Digiwar - the Yeep-blog

Here’s an interesting article on web trends that should die in 2006. I aggree with every single one of them. Especially trend #9.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Firefox and it’s the only browser I use, but like the author says, the bugs and annoyances are getting bigger en worse. The times I start Firefox, only to have nothing happen and requiring me to kill the process and try again start to get more frequent it seems. I have set the auto-update function to notify me of new updates, yet I never see a single notification, while there are updates for my extensions! I still use Firefox 1.0.7 at work, I refuse to update it until the update notification tells me there is a newer version available. How long has Firefox 1.5 been available already? And they give Microsoft shit about not updating fast enough!
The browser is solid, but the people seem to be rested in some state that they think their the best and can slack off or something. The memory use of Firefox easily triumphs that of Internet Explorer. The startup time is a multiple of that of Internet Explorer.
Yes, I still like it, but it’s not as if they’re that far ahead of the curb anymore. Maybe in features, but not in annoyances.

[Now playing: Within Temptation - Restless]

Allright, so I have a cool new smartphone that runs Windows Mobile 5, but I haves some gripes about it.

First of all it doesn’t have any way for me to jot down some quick notes. No Word Mobile, no other notes application. I’m forced to use voice notes, or write the notes down in the Tasks application, which has a shortcoming of it’s own: Once a task has been added, it can’t be editted. Maybe it’s my telco’s choice, because it also offers a more PDA like phone, which is ofcourse more expensive, I don’t know. All I know, is that I don’t have any simple way of taking some quick notes.
Since I’m a programmer I’ve taken it upon myself to write a small application for my note taking needs. It’s a small application that I’m going to write using the .NET Compact Framework 2.0. Once I have it working, I’ll put it somewhere to download.

Then there is the ringtone issue. I can’t use MP3s as ringtones. That’s just stupid. I can only use midi files, wave files (our you frakking kinding me??) or WMA files. Then there is the issue that I must put the files in a special directory in the memory of my phone. I can’t put it on my storage card. So, I’m forced to use up the precious 20 or so megabytes of system RAM, instead of being able to use my 512 MB SD card. That’s just really stupid.
And here comes a good one. An issue that had me stumped for hours: When you place the song/sound on the phone, you’ll have to reboot for the contact manager to accept it!! How’s that for user convenience? I can’t just put the song on my phone, select it and use it. Not if I have recently used the Contacts manager. It must cache something, because I can select the file, but then it won’t find it and thus not use it. I reset the phone and I can select and use it. I then put on a new song and it’s the same problem again. That’s really frakked up!

Other then that, it’s a real cool phone. If I run into more problems and find some solutions, I’ll let the world know through this weblog.

In other news, I still owe you people an article on Outlook XP and Outlook 2003. It’s coming! Don’t worry, it’s gonna be here. I promise.

And in case you’re wondering what the frak all that “frakking” is about, I recently discovered the new adaptation of BattleStar Galactica and I’m loving it! I just watched the entire season one with the 2 part mini-series in 3 days, so I’m completely Galactized.

[Last played: Six Feet Under - TNT]

So I read about this guy who is preparing a classaction suit against Wikipedia for the damages caused by wrong information that’s available on the site. The website about the classaction suit has an e-mail adress which you can use for more information. It also has Google ads. Sounds like a money making scam to me. I sent them the following mail and am curious what I will receive back, maybe the standard response a lot of other people have being getting?

Hello,

I just read about the class action you are preparing against Wikpedia and I understand your concern about wrong information being spread about persons or businesses. But why not try to work out a solution? Why immediately sue and try to get rich out of it? Why do you ask people to tell you about the wrong information on the website and then file a complaint. Why not ask people to contact the maintainers of Wikipedia, inform them about the inaccuracies and ask them to correct them. Or even better, edit the content yourself. I know you disaggree with this as you stated in a standard response to various aother e-mailers that you don’t feel you need to register to edit the wrong information. But when a newspaper, or other online media prints wrong information you’ll have to do a lot more then just register and change it yourself. You have much more power right now with Wikipedia then with other media.

You also state that you want to recover monetary damages due to Wikipedia flawed business model, but Wikipedia is a free website, it doesn’t cost you a penny to add or lookup information. It doesn’t even have advertisements, unlike your website about the class action which contains Google ads. A website that claims to do this to help people but has ads on it sounds like they’re in it for the money to me.

I might be missing something here, maybe it’s because I’m not an american and not used to sueing everything and everyone when I don’t like something, so if you can explain to me why we should lose such a free and innovative media, it’s be delighted to hear from you.

Kind regards,

Jeroen-bart Engelen

[Last played: S.O.D. - Moment of truth]