Bad rails

Can someone help this patch get a move on?

Escaping `table names` for mysql - so reserved sql keywords don't cause errors.

Insanity

This article scares me - it's a decision in an Australian court to hold the operator of a site responsible for copyright infringement for linking to copyrighted material.

Insanity.

Idea: Bug trackers for cars

Choice magazine is a great consumer resource for fair and unbiased reviews of products; but it can't compare to a tool like Trac for finding out known issues with a product.

It's with this mindset that I'm thinking: why don't cars have public accessible bug trackers? I was sitting in the back of my house mate's car - an Astra, which has a cup holder in the back.
What a neat idea - perfectly sized for putting my can of soft drink into it (which; incidentally; I had).
Being summer, I wound the window down; only to find that if I have a can of drink in the holder; I injure my fingers rolling down the window.
Also; I can't put a large cup from McDonalds into it; either - only one size of can.

Someone has now dropped the ball on this one by failing to do simple tests of functionality. It's a really great and useful idea; but the implementation is broken.

Idea: iBusking

Today I was in Rundle mall; and I saw a busker with a drum machine. He had a pretty decent setup, and a funny shaped guitar - obviously; it's not a guitar, but that's the easiest description for it.

He'd tap away; and the drum machine would pick up a rhythm; then he'd chime in with his music.
It was good enough to have people walk up; pull out their earplugs and start to tap their feet; dance a little even.

One lady with her ipod tips a few $ and wanders off.

I found myself wondering: why does her experience of this music have to stop there? How hard would it be to have the busker give her a copy of his music right there and then? What if the busker had a Really Cheap Device that let him record to MP3 and transfer that to a USB device.
Certainly the busker would solicit more donations; because if you are face to face with someone and getting their music; you are far more likely to put your hand in your pocket.
There's also no issues with trusting money over the internet; or DRM; or any of that junk.

Exhibit 1.0

Exhibit is the new Ning.

Finally, ajax is doing something useful-ish - Imagine backing this with a triplestore.

Why it's a Good Idea to use Sensible CSS

Imagine:
You are blind; and you want to read this blog. Do you have to wade through the huge left hand side menu of crap before you can find out any information. Wouldn't it be great if your screenreader could guess that a menu is a menu and content is content? (ignoring one unless you ask for it).

Meet SADIe.

1. Author creates site, marks up css with classes and names like menu and content and comments
2. Author or third party describes in generic terms what a menu is, what content is in an ontology. For site specific things, you can extend basic concepts like UnimportantInformation to create a meaningful description of your site. There are editors for this.
   
3. This is made available with a LINK tag to the RDF.
4. A semantic web enabled screenreader comes along. It knows what Content is; and can map the CSS styles for content to the Content object. It doesn't know what CloCkWeRXAboutPage is; but it knows CloCkWeRXAboutPage extends UnimportantInformation.
   
5. It reorganises the layout of the content to provide a better user experience for the end user. Unimportant stuff gets left behind, important stuff gets upped in priority

My only thought is the affect of spam / advertising if this took off.

I still hate filezilla

Filezilla is still as shit as before.

Take a look at this interaction bug.

Me:

1. Connect to FTP server


2. Get a directory listing of some kind


3. Add a file, example.txt, to that directory external to filezilla.


4. Enter /path/to/file/example.txt in the server address bar.

Expected:
File is downloaded.

Actual:
A warning that /path/to/file/example.txt/ is not a
directory.

Attached: screenshot





So; the design is:

1. User uses the mouse to navigate this interface, and download/upload files
   


2. 
   If the user choose to use the keyboard to get to a directory quicker; they can do that
   


3. 
   But if they want one specific file, they must use the mouse to get it AFTER typing in the directory they want
   


4. 
   If they type in the wrong thing; display an error from the server as far away as possible from the control they are editing (error messages are leftmost, the server control is rightmost)
   

Them:

That's by design.

