Apple has this great site they just opened, touting the glories of web standards. Yee-haw I say, a publicly facing, corporate campaign to push web standards and tear down the failures of the past… Oops, I was wrong:

The good news is that you can bypass their stupid JavaScript hack browser detection. Firefox users can install the User Agent Switcher plugin and switch to Safari. Now you can get in. Some of the content works, but Apple cut corners when they developed this so only their standards based browsers will fully work. Other standards based browsers like Firefox, and Opera will only be able to see some of the effects.

This is what we must not conform to. If we want a truly standardized experience on the web, we must not let corporations drive it. Fight corporate skewing of open standards to improve their bottom line. Stop them from dictating the terms of our development platform to serve their ends. We must not let them start the browser wars again. A fractured inaccessible web is not tolerable anymore.

This is a direct parody of Steve Jobs letter about Flash.It is intended to be thought provoking, insightful, and inciting.

Being a Macintosh SE, iPhone, iPad, PowerMac, PowerBook, home built PC, Windows using web, Flash, print developer that has working in the training development, corporate marketing, and software development industries for too long… I couldn’t read Steve’s letter without calling BS. Read this with an open mind and consider the end user, not the corporations. I want Flash, my kids want Flash, why because some developer’s do amazing work on this platform and we should have access to it. Content is king. Enjoy…

Apple has a long relationship with Adobe. In fact, we met Adobe’s founders when they were in their proverbial garage. Apple was their first big customer, adopting their Postscript language for our new proprietary, Mac only, Laserwriter printer. Apple invested in Adobe and owned around 20% of the company for many years, hoping to keep them from helping Microsoft take our Design and Publishing customers from considering Windows as a viable platform. The two companies worked closely together to pioneer desktop publishing and there were many good times. Since that golden era, the companies have grown apart. Apple went through its near death experience and I abandoned them, and Adobe was able to expand into the corporate market with their products, and deliver all their software to our Microsoft Windows competitors. Today the two companies still work together to serve their joint creative customers – Mac users buy around half of Adobe’s Creative Suite products – but beyond that there are few joint interests because we can’t control what Adobe produces, or who their target customer is.

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As much as I’d like to get excited about the iPad I am trying to wait and see. Several times a year new gadgets are released and people go gaga over the potential they offer, rush out and purchase them, then lament the flaws they discover after using theses as yet untested devices.
As much as companies test their products it’s only in daily use that many flaws can be found. Repetitive daily tasks, various use cases, unusual routines, and mass usage all play out scenarios the manufacturers (and software developers) can’t even imagine. This is the elusive nature of humans and the tools we use.
So here’s the deal with me and the iPad. I want one but I don’t want to figure out all these issues for Apple. I know it will be a good product but I don’t know if it will be good for me. I have specific things I want it to do, but I’m as unique as the next person, and I can’t be sure that there was an engineer with my unique use patterns to play out all the flaws that this device will have for me. I’d love to have a portable sketchpad, movie watcher, note taker. But I don’t know if it will work as a sketchpad for me, it might. So I’ll wait and play and read and let the market solve these problems before I invest in this new technology.

A month ago I noticed that my father-in-law’s Honda Civic had been tampered with. I wasn’t sure if it was done by the previous owner or when it was parked at my house. Then yesterday when I was filling my tank I noticed my car had been tampered with too. Continue Reading »

I’ve had it! I bought Need for Speed Carbon the day it arrived in stores. I ran out after work handed over my hard earned cash and ran home to install it. It was fun, and I loved it. Sounds great. But the game crashes all the time. Random crashes, no warning, no error, straight to desktop crashes. All the time. Patch 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, none of them do anything to improve the situation. I’ve reinstalled the game, Direct X, updated drivers all the recommended support tips. No good, still crashes. I started playing again, because I love the game and I bought it, and it still crashes. Because it’s random I can sometimes get through a fair bit before it crashes, other times one race. Sometimes in the car store, other times after cut scenes, the last time, which prompted me to write this, right in the middle of a race. ARGGGGHHH!!!!

Maybe it’s my system. Could be. But why wouldn’t Doom 3, Quake 4, Half-life 2, Tomb Raider, Bioshock, or Need for Speed underground, underground 2, or Most Wanted crash then too? In fact no other game I’ve played has crashed. My system is pretty much top of the line. Core 2 6400, 2Gb RAM, ATI 1900XTX 512Mb VRAM.

Why wouldn’t a company write a patch to resolve such a widespread, common problem. This is a well documented issue:

• reaper-x
• Gameguru
• Neowin
• Megagames
• Overclock.net
• Guru3d
• Here is the full Google results link

I understand not knowing how to trace an un-reproducible bug, that doesn’t seem to be a problem here. I understand having hardware that doesn’t meet the system requirements, not an issue as far as I’ve read. I understand abandoning a project, not the case here as there have been three patches released since it launch. So what’s the problem?

More importantly I want to know why EA would think that I would actually buy the next installment of this game that comes out this week, Need for Speed Pro Street, when they haven’t even gotten the last one to work! I for one am waiting to buy this game until the user reviews come out, becasue even the game magazines didn’t report this problem with carbon. Buyer beware.

Update

Right after I wrote this article, I found that the demo was online for Need For Speed Pro Street. I downloaded the 750 Mb file, installed it, and ran it. It trudged through the intro movies, flashy animations etc… Then I set my video setting to match my screen, this game at least supports my wide screen monitor, unlike Carbon. Setup my game pad. Then started the demo for the speed challenge. CRASH!!!!! I tried again, having to repeat all my setup procedures again. This time I quit after changing my settings, anticipating the crash and not want to set up my screen and controls again. Re-launched and tried again to start the race. CRASH!!!!!!!!! Wow, now I really want to buy this game.

Aren’t demos supposed to be the compelling, “oh my this is so amazing I have to play the full game” experience? The “this blew my mind, now I want to give them my credit card number” kind of experience? Oh well, guess I’ll save my money for the Orange Box, Crysis, or anything that doesn’t have the EA name on it. Pathetic!!!

One of the often overlooked problems with our dwindling oil future is plastic. As we continue to burn oil in our engines we are using a valuable resource that could be used for durable plastic goods. When the oil runs out, or becomes extremely rare and expensive, how will we manufacture plastics? We rely heavily on plastics for all our products; electronics, transportation, medical technologies, construction, and housing. There are few things today that do not rely on plastics and polymers.
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As a follow up to the article on cheap carbon frames I wanted to make a few additional points about bicycle quality that are less specific than one frame material. To begin, I think that everyone should ride bicycles. Bicycles provide low impact healthy exercise that is fun for all ages, and even more fun to do as a group. To get started you need to have a bicycle. If you already have one, or need to get one, here are some simple rules to follow when looking for a good bike.
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Hello again and welcome to the Microsoft show, the greatest show on earth. Where the marketing department seems to have a bigger budget than the developers. It seems now that they aren’t pleased that so many people are waiting until the big bugs are worked out before upgrading to Vista. They are now about to launch a new marketing attack to coerce consumers that everything is ok, they don’t need to wait for the service packs. Do they really think that jedi mind tricks work on consumers?I won’t rehash the article but I would like to articulate why people are legitimately hesitant; no two people can agree on whether or not it is worth upgrading! Continue Reading »

There’s great design, and there’s good design.

Carver Engineering has developed technology for vehicles that will enable 100mpg with 100+mph, and a +350mile range…Sounds fantastic! Continue Reading »

I first ran across the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project while browsing Gizmodo one day. My first thought was why would children in developing countries that don’t have access to schools, textbooks, or teachers need laptops? Continue Reading »