Soapbox

My old apartment had a flag in its back yard, apparently the flag pole and bench was a memorial for a Marine killed in combat. After September 11, when all flags were supposed to be struck in mourning, that one flag hadn’t been lowered, so I went and drew it down to half-mast, with proper honors. You would think there would be at least one US citizen around who would care enough so a French one did not have to…

The flag seems to crystallize a lot of posturing on both sides of the political spectrum in the US, but people are woefully ignorant of proper flag code. It prohibits wearing the flag as apparel, for instance (except for duly authorized personnel like the military), or its use for advertising purposes (the biggest flags around seem to be those on car dealerships). Burning is also the recommended form of disposal for a worn flag (respectfully, of course).

A 33% hike in Muni fares was announced today. This will hit the poorest people in the city first, and to add insult to injury, this is accompanied with cuts in service.

San Francisco has a budget of over $6B, about the same size as much larger cities as Chicago or Paris, and exceeding the budget of 20 of the US states. It also exceeds the entire GNP of countries like Mongolia or Georgia (in the Caucasus). San Franciscans get little to show for it in services.

One reason why: SF has over 8,000 city employees making over $100,000 a year (the head of Muni is one of them, making $325,000, or more than US Cabinet ministers who make $191,000). The share of the city budget spent on those high flyers is over $1B…

After eight years of a automobile-free life in San Francisco, I bought a car in December 2007. Acxiom had relocated us from our lovely downtown San Francisco office (a 15 minute walk from home) to the outer boondocks of Foster City (viable transit options: none). Before I started commuting, I simply could not fathom the point of podcasts. Now, I understand where they can be useful, but they are still not my cup of tea.

The main reason why is that podcasts are like the remaindered bin at a bookstore (remember them?). Sure, it is fun to rummage through them in search of a bargain, but usually you don’t find the books you really want there, and if you value your time as you should, it is not a productive investment thereof. Audiovisual media like podcasts force you to take them in at their speed, unlike the written word that can be scanned efficiently for triage. The so-called rich media are actually low in information value, “rich” should really be construed as in “rich foods”, i.e. pejoratively.

Audible, the downloadable audiobook company, has a promotion where they are giving away a free copy of Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I was thinking of salvaging the daily 60 to 90 minutes of my life I lose to commuting by listening to books that I actually want, perhaps even learn a new language, and Dr. Covey’s often frighteningly earnest self-help book seemed to fit the bill for a test run. I soon found my attention would wander back to the road and I found it impossible to concentrate on the book, a good thing, I guess.

Back to classical music it is…

I seem to be late to this party, but one of the security updates for Windows XP (.NET 3.5) silently installs a Firefox plugin that:

1. tells every web server you visit which version of the .NET framework you have, in my case

<tt>Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009021910 Firefox/3.0.7 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)</tt>

2. allows websites to install software on your desktop using ClickOnce, a mechanism so abysmally stupid in its insecurity it gives ActiveX a run for its money.

The reason why Microsoft is doing this is to increase penetration of its also-ran Silverlight competitor to Flash for the 20-30% of Windows users who use Firefox instead of Internet Exploder. To make matters worse, the plugin uninstallation button is grayed out. A Microsoft staffer has published instructions on removing this on his blog.

This behavior is of course completely unacceptable. Perhaps Adobe will now join the line of Microsoft-bashers at the European Commission.

Update (2009-10-18):

Good news: Mozilla responded quickly to block this piece of malware. That should also disable Silverlight altogether. Two birds with one stone.

I decided to take action and wrote a letter (PDF) to EC Commissioner Neelie Kroes, apparently the only person in the world who has the cojones to confront Microsoft about its practices.

I never liked Research In Motion’s Blackberry phones. They have excellent support for Microsoft Exchange, but were abysmal for standards-based POP and IMAP. It used to be the only way to do so was to use their webmail client (for all I know, this is still the case). This completely defeats the purpose of a mobile email client. Hey RIM, the nineties called, they want their mobile email back… Even my old Nokia Series 40 dumbphones could do better. If this weren’t enough of a deal-breaker, the stunted web browser would seal its fate.

I was amused to see RIM’s recent marketing messages, like “The world’s first touch-screen Blackberry!” or “The first flip-phone BlackBerry!”. In other words: “our products are so calamitous we dare only compare them to our older models, not to any meaningful competitors”…

Then again, their core market is Windows/Exchange shops that will resonate with the Inferior But Marketable argument.