* Posts by Mike Flugennock

2068 publicly visible posts • joined 19 Nov 2007

Moller Skycar to finally crash and burn?

Mike Flugennock
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@tempemeaty 23rd November 2009 19:36 GMT

This project has come _further_, you say?

You mean, like tethered test "flights" where it doesn't seem to really fly so much as hover in the ground effect?

Don't get me wrong; those flying cars in "Blade Runner" looked cool as hell -- especially the '59 Pontiac taxicab retrofitted for flight -- but I'm really not holding my breath for it, owing to the needs for upgrading ATC systems, not to mention all those idiots out there who can barely control a machine traveling in _two_ dimensions, let alone three... oh, and don't even get me started on how any of these flying-car inventors plan to deal with the contingency of any kind of power/propulsion loss; as far as I can tell, any power loss on _any_ of those Jetsons-wannabe flying cars results in them immediately plummeting from the sky as they all seem to have about as much "glide" as a set of car keys.

Seriously, guys -- screw the flying cars for now, and get to work on my goddamn' Newspad:

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_aYFbU3YZ66Y/SeibZSKfBOI/AAAAAAAAAvw/REZqBvKvvJI/s320/space+2001.jpg

(and no, the Kindle -- and the Sony e-book reader -- don't frickin' count)

Will Ferrell is Hollywood's most over-rated overpaid star

Mike Flugennock
Pint

@Adam Williamson, 20th November 2009 07:02 GMT

Point well taken.

Along with Monty Python, Fawlty Towers and Red Dwarf, we've also gotten something called "Are You Being Served", which is more along the lines of a traditional sitcom, though it still has a lot of the kinds of situations you'd never see attempted in American sitcoms (ironically, one of my favorite Monty Python sketches is a parody of American sitcoms circa late '60s/early '70s, the infamous "Attila The Hun Show").

We also get Benny Hill over here of course, which is pretty much the antithesis of Python, but which I found myself enjoying very much in spite of myself.

Comedy Central carried The League of Gentlemen for a bit back in the late '90s; I thought they were absolutely pants-pissing funny, and thought for sure they'd be the next Python -- and then they were gone. Damn, were they good. Having had to go on unemployment for a while about ten years or so ago, I totally dug their "Job Centre" sketch.

We're also getting Top Gear over here now, thanks to the BBC America channel on our satellite, but I'm not sure if that really counts as comedy.

I know a lot of you guys rag on Rick Gervaise over there, but I thought the British version of The Office was absolutely frickin' brilliant. Gervaise as the Boss was devestating; he reminded me of the Boss in the BOFH stories. The American version is feeble by comparison; it just doesn't have the same edge to it. (This is why I can't see why people over here think Norman Lear is so great; everything of his that got any notice was stolen from the British and watered down)

That said, I don't doubt there's a lot of crap on TV over there; I've often heard British Reg readers mentioning a woman named Catherine Tate in terms of disparagement, often in the same breath with the catch phrase, "Am I Bovvered?"

Pint of lager icon, because -- if I'm counting forward from Eastern Standard correctly -- it's getting to be lunchtime in London right about now.

Mike Flugennock
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at last, it's official

Not that I care that much whether or not I'm in agreement with the "official narrative" or anything, but it sure is nice to know that I'm not the only one who just isn't into Will Ferrell. Not only is he just not that funny, but he's always annoyed the shit out of me somehow. He's one of the reasons I gave up on SNL long ago; he's like a cut-rate Chevy Chase imitation.

I don't know how this guy got to be such a big star; he's like those other "stars" who just don't have anything going on, and are often flat-out annoying, but which the networks and studios insist on trying to shove down our throats -- like Reese Witherspoon, or Ben Affleck, or the entire cast of "Friends" -- they're dismal, they're boring, they're annoying, they're forgettable, but they're frickin' _everywhere_.

Mike Flugennock

@Mike Moyle, re: Samuel L. Jackson

Actually, Samuel L. Jackson was excellent in "Pulp Fiction". Granted, "Snakes On A Plane" was an epic FAIL, but I can't really blame Jackson for that.

But, still...for most overrated/overpaid director, it's got to be Michael Bay, hands down -- with George Lucas running a respectable second place.

Mike Flugennock

@Haku, 19th November 2009 16:47 GMT

Actually, that's long been a big problem with American comedy. It's always seemed a bit boorish and crass compared to British comedy (spoken while kneeling at my altar to Monty Python). Being American, I grew up with the likes of Ernie Kovacs, Jackie Gleason, Green Acres, Gilligan's Island and the like. The first time I saw Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, it was like the scales fell from my eyes, seeing what really good comedy should be, and I just couldn't stand to watch American comedy much after that.

