Chad's News

Al Franken Wins Minnesota Senate Race

Chad Cloman — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:51:00 +0000

Remember that election back in November 2008, the one where Barack Obama became President? Ancient history, right? Well there was also a very close senate race in Minnesota that was only resolved yesterday (June 30^th). It was between incumbent Norm Coleman and Al Franken of Saturday Night Live fame. After a recount, ballot challenges, and multiple court appeals, the Minnesota Supreme Court has certified Franken as the winner, by 312 votes out of 2.8 million cast.

This is an important event for US politics, because it gives Senate Democrats the 60 votes needed to override a Republican filibuster. Thus, the Democrats no longer have to compromise with the Republicans and can pass whatever laws they desire.

I just find it amazing how several highly significant elections in the past decade have been decided by a few hundred votes out of millions.

Link #1: http://www.reuters.com/…

Link #2: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/…
(via digg)

Firefox 3.5 Released

Chad Cloman — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 06:29:38 +0000

Firefox 3.5 was released yesterday. The most significant feature is a much faster JavaScript engine, so those heavily scripted Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, digg, and Gmail will be noticeably faster. Other features include partial HTML 5 support and a private browsing mode. The linked article has an overview of the more important changes, while the release notes give more detail.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

The Next Salvo in the Internet Sales Tax War

Chad Cloman — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 01:33:29 +0000

Amazon has an affiliate program where members refer traffic to Amazon for specific products. The members get a percentage of sales made by the referrals. Regular Chad’s News readers will recall that New York state recently decided that an in-state affiliate was sufficient cause to require Amazon to collect state sales taxes on purchases by New York residents. Amazon is challenging this in court as being unconstitutional, but is collecting the tax in the meantime.

Now North Carolina is in the process of changing its tax laws, such that anything purchased through Amazon affiliates in that state would be subject to sales tax. Amazon has preemptively responded to this by shutting down its affiliates in North Carolina. This is an overreaction on the part of Amazon, but the company is very serious about not having to collect sales tax for states in which it doesn’t have a physical presence. State legislatures, however, are reasonably upset over the loss of significant tax revenue to internet retailers. Residents are supposed to voluntarily pay “use taxes” on internet purchases, but that rarely happens.

How this will all end is anyone’s guess. Amazon is up for the fight, however, and the final outcome will be decided in court.

Link #1: http://www.news-record.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Link #2: http://www.news-record.com/…
(via The Consumerist)

Update: Amazon has banned Rhode Island affiliates as well.

HTML 5 to the Rescue

Chad Cloman — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:56:13 +0000

For web designers, dealing with images is simple. You just use the HTML tag, and the browser knows how to handle it, whether the image type is PNG, JPEG, GIF, TIFF, or whatever. The same cannot be said for video content. Adobe Flash has become an informal standard, but even then you have to use the nonstandard tag with lots of vendor-specific information, or the horrible tag that’s official but even more cumbersome. HTML version 5 hopes to do away with all this by making video content as easy to handle as images are today. The browsers will have built-in codecs to display the video, and all the designer will have to do is use the tag. No more browser plug-ins for Flash, Silverlight, or JavaFX.

This is only one of HTML 5’s new features. For instance, there’s an tag for (you guessed it…) audio content.

HTML 5 is still in draft form and won’t see widespread use for years, but some newer browsers already support certain features. And it will make life much easier for web developers.

Link: http://www.infoworld.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Computer Programming Comics

Chad Cloman — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:51:31 +0000

The linked article has a top 25 list of individual comic strips related to computer programming. I think it’s an indicator of xkcd’s greatness that it makes up more than half the list.

Link: http://slashweb.org/…
(via digg)

15 Early Computer Mistakes

Chad Cloman — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 23:47:55 +0000

The linked article details 15 design mistakes from the early years of personal computers.

Link: http://technologizer.com/…
(via Slashdot)

Get Your Mac Clones While They’re Hot

Chad Cloman — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 23:09:11 +0000

Apple does not like Mac clones, but Psystar is going against Goliath and selling them anyway.

Thanks to Josh for this topic.

Link: http://www.psystar.com/…

Analysis of the Conficker Worm

Chad Cloman — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:58:00 +0000

Back in March, there was some concern about the Conficker worm. The linked article has a very readable overview of the worm, its history, what happened on April 1^st, and what it’s up to now.

Link: http://www.newscientist.com/…

LED Light Bulbs In the Wild

Chad Cloman — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 12:02:06 +0000

As CFLs have been replacing standard incandescent light bulbs, so will LED bulbs displace the CFLs. They last longer, use less electricity, and don’t contain hazardous materials. Right now, however, they’re way too expensive ($40 to $80 for the ones described here). One of the LED bulbs in the linked article even has a remote that allows you to change its brightness and color, which is a bit over the top for my tastes. But CFLs were super-expensive when they first came out, so I expect the LED bulbs will drop to a reasonable price as well.

Link: http://sharp-world.com/…
(via Engadget)

A Million Words

Chad Cloman — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 22:08:27 +0000

By one measure, the English language recently broke the one million words mark. And which word, you may be asking yourself, was the lucky number 1,000,000? Why “Web 2.0” of course.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

iPhone News

Chad Cloman — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:15:17 +0000

At the WWDC last week, Apple made made several announcements about the iPhone. For current users there’s the upgrade to iPhone OS 3.0, which has many new features, including the following:

Cut, copy, and paste
Landscape keyboard
Multimedia messaging service (MMS) (although you can’t use it yet because AT&T, the US carrier, doesn’t support it)
Tethering (once again, not yet supported by AT&T)
Voice recording

The OS will be available on June 17^th.

Then there’s the new iPhone 3G S, which is similar to the iPhone 3G but has twice the speed, four times the disk space, and almost double the battery life. Engadget has a side-by-side comparison, and Consumer reports has a good overview. The 3G S will be priced at $199 (16GB) and $299 (32GB) for new and end-of-contract customers in the United States, and will go on sale June 19^th.

The real controversy over the iPhone 3G S, however, is what’s happening to existing iPhone owners. If you’re already in the middle of less than a year into an AT&T iPhone contract, the prices go up by $200 (there is a cheaper way to do this). Additionally, the current iPhone 3G is being reduced in price to $99. So if you recently purchased one at the higher price, too bad for you. (There was an available credit, but it expired on June 14^th.)

If you purchased a new 3G on or after May 9^th, you can trade it in for a 3G S for a small restocking fee. According to the Consumerist, “AT&T has extended its one-month price protections for recent 3G purchasers to May 9 so iPhone 3G users who bought their phones that day or later can still turn it in and get the new iPhone 3G S for the same price on June 19. To qualify for this extended return policy, customers will need to visit an AT&T retail store and pre-order iPhone 3G S between June 8 and by June 18.”

Thanks to Josh for suggesting this topic.

Update: AT&T has changed its upgrade pricing for current subscribers who are 11 months or more into their contract. And it turns out that I was wrong in the article above—it was previously possible to get the less expensive 3G S prices if you were a year or more into your current contract.

Auto Accident Checklist

Chad Cloman — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 04:30:33 +0000

The linked article has a printable accident checklist (PDF) that should probably be in everyone’s glove box. I’ve learned to call the police, even if it doesn’t seem like much damage, because car body repair is hideously expensive. In my first significant accident, back in the early ’90s, I had to pay a $500 deductible because I didn’t get enough information to track down the other person (who was at fault) or his insurance company.

Link: http://www.seriousaccidents.com/…
(via Lifehacker)