Mom and Dad will be here on Saturday, they’re predicted to arrive sometime Friday evening.
Storms associated with Hurricane Hannah will be here on Saturday, also currently predicted to arrive sometime Friday evening.
I don’t believe in coincidence.
Monthly Archives: September 2008
Google's Nuclear Ambitions
I’ve been playing with Google’s new “Chrome” web browser for the past 24 hours. Not literally of course. I did take some time off to sleep last night and go to work today. (Just don’t ask how many hours of sleep and did I mention that I write web-based applications for a living? The sort of thing that will likely be required to work in Chrome?)
In all, I’m pretty impressed with it. I have found a few minor problems with it — for instance, selecting all the text in a sentence (such as this one) which wraps around onto more than line on the page, results in the “selection marker” spanning the entire page. Also, my bookmarks weren’t imported. But all in all, it’s been pretty solid so far. If Google puts any sort of marketing muscle behind this like they have with the Google Toolbar (when’s the last time you saw a PC without the Google Toolbar?) or GMail, they could put a serious dent in Internet Explorer’s market share. (Depending on who you ask, about 70-80% of the people on the web are using Internet Explorer, 15-20% are using Firefox, and the rest are using Safari, Opera, or another small player.)
One of Microsoft’s practices which people have been pointing at as anti-competitive is that every copy of Windows comes with Internet Explorer pre-installed. Internet Explorer’s default search engine is Live.com.
In the past, Google has protested this practice. (One theory is that Chrome was released as a hedge in case Microsoft does any further integration between Internet Explorer and Live.com.) The default search engine for Chrome is (of course) Google, but they appear to be attempting to forestall any claims of hypocrisy. When you run Chrome for the first time, before you do anything else, you have to confirm your choice of search engine. In addition to Google’s, you can also choose from Yahoo!, Live Search, AOL or Ask.
So by now you’re probably thinking this sounds pretty cool, and I want to get me a copy of that “Chrome” thing, but what the heck does this have to do with any sort of nuclear ambitions?
Well, as you know, when you install the Google Earth application, you explicitly agree to refrain from using Google Earth to control nuclear reactors. (It’s very similar to how you are forbidden from using iTunes for “…the development, design, manufacture or production of missiles, or nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.”
As is my habit, I read Chrome’s End User License Agreement before downloading the program. It seems to be a lightly edited version of the boilerplate license agreement from all of Google’s online services (e.g. Blogger, Picasa, etc.). I’m by no means a lawyer, but one of the more interesting clauses in this license appears to claim that you grant Google a license to use anything you publish (or upload!) via Chrome.
But there’s nothing in there forbidding you from using Chrome to control nuclear reactors.
Getting Buzzed on Labor Day
One of the highlights of my Labor Day was getting together with the Jaycees to help out at Gaithersburg’s Labor Day Parade.
We had our usual problem where the city’s organizers’ eyes were larger than their streets: The balloon traveled most of the parade route within a few inches of the street in order to avoid getting tangled in the numerous low-hanging utility wires. (Still, this was better than two years ago when we were guiding an airplane balloon with such a wide wingspan that people on both sidewalks had to duck.)
All in all, the hassle was pretty minimal. It was a fun event as usual.
A bit more “interesting” (mostly in the “entertaining” sense) was the afternoon’s driving lesson.
Kay’s leaving the country in a few weeks to take a job in Italy. She’s taking her car with her, but she’s already been told that she’ll have to do some driving in rental cars (if nothing else, while she waits for her own car to arrive). There are however two small problems. Minor things really, hardly worth mentioning:
- Evidently, most rental cars in Italy have manual transmissions.
- Kay has only ever learned how to drive with an automatic.
After remembering that my car has a manual transmission, Kay asked if I’d mind teaching her. So because I’m such a great guy, I ended up spending about 90 minutes with Kay this afternoon, driving around a mostly empty complex of parking lots with plenty of hills to practice starting on.
It’s only the second time I’ve taught someone how to drive with a manual transmission and it brought back a lot of memories from back in 1987 when I first learned. I had a rough time learning how to start on hills too. (Kay was no doubt hating me the first time I made her stop halfway up.)
Because it’s a hybrid, my car’s engine is quieter than most. So between wanting to make sure Kay could hear the engine and just generally wanting to avoid the distraction, I’d turned off the radio before she got behind the wheel. After dropping her off (I made her drive) I switched it back on.
I burned out on pop music about 12 years ago. These days my preferred format is country and when I switched the radio back on, I started laughing.
The first song to come on was by Alan Jackson. He was singing Drive.