Of course, we do have the Marx Brothers, Mel Brooks, and the first six seasons of SNL, but they're the exceptions that prove the rule.

Google adds automatic captions to YouTube

Mike Flugennock
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oh, fan-frickin-tastic...

...so, how much more real estate will this gobble up from my videos on top of the goddamn' pop-up ads? It's already a big enough pain in the ass remembering where to click to turn the friggin' annotations off. Those goddamn' things are nothing but a big, fat annoyance. I've reached the point where, if it's something I really _really_need_ to see, I just copy the video URL, and use KeepVid or ClipNabber to download the video as an mpeg4 so I can watch it in peace without having to stab at a button to turn off the annotations or get rid of a friggin' ad.

Fargin' bastidges. I'm about _this_close_ to ditching YouTube for LiveLeak, or Viddler. Hell, I've already got accounts set up on both of them. I'm leaning towards LiveLeak -- even though their system of posting is a bit confusing -- because so far, I haven't seen that much in the way of pop-ups. Viddler, unfortunately, on top of the Google pop-ups, is also running "post-roll" commercials that disable the stop button. Assholes.

California votes in HD TV power pruning law

Mike Flugennock
FAIL

great HDTV power-saving idea

Just turn the goddamn' thing off and unplug it. Take a walk. Go to a museum. Read a book.

Nancy Grace, Oprah and Project Runway in wide-aspect high-def are still crap.

MS store staff in spontaneous electric boogie

Mike Flugennock

@AC 18th November 2009 11:52 GMT, re: diner

That wasn't a _real_ diner, but likely one of the cheap simulacra that are springing up all over the States, now that the yuppies have discovered diners (along with dive bars, which are being similarly ruined). Luckily, you got to fly back home to Britain, and I'm stuck _here_.

If it were a _real_ diner, the most effusive marketing would've been in the form of a waitress who may have been a real hottie in her youth, but who's now in her fifties, wearing a uniform just a bit too tight, who hovers over you while asking in a husky, rasping, pack-a-day voice, "Hi, what can I get for ya' hon'?"

Oh, and btw: the British, stuffy? Excuse me, but would this be the same Britain who gave us The Ministry Of Silly Walks, and a certain Mr. Anderson who plays the flute while dancing on one leg?

Mike Flugennock
Pint

@Sarah Bee, re: Gob-smacking isn't the _word_...

Yeah, I guess there's a chance of that, but, still... this _is_ Microsoft we're talking about, here. This had all the spontanaiety of the scene in "Fame" where we're all expected to believe that a bunch of performing-arts students would spontaneously burst out into the streets, doing all their moves exactly right while dancing on cars. These sales droids all knew the moves. They all knew when to clap and chant "Microsoft!" -- and, they put that redhead in the green t-shirt with the admirable knockers right in the front row, where people in the mall could see her.

The only thing missing here was Steve Ballmer himself bursting in from the back of the store, armpit-stained, sweat-flecked bald head glistening, jumping and skipping grotesquely through the crowd while bellowing, "I...love...this...COMPANY!"

Pint Of Lager Icon -- only because there's no Pint Of Stout icon, which I'm going to need several of if I expect to kill off all the brain cells which are storing the memory of having seen this video.

Mike Flugennock
WTF?

Gob-smacking isn't the _word_...

Spontaneous, you say? Oh, man. Give me a big, fat _break_, already. You actually cancelled a Mac order and bought a copy of Windows 7 because of _this_?

A bunch of multi-colored-shirted employees at a Microsoft store -- mind you, the company that gave us those wretched Seinfeld ads, and the Windows 7 Tupperware Parties -- suddenly "spontaneously" bust out into the clappy dance? It looks like something taught to people at those weird-assed, cultlike corporate management training retreats -- you know, right after the Falling-Backward-While-Trusting-People-To-Catch-You exercise, and the firewalking exercise.

Maa-aaan, that is some of the creepiest shit I've seen in a while, even from Microsoft's marketing department; I didn't last more than a minute before I had to stop it. Mind you, some of the "geniuses" at the Apple shops can get annoying in their own special way (and I've been using the OS Of The Gods since 1985), but at least for the most part they're actually busy helping customers figure stuff out instead of performing crass, shallow stunts.

Jayzus, that's some nasty shit. Looks like they could stand to be taught another dance -- a long-time favorite dance of mine: the Fish-Slapping Dance.

Google Docs set for 'get rid of' Office moment

Mike Flugennock
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I may have a Get Rid Of Office Moment...

...but it sure as hell isn't going to be so that I can turn my work over to friggin' _Google_, f'cripesake.

