Free Campaign Consulting

I was listening to the radio at work, the other day, when the station aired a campaign spot for a man I've never heard of. He's running for the senate, apparently, yet all the ad told me about him politically was that a sweet old narrator seems really impressed about the fact that this candidate still gets up and mows his own lawn. Somebody's grandfather also seems comforted by the fact that this aspiring public figure still drives the same pickup truck that he's had for over 30 years.

That's it. That's all the factual information that this campaign ad had to say about this man's qualifications to represent me with a seat in the U.S. Senate. After the 5th time of hearing it that day, not only did I have the "facts" of that ad memorized, and, in spite of my best efforts, an opinion of him had developed the vacuum of any real information about what he'd do for me in exchange for my vote.

Now, I'm not exactly suggesting that I want a multi-billionaire to pick and choose which corners we cut on the way to a tax-break, but I do expect a politician who's made it to that level in his career to... kind of have his shit together. I mean, if he wins, he'll be a senator. He'll probably kind of busy with things that are more important than getting the edging around the driveway just right. Hell, even my Dad started paying a neighborhood kid to rake the leaves after the mortgage was paid off. I guess that I'm supposed to find it charming that he's such a regular guy he'll cut his own grass. But I need to know a little more about a man who'll have the power to vote on whether or not we're going to declare war. It could happen. If I need open heart surgery, I want to know more about my doctor than that his patio is still level two months after he built it himself.

As for the 30 year old pickup truck: that gag is so old it's got hair on it. If you simply have to tell me he's good with long term relationships, will you just trot out his wife for public display like everybody else. I don't care if he's sentimental about a piece of farm equiptment... and I hope to God he can get a car loan. This tells me nothing useful. At least if you'd bragged about how long his marriage has lasted, we could both pretend that it would suggest that he's trustworthy and loyal. In reality, of course, hearing that a politician has been married for 30 years, means that after 3 decades with him, his wife isn't miserable enough to leave him yet.

While I'm at it, I'd like to tell anyone running for public office: stop holding press conferences in the middle of a ranch, in the woods or off the back of a fucking bass boat. Just stop that. It's not spontaneous. It's not even effective enough to be deceitful. Nobody thinks that a CNN camera crew got lost in the wilderness and just happened to stumble across a national political figure leading a crew of landscapers in a brush clearing project. We all recognize these little publicity stunts for what they are: cynical and scripted photo opportunities designed to give the candidate a carefully manipulated image. The only message that this sends to me is that if you are running for office, I can't trust a word coming out of your mouth.

This week's Schadenfreude: Techno Babble

The computer industry is one of my favorite places to pick sides in a fight. Consequently, it is a prime source of schadenfreude. Over the years, I've accumulated a small list of "good guys" that I root for and "bad guys" that I pull against. Some of my winners are people that continually lead the the charge to bring innovative products to market (VIA, AMD, Apple). In many cases, being a "good guy" simply means that you are a company that managed to nail a superior product at a competitive price (ATi). While it's true that some of my "bad guys" just managed to dominate their segment of the market with a crappy, overpriced product (Intel), I do reserve a small reserve of contempt exclusively for the deceitful (NVidia) and the maliciously predatory (Microsoft).

So, let's kick off this week's poetic justice:

AMD

Anyone remember the K6-3? No? I'm sure that AMD tries not to either. Why would they, after all, for the first time in the CPU market, not only has a non-Intel company managed to ship a superior product, but they are doing so in competitive numbers. Here are AMD's Q3/Q4 shipping numbers for it's K8 generation of processors, thanks to Hard|OCP:

Q3: FX - 12,000; 754-pin - 970,000; 939-pin - 250,000
Q4: FX - 14,000; 754-pin - 900,000; 939-pin - 530,000

How is this schadenfreude? Compare those numbers to the measly 100,000 Itaniums that Intel looks to ship for 2004. No wonder HP is dropping the CPU from its lineup. As if this wasn't good enough, AMD actually out shipped Intel in the retail desktop space for the second time in 2004.

VIA and AMD

I hear some of you saying, "Not so fast there, Andy. PCI Express is still an Intel-only motherboard feature." OK, it's true that, up til now, if you wanted 64-bit processing and a PCI Express graphics card, you couldn't have both. It was a choice between an AMD CPU or an Intel compatible mobo... up til now that is. In fact, thanks to some sharp eyes, it's come to light that Abit has a socket 939 mobo with PCI Express ready to go, as soon as VIA can ship them some K8T890 chipsets. I know what I'm stuffing in my Christmas computer this year... an Athlon 64 and a PCI express video card.

Microsoft

Remember how the geeks in your life have been telling you that you couldn't get a virus from looking at naked pictures on the internet? We lied. Well, at least, we lied to you if you wanted to do it on Internet Explorer. The code to a malicious exploit that allows a code to execute based on a flaw in the way Internet Explorer and Office decode jpegs has gotten out. You need to hit Microsoft's website and start patching immediately... immediately after you download and install Mozilla Firefox, anyway. Better start using Thunderbird in place of Outlook and PC602 Suite instead of Office, just to be safe. They're all free and won't get your machine more infected than a sailor on shoreleave in the poor part of Thailand.

