IE 8 Beta 2 Goes Public

Ok, so I'm making this post from IE 8 Beta 2. I just downloaded it and installed it and overall, I'm going to just go out and say it, I'm really impressed with Microsoft this time. They did an overall good job with IE 8 and they fixed a lot of the things I had taken up issue with in IE 7...HOWEVER, that is not to say that I have found my fair share of things that really just piss me off.

Thing 1: Addons (biggest pet pieve thus far)
I'm not sure what it is, but for some God forsaken reason, Microsoft feels it's necessary to make their addons actual installed programs on your computer. This is a terrible, terrible idea in my sincerest opinion. Firefox had the grand idea of making addons and extensions only a part of firefox and they were installed as such, but for some reason Microsoft thought that making them programs that isntall on your computer like every other program was a good idea. All I know is that this is annoying. The first thing I did when I got IE8 was to install some extensions to see the new line up and I found one called Adblocker...I'm thinking of ABP (Ad Blocker Plus) on firefox and I said ok...it isntalls like a normal executable program and puts a TASKBAR ICON ON MY COMPUTER....WAIT WHAT!?...o no, the extension just infested my computer and then wanted me to buy it or have a 15 day trial of the adblocker...HELL NO...extensions, just like IE, should be free...way to go on that one...

Thing 2: Accelerators
Ok, these are a great idea, great concept but they were poorly executed...or possibly just still buggy but it seems all too convenience of a problem to be accidental. Whenever you use one of these accelerators, whether it be the Blogger one like I'm using to post this or Google Maps or whatever, if there is a search box or a text input field available on the page it pulls up, it will automatically fill it in with a link that goes to the "ieaddons.com" page and yes, you can just erase it, but WHY??? If it's something that's there to create a convenience, why on earth would you put something in it that everyone will clearly find to be a nuasance? Is this Microsofts new policy or something, "for ever convenience there has to be an equal and opposite inconvenience"...no, sorry Microsoft, you're not Sr. Isaac Newton it doesn't work that way for you.

My list of issues goes on for a few more, but I realize this is a long post, at least in terms of my posts, so I'm going to leave it there. But just to list a few more of my issues: tab coloring; why is it randomized whenever I open a new one? Address bar, the whole address other then the main "urlhere.com" is faded out...wtf? And of course, the ever present "Smart Screen Filter" formerly known as Phishing filter or whatever it was in IE 7...pointless and it blocks some legitemate sites so it doesn't relaly need to be there...O yea, and pardon any spelling errors in this post as well because in version 8 they have still failed to include spellcheck like Firefox has had for several versions now...

Till later...

Microsoft Photosynth

So, today I found this thing that was posted on Slashdot about Microsoft's new product that just got moved from "tech preview" status today called "Photosynth". It looked like a really cool idea so I immediately downloaded it to play with it a bit and I have to say, it's some pretty freakin sweet technology. The basic idea is that you take a bunch of pictures of either an object or a scene, as if you were making a panorama, but then you move around and keep taking pictures. Then you take all those pictures and load them into photosynth which then sorts through them all and aligns them to make a 3D model based on your pictures. It's not perfect yet as it's still a bit choppy and sluggish in the browser when you view someone else's "Synth" but it's a really neat concept and it works really well from what I can tell so far. I have yet to make my own "synth" yet though so I can't speak for that part, but it looks like it works really well from what has already been uploaded to their site.

Check it out for yourself <a href=http://www.photosynth.net target="_blank">by clicking here</a> and make sure to come back here to post your own thoughts on this program. I'll be posting again once I have my own synth uploaded and I can talk a bit more about the program functionality then.

Server Updates

So, as I've been saying in recent posts, my server is finally setup and running. Still trying to work the bugs out of it here and there, but for the most part it's good to go from a functionality standpoint. The only thing I have left to do, and this is really just a nit-picky thing is get mail going on it. I've got the DNS working as well as Apache and ProFTP so that's all taken care of, but if I really want a good, functional server, in my opinion, there needs to be a way to receive mail to the website address as well.

Overall though, and yes I'm going to turn this into a Ubuntu Server Edition talk, I am generally impressed with Ubuntu Server 8.04.1. It's not necessarily as light weight as some other distros I could have chosen, but the trade off was extreme ease of setup and maintenance in the future. But as servers go, it's also not that hard on resources either, at least compared to something like Windows Server 2008 which requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and 10GB of hard disk space. No, Ubuntu server has been installed on less then 1GB of space and I have just 256MB of RAM, which only 100MB at most have ever been used of it at once so far.

So, if you're curious about the new server, you are free to check it out. The new server is hosting www.techmachine.net which is my old blog site but I am now going to be running my business off of it as soon as I get it stablely running using DDNS which is the only difficulty I've had thus far with it.

Google promoting new FCC legislation

Ok, so I found this today while I was surfing around. It seems Google is trying to promote an FCC bill that would free up the "white spaces" between the analog tv channels for public use and make them unlicensed wireless spectrums for use by anyone.

Personally I think this is a great idea, which is why I'm going to give them some publicity here on my blog. Imagine the possibilities in wireless technology if these analog channels were to be opened to public use! The possiblities are endless.

If you read this and you agree with this, go to FreeTheAirwaves.com and check it out. There is a short video clip on the main page that goes into some more detail about what this is all about and what Google's position is on it as well. There is also a petition on the site that Google will be presenting to the FCC for consideration with this bill.

So check it out, and I'll see you back here soon.

(PS. This is my first post using w.bloggar application. I'm test driving this app in hopes that I can use it more in the future. But in case this post comes out looking weird, that's why and I'll try to fix any problems I find as soon as possible.)

New Server, W00T

Alright, so I just got settled in my new condo, had Comcast come out and setup my internet and TV and my server has been live now again for about 16 hours....14 hours into it I managed to bork it up, however. I was messing around with my user groups and accidentally removed myself from the "admin" and "adm" groups which allow my user to use the "sudo" command to execute programs and commands with root privileges...So, right now, the web server is still up and running (no domain name yet, working on it) but until I can get back to my condo to reboot into the recover root console, I won't be able to fix my group settings so I've been locked out of it now for about 2 hours and will remain that way for the next hour, until I can get home. I also got webmin installed on the server, but forgot to set the router to forward the proper port to the server for it, so even though it's installed it's useless until I can get home and set that on the router (I don't have remote administration on the router setup for security reasons).

But bad news aside, I'm really excited for this project. I will be documenting my progress as it goes along, but the basic plan is to make a big combination server that will be a prototype for the beefier server I'm planning for later this year. Right now the mightly PIII processor it's running on currently will be a standard LAMP (Linux Apache2 MySQL PHP5) server with Webmin, web administration and Samba installed as well as FTPd, OpenSSH and Postfix. My hope with all this is mostly just for educational purposes so that once I have the beefier hardware I can set this up in a virtual server environment so that each of these services will be on their own virtual server instead of all running on the same computer and then I'll probably keep it that way as long as I can partly for the educational experience it will provide, but I'm also planning to make it a fully functional personal FTP and Mail server for myself and my roommate, so we will see how it goes, I'll keep the updates rolling.