[cpd2009]

i'm still alive.

You should try to post here a bit more often. I have been asking for input on some tech related things during the last week, but I don't need advice on such issues at the present time.

Mostly, it's been me and Blake, with Sandy occasionally coming by.

[cpd2009]

Yeah, the post title is correct. In all fairness, IE has come a long way from being the bug-ridden browser with loads of security holes. It is quick and responsive, and loads up rather fast.

However, IE is still not perfect. For one, some sites, such as Walmart.com tend to crash the browser tab whenever you want to search for anything. Occasionally, other tabs may stop responding or crash and reload.

David explained to me that this could possibly be malware trying to get into my system, but I doubt that. IE11 is known for rendering issues on some websites, especially when it was first released. I run AdBlock Plus on the majority of websites as well, except the ones that I frequent and that I want to support. So the chances of getting malware through a hacked ad network are reduced greatly. Oh, and Adobe Flash may also be to blame as well. Flash gets it's occasional crashiness with Seamonkey as well, and Flash has historically been an untamed beast and CPU hog.

In the end, I will likely go back to Seamonkey since IE makes some of my favorite sites unusable due to rendering issues or crashes, like BadTranslator and FileBurst. It also doesn't have as much customizeability like Seamonkey does.

[Blackberry Bun]

Flu finally gone completely. Hope it will not return for a long while.

[cpd2009]

Flu finally gone completely. Hope it will not return for a long while.

That's good to hear. If they have flu shots in Indonesia, you should consider getting one every year. In the USA, flu shots are offered in the fall and usually run about $10 to $20 depending on where you get one from. If one has medical insurance, then flu shots are free as insurance usually pays for it.

My Internet Explorer weeklong test ends tomorrow, and after that, Seamonkey will once again be my main browser. However, I am tempted to give the Opera browser another spin, especially since I haven't used Opera when it became a Chromium re-skin.

One more thing... HTML5 video runs extremely smoothly under Internet Explorer... almost flawless. Whenever I view videos on YouTube using Flash, they always have jerky playback on both of my systems. Too bad all the browsers haven't agreed on an HTML5 video standard yet.

[RAMChYLD]

I managed to DX some Indonesian radio in my car last night. 999khz is getting me some AM station from Jakarta. Just by using my car antenna and car radio set to AM, no additional equipment.

Why can't DXing TV channels be as painless as this?

[cpd2009]

I managed to DX some Indonesian radio in my car last night. 999khz is getting me some AM station from Jakarta. Just by using my car antenna and car radio set to AM, no additional equipment.

Why can't DXing TV channels be as painless as this?

Try DXing FM next. Here in rural South Dakota, DXing distant stations is very easy since the radio selection is very limited in my town. It's just that you need to have the right kind of weather for DX to happen.

DXing TV? In the USA, DXing TV has become much more difficult because of our switch to digital broadcasting. Digital broadcasts need a very strong signal to be decoded, and a moderate to weak signal will either give you a boxy picture or no picture at all. In the past, a moderate to weak signal would just give you a fuzzy but watchable picture.

[cpd2009]

Well, my Internet Explorer week-long test was completed Monday evening, and here are my thoughts summed up in Pros and Cons:

Pros: Browser is fast to start up after you boot the PC; under 10 seconds with Audrey, and around 10 seconds sharp with Greta. GPU acceleration is noticeable, especially with HTML5 videos, which play flawlessly. IE has some security features enabled by default, like only displaying secure content on a mixed-content page and preventing pages from loading certain CSS scripts.

Cons: Browser can get a bit unstable after a long browsing session, resulting in occasional tab crashes and reloads. Browser is somewhat uncustomizeable with limited selection of add-ons. AdBlock Plus is available for IE, but it's not perfect and ads still get blocked on whitelisted sites. No way to change the look of the browser with skins like Firefox or Seamonkey.

Conclusion: IE is definitely not the buggy, security-hole filled browser that people like to think it is. MS has made great strides in improving the browser's speed and security, but the issues outlined above prevent it from being worthwhile to use.

Now, I'm going to try the Opera browser. I have knocked it in past months from ditching their own program and relying on the open source Chromium browser for their builds, but I haven't used it that much since then either. I need to form a more solid opinion on it. So, starting now, Opera is my main web browser until next Wednesday.

[cpd2009]

Chrome!Opera... meet OldOpera.

[RAMChYLD]

I am the insane hackermann!

[cpd2009]

There is much going around about the Trans Pacific Partnership and the FCC's Net Neutrality issues, and one thing I always think about is...

Why should I care?

I understand that the TPP can be abused to facilitate internet censorship and perhaps bring on draconian copyright enforcement, and the lack of Net Neutrality means that ISPs can favor certain content providers like Netflix over others by giving them the best speeds while putting everyone else on a slower connection.

But I don't really see how these two things would affect me personally if they do end up getting passed. My YouTube channel hardly gets any views and most of my content is fair use YouTube Poop. I doubt I would end up going to jail if the TPP passes. As for Net Neutrality, I can see myself living without it. I don't use Netflix because I can't stand their push for a world without physical media (read: you don't own the movies you purchase on Netflix) and my Roku box doesn't get a lot of use as is. I don't play multiplayer online games, I never download movies off BitTorrent and most of my video viewing comes from YouTube and BlipTV.

So, unless someone can convince me that the TPP is the horrible thing people make it out to be, and that lack of Net Neutrality will doom the Internet, then I probably won't care about these two issues.

I'll get off my soapbox now.