We have Office 2004 -- or at least the bits of it that we need -- on all three Macs at our house (G4 tower, two G4 iBooks) as my wife uses Word and Excel for a fair amount of her work: Word for actual text-document work, and Excel for schedule/event tracking (her "retirement job" is booking musicians for local festivals).

Even though I've slipped her a copy of Creative Suite, she still insists on using Word to lay out brochures, and when she runs into trouble, she yells for me to help her -- as if I know jack shit about Word, other than that _it's_not_a_page-layout_program_, goddammit. Countless times I've offered to show her some basic InDesign chops, so that she can lay out her business cards and brochures in a proper layout app, but she just won't hear it. I've given up.

As far as the "Get Rid Of Office Moment" -- as I mentioned, the wife uses Word and Excel way more than I do. I barely touch Word, and only when getting copy for a brochure or newsletter layout from a client, so that I can strip out all the formatting and markup and other extraneous crap, and export it to a plain text file so that I can format it properly in InDesign. I've hardly touched Excel since I installed it; I've used it a grand total of _once_ in the two years I've had it, and that was to crack open a couple of pie charts so I could export them to Illustrator, where I could gussy them up properly for an annual report layout. I have PowerPoint on the G4 Tower; I installed it with the idea of learning my way around it sometime, but I just haven't been motivated; I launched it once or twice after installing it to make sure it installed correctly, but that's about it.

So, the "Get Rid Of Office Moment" is pretty much academic for me, as while I have it on my computer, I pretty much act as if it isn't there, save the occasional Word file destined for a layout in InDesign. And, assuming a GROOM -- hey, cool accidental acronym, there -- I'm sure as hell not going to do it just so I can turn over all my work to Google so they can mangle it any way they damn' well please, and lose it in the "cloud", and so I can lose access to it and the ability to work with it on those occasions when connectivity goes south. I mean, c'mon; screw _that_ noise. Frying pan, meet fire.

Mike Flugennock
WTF?

@unother.dj 14th November 2009 10:17 GMT

Word = Photoshop? Dude. Bite your tongue.

Photoshop works like a champ, was easy to learn, and can handle pretty much everything I throw at it and, unlike Word, doesn't pause at random moments, making me think that it's hung or crashed while it sits there doing its imitation of Curly Howard ("I'm tryin' to think, but nuthin' happens!")

Photoshop gives me almost pure joy and satisfaction. Word, on the other hand, makes me bash my head on the desk until my brain dribbles out of my ears.

Michael Jackson planned 'robot duplicate' of himself

Mike Flugennock
Grenade

Oh, if only I had a million bucks...

...so I could buy up all those body scans and plans and such, and destroy them immediately.

The original Michael Jackson was insufferable enough.

Microsoft defends Hotmail's cookie requirement

Mike Flugennock
FAIL

D'ahhh, I don't need no goddamn' "experience"...

...I just want to get my mail*, read the news, and find out what I need to know.

Any of these bozos blabbing on about my "user experience" is just blowing smoke up my ass.

------

*...but I use T'Bird for that, anyway.

Mike Flugennock

@RW 13th November 2009 16:31 GMT

RW asks: "Haven't the designers of these brain-dead systems heard that the internet is a hostile environment where unknown domains are viewed with extreme suspicion?"

If the blizzard of requests from unknown domains isn't bad enough, it's the requests from dotted-quad numeric IP addresses. There's a fistful of sites out there that I come across which trigger announcements from Little Snitch that "XXX.XX.XX.XXX is requesting access on Port XX"; these requests, obviously, get an immediate "Deny Until Quit".

I don't know about the rest of you, but when I'm browsing, requests for access from numeric IP addresses are shot on sight.

YouTube tests skippable pre-roll ads

Mike Flugennock
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Not directly related, but...

...my favorite part of every Flash site has always been the "Skip Intro" button.

That said, I'm about ready to start posting my stuff on LiveLeak, as it hasn't been entirely ruined by advertising yet. Granted, my pieces aren't the type that get over a million views and attract ads like flies to shit, but, still...

...hell, as far as that goes, I'm about ready to go back to just posting mpeg4's on my local Web space, and passing the URL around.

Google smothers stranded US holiday travellers with Wi-Fi

Mike Flugennock

Holiday travel...?

What is this "holiday travel" you speak of?

Oh, yeah... that thing people do on airplanes when they feel just haven't been punished enough already.

Holiday travel for the wife and I consists of driving about fifteen minutes across town to visit her daughter, the daughter's husband and our freshly-minted granddaughter for Thanksgiving -- and about two hours' drive up to South Joisey on Christmas Eve to visit the wife's sister and remaining family.

What the hell kind of masochists _fly_ anyplace for the holidays? They must either really, really love their families or have been really, really guilt-tripped by them.

