Adam's Blog

It's rare someone creates a website that is truly unique. It was made by Miranda July. Very cool stuff.

I used to have the utmost respect for Theo de Raddt, the project lead for OpenBSD and OpenSSH. He is a code machine, and he maintains an entire OS. He has written plenty of software that I have used or currently use. But this week, he wins the A-Hole of the Week award, for being a big giant economy sized douche bag. There are currently about 100 messages in this thread about a copyright issue. You really should read the entire thing, it's seriously COMICAL to watch this guy! Here's the short version of a long story: an OpenBSD developer, whether intentionally or not, copied - exactly- GPL'ed code for which he did not own the license into a BSD licensed device driver submitted to OpenBSD. This is a clearcut copyright issue: the driver was apparently copied word for word, cut and paste, including all white space and variable and function names. Theo CAUSED the problem by replying ON BEHALF OF the author, and basically said either he deletes it or he's acknowledging the infringement, essentially cornering the developer and preventing a peaceful outcome. He started the war, is to blame for the flamefest, and is a sad representation of...

Since it's eaten up quite a bit of my time, I've spent way too many posts discussing OSNews, and that will come to a close today. See, today I wrapped up the remaining bugs and features I planned for 4.0-final, and made a code snapshot and called the OSNews codebase on www4 "final." Thus ends that chapter of my life. I made a lot of last minute changes, including fixing the problem where the sidebar falls below the main bar (thanks to a reader for that contribution). I redid the classic theme, made the "Orange Platinum" theme available to non-subscribers, allowed up to 999 characters in a conversation, and much more. All that remains now is David giving it the OK or hiring a designer to make the changes he wants. When we get that, we go live.

I decided that I would add some features to OSN4 that are "subscriber only" features. I won't lie, I did it up subscribership, not because it gets me rich (it doesn't, I make no money from it) and not because I'm a jerk, but rather because OSNews is a better experience without those pesky ads and I want other people to see it. Plus, the longer OSNews is profitable the better equipment we have, the more attention we get from our admins, etc. Thus, I have implemented some subscriber only features. Like v3, the most obvious benefit is that all ads go "poof" and you never see them. Period. The most requested feature is the "ignore list." You can now ignore a user, and their comments will be automatically collapsed and highlighted. This is great if you want to ignore a troll or someone who really bugs you. Thirdly, instead of changing each page to "view -> all comments" in flat mode, you can now set this in your prefs and just see all comments on each page in one shot. This is VERY useful to people who are married to flat mode. I may add additional site skins for...

Some Positives "Much nicer than the old site, particularly the "recent comments" feature." "I find the site to be very aesthetically pleasing. It reminds me of a newspaper. The previous site certainly was better on limited hardware and small devices, but I do find the new site easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye." "Awesome work!" And from the Complaints Department: "New look is interesting, but I feel like something lost. Can not tell what is it exactly." "I am really sorry, I love the new features, but I *hate* the new look." "It's somewhat "painful" to read, as in - it actually hurts my eyes. [...] If it goes live in this current form with no way for me to continue using v3, I will be leaving this site." ...And my personal favorite: "CSS [...] RSS [...] Javascript [...] So this is the "Internet Explorer Only" version of OSnews?" I'm not even sure what that heck that means, but I hope this guy isn't a web designer. The people who are either unhappy with - or in more cases than you'd expect, seemingly angry - about the new look haven't offered a ton of specific suggestion, so we'll...

Humanity is wonderful. It's naught short of amazing to see science in action. Humans are the only animal in the world to drink the milk of other animals. But in the last hundred years or so, what do we see? Calcium is available in many other places, and milk still has to be pasteurized and homogenized, etc. And as time goes on, what are we seeing? The rise of lactose intolerance, because we no longer need milk for vital nutritional vitamins and minerals. So today, I found a wonderful tidbit on a woman who is "allergic" to electromagnetic radiation. If she is too close to microwaves, gamma rays, and other electric signals, she develops a rash. So she painted her house with a black carbon based paint and silver lined shades to block out the signals. She bought a plasma TV and has only wired phones. No microwave, no computer, no wireless connectivity. In the last few decades, we've bombarded the planet with all sorts of radiation, and there's little doubt that eventually we'll see some consequences of all the radio waves we're just dumping into the atmosphere. There are currently about 500 people labelled "electro-sensitive." I would venture a...

Within the next two weeks, we will see a more public beta of OSNews version 4. I have pretty much everything integrated, and the site -- I think -- is feature complete. I am excited about getting some user feedback. I am also thinking that it might be interesting to have have a stylesheet contest a la Slashdot. That's not for some time though.

I was playing around the other day on one of the many news sites I visit and there was an article about can't-miss web site "footers." So, I checked out these masterful designs and what did I find? Nearly all of them had "Valid XHTML" and "Valid CSS" links on them. Most, like my humble little blog, had fancy little 80x15 buttons too. And then it hit me - WHY!? I am sick and tired of these buttons. Honestly, I don't give a crap if your stupid homegrown blog is valid code, so long as it renders properly in my browser. I'm not using an accessibility application, and I wouldn't stop visiting a site if it weren't properly semanitcally marked up. I bet you very few external apps will choke if you enter a URL with an & instead of a properly escaped &. XML needs to be validated. HTML and XHTML don't. HTML has survived because of so many browsers having such a capable quirks mode. Frankly, as of right now, I find the entire validation link concept obnoxious. Slapping some tag on your page does nothing for your reader - if they truly have a screen reader or...

That is my baby - that little white mass under the line there. I got to watch its little heart beating this morning. I don't believe there can be a better feeling than I feel seeing this picture right now.

So, I started thinking that I spend a lot of time angry. Angry at this nasty, deplorable administration, angry about stupid people and practices, angry about oversensitivity and having a general hatred for most of what mankind has become. Writings like this one by Kurt Vonnegut fire me up, and then I have to deal with stuff like this story, where a girl is being sued for saying "That's so gay." How about this wimp puss knucklehead guy who is suing a 7 year old girl for mistakenly rollerblading into his way while he was on his bike. Let's not forget the most important story in American: the conflict over the final resting place of Anna Nicole Smith trial. It's just part and parcel of things - we stupid humans get get worked up about the most stupid things. I mean, seriously ...why? Life is way too short for the riduculousness we force ourselves to endure. We as humans thrive on conflict. We crave it. We hunger for it. We create things just to breed it. Our most revered events are based on competition which is just a more benign form of conflict. So I am going to do my...