Save as: BMP

Dear Microsoft:

Kiss my butt.

Yes, there is probably a fix or workaround for the stupid old "save as BMP" issue that plagues all of the products you make.

Up yours for not fixing it by now, it's 2009, and I still have to deal with this.

NOBODY USES THIS DUMB FORMAT, QUIT SUPPORTING IT, DUH.

Thanks, just had to say that.

The Concept of Ownership

Recently I came upon a little puzzle of an idea.

When you buy something, it's yours, right?

People buy animals, materials, products, food, buildings, even land.

But at what point does this idea that "if it can be purchased it is yours" run out?

Let's see if this example highlights a hard-to-pin-down idea...

Suppose that rather than the top 1% of our world population possessing most of the wealth in our little world- instead there was only 1 person.

And one day, that very rich person bought everything on the planet.

Every object, every piece of land, every last bit of food- everything.

So far, it's not a big deal aside from being scary.

But now, that person decides to throw away everything they own. Destroy it. This is where it gets ridiculous as somehow destroying everything is nearly impossible.

The point here is that 1 person has thrown away the things the rest of the world population needs to exist- food, shelter, land, etc.

So, how do we now justify our concept of ownership?

This person bought everything that existed, with their own money, and then threw it out.

According to the standard USA definition of ownership, that was their right.

Isn't it?

Whaaaaat?

So, I am listening to last FM, and the song is a weird ambient track with the recorded 911 calls from a flight attendant on flight 11 mixed into it. Totally creepy.

I google it, and the wikipedia entry for flight 11 says:

"Investigators retrieved Mohamed Atta's luggage that was not loaded onto the flight. In Atta's luggage they found al-Omari's passport and driver's license, a videocassette for a Boeing 757 flight simulator, a folding knife, and pepper spray."

Umm... guy who was planning to hijack a plane packed in the bag he was taking with him: a video tape on how to fly a plane, identification, and weapons...

all things he'd never be able to get at once the plane took off,

all things he'd never need again if the plan went as expected,

and all things, had he been properly searched, which would have endangered the mission.

Does that sound likely? Nah, me neither.

Sounds like a classic "Orgy of Evidence".

My Review of this Dixie cup

Hi, I just got this Dixie cup, and I wanted to give you all my review of it.

I noticed it was quite cheap, so I decided to try it.

At first, I had a great time drinking out of it, but over time, I noticed I could not pour an entire can of beer into it. And it's kind of poorly made, really- made out of paper. It was cheap, but I am having a hard time giving it five stars. I mean, I can't even fit a can of beer in it.

Also, I later realized that it didn't come with instructions on how to mix a Long Island Iced Tea. I want to drink this drink, and I am sure I should be able to drink it with this Dixie cup. I don't see why they don't tell you how to make that drink somewhere on the box the cup came in. Jeez.

Another downside is this Dixie cup did not fare well when I ran it through the dishwasher. It fell apart, and I had to get a new one out of the box. I was hoping to stretch this box out a while, and I have already used one cup up completely. Not so good in the longevity department.

Pros: lightweight, inexpensive, holds liquid

Cons: doesn't hold much liquid, doesn't come with drink mixing instructions, cheaply made out of paper instead of glass or metal

Other: Just in case you think I am off my rocker, I am not. I have been reading product reviews, and people are fucking idiots. "I bought X, and it would be great if it did Y, but it doesn't, so, the product isn't good because of that."

Uh, if it was *supposed* to to something and then didn't, that's one thing. But if the product clearly isn't supposed to do something, and then it in fact does not do that thing, that is not a negative aspect of the product, that's you being disappointed. ALSO, the manual is not supposed to tell you how to do every possible thing with your product. That's what the internet is for: if you can think of doing it, probably someone else has thought it too, and documented it, and posted it on the internet somewhere. For crying out loud. So many reviews read like a complaint list of all the things the person had to actually learn in order to set up whatever it was that they had bought.

And yes, I am clearly complaining about people not being able to properly describe the actual functionality of a product as opposed unintentionally highlighting the thickness of their skulls. Which is to say, I am complaining about a product we already know is faulty- human beings- and highlighting my own thick-skulled disappointment in them rather than illustrate their actual usefulness. My bad.

However, when someone is trying to ascertain the actual quality of functionality of some product, the "I am an idiot who can't or won't read the manual" is a detail that largely does not have anything to do with the product's performance.

[sigh]

Ok, back to clicking.

