Why I really hate Wikipedia administrators, Part II

Last week’s post generated a lot of controversy. Here are some more events that have happened to me since I posted my previous post:

Why I really hate Wikipedia administrators

Wikipedia administrators have turned Wikipedia into an online totalitarian regime, and no one is doing a darn thing about it.

Coming soon: Monthly blog reports

I decided last night to give a monthly status report of my blog to the readers of this blog. It will be categorized as “Monthly Blog Report” and will contain statistics and analysis for this blog.

Another example of phony weight loss programs

Pills, diets, hypnosis, and… smoothies. These are just some of the millions of cures posted online and through digital media to appeal to customers with weight problems. Unfortunately, many of them don’t work, and even the testimonials used to support them are not typical results or are just fake.

Last night I was listening to the radio and heard a commercial for Right-Size Smoothies. Part of the commercial said “I just got off the phone with a woman who ordered Right-Size Smoothies…she’s already lost twelve pounds in seven days”. Yeah right!

Another claim the advertisement made was that it knocks out your appetite and helps you burn more calories than you take in. Sure, not eating much should lead to weight loss, in concept, but this can cause malnutrition and other health problems. And you’re only burning more calories than you take in because you’re barely taking in any calories.

The most shady part of the advertisement: “We’ve developed a cutting-edge appetite manager called apamin. It’s in the smoothie, you drink it, it knocks out your appetite…that leads to weight loss”. Apamin. What a fancy word. Unfortunately, apamin is the toxin that’s found in bees’ and hornets’ stings and it’s a nerve sodium-channel blocker. You don’t want the feeling of a bee sting after you drink anything, do you?

So the first advice to weight loss- pay no attention to the phony weight loss scams out there.

Blogger blog deleted

Why?

1. I like WordPress better.
2. Managing two blogs requires twice the effort, and I only have one.
3. I find no practical use for it.
4. All my friends use WordPress.
5. Blogger doesn’t come with so many features.
6. This blog was created first and it has more content.
7. That other blog was never intended to be created.

So please do not visit http://deathgleaner.blogspot.com anymore, since it will be empty.

Top Ten Reasons why Internet Explorer 6 Sucks

We all know that fact, that IE6 sucks, or do we? Apparently, 15-20% of the online population using Internet Explorer doesn’t know. So here’s to the people using the crappy browser:

1. Crappy page rendering- Internet Explorer 6 was introduced in a time where HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, and CSS were still emerging technologies. They’ve gotten way better now, but IE6 hasn’t. Nearly every website I visit with IE6 is messed up in some way.
2. Slow as a snail- Browsers have gotten undoubtedly faster and Internet Explorer is still crawling along with it’s slow rendering engine.
3. Plain interface- The buttons for IE6 look so bland, un-interesting and huge, a far cry from what Firefox, Safari, and IE8 have.
4. It’s old and outdated- For computer software, time doesn’t heal, it destroys, just like what Newton said in his Second Law of Thermodynamics.
5. No extendability- Firefox, Opera, and IE8 all have extendability features, be it add-ons or widgets. Who’s ever heard of that in Internet Explorer 6?
6. It’s being ditched as we speak- Right now, over 150 companies are letting go of IE6 by displaying a banner to IE6 users to upgrade, or just denying IE6 users access to their website.
7. Almost everyone, especially web developers and “nerds”, hate it- Speak to anyone out there who knows computers and you’ll hear them say IE6 sucks one way or another. These people are intelligent and this time, what the public says is true.
8. Lack of security- Internet Explorer’s security “wall” is like swiss cheese — tons of holes for spyware, malware, and viruses to get into your system.
9. Besides #8, there’s hardly any features- Private browsing, add-ons, security checks, tabs, advanced error console — all missing.
10. There’s better browsers out there- Either Internet Explorer sucks or every other browser is just way better… or both, and I’ll bet you a rock could beat Internet Explorer for speed and security.

You all know me, I’m an Internet Explorer 6 hater. I just wanted to whine about this crappy old browser, and I will continue doing so until every last copy of Internet Explorer 6 is crushed, deleted, incinerated, and sealed in a nuclear fuel depository for the rest of history.

