inside aebrahim’s head

It looks like Microsoft is hosting a new IEBlog over on their new MSDN Blogs site (thanks to mine for the heads up). It’ll probably be worth following and seeing what they have to say. Certainly not daily reading, but probably something to check out every now and then. I’m hopeful (though not very optimistic) that we’ll see some good debate there. Right now most of the comments over there are just mindless IE-bashing, which isn’t very conducive to getting any real use out of the blog. If this sounds like something you’ve done, consider leaving thoughtful comments instead.

Also, there is an Internet Explorer Feedback Wiki hosted on Channel 9. There are some useful links on there, but surprisingly, the site seems to have a somewhat ‘IE-sucks’ kind of vibe. Odd for an MSDN wiki.

All in all I’m happy that Microsoft is trying to become more open with its development efforts. It’s headed in the right direction. However, it remains to be seen how committed they are to it, and whether or not it translates into any real changes.

Watch Bush and Kerry duke it out! Warning: Flash Player required. Thanks to Chris Thomas for this most excellent link.

UPDATE: They’ve added a really annoying interstilial video ad. It now takes about a minute before you can even start viewing the actual flash applet.

It’s about two weeks too late for me, but the most important bug blocking Eudora to Thunderbird migration (bug 3157) has been fixed! This is excellent news for anyone out there using Eudora who’s ready to ditch it. I believe that the University of Chicago may be considering deploying Thunderbird (and Firefox) in the future, and their current userbase is primarily using Eudora. The fact that this bug is now fixed removes a big blocker for them. Attachment names are also now converted properly, which is also a very positive development (bug 242953).

They’re planning on shipping preview versions of Thunderbird and Firefox to students this September as optional unsupported software. They’re likely to be shipping Thunderbird 0.7.2/0.7.1 and Firefox 0.9.2/0.9.1 on their connectivity package CD. Unfortunately they won’t have the fix I mentioned, but when they redeploy in September 2005, the fix will be in, and I’m hopeful that Thunderbird/Firefox will replace Eudora/Mozilla as their officially supported applications. They’re certainly evaluating this possibility.

Thunderbird is an excellent email client, but before it’s really ready for primetime adoption, it also needs to be excellent at importing mail/addresses from other email clients. I’m glad to see that it’s getting there.

So I’m trying to call my fiancee in India over my Vonage phone, and I get the following message from the Indian local-end of the VOIP call:

“This facility is not available on your telephone. [Insert Hindi version of previous statement]. [Insert Bengali version of previous statement].”

No matter how much I keep trying, it still happens. It’s not the first time either. But this time I was annoyed enough to call Vonage and ask them to please fix the problem.

My tech support conversation went something like this:

TS: Hi, what can I do for you today?

Me: Hi, I’m having a problem calling certain mobile numbers in India, I’m getting a message from your Indian local end provider saying that “This facility is not available from your telephone”.

TS: Sorry, we don’t provide voicemail in India.

Me: Yes, I know, it has nothing to do with voicemail. The message is from your local provider in India.

TS: I’m getting a lot of static right now on your end [probably because I'm downloading something while I'm on the phone], I’m going to push a new firmware out to you. I think that will solve your problem and your calls won’t get dropped.

Me: No, that won’t help me. What happens is that when I place a call from here, it gets routed to India, and in India, a local call gets placed from your VOIP provider to the number I want to call. That last step is failing. You can push me a new firmware if you want, but it certainly won’t help me solve my problem. Usually this happens at night or during the early morning, and when it happens it happens for hours at a time and I can’t get through.

TS: [It dawns on him that I might actually be having a real issue.] What times does this happen? It sounds like you’re trying to connect at peak usage times.

Me: It happens usually very early morning, like 2:00AM or so through the late morning. It seems unlikely that you’re getting a lot of calls placed at 2:00AM Central.

TS: Well, it’s probably a peak usage time issue.

Me: That’s possible. But it’s not acceptable to me that just because it’s a peak usage time, my phone calls should not go through. When I place a call, I expect that it will go through. Whether or not it is a peak usage time and you have the appropriate call capacity is an issue for your technical staff, not for me.

TS: [Is quiet for a few seconds.] I’m going to escalate this to our Tier 3 tech people, hold on a minute so I can get you your ticket number.