Internet Explorer 7: Microsoft doesn't care about usability

Just a general rant:

The top menu bar of IE 6 is completely configurable. You can add or remove buttons and change the appearance and generally make it just how you'd like.

Good luck trying that with IE 7.

In typical Microsoft form, some idiot decided that you didn't need to be able to reduce the size of the menu bar area.

Here's IE 6 with the top menu customized to be very small,

http://www.clickthebunny.com/ie6menu.JPG

and here's what you get in IE 7

http://www.clickthebunny.com/ie7menu.JPG

Webstalking is fun!

Hello!

I am your frienly neighborhood webstalker.

How am I different than a creepy webstalker?

Well, a creepy webstalker is someone who has some unsavory intent, right?

A lot of people online are blissfully ignorant of the concept of at least attempting to obscure their identity.

When I first started on bulletin boards back in the mid 80's, most of the online world then was quiet and safe, and you could get access on a BBS without any contact information or anything- completely anonymously. That sentiment has rolled forward with me for many years, and while I have let my guard down a bit, it's only now in this day and age when there are literally billions of people online. I am not rich, famous, or keeping the secret to eternal life. It's likely nobody reads my blog except for a few friends, and if someone decided to webstalk me, well, I am just one of many: white, 5 foot 9, brown hair- someone stalking me would be spooky only in that it seems so unlikely.

Anyway, back to the blissfully unaware. If you put your actual name in your e-mail address... that's a bad idea, unless it is a common name, like Lisa Smith or Richard Davis or something. If your name is uncommon, you are exceedinly easy to webstalk, and as such, ought to make sure not to use your real name if you wish to ensure some level of privacy. Hint: websites like myspace and facebook do not protect your real name.

I seem to be going off on a tangent here... that's ok.

My point is: if I am webstalking you, it's because you're an old friend of mine that I want to talk to- or, in a rare case, I will webstalk someone to show them that they are being foolish with their personal information. An example of that- I bought something on craigslist a while back, and the seller replied to me from their personal address which was their uncommon last name. When I picked the item up, I mentioned to them then, in person, the 'danger' of doing that kind of thing. I told them "In many cases, a person can google all kinds of things about you just by knowing your name and roughly where you live.", not "I did google all kinds of things about you, just to see if I could."

I feel like I am providing a public service announcement for online safety.

Everyone should have a spare e-mail address for doing business which does not have any google-able content associated with it. Two bonuses to this- when it gets overrun with spam you can just delete it, and also, you do not mix up business correspondence with personal.

It may seem like a deviant thing to do- webstalking people- but I think you should assume that everyone does it, and that any information you put online is susceptible to a nosy websurfer, and post/not post it accordingly.

MyLife : wants to be myspace, but misses the point

If you have been trying to find friends online, you may have stumbled onto this site, "MyLife".

The idea with a social networking site like myspace is that it's free, and at least relatively easy to connect with your friends. Since it is free and 'easy', if you are lucky, your social networking site will succeed, and many people will find their long lost pals on your site. Hooray.

Enter the wanna-be, for-pay site.

"We want you to feel like that person you are googling is here, and after you invest time and effort into setting up your profile, we're hoping you pay for access, because after you dink around here long enough, you're going to figure out that you can't see anybody's profile without paying" is one version, and then there's the possibility that the site is exclusively a ripoff site (not sure whether this not-very-clever ruse actually exists), where the extent of the person's information you get after you pay may very well be what you already have: their name.

But this pattern violates rule one of the myspace model. Free.

Another thing- superbly annoying, high-pressure interface. "Fill in your profile!", "Add everyone from your e-mail address book!", "Pay for access!"... and the creepy icing on the cake- the site sucks your facebook profile image in automatically, and won't let you delete it.

Maybe back in the mid-nineteen ninetys people in general were unwary enough to be taken by this kind of nonsense. Let's see: site I have never heard of claims to have a shred of information about an old friend I can't dig up anywhere else online... hmm. So, I am to believe that this person, who is not surfacing in google, not in myspace, not in facebook, not in a white-pages search... this nearly not-online-at-all person chose your crummy for-pay site as their jumping-off point into the internet?

Not highly likely.

Screw you people and your sucky business model. Hope you feel really good making money off of the few old people who don't know any better- not that their money will be enough to keep you in business. Please make sure to keep your mylife credientials on your linkedin profile so I can make sure I never have to work with you.

PS: a quick google of mylife and ripoff came up with plenty of peeved people. might want to give these guys a miss.