This just pisses me off ’cause it’s beyond fucking wrong, and it’s intentional:

As if life wasn’t hard enough, some lowlife, scumbag griefers have taken to deliberate assaults on people who suffer from both photosensitive and pattern-sensitive epilepsy.

Wired magazine reported last month: “Internet griefers descended on an epilepsy support message board last weekend and used JavaScript code and flashing computer animation to trigger migraine headaches and seizures in some users.”

How not to assault your users.

I tried to use AT&T chat to resolve my DSL problem. What the fuck was I thinking?

Please wait while we find an agent to assist you…
Thank you for contacting AT&T Internet Services, my name is Nicole Hodges. One moment while I review your information.
Nicole Hodges: Thank you for contacting AT&T Internet Services, my name is Nicole Hodges, please allow me a moment as I review the information you submitted.
Nicole Hodges: Hi, Dan Tripp. I see that you need an assistance for DSL connection.
Dan Tripp: Yup
Dan Tripp: It’s been completely unusable for several weeks.
Nicole Hodges: I am sorry you are experiencing this issue and will be happy to assist you.
Dan Tripp: My best guess is that y’all shut it off when my neighbor moved out.
Nicole Hodges: Is XXX-XXX-XXXX your DSL telephone number?
Dan Tripp: Yes
Nicole Hodges: Let us check on the line signal using your number.
Nicole Hodges: Allow me to put you on hold while running the line test.
Nicole Hodges: As I run a test on your line, it does not give me results on it. I try to pull up your account and discover that you cannot connect to the internet due to non-pay of your DSL bill. Have you settle the bill or not yet?
Dan Tripp: My bill looks current, according to your online payment system
Currently experiencing network delays, one moment please….
Network connection re-established.
Nicole Hodges: I see. I suggest that you call our billing department to clarify the issue. I cannot access the full information about the payments and bills here on my end. They can explain much further with that. The telephone number to call is 1-877-722-3755.
Nicole Hodges: Is there anything else that I may assist you with today?
Dan Tripp: If there’s a problem with billing, then why isn’t my phone service cut off as well?
Nicole Hodges: Who is the provider of your telephone service?
Dan Tripp: Wanna take a wild fucking guess?
Dan Tripp: Actually, why was I expecting the chat service to be any more useful than calling y’all on the phone? (It’s not… same tortured English, same inability to actually do anything besides read from a script)
Dan Tripp: …same inability to distinguish between one’s head and one’s ass.
Dan Tripp: Who the hell do you think you’re fooling?
Currently experiencing network delays, one moment please….
Network connection re-established.
Dan Tripp: Y’all can’t even maintain a goddamn network connection with your chat.
Nicole Hodges: Dan Trip, this session is being discontinued. Please contact us later, and we will be happy to assist you.
Dan Tripp: You can’t even SPELL MY GODDAMN NAME, WHICH IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU
Thank you for using AT&T High Speed Internet. You may now close this window.
Your session has ended. You may now close this window.

Thank you, Adobe, for all the suh-weet swag and for the free copy of Flex Builder with Charting Components!

The features in the upcoming version of the Flex Builder are definitely upgrade-worthy, especially if you have any interest in AIR. There’s also better-exposed support for creating Flex Modules (there’s now UI for it instead of mostly just compiler flags/switches) which looks like it’ll be a big help.

AIR is a very cool technology which seems remarkably robust for a 1.0 release of a product. Essentially, it allows web developers to leverage their existing skillset and create desktop applications. Most of the demo AIR apps I saw were simply Flex apps that had been copied and pasted into an AIR project, with a single change of one tag… <Application> to <WindowedApplication>. That is just simply badass. Change one tag and your Flex app will run on Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux… and you don’t have to learn any icky Java. (Hey, even Bruce Eckel is a fan of Flex… I think that says something big.)

Overall, the presentations were interesting, though they were given by engineers who didn’t really seem to have much experience presenting. I was sitting in the second row and couldn’t hear several of the speakers due to a combination of loud, self-centered, obnoxious, drunken dickheads in the back and several speakers’ fear of the mic. Presenting is hard, so I can cut ‘em slack, but the disrespectful assholes in the back… grr. I mean, c’mon, Abode fed and liquored everybody up, gave us a ton of cool stuff (shirts, books, mugs, stickers, posters, mail-order Asian Brides…) and all they asked in return is for a couple of hours of our attention. And besides, it was really awesome to see some of the upcoming Builder 3.0 (Moxie) features demonstrated. I seem to absorb demos much more readily than reading text from a book. I guess I’m kinetic… who’d have guessed?

