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While talking to a friend of mine (yes, believe it or not I do have a few friends) he asked if I had seen the new Safari web browser.  I will admit, I don’t follow Apple stuff to much. I’m not a hater, or a die hard Microsoft user, I just no Apply fan boi.  So really I didn’t even know that Safari is up to version 4, or that it had a major release a few weeks ago.  I was informed that it was really cool, and looked great, so I figured I’d give it a shot.

It’s kind of funny though, to go to the Apple website you wouldn’t know that the software was recently released. As a matter of fact to look at the website as I type this, there is no mention what-so-ever about the release that happened in July 8th (today being the 17th so 9 days later).  After a little bit of searching I found the page (if your interested its apple.com/safari It can also be found by clicking the downloads link on the anywhere in the apple site), and took a look at the marketing spiel.  One thing I beginning to hate about companies and their use of the word Innovation.  They don’t seem to care if a technology or setup is out there or not.  As long as it wasn’t done “Their Way”, then they are providing innovation to the market.  The example here is:

With Top Sites, Safari keeps a running tally of the websites you visit and automatically creates a graphically rich page that displays up to 24 thumbnails of your  favorites.

This is not Innovation in itself as the Google browser, Chrome, has had this since release I do believe.  Now they didn’t have it on a stylish solid background, with the thumbnails looking like they curve around the screen. All that though is just display, displaying a users top sites is not a Apple Innovation.  The items below on the page are not even innovative, really they are nothing more then the normal progression of features.  HTML 5 is a up coming recommendation (though not fully set yet) the same with CSS3.  Really the only thing on the page that is possibly innovative is the WebKit project as it is a true derivative work of the KDE project’s KHTML software library.  Also, you would think that companies would word security statements a little bit better. A few months ago, at a “security conference” a Mac was hacked into in under 10 seconds via a Safari 3.2 library.  So reading that a software package has “be built From the ground up with security in mind” tends to make me nervous.  Let me mention again, that yes I’m tearing about the marketing speak on Safari page, but they are not the only ones guilty of this.  So I’m not being a hater, just it happens to be the site I’m talking about right now.

With the negative marketing speak out of the way, I’ve downloaded and installed the software on my laptop, and fired it up.  If anything can be said about the products Apple releases, they look great.  Safari is no exception to this.  Really, if Apple really wants’ to innovate the market, they should leave the feature creep to the other developers  and just show the world how to make those functions work and look good.  Safari’s version of top sites looks many times better then Chromes version, same with the history search that uses page thumbnails so you can see which page on a site your selecting.  Apple lists 150 features for the Safari browser on their website, some new, others not, but since this is my first run with safari, I guess they will be new to me. 

One feature that I need to check out a bit more is the Speculative Loading.  Basically Safari is going to try to guess which page or document your going to go to next and pre-load it ahead of time.  This probably ties in with Apples claim that Safari is faster then the competition.  It might not actually be faster in processing information, it might have just had a head start getting it.  Where as this has some obvious benefits in the rendering category, I have to wonder what it’s going to due to my cell phone bill.  You see many times when I’m on the web with my laptop, I tend to be in places that don’t have wi-fi access.  So instead of Wi-Fi, I’m tethered to my Blackberry under Verizon’s plan. I get 6GB a month of bandwidth, which, since I tend not to be on YouTube or Hulu when I’m tethered, has been more then enough (I will admit though, I really wish there was more bandwidth usage for my money so I can view more video.  But then who doesn’t wish they had more when there is a hard and set limit.)  My concern is though, say I’m on a news site with links to Video that I wouldn’t normally click on cause I’m using the tethered cell connection, that Safari may still be downloading all that information anyhow.  I’m going to have to remember to test that.

Well looks like I’ve got my work cut out for me to test out this browser.  Granted I’m sure if I do some surfing, someone else has already done the work for me, but what fun is that?!

I have a announcement to make! Contrary to popular belief, The Lady in the Lake did not rise, cross the Atlantic, and deliver the Sword Excaliburunto President Obama.  The Oval office did not receive a round table, and the new administration did not don titles of Lord and Lady, and suddenly develop Posh English Accents.

