FIREFOX
Michael Cain: ‘Tabbed browsing is one of those things that you either love or not. If you love it, you can’t figure out how you got along without it. If you don’t, you can’t figure out what the big deal is. Meanwhile, the ‘ad-block’ add-on for Firefox is enough to make it worth considering all by itself. A couple minutes for each of the sites that you visit regularly, and they are essentially ad-free. Recently, the discussion at one site I read daily was focused on a particularly obnoxious set of ads that were running. My honest reaction was, ‘This site runs ads?’ I blocked them out months ago and had forgotten.’
Bill Spencer: ‘The comment yesterday that IE also has the Ctrl-F ‘find’ function is misleading. The invention in Firefox is not Ctrl-F, but the way the Find is implemented on the screen. Very clever and useful without taking away any web page display.’
GOOGLE EARTH
Jim: ‘Amazon’s A9.com site has street level photos that compliment Google Earth’s photos. ‘Block View allows users to see storefronts and virtually walk up and down the streets of currently more than 10 U.S. cities using over 26 million photographs.”
CULTS
RW: You write: Strong faith? Swell. Certainty? Uh, oh. Or, as Vaclav Havel phrased it, Keep the company of those who seek the truth, and run from those who have found it.‘
PIMCO COMMODITIES
Anon: ‘I own shares of the Pimco Commodities Fund that you mentioned July 18 – PCRIX. You wrote, you have the advantages of their expertise and the diversification that $3.75 billion under management can bring. I’m not sure that I agree with the ‘expertise’ part because it is an index fund. It simply attempts to track the Dow Jones AIG Commodities Index. Please don’t mention my name on your web site because I am a stockbroker and I don’t want anyone to think that I am giving investment advice.’
☞ Fair enough.
TROOP STRENGTH
Even those who believe we should have attacked Iraq before we really had to (if we ever did really have to) . . . and before finishing off Bin Laden . . . can still wish we had done it better. Imagine if we had gone in with enough troops to secure the country. (And funneled fewer billions to Halliburton at $100,000 a head and more to unemployed Iraqis, but I digress.) On the issue of troop strength, consider this overview from Knight-Ridder’s senior military correspondent.