The most interesting product demo’ed, by far, was SlideRocket, which is pretty damn sweet presentation software built using Flex and the Papervision 3D library. I’m definitely going to use SlideRocket in the future. There’s also version of Adobe Premiere which works on the web and has been used by MTV and several other companies to create promotional tools that allow users to create their own music video from existing footage that they provide. An example shown was the MTV remix tool which allows one to make their own custom Nelly Furtado video. Pretty awesome, though it still demonstrates that even the most powerful tools in the world can’t spin shit content into gold. (Nothing could ever make Nelly Furtado listenable, ‘cept maybe a lobotomy… or a truckload of LSD. If she’s like a bird, she wants to fly, then I’m like Dick Cheney out hunting…)

Overall, FlexCamp was worth attending, and not just because of all the sweet treats they gave us. I note that there was a far larger percentage of women in attendance than at RailsConf, and that the audience seemed really diverse skill-wise. I don’t go to geekfests to meet women… my point is that a healthy community will likely have a more ‘natural’ mix of men and women. Women kinda stuck out at RailsConf because there were relatively few (though the ones I met were hella-cool.

Total tangent… I was sitting next to a lady at RailsConf who was working on an application called “Tissue Tracker.” I had to ask… was it a “cutesy” name for an issue tracking system… like T-Issue Tracker… she laughed and said “no, and we’re not tracking used Kleenex either… I work in the healthcare industry and we use this to track tissue samples.”

A few folks at FlexCamp asked questions about things that were eerily telepathic (I totally wanted to know the answer) and several folks asked questions that demonstrated a fundamental lack of understanding/experience with web development. (One person, in particular, wanted to directly access their database without using a middle tier…. no XML or PHP [or presumably “security” or that wackiness called “business logic”].)

The Rails community needs to be more like the Flex community in terms of acceptance and attraction of experiential diversity/focus. The Flex group ranged from server monkeys to UI designers and animators. How many animators are in the Rails community? (And how the hell would you use Rails to do animation? […but that’s not my point.]) Adobe is good a not only making awesome tools, but they’re good at explaining and demonstrating how to leverage their tools to accomplish stuff. And that’s the point.

Somebody really needs to start a PeepCode-style screencast or the like for Flex. That’d be the bomb.

I’m at RailsConf2007, and while it “officially” starts tomorrow, I’ve already had a good ’nuff time that it’s been worth the effort to get here… nevermind that there are three more days of Geekfestness and that I’ll be seeing four of my favorite human beings early next week.

Lou Springer posted some pictures on his blog of the Flex on Rails “Birds of a Feather” “session,” and I’m in one of ‘em with my hand in my groin. Perhaps that summarizes how awesome Peter Armstrong’s presentation was… though it was entirely too short (the presentation, that is…).

I couldn’t agree more with Lou’s comment:

The one-hour BOF presentation went through the Flex and Rails story at a blinding clip. It’s too bad there wasn’t a full session on the subject at the conference.

About six months ago, when I finally checked out Flex, I stumbled across Peter’s book and tried to oder it on Lulu. I had some problems with Lulu’s login process (some sort of session management problem which made me nervous about giving them my credit card info.) so I wrote to him to ask if he’d be willing to sell me a copy directly. After politely responding to a couple of my cranky e-mails, he sent me a copy of the book and suggested that I make a donation to Child’s Play if I wanted to compensate him (he’s an above-board kinda guy and didn’t want to skirt paying taxes on it). I was really, really impressed at the time and after meeting him, I’m even more impressed.

Flex + Rails is some powerful Kool-Aid and Peter’s book “Flexible Rails” is beyond worth the $20 he undercharges for it. Hopefully Peter will get more attention/space/time at the next conference. Take a look at the pictures Lou took… the room we were in was sitting room only. There’s definitely a lot of interest in Flex + Rails integration, and I’m sure it’ll do nothing but grow. I think Peter is a good face/brain to represent this segment of the Railsiverse, and hopefully he’ll gain the attention he deserves in the Rails and Flex communities.

Like Lou, I got a t-shirt which doesn’t quite fit, but I’ll give it to a cute girl and take pictures of her wearin’ it. That’s better marketing (and easier on the eyes, I’m sure) than me wearin’ it, hands down.

I’ve been surprised to run across a number of Ruby on Rails folks who I recognize from the Bay Area. It kinda figures that they’d be here… but it’s just cool to be far from home and see familiar faces. I’m impressed with how cool and genuinely nice so many folks in the Rails community are. I feel like I’m making some new friends that I’ll have for a long time. I certainly hope that’s the case.