Mozilla

This one's not really schadenfreude, unless you consider it a kick in the teeth to Microsoft's browser monopoly. Mozilla Firefox 1.0PR has passed it's millionth download in under 100 hours of availability. Not only that, it has climbed from 4% of the browser market in Jan 2003 to 16.6% in Sept 2004. Somewhere, Richard Stallman is laughing so hard he needs emergency oxygen.

Honestly, all this good news is enough to remind me of the heady days when the Mac beat Intel to the 200MHz mark, or when AMD shattered 1 GHz with a shipping part. I'm sorry to see NVidia besting ATi on Doom3 performance, but it'll probably mean that next summer's Radeons will truly hit with a vengence. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Competition forces the real innovations to the top.

If you Blog or Livejournal do this NOW...

...or don't, and see if I care.

Whether you use Windows, Mac OS X, or some variety of Linux, (or all three, like I do) chances are you already knew how much Mozilla Firefox kicks ass. It's fast and compact, has a small but well thought-out list of features, yada, yada, yada... But one of the best things about it is the community of extension authors that allow you to selectively add features you might want or miss. They have a little bit of everything, from image widgets to features that allow you to hide any element from a web page that you're viewing. (For example, you could "nuke" an annoying seizure-inducing banner ad.) But the feature we're interested in is called Sage.

Sage is a small, streamlined RSS and ATOM newsfeed reader. (Most of you already know what that means, but for those who don't, think of newsfeed as a special text version of your blog that Blogger and Livejournal automatically make available. With the right program or service, you can be instantly notified if a site updates. "You've got Blog!" You can also browse, blogs and other sites by headline or article this way.)

Once installed Sage hides in Firefox ever so quietly until you launch it from the Tools menu. Then it opens a sidebar with your RSS feeds, which are managed in a special folder in your bookmarks menu. You can open an RSS or ATOM feed right in the URL field to a regular window, (which will look like the XML or ATOM code) then bookmark the address to that folder. Renew the link from Sage and Voila! Instant headlines. (Quick tip for Livejournal users, just add "/rss" to any public Livejournal page to covert it to it's RSS equivalent. For instructions on how to do the same for "friends only" pages, go here.)

I love this, as I don't have time to get sucked into LiveJournal the way some of my friends have, but I do want to read their journals when they update. But with this set up, I can have a set of icons sitting in the sidebar of my browser, checking pages for updates (as little or as often as I want) and letting me know if I should look at someones blog, or read an article from Slashdot. I'm really busy during the week, so I love this feature. Until I figured this setup was possible, I just didn't get that excited about newsfeeds, but now I'm looking for a good one for my Palm Tungsten T3 so I can check for updates over bluetooth from the couch.

So, if you haven't downloaded Firefox, check it out. (Hell, while you're at it... Thunderbird is a kick-ass email client without the vulnerabilities of Outlook Express.) If you already use Firefox or Mozilla 1.7 and you don't have a newsfeed routine worked out, give Sage a try and see if you like it. Happy surfing!

(BTW, if you're looking for a free and legal way to open and author Word and Excel files, check out 602PC Suite. You'll be glad you did.)

Schadenfreude: Windows XP SP2

I'm thinking about starting a weekly feature here. For those of you who haven't been infected by this particular meme, Merriam-Webster offers the following:

Main Entry: scha·den·freu·de Pronunciation: 'shä-d&n-"froi-d& Function: noun Usage: often capitalized Etymology: German, from Schaden damage + Freude joy : enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others

So for this week's laugh at someone else's expense, I've picked a company that can certainly afford it, longtime tech industry villain Microsoft. From all appearances the release on Windows XP Service Pack 2 has been an absolute mess for end users and companies' IT departments. I've been collecting these horror stories ever since my Windows Update icon has been telling me that SP2 is available for download and installation right now!

These are from Slashdot.org:

Inspiron owners complain of SP2 slowdown

"- in some cases by a factor of almost ten, from 2.6GHz to 300MHz"

WinXP SP2 = security placebo?

"It may look impressive, but the SP2 package fails to provide several of the most important, basic modifications required to run Windows safely on an Internet-connected machine."

Check for spyware before patch, Microsoft warns

"Barry Goff, a group product manager at Microsoft, said some spyware could cause computers to freeze up upon installation of the update."

And from the Register:

200 apps clash with XP SP2

"Consumers should note that some programs will 'stop working' after they install Windows XP Service Pack 2."

XP SP2 über patch already needs fixing

"The vulnerability allows malicious websites to place an executable file in a user's start-up folder when a user drags or clicks on a program masqueraded as an image."

And from eWeek

XP SP2 Gives Reasons to Switch to Linux

"... I did expect to see some improvement. Boy, was I wrong. Yes, some things are better, but there are also a slew of new, exciting security concerns."

Latest SP2 Flaw Bypasses IE Security Zone

"... the use of an unconventional value in the "Content-Location:" field of an MHTML (MIME HTML) file causes the browser to execute the file in the Local Intranet zone, even though it is run from the local computer."

Mac OS X and Linux users have been telling the IT industry to get off this low-security, proprietary, overpriced OS for years, maybe now a few more CIOs will listen. I run all three operating systems at home. It's true that they all have their idiosyncracies, but bar none, XP is the one that misbehaves the most and expects everything to act the way it acts. Bill Gates and Steve Balmer, your OS security is a joke and people know it. If you're out there: Ha-ha!