2005-02-28

Wikipedia

Posted in Geek Stuff, Otaku Stuff at 4:41

It still surprises me how many people don’t know about Wikipedia. Whether it be research for your math/english/history paper, or looking up some obscure Star Trek/Star Wars/Comic Book/Anime/Manga term, they have it all.

In case you didn’t know, the wiki in Wikipedia is a term referring to a website where any random visitor can edit almost any page. Surprisingly, peer pressure and the dedication of other users keep trouble to a minimum. Since wikis keep a history of changes, and damage is easy to undo. Wikipedia’s stated policies concerning referencing sources and the peer review do the rest. I know this may sound unreliable, but don’t dismiss it before you try it.

I like to wander around Wikipedia when I get the free time and in fact, one of my future projects is a script to dynamically build a “My Home” page containing Wikipedia’s Entry of the Day as well as numerous Word of the Day, Quote of the Day, and Puzzle of the Day entries from around the web. Sort of a daily dose of genius. I’ll post it here when it’s done.

What specific benefits do I get from Wikipedia? Well, it helps me keep my trivia edge (I have always excelled at knowing the most pointless facts about anything other than sports or pop culture, my two least favorite areas) and, Sci-fi fan that I am, I did not know what unobtainium or Clanking Replicators were before wandering Wikipedia.

On a parting note, I should warn readers that Wikipedia may be a little slow lately, they’ve been experiencing a massive growth in popularity. In response, they are running a fundraising drive and have already raised 85% of their goal as of this posting.

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2005-02-24

And now for something comple… err… a little different. (A.K.A. My Favorite Webcomics)

Posted in Geek Stuff, Reviews at 0:45

This post has been moved to a more accessible home. Please visit the GoodWebcomics page on my website.

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2005-02-23

Best Viewed Without Internet Explorer

Posted in Geek Stuff at 23:06

I suppose the title should really read “Best Viewed with a Standards Compliant Browser” but too many people don’t know how broken IE really is. Anyway, as you may or may not have noticed, this site doesn’t look very good on at least some Internet Explorer setups. I didn’t know about it myself since I use Linux exclusively. (well, and some OpenBSD)

I don’t intend to fix it since it’s far too much hassle to go to someone else’s house to test it. (This house is an IE-free zone and IE is locked out on the handful of WinXP machines) However, for those people who honestly didn’t know about the alternatives, I’ll list them along with any comments I have. I’ll also list the ones for other platforms just in case you use a non-Windows system and are curious. All links point to their respective browsers’ “Hey, look why I’m great” pages .

Windows:
* Amaya (Created by the W3C themselves as a demonstration/test platform for new standards. I’ve been meaning to use this to test my pages since it’s the most standards-compliant browser around.)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* K-Meleon (Uses the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla but gets a speed boost from strategic use of native Windows components)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)

Linux:
* Amaya (Created by the W3C themselves as a demonstration/test platform for new standards. I’ve been meaning to use this to test my pages since it’s the most standards-compliant browser around.)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* Epiphany (
* Galeon (Uses the Gecko rendering engine from Mozilla but, like Camino for MacOS X, provides a native interface.)
* Konqueror (My other favorite browser. It should be available as part of your Linux distro’s package repository.)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)

MacOS X: (I don’t own a Mac so I can’t test Mac-only stuff)
* Amaya (Created by the W3C themselves as a demonstration/test platform for new standards. I’ve been meaning to use this to test my pages since it’s the most standards-compliant browser around.)
* Camino (Uses the Gecko rendering engine like FireFox does but also has the MacOS X look and feel.)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* iCab (Feature set seems to be similar to Opera or FireFox. Pro version is not free. Not open-source.)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)
* Safari (Comes with MacOS X. I’ve heard mixed comments about it.)

Other OSes: (no item is guaranteed but they’re proabably available)
* Dillo (Missing a lot of the web features but it’s REALLY small and fast.)
* Mozilla (Good if you’re used to the old Netscape Communicator but it’s being phased out in favor of FireFox and Thunderbird)
* Mozilla FireFox (My cross-platform browser of choice.)
* Netscape Communicator (Nowadays, little more than a rebranded version of Mozilla.)
* Opera (Either ad-supported or purchased. Not open-source. I couldn’t get comfortable with it.)

I know you can probably find tons of other browsers for Windows but they aren’t listed because every one that I’ve found uses Internet Explorer’s core to do their HTML rendering which means that all of the layout bugs and many of the security holes are still there. If you run something other than one of the above operating systems then look around for ports. For example, FreeBSD and OpenBSD have huge ports collections and package repositories.

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2005-02-22

Why you should dislike Nintendo

Posted in Geek Stuff at 18:24

I have run across this several times, people try to remake an old Nintendo game and what does Nintendo threaten to do? Sue! And I’m not talking about ones that people can still buy. I’m talking ones that a remake wouldn’t affect sales of because any re-releases would be on Gameboy and people would still buy them so they could play on the bus/in the car/at school/on a plane/etc.

Here’s an example.

This really sickens me and I’d stop buying from them if it weren’t for the fact that I only play older Nintendo games anyway. (Can’t stop what you aren’t doing, or if you can, you’re probably eligible for a nobel prize in something like demonstrative philosophy.)

I’d suggest a letter writing campaign since Nintendo will just assume lack of interest in any boycotted game. Remember, snail mail takes more effort than e-mail but is more likely to have an impact.

On the other hand, at least they aren’t attacking the “Zelda Classic” system for creating and playing unofficial Zelda quests. Whether they’re too lazy to find it or too nice to attack it, I don’t know. It’s really nice and I really should do a post just about it but I’m too busy playing game remakes now.

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2005-02-21

New batch of links, some Google Bombing, feminism, and Walmart

Posted in Web Wandering & Opinion at 6:23

Have you ever heard of Google Bombing? Neither had I. (Well, it sounded familiar) It turns out that Google Bombing means to legitimately exploit the fact that google treats links to pages as popularity votes for those pages. So, I’ve added a google bombs section to the bottom of the menu.

Also, I finally found some good blogs written by/about women (you’d be surprised how much harder it is) so I’ve added them to my “good blogs” links section. Don’t believe me, start at this article and then browse from there.

The funny thing is, I found them while I was looking for some information on the truth about Walmart’s business practices and their effect on the economy. My other major find was a post on another blog by a woman. Thank goodness for blogrolls.

Enjoy.

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