Oh, and what other "gift" do I get from Google along with the free wi-fi -- perhaps a wide selection of "targeted" seasonal advertising from all the surrounding airport hotels, and all the overpriced gift shops in the terminal?

Too bad you guys don't offer us a "M'eh" icon.

Google backs enormous load of balls for Olympics

Mike Flugennock
FAIL

Crowd farm? Own an LED? People power the Cloud...?

>BOOM!< Ouch. My brain just exploded.

Security firm chokes sprawling spam botnet

Mike Flugennock
Pint

@Mike Powers 10th November 2009 17:50 GMT

D'ahhh, "terrorism", my ass.

Where I come from, we call that "payback", and it's a _bitch_.

Epic WIN! Congrats, you guys!

Kiwis slap 'vacant' sign on Paris Hilton

Mike Flugennock
Coat

She's so pretty, oh, so pretty...

Vaaa-aaaaa-CANT!

Sorry, so sorry. I'm gone. Mine's the one with the copy of "Never Mind The Bollocks" in the pocket.

El Reg's LHC visit - Deleted Scenes

Mike Flugennock
Coat

Hang on a second, what tha'...

...imagine my disappointment when I clicked on the headline and all I found was actual photographs of the actual Large Hadron Collider.

I was totally expecting a nice, juicy Playmobil spread. Humph.

C'mon, you guys; Playmobil coverage or it didn't happen.

Mozilla aborted IE in Firefox clothing

Mike Flugennock

@asdf re: Firefox

I don't know which OS you're on, but FF 2.0.0.20 on a G4 tower under OSX runs like a champ. I tried 3.x on my iBook, but 3.x was dog-slow, so I downgraded to 2, and all is well. The wife still has FF 3.x on her laptop; she complains that it's slow, and I've offered to reinstall FF 2, but she's one of those people who refuses to be taught anything -- so I just let her be, and be thankful that we aren't running Windows at this house, as I'd never get any designing done for all the time I'd be pissing away scraping viruses and trojans and spyware off of her system.

Just for the hell of it, though, just to see what all the fuss was about, I just now went over and downloaded a copy of Opera 10 for OSX. The little fucker wouldn't even _launch_ -- you double-click it, it does the little zoomout effect, and... nothing. So, I went back and downloaded the most recent rev of Opera 9. It ran OK, but right off the bat, Little Snitch flagged two attempts by Opera to phone home; I clicked "deny", after which Opera refused to load any pages. So, I quit and relaunched Opera, and told LS to "allow until quit", after which everything worked fine. It even imported my bookmarks. Cool.

It was shortly after that when I realized why I ditched Opera after less than five minutes the last time around -- absolutely no control over the appearance of advertising, whether as gifs or Flash. I went to the Drudge Report page -- which I read purely for cheap laffs, I assure you -- and immediately remembered why I use Firefox/Flashblock/Adblock/NoScript. Opera's total lack of any kind of media filtering means I was hit in the face with the Drudge Report in all its horrifying Flash- and wiggling-gif-infested glory. Now, with the benefit of experience, I can belatedly join the El Reg Chorus Of Guys Telling Opera's Honcho To Quit Whining, Because Your Browser Sucks.

So, long story short: I'm sticking with FF 2, and this old copy of Mozilla, for those really anal-retentive sites that won't load under Firefox.

Legendary McLaren F1 designer talks up e-car plan

Mike Flugennock

Don't know about the seating

Far be it from me to second-guess a guy who designs McLaren F1s, but, still... that seating arrangement looks real goddamn' uncomfortable -- like a lot of mini-cars or pseudo-sportscars which claim to seat four, but only if your backseat passengers happen to be midgets.

Seriously, if these sketches are anything to go by, I've seen more backseat room in a goddamn' '72 Beetle. Oh, and I've seen future-car concepts that propose one-in-front, two-in-back seating going back to about the early 1940s, and it looked uncomfortable back then, too.

US woman to drop sprog live on internet

Mike Flugennock
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@Stratman 6th November 2009 14:10 GMT

Alright! Another backwards film freak heard from.

My parents and teachers honestly couldn't figure out what we saw in that. Running stuff backwards gave it this strange, surreal, dada-esque quality, real but unreal.

My own personal fave was, in our senior-year film class, watching the last ten minutes of "Guns Of Navarone" backwards. Man, was _that_ ever a treat. We had the whole class howling.

Mike Flugennock
FAIL

Hey, lady; 1998 called...

...and they want their stupid-assed, totally-played Internet media gimmick back.

And, no, I do _not_ want to look at your goddamn' Baby Bump. Yeeeesh. Frickin' famewhores.

