reachsneaker: Destiny is overrated. Do what you want.
:IM conversation with a friend (J)
Monthly Archives: July 2001
Dear Netscape, your effort was valiant, but now, please die.
Dear Netscape,
You are the symbol of the fight for freedom from the ongoing domination of Microsoft in today economy. You are the idol for the fight of the small software developer against the bohemoth those of us in the trade affectionaly call “The Evil Empire” You won our respect. You won our admiration. You did what no company had ever done before. You catalyzed the phenomena of the Internet which none of us who were touched by it or experienced by it will ever forget. You are a hero. And for that we salute you.
Another great virtue of heroes is that they accept defeat graciously. In that respect however my dear Netscape you leave a lot to be desired. You lost the browser wars. But you mistakenly thing that the battle is still raging. Let me repeat that for you: You lost the browser wars. So now why after doing so much good for the world, humanity and the Net as we know, why in the name of peace and honor do you continue to plague us with your sub-par efforts to still call yourself a browser!?
Your style sheet support sucks. You can’t render a table without pegging a gigahertz processor. Your support for standards is flailing. Your innovation is dying. You make life miserable for all of those web developers out there who are forced to still support you as a legacy browser. Geez… people are now uttering your name with the same level of adoration as they mention CICS or mainframe!
It’s unfortunate but true… Microsoft whooped your ass and took away the glory. I mean what more do you need to realize that than to get acquired by AOL! Now the most graceful thing you can do, is to accept your defeat gracefully and bow out for good. We won’t think less of you if you do.
best regards,
A well-wisher.
N.B. : This rant is in no way intended to be directed at any of the really smart people who worked at Netscape prior to its acquisition by AOL or to the several open source developers who are writing great stuff everyday. This rant is directed at the Netscape browser. Simply because it just doesn’t cut it any more. And I firmly believe that the folks who are contributing to the Mozilla project are just as capable if not more so of creating software that can kick Microsoft’s ass, but the unfortunate truth folks, is that we’re not there yet… and the first step to improvement, is recognizing what needs to be improved.
Sneaker:1, Netscape:0
Yeah Netscape! Take that!
So after a little bit of putzing around with stylesheets last night, I finally got Netscape to render these pages a little better than the piss-poor, loser-like, pathetic job that it has been doing thus far. So for those of you unfortunate souls still using Netscape… no… my layout skills are not really as screwed up as they looked like they were so far. Hopefully things will look better now.
For more on Netscape, see the upcoming rant on it in reviews in a bit….
Sections which are updated regularly are: quotes, writings, reviews, whatsnew and links.
BTW, just recently set up cgicomments (thanks to knurdle) on the blogs so that I can get your comments on stuff! Lets see how that works!
Eavesdropped!
People should not be allowed to fuck with time!
:Me talking to Brandon when we’re trying to figure out how to deal with all the freaking variations in time, time zones, daylight savings and all the other variations on time.
Vagueness and Continued Ambivalence
Kudos to karenika, gigglechick.com and all the other bloggers out there who have the guts to post all kinds of personal stuff on this public medium. They are definitely stronger than I. I can learn from them. The have the guts to stand out here and say what they really think. And also to relate it to personal life. I’d like to do the same. But everytime I sit down to write this, i keep thinking of all the freaking complications involved in me doing what I think. It becomes worse when someone I *know* tells me that they read what I wrote!! Don’t get me wrong, I love the feedback! I love knowing that people actually read some of this crap…. but when it’s someone who knows me really well, then that gets scary… because even those people who know me well, will be surprised by some of the stuff I write on here. Because this is not stuff I discuss even with them.
I guess I’ll describe it as the Heisenberg Principle for Blogging (I’m reading a book titles Physics and Philosophy by the famous physicist Werner Heisenberg these days, so…) i.e. “Once the blogger knows that the blog is being read, then it begins to influence what the blogger blogs” 🙂 I guess what I really mean is that knowing that people who know me (personally and professionally) have seen the stuff that I write on here, brings back the dreaded ambivalence that resulted in sneaker.org going down in the first place. Because then I start worrying about what people think, what will they react to. The security of the public anonymity (wow, isn’t that a twisted concept…) fades away.
When I made the decision to put this site back up, I had to fight to figure out how much information I should really put up here. The information is out there. And information is what matters. Information may soon be the only thing that matters. But that doesn’t mean that information about me matters. So I should really be able to put stuff up, and use the wonderful title of a book I read many many years ago… “What do you care what other people think?” by Richard Feynman. I’ve always cared what other people think even though I may try not to make it look so… so now the effort is to try not to worry about what other people think.
But, everytime I sit down to write on here, I always land up making the entries intentionally vague. Vague so that even the people who the entries relate to (honestly they almost always relate to people and events) would have a tough time knowing if that’s really what I’m writing about. The security of public anonymity is supplanted by the security of unrecognizability and vagueness. I guess that’s good in a way. Allows me to maintain face and not give away everything! 🙂
I guess the coolest way to end this entry is with a question: Would Anais Nin Blog? 😉