Stuck in the middle of MySQL hell

I hate BETWEEN.

How fucking stupid is it that:
SELECT * FROM table WHERE id BETWEEN 1 AND 1000 is not the same as SELECT * FROM table WHERE id BETWEEN 1000 AND 1.

Where's the principle of least fucking surprise.

Note to self

KML rendered with Google Maps is a great way to add value to your application.

Stats, Why People Should Be Shot & Murder Planning

I got my name in a newsletter for yelling at people for un-blogger friendly web design, still own in the top 10 for murder planning, and am edging up when it comes to why people should be shot.

I just edged over the 500 post mark, and on top of that all (and yet another disaster of a week); I serve 80-90,000 pages a day as part of my work application.

I've also indirectly influenced 85% of our 2,500+ daily users to use Firefox.

Holy crap; numbers scare me.

PEAR is getting foaf...

Finally, PEARweb is getting foaf output - I'll have a reputable foaf file again.

Yay.

Direct Load Control - Where can I get it?

I want Direct Load Control - I wonder how I can get it.

Thoughts, suggestions?

Full page zoom in Firefox

From the Burning Edge:

Fixed: 323934 - [Mac] Change default toolkit on Mac to cairo-cocoa.

Mac is the last major platform to switch to using Cairo for graphics. Now that all major platforms are using Cairo, it is possible to make changes to Gecko that rely on the use of Cairo. For example, it is now possible to fix the use of units in Gecko, which will in turn make it possible to implement full page zoom. Because so much cross-platform Gecko work depended on getting Cairo turned on on Mac, the switch may have been rushed, leading to more regressions than is usual for a large change.

Firefox 3.0, I can't wait.

It's Standard Business Practice to Screw Customers

I got a reply to my earlier angry post about shoddy textbooks.

The main points:

The back cover and preface make that very clear as does a flickthrough the textbook that the solutions are not supplied.

It's a little to hard flick through on Amazon, isn't it.

It is not meant as a casual read to help one understand accounting. There are thousands of other books that do a better job at that because they are designed as such. A quick perusal on any large bookstore website would alert you to that.

Are we implying I could not understand the subject matter? Or that people shouldn't buy this book if they intend to understand accounting?

Access to solutions for university textbooks is never allowed to students or non students. This is because we give the solutions to lecturers and they decide when they will release the solutions to their students.

The cited reason on the phone was because it 'overlaps with exam questions'. I would find it very disturbing if a lecturer was too lazy to write their own questions for an exam.

Lecturers want students to read the text, practice answering the questions and then hand out the solutions so they can see where they have gone wrong.

But god forbid someone purchasing the book outside of a university context wanting to be able to validate their work

If we were to give out solutions to textbooks the lecturers would not adopt the text for their course. No higher education textbook publisher provides solutions directly to students - it is standard business practice to only supply them to lecturers....in fact our site where you requested the solutions makes that very clear.

Where exactly does it say that? Not here, that's for sure. The closest thing I can come to it is:

Notice to students:
The password-protected resources on this site provide lecturers with the flexibility to either restrict or time the release of solutions etc to their students. The names of students posing as instructors to obtain access to these password-protected lecturer resources will be passed on to the university at which they study for appropriate action by his/her lecturer.

What a startlingly clever business plan.

1. Start out selling our textbooks only to universities; because shit, that's a market with unlimited growth.
2. Assume anyone who doesn't send us email from a .edu account or something else we consider proof of 'legitimate university lecturer' wants to cheat on an exam or their coursework.
3. Make it impossible to prove to us that the above is false.
4. If a member of the public buys our book(s); screw 'em: they should have gone to university. Joke is on them - they should have bought someone else's book.
5. We'll make education easier, because the lecturer can just include our questions in the exam direct from the book. That way we can be sure we're properly giving students who buy our book the tools needed to solve these problems - all accounting problems are the same, every year, every edition!