Posts tagged with "april fools"


The April Fools Day Buzzkill

Peter Cook

From a reputable news source:

In an unprecedented sociological shift, the number of people voicing disdain for April Fools Day jokes now outnumber those making the jokes.

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling of the Peter Cook Institute chalked the shift up to smugness.

"[..] denouncing a day of fun while feigning intellectual superiority provides high returns with minimal effort. One is left surprised they don't see the irony that their complaining is now more deafening than that which they're complaining about."

The uniform makes him (and therefore this post) look more legit.


No April Fools posts from me

So its April Fools Day. I was wondering how I could top my previous years when I gave glowing reviews for Windows 7 and how Whole Wheat Radio had become a commercial enterprise, but I'm taking a different tack this year.

I will not be making any April Fools jokes on Twitter, nor reading Wikipedia's April Fools page, and I certainly won't be creating an April Fools blog post. April Fools blog posts are responsible for a shocking decline in productivity and decency this time each year, and I will not afford this nonsensical drivel any of my time here whatsoever.


Does April Fool's have a Boxing Day?

Conan O'Brien on the 2nd of April: Man, I am so tired. APRIL FOOL'S! I'm NOT tired. (I'm kind of tired)

Only Conan O'Brien could get away with posting an April Fool's joke when it's not April Fools. Well, either him or that @i2yh guy, he's pretty dodgy.


My auspicious Windows 7 review

Windows 7

Back in the day I used the release candidate of Windows 7, but now that I finally have a student copy I've been using it in a production setting. These are some of my observations.

Getting used to Windows Aero

Compared to my Mac and Xfce FreeBSD machines, my copy of Windows 2000 that I ran in a VM was really starting to look tired. While there may have been many changes under the hood in Windows 7, for someone coming from 2000 the user interface was the most noticeable difference.

Despite what some may imply, Microsoft didn't copy the Mac when creating the Aero engine, they took the paradigm one step further by including transparency in almost everything from titlebars to toolbars. To compensate for the lack of readability they blurred the background using a glass effect that's rendered in real time by the graphics hardware. The result could be compared to an elegant sheet of thin Japanese rice paper which isn't just used for art but in fact for all serious work documents printed on in Singapore, and I assume much of the East.

The Start Menu

Coming from Windows 2000 the Windows 7/Vista Start Menu was quite a pleasent surprise. Instead of using program group menus that annoyingly expand to accomodate the number of icons they contain, the Windows 7 Start Menu instead conveniently shoehorns all the icons into a small, fixed sized window with scrollbars.

With Windows 2000 if I wanted to access a lesser used application I would have to click Start, hover over the Programs menu, then hover over a program group. With Windows 7, I simply need to click the Start menu, click All Programs, scroll through lots of convenient icons until I find an application menu distinguished by an easy to see folder icon, then click it to expand the group out which adds all the icons from that group into the list, then scroll again while trying to avoid popping up any tooltips which obscure the icons below it, then click the application.

On Mac OS X applications are bundled into packages which means you can drag the Applications folder over to the dock and use it to launch what you want. Creating shortcuts to obscure exe files buried in folders with hundreds of resource files and DLLs is still a far more intuitive approach.

Windows 7's start menu

Compatibility

The primary reason I avoided upgrading to Windows Vista to run my Windows applications were the horror stories people told about applications and hardware not working. By comparison, Windows 7 has been able to run all my applications without worries, and thanks to the cohesive nature of all Microsoft's internal software divisions, applications written by the Office team have yet to generate a single Program Compatibility Assistant error.

Silverlight bundled

In earlier versions of Windows users had to manually download and install Silverlight to access all the hundreds of exciting sites using the technology. Now that it's bundled by default, this makes accessing the web easier and more fun.

Given the growing discontent with Adobe Flash, Silverlight promises to end the frustration with predatory vendor lockin and tiered platforms by being an open, standards based framework that any browser on any platform can access equally in the true open spirit of the web.

