Jim Roepcke's weblog have browser, will travel (est. 1999)

Turning off GPS would be Dubya stupid

You Must Be Present to Win: Destroying Our Village in Order to Save It

I already knew that turning off GPS would cripple marine navigation systems (and thus shipping), and obviously things like car navigation systems, but did you know it apparently would cripple the SS7 network which would disable credit card processing, phone calls, wireless roaming, and more.

So, terrorists have gotta love the US Government's plan to disable GPS if they attack.

Veen’s Boulevard of Broken CMS Dreams

Jeffrey Veen: Making A Better CMS

I think it's worth noting that opensourcecms.com only features PHP/MySQL-based software. Not because I'm not a fan of PHP, but because I'm not a fan of PHP because most PHP software I've tried out sucks... on the front-end, and the way it's coded. For years I have been vehemently against using web development tools that focus on a 'code-in-html' style, a la ASP, PHP, JSP.

I think the job of maintaining and evolving a system using that kind of development tool gets disproportionately harder as the system becomes more sophisticated, and that leads to developers taking shortcuts or making compromises that affect the usability and future potential of the system. I believe that's why you end up with software that seems "written by geeks, for geeks".

To balance that mini-rant, I should note Jeff takes a deserved swing at Plone as well.

I totally agree.

During the 2.0 development process, the team was pretty religious about using semantic / accessible markup. The default skin was completely table-less (except for the displaying the calendar which rightly belongs in a table), and it was possible to radically alter the layout of a Plone site without touching it's 'main_template'. Unfortunately, Plone's UI is pretty ambitious, and getting Plone to render properly in all the browsers that needed to be supported (I'm looking at you, IE) was nearly impossible without making unacceptable compromises.

At the last minute, a decision was made to change the default skin to use a single table with 3 columns. The rest of the skin was still tableless, using semantically-rich markup and the design was fully CSS-based and customizable using CSS... EXCEPT for that damn 3 column layout. The table-less skin was shipped as well, but you had to manually choose it. I was pretty pissed about this, from the religious perspective (yes, I had totally drank the Kool-Aid during the Plone 2 beta process) but I totally understood why it was done. First impressions count, so if it looked or behaved poorly in IE6/Win, Plone 2 was doomed.

Now, in practice, if one did a major Plone deployment, the Plone skin probably wouldn't be used anyway, the customer's custom design would be skinned. So, it's basically an issue if you want to use Plone's default skin and customize it with CSS instead of making a custom skin... which isn't hard... after you've done it once.

I'm now (well, I will be again once I press "Send to Weblog" in MarsEdit) working on my 3rd table-less Plone 2-based web site. The first two used Plone 2's table-less XHTML template and was designed "only" using CSS (okay, there might have been a couple tags added or changed here and there), but this one is using a custom table-less template provided by our excellent designer. Yes, we're stuck in IE6-CSS-bug-hell again, but the customer needs WCAG compliance, so I expected that pain.

BTW, this is why I'm a big supporter of FireFox and why I'm so disappointed Netscape (well, really AOL, but they're dragging Netscape's name in the mud doing it) sold out and put IE in the new Netscape. IE makes the job of making good-looking and accessible web sites significantly harder and more expensive that it needs to be, and all because Microsoft ruined the browser market like it has ruined so many other markets. Thank goodness for competitive open source software that is forcing Microsoft to invest in real software improvements again.

Okay, I'm done ranting. Thanks for the fuel, Jeff!

PS: The song 'Boulevard of Broken Dreams' started in iTunes just as I was about to post this, so I just had to change the title. Thanks Green Day, and thanks Apple for the iTMS that made it so easy for me to buy TWO versions of that great song! (I just bought the live version of it this morning)

iPod Price Reduced (in Canada)

Marketnews.ca: News - iPod Price Reduced Due To Levy Decision

While the ruling isn't final yet, since the CPCC could appeal, it's good retailers have moved quickly to give consumers a break.

And I think it's time to contact the CPCC about getting my money back.

NHL players won’t fool me

TSN.ca: Poll: Fans remain on owners side

The players need to give it up, their 24% pay cut PR ploy didn't work. The public will never support their attempts to maintain their ill-gotten lifestyles. The CBA has expired, so just because it was the status quo doesn't mean the owners are at all obliged to make the new CBA comparable. It seems the only reason it lasted so long was the NHL so badly wanted their players in the Olympics, and extending the (horrible) CBA was the only way to make it happen.

The players keep saying "we shouldn't have to be the ones stopping the owners from making mistakes" and "the owners need protection from themselves, it's not our fault". I recently read and article about how many of the worst NHL contracts were more about corporate revenge than they were about smart hockey or business decisions.

Found it! thanks Firefox history sidebar!

Sportak: 12 dumb contracts that ruined hockey

Here's one of the most blatant examples:

So yes, the owners need protection from themselves, and that's valid. They also need protection from agents and hockey parents who believe their family deserves a lifetime of wealth for getting their kid into a pro hockey league.

The NFL and NBA, or their players, sure aren't hurting with their salary caps. The NHLPA keeps saying the league has revenues at a certain level, based on the revenue growth over the last CBA. Unfortunately, the NHL no longer has sweet TV contract revenue like they did back then. The NHLPA seems to conveniently exclude that from their projections.

I watched an AHL game on Sportsnet last night. The Edmonton Road Runners vs. the Hamilton Bulldogs. Farm teams for the Oilers and Canadiens respectively. It was a great game! It ended in a shootout after overtime didn't produce a winner! And the Road Runners have several good young players who played on the Oilers last year. The NHL has nothing to fear... those young guys are entertaining and I believe they would take the place of NHL players as quickly and with as much remorse as NHL players have been taking the place of players in Europe and Russia.

Oh, that's another thing that amuses me... NHL players won't accept a cap over here but they'll play for 10%-50% of what they make here to play in Europe. Nice of them, offering a one-time 24% rollback. They're not fooling anyone.

The Graphing Calculator Story

Slashdot: Skunkworks At Apple -- The Graphing Calculator Story

Wow. If that is true, even the insane part about the monitor catching on fire, that is an amazing story. It should be a movie, but unfortunately most people proabably wouldn't pay to see guys code 18 hours a day.