As of 12:10pm today, I officially became a Zend Certified Engineer at the Pearson Vue testing center in Greenville!
Monthly Archive for November, 2007
When I started reading Bill Clinton’s book Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, I began to learn about and think about some of the more ingenious ways to help those in need not only in the US, but around the world.
To me, there is nothing more unique than the approach taken at Free Rice. Users get to test their vocabulary (and, hopefully, learn some new words as well), but at the same time each page view generates revenue from their sponsors. This revenue is then used to purchase rice for the starving and distributed through the United Nations World Food Program.
Can you think of a better way to help starving people around the world? Not only are you paying for those people to survive another day without taking a penny from your own pocket, but you’re also improving your own vocabulary skills - something Americans in particular need to spend more time doing.
Help feed some starving people from around the world - go test your vocabulary for a few minutes at Free Rice.
I saw an ad for Take.TV on LifeHacker this evening and was intrigued. I clicked through and watched their Flash demo, and I have to say… I’m underwhelmed.
What exactly is the point of having to take the USB thumbdrive from TV to computer and back again? Even the Apple TV lets me watch media on my TV without the hassle of physically moving anything from one to the other.
Provided they have a better method for enabling media (preferably hi-def and convertible from many different sources), do we really have to take a step backwards here? Why don’t I just plug my computer directly into the TV with a standard video-out cable?
The whole point (to me, at least) is that there need be no physical effort involved in the process. With a matter of clicks from my computer, bingo, media is now available on my TV elsewhere in my house.
Best of luck to the Take.TV folks, but if I were their venture capitalists, I’d kiss my money goodbye…
So I was recently linked to Paul Krugman’s opinion piece from the NYTimes entitled Prostates and Prejudices and I just can’t ignore it… I mean, you guys actually pay this man to put out hypocritical crap like this? Wow… I need to go to work for the NYTimes.
The third paragraph is where we really start to hit Rudy Giuliani hard:
Let’s start with the facts: Mr. Giuliani’s claim is wrong on multiple levels — bogus numbers wrapped in an invalid comparison embedded in a smear.
So a politician didn’t get his facts right or took something out of context to further his own point? Well, that’s not exactly news, but alright, let’s hear what you’ve got to say…
Mr. Giuliani got his numbers from a recent article in City Journal, a publication of the conservative Manhattan Institute. The author gave no source for his numbers on five-year survival rates — the probability that someone diagnosed with prostate cancer would still be alive five years after the diagnosis. And they’re just wrong.
Wrong you say? Ok, I can believe that. I mean, who’s ever heard of this City Journal and why would we believe a conservative Manhattan Institute anyway? Carry on…
You see, the actual survival rate in Britain is 74.4 percent. That still looks a bit lower than the U.S. rate, but the difference turns out to be mainly a statistical illusion. The details are technical, but the bottom line is that a man’s chance of dying from prostate cancer is about the same in Britain as it is in America.
Wa… Wait a minute. So you’re saying the survival rate in England is actually 74.4% but that it’s actually the same as the claimed 82% survival rate in the United States? I’m not sure my high school Algebra teacher would agree with you on that one, Mr. Krugman.
Oh, by the way, where did you get your claim of 74.4%? Forget to cite a source, did we? And how exactly does 74.4% end up equaling 82%? Oh, right, just take your word for it…
So that’s bogus numbers1? Check. Invalid comparison2? Check. Smear campaign against Giuliani3? Check.
Hey, I hate the man just as much as the 9/11 next 9/11 guy4, but come on. If you’re going to call the pot black, at least make sure you’re not the kettle first.
Missing an Email? It may be Media Temple’s Fault
It started last week when I was trying to sign up for Ron Paul Christmas. For some peculiar reason, I didn’t receive the welcome email. After talking with the site owner, it turned out (mt) was rejecting the email because the email address wordpress@ronpaulchristmas.com didn’t exist on the sending server.
Now, this isn’t particularly unusual. There is no requirement1 that an email address actually exist for a server to send email as if it were from that address. This is especially true from Wordpress blogs, which often send email from
wordpress@domain.comaccounts on behalf of their owners. Now, since this is only used for outgoing email, in most cases users would never bother setting the email account up. Why would you? You’re never going to be receiving email there2, so what’s the point?Well, (mt) apparently knows better than you do… For “security reasons”3, their grid service does a “callback” check on every incoming email address. If the server handling mail for
domain.comdoesn’t recognize that account (such as ourwordpress@domain.comexample), (mt)’s server will reject the message.I’ve tried to point out that this kind of behavior can be detrimental, particularly in the age of blogging and web services we now exist in, but the best answer I’ve been able to get out of (mt) is that I should add the sending address to their Mail Protect whitelist. Well great, unless I can add
*@*to the whitelist, or at the very leastwordpress@*, that’s hardly a viable solution - how do I know the address that’s sending to me if I never get the email?If you use Media Temple’s grid service4, please contact (mt) immediately and tell them this is an unacceptable situation. I love a lot of aspects of their grid service, but this is clearly not one of them…