Irony?
Does anyone else find it a little ironic that a country which spits out CO2 at the rate of 1,558 million metric tons per year, yet refuses to ratify the Kyoto Protocol or even acknowledge that greenhouse gasses contribute to global warming is bearing the brunt of extreme weather which said global warming plays a factor in creating?
I wonder if Australia’s next…
Will.
Opera
Is it time to change browsers again?
I have never used the Opera browser before today, not really wanting to have to purchase it. Opera however is now free (as in beer). I am a big fan of open source, I like how it able to providing a viable competition in monopoly markets (operating system, browsers, office suites, etc), I guess partly because it’s harder to squash a non-profit since they are not in it for the cash. At the end of the day though I will use whatever works the best (and I can afford) — hence why I use OS X (admittidly jam packed with OSS goodies without which it would not be nearly as good).
Firefox on Windows I have enjoyed, but my Mac experiance isn’t so rosy. I use Camino, aand I find that whenever I have a page with some flash graphics (or a few), the browser can really slow down, especially if I am writing text. With Firefox on OS X, the middle mouse click doesn’t open the link in a new tab so it’s out of the question (though I still keep around for it’s excellent javascript console/debugger).
I’ve installed Opera on both Mac and Windows and I have to say I am quite impressed. The installer is a tiny 3.6MB, and it does feel nice to use. I did have to take 5min to “firefox-arise” it a bit including:
- changing the theme, I don’t like having distracting blue tabs in my periferal vision, this was a cinch (Tools->Appearance)
- Showing the status bar, I like to know what I’m clicking on (View->Toolbars->Status bar)
- Re-mapping Ctrl-T to be open a new tab (I could not cope otherwise). This was a little more involved as I have never used such an unusual keyboard mapping dialog. Tools->Preferences->Shortcuts->Edit. Then search for “t ctrl”, click edit, type the text “New Page”, and select “New Page” from the drop down box. Not sure if I like that way of doing it or not — it’s certainly very innovating though.
Some things that seem really nice: The “quick preferences” menu option. Tabs are above the Address bar. This is a little odd at first, HOWEVER, from a usability point of view (I am studying Usability Engineering), the tab metaphore makes much better sense with the address bar as a child of the tab frame (I think the technical term is visual affordance or something — hmm, I do need to study that one ;-) ). RSS suport is a little different to firefox, I have to say I like the “live bookmark” model that firefox adopts.
UPDATE: Oh and you can actually click on that dialog that pops up when a download is finished! Thank you! And I like the “back to start” back button, which takes you back to the first page opened on that tab.
Features like in-built torrent support are just awesome.
Will.
I just want a ping!
One of my windows computers is in a DMZ, which for a windows box is rather dangerous, so running a firewall is crucial. But gee, they don’t make it easy for you to allow pings! At first I had Kerio Personal Firewall which I have used for years, but I just couldn’t get it to cut mustard with allowing pings. So next I tried Zone Alarm where it was easy to allow pings, but the GUI has way too many bells and whistles (read: CPU drain) and for some reason Zone Alarm and VET (my anti-virus) just do not want to co-exist, not to mention one needs to pay for Zone Alarm.
So I tried Sygate Personal Firewall which I had used many years ago. It is still free, and the GUI has been vastly improved since I used it last. And, pings were easy to allow (Tools -> Advanced Rules, Ports and Protocols (ICMP), allow 0, 3 and 8). Theoretically Kerio should have worked with the same advanced rule, but no dice for me.
Will.