I should probably do some name dropping and link-lovin’, but the bed I’m sitting near looks awfully comfortable right now. Besides, a number of the folks I’m meeting will likely end up in my list o’ friends over there in the sidebar… and there are several days of Geek Joy remaining.

This illustration of Mac vs. PC vs. Linux definitely says more than 1,000 words.

It looks like Match.com is going for select target demographics instead of making broad ads to appeal to the masses.

This example is an appeal to gays/metrosexuals:

This example is an appeal to the hair-loss prevention crowd:

This example is an appeal to a niche homosexual demographic:

Interesting, for sure.

I must have one of these when they’re available…

… a company called Polymer Vision, which spun out from Philips in 2006, has come up with an ingenious solution. It’s called the Readius (pictured) and it’s an E Ink display that’s similar to the Sony Reader, except for one important factor — it’s rollable.

You can roll the 127mm (diagonally) E Ink display into a compact form factor that measures 56mm wide, 100mm tall and 21mm deep, so it will fit into a jacket pocket. The Readius can display 16 shades of grey and it has 4GB of on-board memory, so you can store all your books, emails and PDFs on it. It also features USB, as well as GPRS/EDGE and DVB-H connectivity, meaning you can download data wirelessly, too.

The screen unrolls and looks like paper. Amazing.

It makes me all tingly… or maybe that’s the white mocha I just drank in action.

Thank you Commodore 64 for reminding us all of what it’s really all about.

PHILADELPHIA - About 1 percent of Web sites indexed by Google and Microsoft are sexually explicit, according to a U.S. government-commissioned study.

Government lawyers introduced the study in court this month as the Justice Department seeks to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which required commercial Web sites to collect a credit card number or other proof of age before allowing Internet users to view material deemed “harmful to minors.”

The U.S. Supreme Court blocked the law in 2004, ruling it also would cramp the free speech rights of adults to see and buy what they want on the Internet. The court said technology such as filtering software may work better than such laws.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law on behalf of a broad range of Web publishers, said the study supports its argument that filters work well.

The study concludes that the strictest filter tested, AOL’s Mature Teen, blocked 91 percent of the sexually explicit Web sites in indexes maintained by Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN.

Wow, I’ve seen almost an entire 1% of the internet!

(side note: AOL gets props for flitering technology… Jason Calacanis will be blogging about this soon, I bet!)

Periodically I find a story/site/product that makes me say to myself, “wow, Andrew was talking about this two years ago.” While I’m not willing to assign him prophet status, I’ll publicly acknowledge that some of the stuff he’s “predicted” or talked about as being “right around the corner” has definitely come into being. He’s been posting some interesting links to gaming topics recently and has been working on some cool personal side-projects. His blog is one that I’m glad is in my aggregator, and not just because he’s my friend.

So, cheers Andrew here’s another real-world manifestation of something we’ve discussed:

Using ink-jet printers and lasers in the kitchen may seem like a futuristic vision but at Moto restaurant in Chicago, it’s already a reality. Its chefs, who are also engineers, are transforming the traditional dining experience by using inventive technology to create their food and to provide diners with an interactive, multi-sensory experience. Tired of steak and a plate of vegetables? The philosophy of the restaurant is to push the boundaries of known taste, texture and technique and to change the way that people perceive and eat food.

(h/t to the J-Walk Blog, which I follow religiously. Yeah, that’s an intentionally bad pun.)

The quote for today comes courtesy of the Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska):

“The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s, it’s a series of tubes.”

Amazingly, I didn’t know that. From the same clip, I learned that with the internet some people could /gasp gamble online while still in their bathrobes! OMG, what’s next? Working from home while you’re in your bathrobe? What is the world coming to?

Armaggeddon = t-1 and counting.

So, this is the kind of thing that happens when you shut your mouth and start doing… ‘grats Ryan!

This is a great quiz. You’re asked to decide if a given name is a Star Wars character or a Web 2.0 application/company. Brilliant!

I especially like the result if you get all 43 right. (It’s a bit of an “inside joke” in that you won’t get it unless you read TechCrunch.)

TechCrunch is one of the blogs that I subscribe to that detail new and interesting Web 2.0 developments/companies. In one of today’s (last night?) posts, Mr. Arrington shared two pretty funny/cool sites:

• Isolatr, which is a simple parody site. The blurb about “IMolatr” literally made me laugh out loud. Don’t miss the error page, it’s funny too!

and

• Snubster, which is a sort of “anti-social networking application.”

Snubster is a pretty brilliant idea, and I hope Mr. Choung continues to work on it and adds a bunch of AJAXiness. (AJAX is the shiny new wrapping paper/label for “DHTML + JS + XML + HTTP” stuff.)