I’m not trying to put a damper on the parties that, as of this writing, are still going on (I heard the new president will be done “for the day” somewhere around 3am for that matter). Yes, I did vote for the other guy. Yes, I would have preferred that my chosen political party would be the ones that bought us out of financial difficulty.  However, my desire of the success of our nation transcends all of that.  So why then would I mock the visions of a new Camelot with this new President? Simple, because, even if he turns out to be a great leader, he’s still human.  President Obama is not the cure for cancer.  To listen to some of his supporters, he will solve ALL our problems.  I should bold that and underline it (well not underline, I hate seeing anything underlined that isn’t a link or a researchcitation) because I swear, some truly believe that it’s every problem.  Just because he took office the Dow should rise (it didn’t) all nations should love us, and be at peace with each other, any form of disease will be cured, all the hungry will have food, no one will be cold, our cars will suddenly have electric motors in them running at 100% (or More) efficiency.  The list goes on and on.  People! He’s only human, and “only” the president.  He still has to contend with the political Machine, which though favorable towards him, still has a state by state agenda.  Nations across the planet look at him, as they should, as a American.  Some nations like our ways, and some don’t.  Who is in office really doesnt’ matter to them as it’s our fundamental ways, that which makes this The United States, is what they like or dislike.  Oh and all the markets went downward today. 

So, if I’m not trying to be a downer, what am I trying to say? Simply put, lets not build up the expectations regarding this presidency well beyond the capabilities of the Office of the President.  Success (hopefully) or fail, we should be judging him on a more human level.  But where would that human level be.  Personaly here are some of the things that I would like to see, things that may still be on the monumental side but don’t defy the laws of physics.

• How about repairing the division that leaders on both sides of the aisle have developed.  Ever notice are sharply people are on politics.  One side or the other, with the middle ground slowly eroding away.  Note I said repair, I think we have some pretty deep seated hostilities here so it might take a while.
• I want my pay check to be more then 3-5% better  each year.  Obviously he can’t order me up a raise, but if each dollarcan get more for my family than what it could in previous years, then that’s the same thing as a raise.  Bonus points if he can do it with out raising taxes, especially unequally.
• I don’t care if other nations like/dislike us.  As long as they have some respect for us, in the sense of don’t make treaties that they intend to break in 2 week (if not less).  I think the one thing that ticked me off about Iraq is all the French and German equipment that we found that the Iraqi’s weren’t suppose to have due to embargoes and such. Thanks guys! Way to be Allies!

Could I come up with more, Sure, but lets just start here. I think that thoese 3 items are big enough to take 4 years to accomplish.   This, granted in my opinion, is in-linewith the sort of things President Obamas’ campaign was talking about.  It’s more down to earh and not the fairy tails that some minds have invented.  If he can come up with even 2 of those, then I’d have to say, rhetoric aside, that he’s doing a pretty good job. 

As I said before, I didn’t vote for him.  But the line of Democrat or Republican is gone now, and won’t matter for 4 more years.  He is my President, our President, the President of the United States of America, and as such, I pray for the best for him, and for our Nation thoughout his term in office.

We all have our code of conduct, the rules we live by.  Today I broke one of these personal rules, and I’m reminded why I had made it.  What was this mistake? I was totally ticked off regarding the Governor’s budget proposals. Now, this at first does not seem so bad. Why?  Because watching the news and hearing some other peoples reactions it seems not too many people like this new budget. But here is where my rule comes into play. Simply put it’s:

Don’t trust the news!

Ok that might be a little too simple but it definitely gets to the point (oh and sorry Dave, nothing personal).  A little more accurate would be:

Trust the news to spin it their way!

And there lies the problem.  None of the news stations that I’ve seen so far are above this yet. CNN and FoxNews are my two primary examples.  CNN leans, politically, heavy to the left (I know, people who like to watch it don’t want to admit it, but seriously they do) and Fox has just a steep tilt to the right (yes, I’m a Republican, and I can admit this to be true.  And no I don’t fear losing my card).  I’ve watched both, more Fox than CNN, just due to my mindset towards whose accuracies I can follow better.  

The rule doesn’t stop there though (hence the reason I need to write them down as they can be rather complex) as it’s followed up with:

Check the references

This one I learned back, around late 80′s early 90′s from the movie Real Genius, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  Basically put the Internet has given us a amazing tool where when somebody said they read some “fact” you have the ability to research it.  Granted you have to make sure your research is with credible sources, just try to avoid the news sites as much as possible.  This is simple for the budget article, just go to New York States Division of the Budget site (http://www.budget.state.ny.us/).

I took the time to start reading the state budget.  There’s a 150 page short version, and a 560 page (both numbers are approximants) longer number laden one.  I’m not going to comment on the longer one, cause it’s well…. long (duh!).  So I looked at the “handbook” that broke down a little bit more as to what’s changing.

Ok, so after the read, I’m not quite so infuriated, as there are indeed many good points to it.  This brings me to the point about what is true (and thus, legally printable) and what is accurate. Lets take one of the CNN highlights.

