Posted by Jonathan
on May 28, 2005
BROWSER WARS
EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE
It is a period of civil war. Open Source spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Microsoft Empire.
During the battle, Mozilla spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the INTERNET EXPLORER 7, a tabbed browser with enough market share to destroy the entire open source movement.
Pursued by Microsoft’s sinister agents, BEN GOODGER races races home aboard his starship, custodian of the stolen code that can save his project and restore freedom (both libre and beer) to the internet…
Shamelessly stolen from Slashdot. I modded it ‘Funny’.
Posted by Jonathan
on May 28, 2005
I often hear, “Dear Jonathan, your web-page does not display correctly in Internet Explorer …”.
My response would be “Install a browser that supports web standards correctly, rather than some old, virtually unmaintained, obsolete, insecure, piece of crap.
In all fairness, I make my money with Microsoft software, but web browsing shouldn’t be the mess it is. Think of the people you know who have 300 pieces of spyware on their machines. “But I didn’t download anything !!”
Microsoft illegally leveraged a monopoly to wipe out Netscape. Luckily for them, Netscape’s browser was a bloated piece of crap, that turned web-browsing into something like trying to use System 7 on a Powermac 6100. A crash a day experience that probably turned people off the Mac forever.
Now, there is Opera, and Firefox. Both are free as in beer, but Firefox is free as in speech.
More people hit this site with Firefox than with IE. Thank-you. And 20% are on Linux! Windows are the SuXx0rs !!
Download Firefox !
Download Kubuntu !
Download OpenOffice !
Posted by Jonathan
on May 28, 2005
I think I remember seeing a couple of the Firefly shows on Fox over the short period it was on, but it never really managed to register with me.
However, the experience of watching the shows in the right order, from the available DVDs proved wayyy more rewarding.
Firefly shows us a future in which humanity has colonized a new solar system. One in which the central planets are civilized and law-abiding, and the outer planets are wild west frontier of moonshine, freeloaders, ruffians, preachers, outcasts, well you get the picture.
Anyway, Firefly the TV series was cancelled … but as with many things that are briefly shown, then taken away … a small spark leads to a guttering flame … a flame that if the circumstances are *just* right, can grow.
According to Joss Wheedon, “Shows that get cancelled don’t ever get made into major motion pictures.”
But, this time, like winning the Texas lottery, the unimaginable has happened. Serenity, the movie of Firefly has been made. And it is good. Very good. Worth a 10 hour roundtrip to Austin for a pre-screening good.
The movie starts with a scene with River. River and her brother Simon are fugitives from the Feds. River is part of a government experiment and they want her back.
In broad terms (so as not to *spoil* anyone’s fun) the movie deals with a large plot based around River, and many subplots and characters that will be familiar from the original season episodes.
The feel of the movie is ‘kinda gritty’ with the effects feeling almost sandpapered into the movie at times, contrasting with the somewhat sterile effects in other movies and TV shows.
This grittiness blends right in with the rough frontier nature of life aboard Serenity and some of the other locations in the movie.
Humor is shot through the movie like gold pellets in a claim scam. The prescreening audience clapped and laughed at pretty regular intervals.
From the first few minutes, right to the end, this was a great movie to watch. Go and see it when it comes out !!!!!