http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog many ideas are simple, some are brilliant, few are both Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:39:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Photo by gordonflood If you are reading this blog, there's an 80% chance that you are a nerd. If you are a nerd, than there is a 110% chance that you like to be right, and this often means proving other people wrong. In fact, you are probably already thinking about how ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/10/15/winning-its-the-best-way-to-lose-a-conversation/ Photo by Bailey Visual Life Halloween last year resulted in a big bowl of candy. It sat on the kitchen counter, and almost every time I walked by, I ate some. Each time I had some candy, I also had a nice helping of guilt for my lack of self-control. So, ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/09/03/self-control-at-a-distance-aka-good-defaults/ Photo by crayons121 Now that ECMAScript 4 is dead, the rationalizations begin, and Adobe is doing the breakup-was-a-good-thing speech. The most common response goes something like this: This doesn't affect ActionScript 3. If anything, this gives Adobe more freedom to innovate. But that, quite frankly, is a total load of crap. Adobe was a major ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/08/16/ecmascript-4-breakup-hurts-adobe/ ECMAScript v4 was bound to fail. It was making a drastic departure from the current standard, ECMAScript v3, by adopting ideas like: packages, namespaces, early binding, and optional static typing. ECMAScript is best known for the Javascript dialect, a language that is availble in nearly every web browser. Javascript is powerful ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/08/14/ecmascript-v4-derailsfinally/ Let's pretend that you run a website or newsletter. For fun, let's call it: Gizmo's Tech Support Alert... Subscriptions to your newsletter are free, but you also have a premium edition which costs $10 per year. You don't want to worry about the security hassles of storing financial information, so you ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/06/26/always-encrypt-passwords/ It finally happened. Last week, I got a MacBook Pro for work. I've been a proponent of Apple products for a while now. Years ago, my wife and I bought a PowerBook, and when it needed to be replaced, we didn't hesitate to get a MacBook. I've been very happy with ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/05/15/my-brief-affair-with-mac/ Note: This is the follow up to a old, poorly-written, rant on e4x where I used the wrong terms and left huge holes in my arguments. I can only hope to do so poorly this time. A simpler DOM Many developers (myself included) tried to scab together our own object-ish XML ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/05/08/e4x-to-the-rescue-sort-of/ This is part one of my xml/e4x ramblings... XML is all the rage these days. But, like many over-hyped technologies, it has become a victim of its own success, leading to all sorts of crazy ideas. If you find yourself using XML for anything other than document markup or data ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/01/27/xml-processing/ ...and does it with a sense of humor http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/01/19/bill-gates-retires/ I've finally made the leap to WordPress, and I am delighted. The instructions for a five minute installation actually take about five minutes. The WordPress install was, dare I say, delightful, and I couldn't be happier with the outcome. Plus, transferring posts and comments from Blogger was easier than the ... http://www.betterthansimple.com/blog/2008/01/12/goodbye-bloggerhello-wordpress/