Peugeot's bulbous BB1 e-car bound for Blighty

Mike Flugennock

@Francis Offord Wednesday 4th November 2009 12:54 GMT

Dude. You haven't _seen_ ugly. You're obviously slightly younger than I.

To my previous comment re: '52 Nash Metro, I'll add only one word: "Isetta"

When I was a young service kid, while our family was stationed in Germany in the early '60s -- and again in the late '60s -- I saw nothing on the road as nasty-looking as the Isetta, even beating out said '52 Nash -- along with those dorky little rear-engined Renault sedans -- for sheer concentrated ugliness. Also, while I'm sure the Isetta was intended as an urban runabout, I saw them regularly on the Autobahns doing upwards of 70+mph, and remember thinking that the people driving them out there were absolutely batshit.

Mike Flugennock
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Jeez, you guys; it's not _that_ bad-looking...

...actually, I think it's pretty snappy. Hell, I think the Smart's not too bad-looking, either, as far as that goes.

Either one's light-years sharper-looking than your average 1970s American e-car concepts, which look as if they were designed to deliberately sabotage e-car sales.

Of course, if y'all _really_ want to talk fugly, let's talk about the 1952 Nash Metropolitan which, imho, pretty much set the standard for absolutely butt-ugly two-seat urban runabouts:

http://barbersshopauto.com/_mgxroot/1957-Nash-Metropolitan.jpg

Google embraces Wave's permission chaos

Mike Flugennock
FAIL

Waitaminnit! I've seen this before...

...long, long ago.

This shit's just warmed-over "groupware", isn't it? Except it's "groupware" in the "cloud". Dog help us all.

Yeah...I remember "groupware"...one of those solutions in search of a problem. Jeezus, I can't wait 'til this '80s nostalgia crap is over.

Mike Flugennock

@DZ-Jay re: "well, we meant to do it that way..."

...yeah, kind of like my cat, whenever she misjudges the distance between the coffee table and the sofa and ends up doing a face-plant on the carpet, then trots off with this attitude like, "I meant to do that..."

Mac art project game destroys aliens files

Mike Flugennock
FAIL

ART project?

An _art_project_, he calls it?

Jeezus H., man; don't art schools teach those goddamn' kids to _draw_ or _paint_ anymore?

Wallace and Gromit get the Google doodle treatment

Mike Flugennock
Pint

@Tim48

Thanks for the heads-up, man.

Actually, I tried the link in the article, got google.co.uk, and there were W&G happily tinkering away.

True, Jim Henson was a genius -- even though I was already technically too old when Sesame Street first got popular, I still used to watch it for the puppet work -- but Nick Park is an even bigger genius.

Actually, as much as I dig Wallace'n'Gromit, one of my favorite Nick Park pieces was one featuring interviews with zoo animals speaking in the accents of their native habitats; the funniest bit was an interview with a leopard speaking in this elegant, sexy Brazilian accent. Too damn' much.

A wedge of Stilton and some crackers with that pint, please...

Mike Flugennock
Thumb Up

no such luck here in the Colonies...

...where The Evil One is serving up a custom masthead featuring Big Bird. Huh. What a letdown.

Messenger beams back colour snap of Mercury

Mike Flugennock
Thumb Up

@AC 4th November 2009 10:50 GMT

If you look at any of the color images from spacecraft or rovers such as Cassini or MER, the accompanying press-release captions will _specificially_state_ that the fotos are _approximate_ true-color and specifying which filters are used to build the image.

Still, given that, you've got to admit that they come pretty goddamn' close, especially the MER rover fotos.

The issue with the lack of polar images is largely to do with the trajectory the spacecraft take on flyby manuvers such as the latest MESSENGER flyby; once they arrive in permanent orbit, they'll be in a better position to photograph the polar regions. (Jayzus, man, read the goddamn' articles, already; better yet, just go to nasa.gov and get all the details, perhaps take a chance and learn a little bit about celestial mechanics.)

@BristolBachelor: amen to that, pal. You don't hear a whole lot of people -- or a whole lot of Americans, at least -- complaining about the massive buttloads of cash thrown away on wars of aggression in Iraq or Afghanistan, or bailing out bankers and stock-brokerage houses, but Dog forbid we spend any money on healthcare, or education, or science, or expanding humanity's reach into the Universe. Nahh, that'd be a waste. No wonder this goddamn' country's going down the toilet.

Irish brogue voted world's sexiest accent

Mike Flugennock
IT Angle

I assume they broke this down by gender...?

I suppose I could get into a woman with an Irish accent, if her name happened to be Enya. (;^>

Still, speaking strictly for myself, my all-time fave has got to be French, by a long shot.

