misanthropic nonsense

Having trouble downloading that .MP3 onto your BlackBerry? Well, you could always go find a USB tether and a laptop, download the MP3 to the computer, and perform the usual transfer nonsense.

Or, just visit http://mini.opera.com from your BlackBerry, download the Opera Mini browser, and use that to download the .MP3 directly to your phone – just like you wanted to in the first place.

Andy Brice has put together a great post entitled Where I Program. It features a great photo collection of programmers’ offices and work spaces. Our new office space at Antair is covered in the post as well.

Sneezies, from RetroDreamer.

Let it be your Game of the Year!

If you’re in New York City and want to get away from Times Square and the other nonsense tourist traps, do yourself a favor and check out NYC Airplane Tour. You’ll have a blast, and get to see the city from that “CSI NY / Sex and the City” camera fly-by perspective.

FrankenEULA - [noun] – A software license agreement created and used by a software company that’s too cheap to get a lawyer, but is proficient with Google.

In order to see HTML rendered e-mail on a BlackBerry simulator, no matter the model, the simulator must run off of a BES connection (corporate BlackBerry server), as the included ESS (the software POP/SMTP proxy app that allows you to test BlackBerry e-mail services locally), does not support HTML e-mail.

Alternatively, if you have no access to BES, you can still test HTML e-mail rendering with BIS (personal internet connection), but you would need to do so on a real device. You can build a program fairly quickly which listens to incoming e-mail on the device an then delivers the original source of the incoming e-mail to you for debugging.

That being said, the older models of BlackBerry (around RIM OS 4.1), do not support HTML e-mail. If they receive HTML e-mail, they will display the full HTML source code, tags and all. As of RIM OS 4.5, HTML support has been implemented in the BlackBerry e-mail application. In these cases, if the device receives an HTML message, it will attempt to display the HTML rendered format, as best as it can. If the device cannot render the HTML for whatever reason (such as if this is a simulator running with ESS), and the message is a MIME hybrid, where it contains both HTML and text-only parts in one message, the device will display the text-only version of the e-mail. If the e-mail message is HTML only, and doesn’t contain a text-only equivalent in the same e-mail, the device will attempt to strip out the HTML bits and tags and such, and will attempt to present the HTML message as it’s own text-only version.

So Gizmodo had this tidbit yesterday :

There are two things everyone knows about Steve Jobs. He pushes his employees to make some pretty impressive—and market-changing—products. He’s also a horrible person to work for. Now the Harvard Business Review confirms, once again, the latter. [ ... ]  regularly leaves his Mercedes in a handicapped space, sometimes taking up two spaces. The pattern became so noticeable that employees, according to the article, put notes on his windshield that read, Park Different. “Jobs’ fabled attitude toward parking”, writer Leander Kahney says, “reflects his approach to business: For him, the regular rules do not apply.” That means shrouding his company in secrecy; treating his employees to tyrannical outbursts; and refusing basic accommodations that would make beautifully designed products more customer-friendly.

To which I have only one response.

When you found a company that reaches multi-billions of dollars in sales annually, and manage to keep your sanity after decades of running it, then you can comment, second-guess and criticize. Until that happens, please shut the fuck up.

[EDIT]. Too rude? OK then, read this instead.