The control panel

My biggest gripe with Mac OS X is the System Preferences application, a tangled mess of icons without any grouping or order that that open dialog boxes with no cohesive interface. By comparison, Windows 7 swept all it's hundreds of accumulated control panel icons under an electronic rug that presents a series of highly useful questions. You can also click the intuitively titled "small icons" menu item to view all the hundreds of actual control panels.

Unlike Mac OS X and X11 desktops such as Xfce and Gnome, Windows 7 also eschews consistent naming of control panels. Some are just one word, others have "Options" at the end, or "Settings" or "Center" or "Tools". This helps to make things less confusing.

Windows 7's control panel

Different versions

Last week when I was buying my student licence for Windows 7, I was given the default option of getting the Home Premium version, with a small link to the side offering the Professional version if I needed to connect to large networks such as the Internet.

This transaction proved the value of having multiple versions of the same OS. Unlike Mac OS X which forces all the features onto you with one version (and without the option to disable what you don't need in the installer), Microsoft removed features and released different versions so as to not confuse users or exploit said confusion later. This is why Linux is more stable and easier to develop for than FreeBSD, because having multiple distributions reduces confusion.

Windows 7's easy to understand upgrade path

As with product activation, Windows Genuine Advantage and large product keys, Microsoft is rewarding their genuine licence holders by making their lives simpler and serving their needs compared to users of cracked, pirated versions that don't come with any of these features. Apple should be learning from this, if they weren't so busy releasing cheap knockoffs of Windows Tablet PCs which came out almost 30 years earlier.

Windows 7's intuitive boot update screen


Testing Audible's Share With Friends link

Liked Going Rogue by Sarah Palin on Audible.com.


The SHOCKING TRUTH about Disqus, et al

Crab People

You should sit down before reading this.

Despite what seemed like a heartening tide against services like Disqus, they're enjoying a baffling resurgence. I asked myself, why would people voluntarily make their sites slower, more convoluted for security conscious people to use, as well as less accessible, searchable, cohesive, secure and predictable? I did a bit of digging, and discovered something shocking.

Crab people. They taste like crab, talk like people, and they live underground.

Crab people are installing third party comment systems on as many blogs as they can by convincing people they're shiny and awesome. Once installed on a critical mass, they'll be able to control the blogs remotely using an undisclosed back door in the proprietary code and take back the world the Humans so cruelly stole from them.

Crab people! Crab people! Taste like crab! Comment like people!

Somewhat related posts


Becoming a fan of Malcolm Turnbull on Facebook

Malcolm Turnbull on Facebook

UPDATE: Yes, this was an April Fools joke!

I've become a "fan" of conservative Aussie opposition leader Malcom Turnbull on Facebook. This photo of him presenting behind a Microsoft sign that says Innovation, Community, Trust and Security in Canberra cinched it for me. Microsoft especially for me has always been about Trust and Security, but I wish they could have made room for Modest and Humble too.

Microsoft and The Coalition [Wikipedia]... Australia needs both and needs both now!


Internet Explorer 8.1 to support Firefox plugins

Screenshot from Smashing Magazine
Screenshot from Smashing Magazine

UPDATE: Yes, this was an April Fools joke!

Straight from the Slashdotted mouth:

KermodeBear writes in to note that according to Smashing Magazine, the newest version of Internet Explorer, codenamed "Eagle Eyes," supports Firefox plugins, the Gecko and Webkit rendering engines, and has scored a 71 / 100 on the Acid3 test. The article is pretty gee-whiz, and I don't entirely believe the claims that IE's JavaScript performance will trounce the others. (And note that the current Firefox, 3.0.8, scores 71 on Acid3, and Safari 3.1.2 hits 75.) No definitive date from Microsoft, but "sources" say that an IE 8.1 beta will be released in the summer.

I applaud Microsoft's resolve to look to the needs of their customers instead of themselves for the first time in a long, long time. Heck, I may start taking them seriously again myself. This is a great day for the interwebs.

I'd encourage you to read the entire article from Smashing Magazine, Microsoft is adding many more features too; one of my favourites is the ability to skin an entire website if you don't like the current theme of a site you're browsing, and the ability to decompile code on the fly. I'd expect the latter to be quite CPU intensive though, better leave that for the MacBook Pro with VMware Fusion and not my Windows 2000 machine.