Coming up second, though, would have to be your "classic" British accent (but not Cockney). I don't know what it is about it; a British girl wouldn't even have to look like Carol Cleveland in her prime -- she could be average-looking at best, but all she'd have to do is say two sentences to me and I'd be all over her. I'm serious. I don't know why, but I'm a total fool for it.

IT angle: A Ms. Sarah Bee moderates this board, is quite above-average looking from the fotos I've seen, and I'm sure her accent could totally melt me down.

Mike Flugennock
Pint

American accent last? No surprise there...

...although the "American" accent can differ widely depending on the region.

You've got your New York City -- upwards of half a dozen different accents in NYC alone, depending on where you are: Queens, Brooklyn, Bensonhurst, Jewish/Manhattan... I'm oddly attracted to girls with a Brooklyn accent, for some reason.

Just a bit south, you've got your nasal, "hard" North Jersey, or "Joisey" -- you could be a PhD. from Princeton, but if you're from North Joisey, you'll always sound like a dumbass. Think Marissa Tomei in "My Cousin Vinny".

Then, there's your South Jersey/Philadelphia -- kind of like North Joisey, but not quite as "hard". My wife is originally from South Jersey; it took her years to get rid of her accent, but when we head up to Cherry Hill to visit her family at Christmas, she instinctively lapses back into it.

Then, you've got your Boston -- again, several types: your classic Bahhstn, as in "pahk the caah in Haahhvahd Yahhd," your South Boston, and your Brookline (think JFK).

Then, there's your Southern, of course -- but once again, this depends on whether you're in Virginia (fairly mild), the Carolinas, Georgia, and worst of all, the Deep South: Mississippi, Alabama, thereabouts.

You've got your sort of corn-fed twang in the Midwest, kind of twangy, but not as strong as Southern.

Then, of course, Texas: enough said.

And, moving west, you get your Classic Californian accent which, to the untrained ear, sounds like someone who's been smoking a lot of weed, especially around San Francisco.

Myself, I'm from Washington, DC, mid-Atlantic East Coast, and have what I like to call a "Six O'Clock News" accent -- that is, plain, homogenized, no distinctive inflections, like a TV news anchorman, a sort of American counterpart to the British "BBC English" accent.

Pint of ale icon because, as I mentioned, I'm a total sucker for a girl with a British accent.

Marvel Comics open on iPhone

Mike Flugennock
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Speaking as a cartoonist and professional illustrator...

...I can only respond to this news by paraphrasing David Lynch's famous question re: watching movies on an iPhone:

Who in the hell is so stupid that they think they can read _comic_books_ on their fucking _phone_?

Firefox 3.6 beta promises speed injection

Mike Flugennock

@Defiant re: FF vs. IE vs. Opera

Sorry, man, but I just can't get behind that. As other commenters here have asked -- show me your test results. Huh, didn't think so.

I still keep a copy of the last version of IE released for MacOS -- v5.2.3 -- around, for those few sites left out there that insist on doing historical re-enactments of the late '90s ("this site works best with Internet Explorer"). I haven't touched it in nearly five years.

I ran screaming from IE as soon as the first stable version of the original Mozilla browser appeared (pre-FF), and haven't gone back. In fact, I still keep a copy of the most recent version of Mozilla (before they went to FF) around on both my G4 tower and my G4 iBook for those rare occasions where FF has issues with a site. What the hell; it's old, but it's good.

I tried Opera once -- admittedly, back in the old ad-supported freeware days -- and it ran like a goddamn' glacier, that is, slow and freezing. I haven't bothered with it since.

I gave Safari a quick try when I first got my G4 tower with OSX pre-installed, and quickly dumped it after discovering its inability to import bookmarks from other browsers (what were they thinking?).

That brings me to Firefox. As I mentioned in a couple of other discussions, I'm still sticking with 2.0.0.20 because 3.x ran unacceptably slow, not to mention that I couldn't shut off the site icons that loaded next to site names in the Bookmarks menu, and which slowed FF waaa-aaay down, to the point where I could actually watch the menu popdown being drawn on the screen -- that is, when it didn't cause Firefox 3.x to do its Challenger imitation (kaboom, crash). Btw, FF _still_ doesn't give me a Preference that allows me to turn the damn' icons off in the Bookmarks menu so that FF runs at something resembling acceptable speed. FF 2.x also has the thumbnail icons in the Bookmarks menu, but somehow doesn't have the same slow-loading/crashing issue that 3.x does. I know I'm not the only one having this problem, and I wish to hell they'd frickin' _fix_ it, already.

As far as being optimized for any particular OS, I can say from my own experience that Firefox -- up to 2.0.0.20, at least -- runs quite snappily on both of my G4 systems, especially with the judicious use of NoScript and FlashBlock.