Better watch out, or you might end up on My Snubster Profile!

This is absolutely spot-on except that it’s missing an entry for QA. The QA portion would be a picture of cow shit in a green meadow, with the caption “What was handed off to QA” underneath.

From the Laszlo User mailing list:

Laszlo Systems, the sponsor of the OpenLaszlo project, has launched a hosted preview of the Laszlo Mail application. We encourage you to try it out at http://www.laszlomail.com, to tell your friends, and to send the developers your feedback.

This is an excellent example of the kind of application that can be built using the OpenLaszlo platform. We congratulate the Laszlo Mail team on this exciting new application. As Jonathan Boutelle says: ” It feels like a candy-coated swiss army knife, an appealing mix of aesthetics and pragmatic design.”

You can read about some of the best practices and performance optimizations that theLaszlo Mail team (and others!) have contributed, on the OpenLaszlo wiki, at http://wiki.openlaszlo.org.

From the product page:

Laszlo Mail puts a high-polish interface on Web mail with features and performance that outshine others - consistently in any browser. The design center of Laszlo Mail focuses on high quality of user experience where the application uses dynamic layout and animation changes to help users to stay oriented within application interfaces and efficiently complete email tasks.

Best,
Oliver Steele
Chief Software Architect
Laszlo Systems, Inc.

Sony is installing malware on your computer according to the article, and it’s a prime example of scumbaggery (or as my friend Adam puts it, “scumbuggery”).

Sony BMG is facing a cacophony of criticism this week following the revelation that some of its CDs are packed with special copy-protection software that conceals itself with an advanced hacker cloaking technique. We think the company is getting off easy.

The firestorm began when Mark Russinovich, a computer security expert with Sysinternals, discovered evidence of a “rootkit” on his Windows PC. Through heroic forensic work, he traced the code to First 4 Internet, a British provider of copy-restriction technology that has a deal with Sony to put digital rights management on its CDs. It turns out Russinovich was infected with the software when he played the Sony BMG CD Get Right With the Man by the Van Zant brothers.

Thanks to SuperDave Slusher for bringing this to my/our attention.

Check out this awesome Visual History of Computer Languages!

This looks interesting. It’s an episode of IT Conversations where David Temkin, CTO of LaszloSystems (makers of OpenLaszlo) is interviewed. From the IT Conversations page:

Before AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) had a name, there was Laszlo Systems, a software tools developer using AJAX-like methods along with with Macromedia’s Flash player to deliver richer Web experiences. David Temkin tells us why he chose the Flash player as a platform. Laszlo went open source and chose IBM’s Common Public License as it was flexible enough to fit their needs without curbing commercial use.

David plans to leverage rich client environments other than Flash Player, such as DHTML, Java and .Net and shares his about thoughts about Eclipse, the recent Adobe/Macromedia merger, refactoring the desktop user interface and calendar interoperability. He also explains why Flash is not an ideal platform for mobile devies and desktop applications and compares Laszlo Blog Boxes to widgets in Apple’s Dashboard and Yahoo’s Konfabulator.

It looks like the IT Conversations site has been streamlined a bit… I was able to download the mp3 without having to jump through hoops. Thumbs-up on that one, Mr. Kaye.

I was piddlefarting around with OpenLaszlo a few months ago, and was basically on the cusp of doing something useful with it… but got sidetracked (of course). I found that the documentation was a bit too sparse for my liking. OpenLaszlo needs a good solid tutorial that walks one through creating a simple application that includes non-trivial bi-directional client-server communication (maybe like a blog editor or something). Most of the samples send simple parameters to the server and get an XML response back. Most of the stuff I’d want to do aren’t uber-complicated, but it’d be helpful to have some of that spelled out in a decent, well-written tutorial.

While I like OpenLaszlo overall, I find myself caught up in trying to figure out how to do things that seem like they should be simple, or at least documented somewhere other than in sample code.

While yes, I could spend a couple of thousand dollars to go to one of their training seminars, I’m not gonna. I’d consider writing said client-server sample app tutorial, but a) I don’t have the time, b) I’m not really a big enough Laszlo fanboy, and c) I don’t think I’d want to deal with the nitpicky comments from internet folks. I dunno. Right now I’m busy working on learning to Think In Java.

Actually, I wrote a simple thing to play around with Laszlo forms and to look at the server response. Perhaps I’ll post that sometime soon and see how bad the razzing is.

edit 03/18/2006:For some reason this particular post attracts a bit of comment spam (I include unsolicited links to blogs/podcasts in that category), so I’m turning comments off.