Whole Wheat Radio to become a commercial site

I wholeheartedly endorse this decision, building and/or product.
"I wholeheartedly endorse this product, decision, service, building or idea."

UPDATE: Yes, this was an April Fools joke!

Given Last.fm's recent commercialisation where they now force listeners from outside the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany to pay a subscription fee to listen to what was previously free music, it has got me thinking about independent singer songwriters. If they release their content for free in the hopes you'll love their material and subsequently attend their concerts and buy their music... you know, promotion... then what right does Last.fm have to charge people to hear it?

Therefore Jim Kloss has decided to fight fire with fire, and has asked me to relay the following information. He has decided to inform the community through Google Reader that Whole Wheat Radio, the bastion of independent music online will soon become become a commercial paid site.

This would be achieved through phases in order not to alienate existing users and the artists who bought into the notion that they're music was being sent to a non profit website that was designed to promote them and their cause instead of generate large volumes of cash for it's proprietors and investors.

These are suggestions interim steps for Whole Wheat Radio's commercialisation:

  1. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectRemove any references to the Core Mission and make the chat page the main page for the site. This will allow WWR to leverage the power of social networking of the community, which is our key demographic and the largest potential source of revenue. Changing the Core Mission isn't revisionist history because we don't call it that.

  2. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectEvery user page on the WWR wiki will be donned with a large, non-removable box indicating what compulsory paid subscription rate they've chosen. This will help to guilt trip and shame people into paying more.

  3. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectMake about 200px of room above the content for each page for banner advertisements. Each advertisement could be delivered by Google AdSense which would intelligently pick up on the text of the individual wiki page and return advertisements that are relevant and interesting to all Whole Wheat Radio listeners. For doing so, Jim Kloss would receive 0.1% of the profits from Google as a referral.

  4. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectMonatise the audio streams themselves to deliver content that will enrich listeners lives and enhance their audio experience. Plugging into Google AdSense, the EJs will be programmed to to download the lyrics to the currently playing song from the song's wiki page and read five to ten text advertisements after each song. Because these advertisements are relevant to the songs, listeners will appreciate them.

  5. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectStart generating profits from the artists themselves. By banning user generated playlists and shows artists could compete for airtime by using an auction system plugged into the master WWR donation PayPal account of which PayPal would take a 92% cut of as a service fee. By rigging the auction system, Jim could still choose what songs are played but give the impression the music is being legitimately chosen by the artists.

  6. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectOnce WWR has generated large sums of cash, Jim Kloss will insure and subsequently burn down the Wheat Palace and move the WWR headquarters to Los Angeles, California to be closer to the commercial music companies.

  7. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectJim will then abuse his position as a trusted friend of the independent musicians to start advising them to sign with one of the major record labels and subsequently become a part of the RIAA. The record labels and the RIAA have consistently shown through their fair and reasonable music monopoly that lawsuits and their own compelling products can also generate revenue above and beyond traditional, old fashioned promotional avenues like independent music websites. As a bonus, WWR would get a commission from these record labels.

  8. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectOnce Jim Kloss has become a social networking guru, he will advise people of such by appending social-networking-guru to every profile page on every website and will proceed to charge people $10,000 per speaking appearance.

  9. Icon from the Tango Desktop projectAt this point WWR will become a publicly traded company with the stated purpose of generating enough capital to expanding their operations, when in fact they're really setting themselves up to be bought. Once majority control is relinquished, WWR will be purchased by News Corporation or Microsoft for a substantial profit and Jim Kloss will retire to a tropical island in the Caribbean or South Pacific, secure in the knowledge that his website and actions have helped independent musicians around the world.

The Whole Wheat Radio board of directors wishes to advise that your reading of this blog post constitutes a silent, legally binding agreement in which you agree with everything that has been said to the extent that if you're asked to provide testimony in a court of law you will be obligated to say as much.