the tindog coffeehouse

I spent this past weekend stuck in a hotel room in suburban Milwaukee. Exciting, right? I know, you’re jealous. But trust me, it wasn’t as interesting as it sounds. For one, it was raining and snowing (yes, snowing!) the whole time I was there. Second, it was Milwaukee. Unless you just have an unnatural fondness for Miller Lite or Laverne and Shirley, there’s really no reason to ever go there. I did, however, discover cheese curds, which I’m told are amazing, but to me they just tasted like, well, cheese. Which we have in Texas. Except we call it queso and dip our tortilla chips in it.

Anyway, I had gone up there to move one of our offices, which had to be done over a weekend. I finished up by mid-afternoon on Saturday, but my flight home didn’t leave till Sunday afternoon. So what do you do for 24 hours in suburban Milwaukee while it’s raining and snowing? You sit around in your hotel room trying to figure out how in the world you took such a wrong turn in life. That, and watch movies.

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Microsoft is finally getting around to responding to Apple’s “I’m a Mac” ads by releasing a series of ads showing various people, including a few celebrities, proclaiming that they’re a PC. The idea is to combat the negative stereotype of Windows and its users propagated by the Apple ads.

With other marketing efforts such as the Mojave Experiment falling flat, it was a smart move on Microsoft’s part to take direct aim at Apple. After all, the Windows/Mac debate has always been about culture and stereotypes rather than about the actual quality of the products.

As well-orchestrated as the ads may be, however, I don’t think they’ll be enough.

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Yes, I know I’m getting a little preachy here, but hear me out.

There were a couple of related stories that were published recently that I think are important to mention. One was an AP story about free speech on the Internet and how companies such as Yahoo and Google sometimes impose arbitrary limitations on that freedom. The other was a story on Ars Technica about the recent amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, an amendment that not only grants telcos immunity for aiding in government wiretapping, but also gives the federal government much broader eavesdropping powers, allowing them to wiretap at will with almost no judicial oversight.

We’re at a point in history where our desire for certain freedoms and civil liberties and our use of the Internet for the exponential flood of information are often at odds with one another. We want to be freely connected to the world, yet even online, there are limits to those freedoms.

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Like many loyal Firefox users, I couldn’t wait for the launch of Firefox 3, which was released yesterday. After trying several times to get to the site, I was finally able to download it last night and install it on my home computer.

I haven’t had time yet to really play with it, but I would say it does feel a little faster than the previous version. I’m not quite sold on the look of it yet, though. (FF3 is themed a little different for each platform. On Vista it has more of the Vista look and feel, on OS X it has more of the Mac’s look and feel, etc.) But the one thing that seemed to be an issue initially was the compatibility issues with a few of my add-ons.

The All-in-One Sidebar, New Tab Button, and 1-Click Weather add-ons haven’t (yet) been updated to run on the new version. I found a suitable replacement for the weather add-on and can easily work around the loss of the others. It’s just going to take a little getting used to on my part. I also had some issues with the NewTabURL add-on, which may require rolling back to a previous version.

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