Me: [Waits.]

TS: Can I get the number you’re trying to call?

Me: 9198313xxxxx

TS: You mean 0119198313xxxxx?

Me: Yes. [Obviously.]

TS: Your ticket number is xxxxxx.

Me: Thanks.

TS: [Seems like he's waiting for me to say something, but then says:] Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Me: No, that’s all. Thanks.

TS: Bye, sir.

Me: Bye.

I’m somewhat hopeful that my issue might actually get resolved, but it would be nice if these tech support people didn’t treat us like idiots when we call in with a real problem. I thought it was pretty obvious what the problem was, but yet before he took me seriously, he tried to tell me:

a) They don’t have voicemail in India. Well duh…
b) He’d push a firmware update to me. This is going to help how?
c) It’s a peak usage time. Sorry, not my problem. That’s what I’m paying them to deal with.

And after that, I had to explain to him what the problem was. Nice reversal of roles there.

In all fairness, aside from this one issue I’m having with calling my fiancee in India (which as you can imagine is a big deal to me), I’m very happy with their service. The line quality is good, and I’ve not had any other problems. If any of you are planning on signing up for Vonage (yeah I know, my post is a shining review ) please do let me know, and I can refer you. We’ll both get a month free.

Blogger has revamped their post editor, which now has a WYSIWYG mode as well as a raw HTML editing mode. Of note is that they’re testing their product on Mozilla and Firefox. It’s great to see large service providers starting to test their products on Gecko based browsers. Even as little as a year ago, Gecko based browsers weren’t even on most web developers’ radars. We’ve come a long way in the last year, and things are only going to get better! That Google is explicitly supporting Firefox on all their products (including Gmail as well) just shows that we have a product that developers can no longer ignore.

As Firefox gets more and more press attention, we’ll gain more users and mindshare, and it’ll be even more difficult for web developers to ignore us. I encourage you all to support the latest marketing initiative, which calls for users to talk back to the press. It’s important not only that we get press, but that the press we get is accurate and objective. I think it’s an excellent idea to develop a team of people who watch the press, and support writers who give us good press, and work with authors who write sensationalist or inaccurate stories about us and educate them so they can objectively write about us in the future.

Infoworld, a magazine that has a decidedly more upscale readership (CIOs and the like) than most PC magazines has posted a very favourable review of Firefox (thanks to yusufg for the heads up). One of their writers downloaded Firefox after reading about it in an MSN Slate article (of all places!) and is hooked on Firefox! That’s great news, especially since hopefully some PHBs will be reading it.
But it’s not all good news. They’ve also published an article titled Microsoft products also vulnerable to Mozilla flaw, which is probably just about the most misleading headline that anyone could have conceived. While the article itself is not bad, anyone reading just the headline is certainly going to walk away with the wrong impression.

Usually when I’m browing Yahoo! News, it’s more for the sensationalist, people-pleasing, and often humourous headlines that they offer. Today, to my surprise, I came across a very well written piece on gay marriage. The piece talks about the difference between Dick and Lynne Cheney’s views on gay marriage, and more importantly the difference between the Republican and the Democratic candidates’ views on gay marriage and whether or not it should be constitutional.

The article makes it pretty clear that both presidential and both vice-presidential candidates are against gay marriage as an institution. However, the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats is that Kerry and Edwards, although they are personally against gay marriage, support the rights of gay couples to share the same benefits as those men and women who marry the opposite sex. I think this speaks volumes about the relative importance that both parties place on the separation of church and state.

I really believe the Democrats have it right here. Although I’m personally against gay marriage, I believe that the state has no place telling people whom they can and cannot marry. Although I believe that the definition of marriage is necessarily dependent on the union of a man and a woman, there is no reason why those who do not share my beliefs should not be able to derive the same legal protections and benefits that opposite-sex married couples currently enjoy. And that’s why, even though I believe marriage is an institution of which gay couples cannot be a part, declaring gay marriage unconstitutional would be wrong and dangerous. Otherwise, where is the real separation between church and state? What real ‘freedom’ would America offer?

