obfuscated.org

Brad mentioned that Google Gears doesn’t work in Safari for Windows. I wondered, naturally, if this wasn’t just a Windows Thing. To find out, I fired up Safari on a mac to try to install Gears. Imagine my surprise when I see the following:

What’s up, Google? I know that there are differences between the browsers and all, but this is just weak. My favorite part is the install button. Here it is on Safari:

And the same thing on Firefox:

Now, I know that this is nitpicking. I know that bugs happen. But seriously, guys. You’re freakin’ Google. You’re the kings of the web. This is a Microsoft move.

You can do better.

The AFI has a 10^th anniversary top 100 films list out. I really haven’t seen too many of these, although the ones I have seen have been (for the most part, excluding “Titanic” which was absolutely awful) very, very good.

Some quick pulls from the list:

My favorite from this list:. “Dr Strangelove”

From the list that I’d most like to see: “On The Waterfront” (Can’t get enough of those HUAC subtexts)

Most surprising omission: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”

(Seen it, haven’t)

1. “Citizen Kane,” 1941.
2. “The Godfather,” 1972.
3. “Casablanca,” 1942.
4. “Raging Bull,” 1980.
5. “Singin’ in the Rain,” 1952.
6. “Gone With the Wind,” 1939.
7. “Lawrence of Arabia,” 1962.
8. “Schindler’s List,” 1993.
9. “Vertigo,” 1958.
10. “The Wizard of Oz,” 1939.
11. “City Lights,” 1931.
12. “The Searchers,” 1956.
13. “Star Wars,” 1977.
14. “Psycho,” 1960.
15. “2001: A Space Odyssey,” 1968.
16. “Sunset Blvd.”, 1950.
17. “The Graduate,” 1967.
18. “The General,” 1927.
19. “On the Waterfront,” 1954. (Seeing High Noon but not seeing this seems like it should be some sort of a crime)
20. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” 1946.
21. “Chinatown,” 1974.
22. “Some Like It Hot,” 1959.
23. “The Grapes of Wrath,” 1940.
24. “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” 1982.
25. “To Kill a Mockingbird,” 1962.
26. “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” 1939.
27. “High Noon,” 1952.
28. “All About Eve,” 1950.
29. “Double Indemnity,” 1944.
30. “Apocalypse Now,” 1979.
31. “The Maltese Falcon,” 1941.
32. “The Godfather Part II,” 1974.
33. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 1975.
34. “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” 1937.
35. “Annie Hall,” 1977.
36. “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” 1957.
37. “The Best Years of Our Lives,” 1946.
38. “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” 1948.
39. “Dr. Strangelove,” 1964. (Should be much higher than #39, but that’s just me)
40. “The Sound of Music,” 1965.
41. “King Kong,” 1933.
42. “Bonnie and Clyde,” 1967.
43. “Midnight Cowboy,” 1969.
44. “The Philadelphia Story,” 1940.
45. “Shane,” 1953.
46. “It Happened One Night,” 1934.
47. “A Streetcar Named Desire,” 1951.
48. “Rear Window,” 1954.
49. “Intolerance,” 1916.
50. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring,” 2001. (I will lose all of my nerd kred when I say: I really didn’t get in to this one all that much.)
51. “West Side Story,” 1961.
52. “Taxi Driver,” 1976.
53. “The Deer Hunter,” 1978.
54. “M-A-S-H,” 1970.
55. “North by Northwest,” 1959.
56. “Jaws,” 1975.
57. “Rocky,” 1976.
58. “The Gold Rush,” 1925.
59. “Nashville,” 1975.
60. “Duck Soup,” 1933.
61. “Sullivan’s Travels,” 1941.
62. “American Graffiti,” 1973.
63. “Cabaret,” 1972.
64. “Network,” 1976.
65. “The African Queen,” 1951.
66. “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” 1981.
67. “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, 1966.
68. “Unforgiven,” 1992.
69. “Tootsie,” 1982.
70. “A Clockwork Orange,” 1971.
71. “Saving Private Ryan,” 1998.
72. “The Shawshank Redemption,” 1994.
73. “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” 1969.
74. “The Silence of the Lambs,” 1991.
75. “In the Heat of the Night,” 1967.
76. “Forrest Gump,” 1994.
77. “All the President’s Men,” 1976.
78. “Modern Times,” 1936.
79. “The Wild Bunch,” 1969.
80. “The Apartment, 1960.
81. “Spartacus,” 1960.
82. “Sunrise,” 1927.
83. “Titanic,” 1997. (I am ashamed to admit this)
84. “Easy Rider,” 1969.
85. “A Night at the Opera,” 1935.
86. “Platoon,” 1986. (The best Vietnam movie of the middle 80’s)
87. “12 Angry Men,” 1957.
88. “Bringing Up Baby,” 1938.
89. “The Sixth Sense,” 1999.
90. “Swing Time,” 1936.
91. “Sophie’s Choice,” 1982.
92. “Goodfellas,” 1990.
93. “The French Connection,” 1971.
94. “Pulp Fiction,” 1994.
95. “The Last Picture Show,” 1971.
96. “Do the Right Thing,” 1989.
97. “Blade Runner,” 1982.
98. “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” 1942.
99. “Toy Story,” 1995.
100. “Ben-Hur,” 1959.