• Plan calls for major reduction in services, including $698 million for schools

OK lets start with the numbers… we see $698 million which to us seems like a rather large number… I mean I’d love to have just 1% of that.  The School Aid Budget line goes from $21,391 million ( or 21.4 Billion for the rest of us) down to $20, 693 million.  So yes it’s true, the Gov is taking $698 million out of a 21 billion dollar budget.  Panic time? Not hardly, plus some of that $698 mil is due to some accounting trickery of money reduced due to the fact that they aren’t increasing the line item.  Basically put, If my pay was suppose to go up $20 next month, but my boss, due to “Trying economic times”, puts the kabosh on it.  He effectively cut $20 from next months budget (No, my wondrous boss, that’s not a hint or suggestion).  And that my friends is the difference between true and accurate, and why one should always research the headlines. 

One thing I do want to say.  After reading this, I’m not totally upset with this budget, like I was when I linked in the CNN article. But it’s still not the perfect solution in my mind.  It seems like there are areas that aren’t touched on at all, and personally I don’t like seeing the budgets of education systems or our police force dropped at all.  Granted that’s me, and that’s how politics works, but still.  There is nowhere in this budget where we see the politicians who will be calling on us to “tighten our belts” to be doing the same in any significant manor. How many staffers do they really need? And what about their payroll.  Granted, it may be that the Governor can’t call for that, but if he is working with the state legislation, then it could / should be added.

I’m sure, as I research this some more I’ll be able to come up with more areas that probably could use some reworking, but it’s getting late now, and I’m starting to lose focus on the issues (that and I was watching Mythbusters while typing this, that does nothing for the concentration).  So ultimately I need to always remember my cardinal rules about the News, and read before I panic.

I have to get this off my mind to start off with….

I find it utterly amazing the “backlash” over the price drop of the iPhone. There is a reason that early adoption of technology is usually considered being on the “bleeding edge” cause your bound to get hurt from time to time. It just the way that it is. People were proudly declaring that they had picked up their $600 toy 2 months ago. Parading it around, saying how it was SOOOOOOO worth every penny of it. At the time, being the Uber elite was worth the price (you know one of these days I’m going to learn how to add that umlaut, or however its spelled, without going into the HTML, which I won’t do cause I’m being lazy). The price was going to drop eventually any how, what difference does it make if it was today, tomorrow, or another month or two from now. Eventually people were going to be able to get that iPhone for at least half, if not more then what you payed for it 2 months ago. I know why it’s a problem, cause it isn’t worth it for $100 a month to be able to say, “I have something you don’t have”? That’s the only reason I can think of. You only wanted to pay $30′ish a month to say that.
Whatever, as it stands Apple caved and is giving out some credits for the early adopters.

I will admit though, I do feel sorry for the people who got the lower end model that’s been dropped completely. I’d consider some form of refund for them, or at least some low cost upgrade for them. It’s one thing to say, “we need to sell more so we’re lowering our prices” (no not in anyway an exact quote, more of my interpretation of the announcement, same with the next line) but to find out the product that you bought was so not worth the company’s time and energy that they are dropping it already, yeah even I would find that more then just a little annoying.

Well, enough about Apple for now, I’m sure there are soooo many more blog and forum posts on it, that I really don’t need to add much more. On to my Web 2.0 make over.
OK, so, I didn’t get much of a chance today to continue to work on this blog out side of this post. If you must know, which I guess is the reason for blogs, it’s because I had a back log of Buzz Out Loud’s to listen to. And yes, I can multi-task, but I can’t concentrate on every thing I need to do or can do with service X and still pay attention to what Tom and Molly (and a whole bunch of other people the past couple of weeks) where saying. And really I wanted to get caught up. I need to get the car radio adaptor for my player so I can listen to these pod-casts on my way to and from work. Or get a working tape cartridge (yes my car has a tape deck not a CD player, it not a clunker just a little older) that I can connect to it. My ride, one way, to work is about 30 mins. Which granted is shorter then some people out there, but not as short as the 5 min drive to another job I once had. This would help in keeping up with my favorite pod-casts.
Before anybody says it, no, even though a tech pod cast and reading a technical manual don’t mix for me. I can drive and listen just fine, with no chance of a distracted driving accident on my part.

Just as a side note, I deleted a rather large disertation on my theory on how the brain works, and how distracted driving accidents happen to some people but not others, and it had nothing to do with luck. Saving a good 10 mins of your life on somthing you might not have wanted to read. For those who might be interested, I’ll make a seperate page someday and retype it.