I’ve been following with some trepidation the efforts (see here and here) to get 1000 reviews of Firefox on C|Net’s download.com. Why do I say trepidation rather than excitement? There are various reasons…

First of all, I don’t think that review-spamming is a legitimate method of promoting Firefox. The idea that “we don’t provide boilierplate text, and want people to give fair reviews” looks good on paper, but there is an inherent bias. People reading Asa and Blake’s blogs are unlikely to give Firefox bad reviews, no matter what.

It just strikes me that mozilla.org is encouraging astroturfing, which I tend to think is dishonest. It’s sort of like going to the Democratic National Convention and asking Kerry who Americans should vote for. No matter how much you insist that you want his honest opinion, you already know what its going to be beforehand, because of the person to whom you’ve intentionally directed the question.

I think there are various other legitimate ways to increase mindshare. Some of them we’ve been pursuing for some time, others we haven’t yet started, and others we haven’t even yet conceived. But asking people to increase mindshare this way I think is a step backwards from the kind of organisation I’d like to see mozilla.org become. So far I’ve been happy and supportive of all of mozilla.org’s marketing initiatives for Firefox. I can’t say I’m going to get behind this one, though.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Firefox, and sincerely think it’s the best browser out there. I have no plans to stop devoting time to what I think is an amazing project. I’m just a little saddened to see mozilla.org encouraging this kind of behaviour.

The World Court ruled today that Israel’s unilateral construction of a wall separating Israel and Palestine is illegal, and that the wall should be dismantled.

Of course, this means nothing. Why? Let’s look at some choice quotes from the usual suspects:

“The only decision that matters for the government is the verdict of the [Israeli] supreme court”.
Israeli Justice Minister Tommy Lapid

“This is going to go to the UN General Assembly. They can decide anything there. They can say that the earth is flat. It won’t make it legal, it won’t make it true and it won’t make it just.”
Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu

“We do not believe that that’s the appropriate forum to resolve what is a political issue. This is an issue that should be resolved through the process that has been put in place, specifically the road map.”
US President George Bush’s spokesman

“We have underlined that the wall not only results in confiscation of Palestinian land and causes untold humanitarian and economic hardship, but also could prejudge future negotiations and hinder a just political solution to the conflict.”
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana

Once again, the United States stands firm in its irrational stance of pandering to the Israelis while ignoring the humanitarian crises that the rest of the world sees, including the EU.

Israel’s strength is the United States, without which it is nothing. As long as Bush (and American politicians in general) continue their Judeo-Christian crusade, Palestinians will continue to suffer. Years later, when people reflect on our times, I have no doubt that the unqualified American backing of Israel will be considered as one of the largest injustices of our time. This unqualified backing has caused far more damage and suffering to an entire population far more severe than Americans can even begin to contemplate. The 9/11 attacks don’t even come close (though many behave as if they were the most tragic events known to humankind).

As for a peaceful resolution, I think the road ahead is difficult. I don’t have a magic solution. But going ahead, what would I like to see? I’d like to see a peace which is respectful of the Israelis and Palestinians both, equally, with shared control of Jerusalem. A peace where neither side needs to live in fear of persecution by the other. A peace that is wanted, appreciated and respected by both sides. I don’t know how to get there, but I hope we do.

The reason I’m upset about the situation now is that Bush, the one man who really has the ability to influence and to set the tone with both sides has shirked his responsibility to do so. Instead of pushing for a peace of the type I described, he has wholeheartedly backed the efforts of Ariel Sharon to create a “peace” where the Israelis are “safe” from the Palestinians, but doesn’t address any grievances that the Palestinians have. This kind of “peace” is meaningless, and certainly not viable.

My migration away from Network Solutions is now 100% complete. I’ve transferred my ebrahim.org domain away from them and moved it to Gandi SARL, located in France.

One of the cool things about Gandi is their contract (fr), which states:

1.
The Client owns the Domain Name registered. Gandi simply acts on the Client’s behalf. Client acknowledges that Gandi services consist only of including in the shared Domain Names database, the Domain Name choosen by the Client, for the duration of the present contract and without prejudice, notably, that the Domain Name is available and that the Client respects terms and conditions of the present contract.

I have yet to find another registrar that states in such unequivocal terms that the registrant owns the domain. No longer am I a subject of the evil (and ridiculously expensive) empire of Network Solutions.