flow|state has a very good UI design piece up currently. Its simple recommendation: make sure the important bits of the UI are front and center.

Can you see the disaster in progress? Most users can’t either.

This dialog has buried the lede. It focuses the user’s attention on the fact that there is another file with the same name in the destination folder. It fails to point out a much, much more interesting condition: The user is about to overwrite a newer file with an older file.

[...]

The above dialog’s text fails at this, as does its layout and typography. There are numerous pieces of text competing for attention, but among the most prominent are the bolded file names. That’s a bit odd, since the entire premise of the dialog is that these two file names will be the same. The dialog has carefully drawn the user’s attention to information which is guaranteed to be redundant. (If the user is moving multiple files, only some of which have conflicts, the file names are relevant—but that case can and should be handled specially.)

I’ve never thought consciously of following the inverted pyramid while laying out a UI, but it makes a lot of sense. I’m curious to look in on some of the screens I’m working on currently to see how well I stick to this principle.

Sirs and Madams,

Thank you for releasing your CLARAty software to the public. That is a wonderful move that we can all appreciate. However, I have one comment regarding your installation procedures: Csh? Really?

Good Day.

Pat pointed out a fascinating article about some of the possible pitfalls of using alternative fuels.

So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost.

His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes.

He’s been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government.

And to legally use veggie oil, state officials told him, he would have to first post a $2,500 bond.

This strikes me as an absolutely fascinating legal/public policy problem. On one hand, I think it’s without question good for people to experiment and innovate with alternative fuels, and a large tax burden would do much do discourage this. On the other hand, it’s pretty obvious that it’s important for the rule of law to stand and for appropriate taxes to be collected such that roads can be maintained.

At current, there’s no obvious and straightforward way to make this happen. Sure, one-off waivers can be granted to individuals, but does that scale? (That said, does it need to? Is the “we really should have good rules in place to regulate them appropriately” threshold one that you don’t reach until a technology is pretty well mainstream?) I’ll be interested to see what sort of legislation pops up around alternative fuel cars.

On a personal note, I think VegOil cars smell like ass. But that’s just me.

The House seems to think that stopping the states from fighting Spyware is worth their time. I wonder if the Senate will….

The federal preemption provisions (Section 6), meanwhile, trump most of the stricter state laws that might have been used to go after badware vendors. This is particularly disappointing, as state laws have opened a new front in the war on badware. A few categories of state laws are preserved, including trespass, contract, tort, and fraud laws. And, in an interesting twist, H.R. 964 preserves state consumer protection statutes, but only if the state’s Attorney General is bringing the enforcement action.

Reading between the lines in Section 6, one thing becomes clear: this section is intended primarily to block the ability of private citizens to sue badware vendors under state laws. By consolidating all the enforcement authority against badware in the hands of the FTC and state Attorneys Generals, software and adware vendors are trying to quietly block consumer class actions that could target their misbehavior. For example, H.R. 964 would have made it impossible for EFF to use California’s Business and Professions Code 17200 (which allows private citizens to sue for unfair and unlawful business practices) against Sony-BMG for its spyware-laden copy-protection software.

Hands up if you’re excited about Safari running on Windows. As I don’t even use it on OS X, I can’t say that I am.

Sometimes, however, one of those sides is just plain wrong.

All the cool kids are wikigroaning these days. I can not pass up a fad, so:

Ninja : Real Ultimate Power

(I think Wikipedia does surprisingly well for this one.)

What’s your favorite wikigroan?