TRY THIS IF YOU DARE

I’ve been trying out this music notation program called MuseScore. It can do some pretty awesome stuff, like mega-glissandos as shown below:

They are pretty crazy aren’t they?

I DARE YOU to try them out. See how much it hurts your hand. You can also access a PDF version here: crazy glissando

Listen to a recording of these played by a professional (NOT): http://oks.kicks-ass.net/~onekopaka/mwtrunk/images/6/69/Crazy_glissando.ogg. Oh, and if that link doesn’t work because you’re using a crappy browser, then head on over to http://oks.kicks-ass.net/~onekopaka/wiki/File:Crazy_glissando.ogg.

(Well actually, some of the notes are below the range of a standard piano so good luck!)

UPDATE: Added a nice coda at the end. Good luck with that!

The answer to “If humans evolved from monkeys then why are there still monkeys?”

Earlier this month I asked this question on my blog to see if anyone would be able to answer it. One person wrote and guessed that humans evolved smart enough to preserve monkeys, and that this was a rare instance. But that’s not the answer.

The answer is simple enough: humans didn’t evolve from monkeys!

So yes, this was a trick question, and it took me 30 seconds to realize that.

Humans and monkeys shared a common ancestor as they are both hominids. That doesn’t mean they evolved from each other. It’s like saying “if I evolved from my cousins, then why are my cousins here?”

Reblog: IE6 No More! Popular Web Companies Start Project to Kill IE6

This article first appeard on Mashable: The Social Media Guide under the title “IE6 No More! Popular Web Companies Start Project to Kill IE6” by Ben Parr and has since been edited by Deathgleaner for use on this blog.

We’ve made no attempt to hide our belief that Internet Explorer 6 must die. IE6 is an ancient browser that does not support many of the major innovations of the last 8 years. Yet it is still used by 15-25% of Internet users – and that fact alone is holding us back from a new area of web applications.

Luckily, we’re not the only ones that feel this way. Twitter users and the Digg community both rallied behind our battle cry. But now a high-profile group of startups, most funded by the well-known early stage venture firm Y Combinator, have started their own initiative, IE6 No More.

The simple website provides a very concise case for why the Microsoft browser must be abandoned to promote innovation on the web. It then provides a call to action: embed a line of code that will tell your website visitors still using IE6 to switch to a modern browser.

Here’s what you would see on a website that has the code implemented:

The campaign is led by the website creation company Weebly with the support of about a dozen popular websites and startups. At last count, the startups include: Justin.tv, Disqus, Posterous, Reddit.tv, Divvyshot, Buxfer, Twitluv, Digital Dandelion, Happn.in, Defensio, and 31bits.com.

While it’s great to see companies taking a stand against the broken browser, we can’t help but wonder whether this type of campaign will make any impact, given that many users of IE6 are only using because of work/IT restrictions or are in underdeveloped countries. David, co-founder of Weebly, gave us his thoughts on the matter:

We think we can have a huge impact: For those users that are just unaware they are using an old browser (mothers, grandmothers), we’d like to encourage them to upgrade and have a better experience using our sites. For those users in corporate environments, we’d like to start putting pressure on the IT department to upgrade — the more users who complain about seeing the prompts (especially if coming from the top), the more pressure the IT department will have to either upgrade IE 6 or install Firefox side-by-side with IE 6 for compatibility reasons.

These startups are fighting an uphill battle, but nobody said killing IE6 would be easy. If you want to support their movement, be sure to check out their website.

Blog Renovation in Process

This is the third time that the blog has redesigned.

Changes that have already come include: New title “Thought Box”, new theme, and fewer posts displayed so that the posts section of my blog doesn’t take forever to load on slow connections. I’ve also added more widgets to both sidebars.

I plan to add a few new categories, re-tag my posts, and possibly add new pages.

Keep updated!
Deathgleaner.

UPDATE 1: I have just stripped all the tags off the website. As of now, it will be categorized. 432 tags is way too many for me to deal with.

UPDATE 2: Theme changed. So much nicer than a theme crammed with widgets.

UPDATE 3: The tags are back! Not so many this time though.