Firefox nabs 30 million users in eight weeks

Mike Flugennock

Phoning home, eh?

El Reg writes:

"Tristan Nitot of Mozilla Europe later told ZDNet UK that Lily's figure was an estimate based on the Firefox browser phoning home every 24 hours to check for updates."

------

Huh. So, why is it it that in spite of my specifically asking FF 2.0.0.20 _not_ to attempt to install add-ons via the Prefs, it still insists on phoning home to Mozilla for add-ons?

Thank the FSM for Little Snitch.

Bloggers go ballistic over non-existent wireless tax

Mike Flugennock
Black Helicopters

The more things change...

...the more they stay the same -- as per usual.

Any of my fellow geezers here remember the old "modem tax" rumor/hoax that made the rounds on a regular basis on Usenet and in email about fifteen or so years ago? This sounds like a modern revival. I'm surprised this rumor hasn't caught on over here, as we've had "Endless September" ever since AOL was hooked up to the 'Net. I first saw it when I first joined a BBS around '89, and it'd show up maybe once or twice a year, usually forwarded en masse by the usual suckers at AOL, CompuServe, Prodigy, etc.

Yahoo! nukes GeoCities

Mike Flugennock
Pint

@ Ed Blackshaw

Oh, yeah! I caught a load of that, too. Freakin' hilarious. Totally caught the look.

Still, about the archivists trying to preserve as many GeoShitties sites as they can: why? I mean, seriously, in the name of all that's holy -- WHY???

Pint of beer, because many of those old GeoShitties sites looked as if they'd been designed after half a dozen or so were consumed.

Google Spanner — instamatic redundancy for 10 million servers?

Mike Flugennock
Coat

Spanner...

...as in, something you throw into the works? Or "monkeywrench", as we call it in the Colonies.

Oh, and "load shedding"? Isn't that what you do a couple of hours after dinner?

Alright, alright, I'm gone.

YouTube video spam promotes Russian real estate

Mike Flugennock

on a slightly related thought... time-share ads...?

This has just gotten me to thinking about the time-share condo infomercials that seem to be all over YouTube like a rash.

Just who the hell is watching _those_? I mean, who knowingly and willingly goes there to view time-share pitches... or, are people steered there the same way they are toward the Russian real-estate ads?

I have a YouTube channel of my own, of "samizdat newsreels" of protests and such, but I don't actually spend a lot of time viewing other peoples' content; still, during the time I'm on, I've seen more than a few time-share condo pitches of varying quality posted, and flagged them to Hell, and -- seeing as how when the wife and I are visiting Puerto Vallarta, we steer clear of those scum like the plague -- wondered the whole time, "who's watching this crap?"

Brother creates direct retinal imaging specs

Mike Flugennock
Alien

Oh, no! He's been Borged!

But, seriously, I can't possibly see anyone in the general public using these besides total geeks, or perhaps those people I see all the time wearing those clunky-assed Bluetooth earpieces with the little blue lights on them ("hailing frequencies open, Captain...")

Still, I could see where they might come in handy at, say, Mission Control, Houston, where flight controllers might want to have a display of certain important systems data visible without having to keep their heads pointed at a regular computer screen on the console.

Otherwise, imho, definitely in that category of Things You Shouldn't Do Just Because You Can.

Alien icon because I, for one, welcome our goofy-looking clip-on retinal-projector-wearing overlords.

Free download turns BlackBerry into remote bugging device

Mike Flugennock

@ frank ly re: loving my "dumb phone"

Damn' straight, man. The only issue I've had is that once in a great while I get the occasional text-message spam; my latest, the other day, was from some mortgage outfit (our house is almost paid for). I registered both my mobile and my wife's on the US DNC List, so I can only surmise that Verizon (spit) sold our number to somebody. Hell, I thought spamming mobiles was illegal in the Colonies no matter what, but apparently Verizon -- if that's indeed the case -- just doesn't give a damn, the ass/arseholes.

Mike Flugennock

loving my "dumb phone" more than ever

When reading news like this, I'm even more thankful for my totally "dumb" and humble little Samsung. It makes phone calls, it receives phone calls. That's it. I love it that way.

Rigid sky-train to fly through magnetic rings on sticks

Mike Flugennock
WTF?

Hey, wait a second...

Didn't I see some wild blue-skying on a system very much like this one in an old issue of Popular Mechanics in, maybe the 1930s? And again, circa 1950s? And _again_, in the late '60s?

