the shadows for quite some time. Because even thought analysts, “experts”, and every other guy on the street proclaim since decades that “Apple is going out of business”, they can still stick their proverbial tongue out to those people. Because they, once again, introduced some hot new products that will cause quite a stir on the market. Because it’s just fun and thrilling to observe Apple’s well-planned actions.

Finally some shiny new (and pretty damn cheap quite affordable) entry-level products. No longer restrained to self-illusionary lusting after the high-end goods. Yes. Apple’s back on track. (Has it ever been really off it in the Jobs v2 era?)

This feels good.

This headline made me smile:

More browser vulnerabilities - surfers advised to use Lynx

It’s true, though: There’s no 100% secure browser out there. There will always be undiscovered/unfixed bugs that malware writers can exploit. I’d still go for Firefox in this case, since the Mozilla community seems to fix bugs (well, at least security holes) way quicker than Microsoft.

Just browsed through the WordPress CVS and look what I’ve found:

Theme Name: WordPress Default
Theme URI: http://wordpress.org/
Description: The default WordPress theme based on the famous Kubrick.
Version: 1.5

I feel so unspecial now. Still, I can understand this decision. Kubrick rocks.

Whenever you think of some interesting hack that people might find useful, someone else has already done it. Oh well.

Anyway, did you know that the formal definition for was ? Well, I didn’t. Interesting. That explains how you calculate stuff like or .

I will refrain from making any cynical comments. Microsoft’s new AntiSpyware looks very promising, and is said to be able to detect more threats than Ad-Aware or Spybot-S&D. The question is if it will remain free or if it will be a paid product when it gets out of beta.

These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics.
Old George Orwell got it backward.
Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed.
He’s making sure your imagination withers. Until it’s as useful as your appendix. He’s making sure your attention is always filled.
And this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.

– Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk

Okay, I’m officially a Happy DreamHost Customer now. They just, without warning, increased my storage space from a not-too-shabby 2560 MB to 7680 MB. Tripled. That’s just.. whee. Thank you, DreamHost. I don’t mind sounding like your PR agent right now. And I think I really might stay here for a while.

(Also, their Newsletter rocks. Refreshingly crazed.)

Disclaimer: Yes, there’s a referal link down there now. If I’m going to link to them anyway, then that doesn’t hurt, right?

I’ve always been confused as to why there are two conflicting ways of byte ordering: Big-Endian and Little-Endian, as used by, for example, PowerPC and Pentium architectures, respectively. This interesting article helps to clear up the smoke a bit, dives into the history of byte sex, and is a good read:

However, anyone who was brought up by computer scientists, rather than by botanists, knows that trees grow downward, having their roots at the top of the page and their leaves down below. Computer scientists seldom remember which way “up” really is.

Oh, so true.

I decided to ditch my old TypePad blog and start a new one. TypePad has great services and fair pricing, but it still felt too limiting for my needs. Also, I wanted to get a DreamHost shared server account for quite some time now, and what better occasion to do such a thing than the start of a new year?

(I’ve just noticed how.. small DreamHost’s main page is, visually. Weird.) (No, this is no DreamHost advertising. I don’t even include referer tags in my links, so there.)

With this hosting change also comes the change of publishing tools. While TypePad uses MovableType internally, I’ve decided to give WordPress a try, since I’ve only heard praises about it (and that’s putting it mildly), and it looks like I might be quite happy with it. Elegant yet powerful, ah..

As to what will happen to my old blog entries, I haven’t yet decided.. It’s still so tidy and uncluttered here, and I’d like to preserve that. I think. We’ll see.