week 02, 2003 archives
american normal: the culture of asperger's syndrome sounds like an interesting book, based on this review at salon. i'm 7th in line for it from the library now.
safari
well, safari seems pretty spiffy, so far. renders this site and the mysql site just fine, as far as i've noticed. the 17" tibook just looks insane, but the 12" tibook is intriguing. still waiting for ogg vorbis support in the ipod.
(oh, reading aaron's comment about not missing tabbed browsing reminded me of that common complaint. as i think i mentioned before, the whole tabbed browsing thing just doesn't appeal to me, so i certainly don't miss it. the spellchecking is cool, although i wonder why it isn't turned on by default.)
in his answer to the 6th annual edge question, mit professor of psychology steven pinker writes: … little in instructional practice has been evaluated using the standard paraphernalia of social science—control groups, random assignment, data collection, statistics. Instead, classroom practice is set by fads, romantic theories, slick packages, and political crusades.” i would note that educational software is much the same, unfortunately. (or at least it was a few years ago, and i assume little has changed since then.) i think an educational software company that actually invested in even minimal research to support the efficacy of its products would find that investment repaid in the marketing value of that information. and they may even end up with better products. (link to pinker's answer via the volokh conspiracy.)
small thing to like about safari #1
my news aggregation page pops up links into new windows. when those windows are closed (or focus otherwise returns to that original window), safari recolors the links to show they were visited. that's cool.
ah, mark has stumbled into what-if-you-can't-hide-css problem as it relates to safari. in a perfect world, all browsers (and other clients) would implement the css standard (and others) perfectly, and the same. in the real world, they all have little quirks. i consider it a pretty big flaw in css (and similar standards) that there's no sanctioned way to accomodate the real world. instead we have a grotty mess of bugs to exploit, javascript trickery, or server-side sniffing.
of course, then you go down the rabbit-hole of tricking out the user-agent to kind-of claim to be who you're not.
it's great that david hyatt, of the safari team, is addressing this stuff publically. it's too bad there's not just a real public face for the safari team like a shared weblog.
can you hear me now?
my little aim bot written with Net::AIM stops being able to send messages after some number of hours of operation, and there's no indication why. the bot is still connected, still gets (and responds to) keep-alive requests from the server, can receive messages, and doesn't get error messages when sending messages, but the messages don't go through. very annoying. i fixed the Net::AIM code to roll over sequence ids properly, but that doesn't appear to be the problem (and i don't think that event has ever even been reached).
the yahoo and icq bots don't appear to have this problem.
working around browser quirks
i'm not sure which would be more useful—a method to tell a particular browser that it is the only one who can use a rule, or a method to tell a particular browser that it should ignore a rule. i think you need both. with the former, you can apply additional rules to work around a bug triggered by earlier rules. with the latter, you can prevent a rule from triggering a bug.
passively filtering mail won't kill spam
paul graham's latest on spam, will filters kill spam? just highlights the problem with how most people are applying filters. it would be better to reject email that you think is spam (preferably at the smtp level). this actually gets the spam out of your life, and gives a clue to the spammer that you are not willing to even see their crap.
what about false positives? i know that if i sent you mail, i would prefer that you simply reject it if you think it is spam. when you file it away in your spam folder, i have no way to know, and no way to correct the problem from my side. i just know i haven't heard back from you, and not whether it is because you hate me, or you just haven't looked in your spam folder, or you went through your spam folder and just overlooked my message. (or if services take paul's suggestion that the filtering be done automatically for the less clueful, that you even know that you have a thing called a spam folder that might have non-spam in it.)
i think you can basically draw a direct parallel between the pharmaceutical industry—focused on stifling symptoms on a case-by-case basis (for $20 a person, with new ways to squash the symptoms every year!)—and the spam-fighting industry.
on a far too regular basis, my mouse stops working. if i simply unplug it from the keyboard and plug it back in, it comes back to life. and there are frequent hiccups where i think the mouse has died, but it has not. it's practically a greek tragedy.
another random thing: sometimes after i've typed stuff into a text box in safari (like the one i'm using now) and then let it sit for a few seconds (or the focus moves?), the text inside the box reflows for no apparent reason whatsoever. very odd. it's a very peripheral-vision sort of moment, where you're not really sure that anything has really happened. (after playing round a bit more, it appears that the text is getting reflowed when i mouse over the buttons to submit the form. very bizarre.