Never mind the fact that, according to the above concept art, by the time I finally get to visit Britain -- as I've always wanted to do -- the London skyline will be blighted by this nasty-looking maglev railway next to your famous Bridge? Oh, and Virgin Railway, that sure fills me with confidence. I assume that's the train to the spaceport, carrying a load of rich folks taking a vacation in orbit? (and am I the only one who, on seeing the Virgin logo on anything, can't help thinking of the Sex Pistols?)

PS: Wow, almost forgot "Starman Jones". Awesome book.

UK telly in coke blizzard shock

Mike Flugennock

@ Matt 89 and Robert Ramsay

Uhh, like, what I said there, above. Python were off-the-scale geniuses, sober or otherwise. Some people are blessed with a natural gift of funniness -- Python, Firesign Theatre, George Carlin, et.al -- but then, you throw a bit of psychedelics into the mix, and look out. Needless to say, of course, if you haven't the gift, all the weed in town won't help you...and, as one commenter notes above, the links between drugs -- especially weed and psychedelics -- and artists go back far before Charlie Parker, or the Grateful Dead, or Pink Floyd, or Peter Max, or Jack Kerouac.

I guess my point was that back in college, a lot of Python's absurdist, situationist-type stuff -- Dead Parrot, Spanish Inquisition, Blackmail Game Show, Ministry Of Silly Walks -- seemed to be especially funny while high... although the first time I saw any of that stuff, it was at age 16, before I'd ever touched weed (started in college; I'm in my early 50s now), and it still had me laughing until I hurt.

I do graphic design and illustration as a profession, and political cartoons as an avocation in my off-hours; I'll readily confess that a lot of my "research" involves nabbing a couple of tokes while paging through the wire services or checking out the talking heads on the TV. I've come up with great stuff while "straight", but there's something about weed that sort of kicks the door down, as it were. Ask the Firesign Theatre, or George Carlin (were he still here).

The secret is, of course, to jot it all down, and then next morning with my first coffee, go over them again and see which ones are still funny.

Mike Flugennock
Pint

Totally speculating with no evidence, here, but...

...d'ya think this could explain 95% of all Monty Python sketches? No, not cocaine, but weed.

I've been watching the six-part documentary on Python on IFC here in the Colonies; last night's episode went into some detail on Graham Chapman's alcoholism, and as I watched some of the old BBC clips, I couldn't help wondering whether or not a joint or two was passed around at some of the script meetings.

Not to denigrate the sheer genius of Python -- they couldn't have been that great if they weren't immensely talented to begin with -- but a lot of that stuff seems as if it were written by people who were really, really, _really_ stoned... especially the Dead Parrot Sketch. I laughed like a lunatic the first time I saw that one, while "straight", but the first time I saw it stoned, I laughed until I damn' near wet myself.

And the Nobody Expects The Spanish Inquisition bits -- that seems like it was written after a few bong hits as well. I mean, c'mon... soft cushions? Comfy chair? "Tie her to the Rack"?

Pint of beer, only because there's no little bong icon.

Mozilla gets orientation-friendly with Firefox 3.6

Mike Flugennock
Thumb Down

Not that it hasn't been said already, but...

Bloat, bloat, bloat, bloat.

I'm still using FF 2.0.0.20 on both my G4 tower and G4 iBook, as FF 3.0 was absolutely dog-slow -- not to mention that there's no way to get rid of those goddamn' thumbnail site icons in the Bookmarks menu which, I'm quite sure, is what's slowing things down in FF 2.x and is what almost always sent FF down in flames in early versions of 2.x and 3.x.

I tried a later version of FF 3.x on my iBook and, while it was able to access the Bookmarks menu without crashing -- which is what almost invariably happened as it tried to load all those goddamn' icons next to the site names -- I still had to wait several seconds while FF grunted and groaned as the Bookmarks menu crawled down the screen.

I got rid of FF 3.x pronto, and have gone back to 2.0.0.20, which can at least load that needlessly icon-loaded Bookmarks menu without crapping its drawers.

FF is still my main browser, but I've found myself occasionally tinkering with Opera while waiting for something better as, sadly, Mozilla seems determined to send FF down the road to ruin.

Mike Flugennock

Oh, and one more thing...

Why the hell haven't they fixed the AutoUpdate/phone-home "feature" in 2.x yet?

Are any other FF 2.x users here noticing how -- even if you explicitly turn off auto-update in the Preferences -- FF 2.x still insists on trying to contact mozilla.org for an auto-update? It doesn't happen _very_ often, but on a regular basis; I'll be happily browsing along, and all of a sudden a message pops up from Little Snitch telling me that FF wants to contact addons.mozilla.org. Not catastrophic, mind you, but still annoying as hell, especially when I went to the Prefs and specifically turned the goddamn' auto-update _off_.

Jayzus, you guys, get with the goddamn' program, already.