Internet Explorer 6 - FAIL!

Today I am once again attempting to work around one of IE6's many issues.

I started wondering just how much money Microsoft has cost the world by trying to reinvent web standards as they saw fit back in 2001. Now there is no way that I can know exact numbers, but let's give this a shot with some reasonable values.

• IE6 has been around for about 8 years I think.
• Assume 6 hours a month dealing with IE issues
• Assume 6 million web/application developers (this number is likely much to small considering how many sites are up on the net)
• Assume an average developer's time is worth $30/hour (the range will vary from somewhat lower to a lot higher).

6 hours * 12 month * 8 years * 6000000 devs * $30
= $103,680,000,000.00

In other words, Microsoft has cost the world ~$103.5 billion, just because they wanted to do things their own way.

Delenda est IE6!

... and now, back to sorting out yet another IE6 feature...

Invasion of my Pockets

This month, Amazon remotely deleted electronic books from their customers Kindels. They then apologized profusely, saying it would never happen again.

They are not the only one with that sort of power. Apple has the same ability to delete applications it doesn't like from your iPhone.

Now I don't know about you, but it looks to me as if many companies are putting in those same features that we demanded they not put in over the last several years. Only they are doing it in a way that already exists when you purchase the product. If any software company put such a feature in, we would call it an invasion of privacy.

Apple says they are unlikely to use the feature and Amazon has claimed that they will never do it again, so why dont they just remove the feature now and be done with it?

I think the real issue here is why are we allowing them to get away with putting it in, in the first place?

I think we can expect to see more and more of this sort of thing, until nobody knows there was a time when it was against the law in most countries.

A product worth playing with

Every once in a while, I find a product that grabs my attention.

The Game Crafter is one of those. I love the concept... not only is it something that might actually work as a "social product", but I can see it being something I can do with my children on a rainy afternoon.

Open Source Business Model

I love this concept.

There is much value in what you can find and get for free online today, just about anything you need is available.
I new business startup accelerator called Lead To Win is using transparent and open methods and materials to help startups get rolling, and it seems to be working as they are doing it again.

See this great article from a real writer: Lead to Win: An Open source Business Accelerator

As someone who loves the startup world, and being an engineer myself, business know-how and experience is something I always struggle with. An accelerator that focuses on the business side of things is sorely needed for people like myself.

They are not the first exactly, something similar was originally tried by Omazo Ventures however they were not as open and never generated the critical-mass support in the community required to move forward (they are now a little more traditional).

I think this deserves a bit more exploration and I wonder what it would take to expand this to other cities.

Rocket War - For Tradition and Fun...

I have got to see this first hand some day.

Here is some more information on The Rocket War.

Toronto Strike

Looks like not many in the twitter sphere have much sympathy for the city workers union (CUPE Local 4160).

See: http://twitter.com/#search?q=tostrike

I just started reading Little Brother (written by Cory Doctorow) which is about the control and abuse of information by your government. John Baichtal called Little Brother a "Manual for our Kids to Save the Future" in his review on Wired: GeekDad.

I found it Ironic this morning while reading the various news sources I parse every morning to find this little gem the UK Guardian: 

ISPs to record all emails and calls

I keep wondering now if people are just blind to the probable abuse of this new regulation. I have no doubt that the people putting it in place have nothing but the best intentions (what is they say about the road to Hell?) but once in place it can not easily be removed again and it would be very easy for any unscrupulous person or organization to use the information against a population.

This has happened before and usually people are not happy with the outcome.

I fear for my children's future.