the corner office

This is the coolest discovery I've made this weekend: IEs4Linux is a tool which downloads and installs Internet Explorers 5, 5.5 and 6 on Linux. It sets up separate .wine directories for each install, so you can run 'em at the same time without the usual Windows world hassles, and the installs don't mess with your normal Wine setup. It also installs Flash 8 and can grab a few others things as well. The wine directories, the downloaded installers (about 250 megs, from evolt.org) and everything are in one directory, so it's easy to shuffle everything around. Wicked.

Two other howtos I found while looking around:

• Gentoo Wiki: How to install IE 6 SP 1
  
• A HOWTO at the Gentoo forums. There seem to be a few ways of doing it, depending on the version of Wine installed.

Needless to say, after finding ies4linux, I didn't bother with the tutorials themselves.

The upgrade also updated my Wine installation to 0.9.5. At first, it caused Lotus Notes to crash with the following error (if launched from a terminal):

colin@mirkwood ~ $ wine "c:\lotus\notes6\nlnotes.exe"
wine: Call from 0x55a1e7c0 to unimplemented function usp10.dll.ScriptCacheGetHeight, aborting
ERROR (0): NetUserEnum failed: err=5 - (131) Negative seek
Host Name       : mirkwood
User Name       : colin
Date            : Sat Jan 28 19:17:04 2006
Windows Dir     : c:\windows
Arguments       : "C:\lotus\notes6\nsd.exe" -dumpandkill -termstatus 1
OSVersion       : Windows 98 4.10 (Build 67766446), PlatID=1,  A  (1 Processor)

The usp10.dll file is the culprit. I found this Howto which advised deleting the file /usr/lib/wine/usp10.dll.so (on my AMD64 machine that's actually /usr/lib32/wine). I did that, and it works fine again. I notice that the 'missing cursor' from my last install has been fixed, as well.

Aside: it seems that I can't copy & paste text from Firefox into Notes (a text field, obviously) - it gives me an error message "Only text can be pasted into this type of field." Pasting from the URL bar works, and pasting from other apps like the console and gedit works, so what I do is paste into a gedit text document and then c&p into Notes from there. Bit of a schlep for blogging, but not the end of the world.

The monthly Gentoo upgrade, since it's nearly monthend and I have a heap of bandwidth left. Just as well, emerge world chomped nearly 300 megs. There's always something that goes wobbly.

This month's gripe is that Gnome got upgraded from 2.10 to 2.12, and the Nautilus browser, which I still don't like but still plod on with, has changed the way it scales fonts in its list view, so now I'm stuck with either huge icons or unreadably small text. I did a bit of digging around, and these notes are just here for me to come back when I'm done with exams.

• A post on the Gentoo forums also griping about Icon view font sizes in 2.10. Contains a suggested patch to fix the way Nautilus does its scaling. I'm sure a similar change can be made for List views.
  
• A follow-on bug on Gentoo's bugzilla.
  
• Same issue on Gnome's bugzilla.
  
• File where the scaling seems to get done: fm-list-view.c (method: fm_list_view_scale_font_size)

Is it worth writing CSS that plays nice with IE versions prior to 6? I took a look at my site stats and I do get a few visits from IE5 and IE5.5.

I was checking out the new blog's design in IE5 and the 2 column layout just wasn't working. I backed up my old CSS file, dug up a few tutorials, and started playing around with a clean slate. There are hacks to get IE5 playing nicely with a 2-column layout, but then I realised that something as simple as an overflowing PRE tag causes the whole thing to fall apart. Setting an overflow:hidden property for the wrapping DIV takes care of that but it's still something I'd rather not do, since I've already got the usual PRE word wrap cross-browser sludge in place. I feel like I'm slapping mud patties on top of mud patties just to keep some crufty old browser happy.

Is it worth it? I feel guilty/sloppy about not doing it, but it is a major PITA.

Oh, what a joy it is to be prepared for an exam, and to get an exam set for those who're prepared. Went pretty well. If the curve is kind to me, it'll be a decent mark.

Next paper is in over 2 weeks' time, so I'm temporarily free.

Not something I would have expected: Linux-Watch has an analysis of recent Wine benchmarks. The devil is in the details, obviously, but in some circumstances, and a respectable number of them, Wine outperforms XP. The analysis is well worth a read.

I saw some noise about this a while ago, and this Washington Post article has an interesting summary of the situation. Basically telecomms companies in the USA are getting a little antsy about the fact that they carry bandwidth for profitable companies like Google, Yahoo and others, and make no extra profit from it themselves. The impetus behind this comes from the expected increase in high-bandwidth services over the Net, such as streaming media - movies, audio, etc. So, the rumblings are underway that the network providers might start charging premiums for traffic, favouring traffic from content providers who pony up, and the counter-rumblings that the US government needs to legislate and enforce the 'network neutrality' that currently exists.

I'm not sure what I think of this. While this is currently playing out in the USA, the Net's global nature means it affects all of us, and precedents in the USA will start filtering out into other countries' carriers as well.

First, the 'premium content' argument seems bogus to me. Currently, if a truck goes through a toll gate on a highway, the toll is for the size/weight of the truck, not for how valuable its cargo is. The toll operators don't get huffy about whether the truck is carrying worthless junk or super-valuable electronics goods.

Current ISPs, despite 'globbing' bandwidth, do at heart have a variable costing structure for bandwidth usage. If you're hosting a website that incurs ridiculously high traffic, you'll get nailed for it. So one could argue that the network carriers should be happy to charge their tolls per byte or megabyte, and be happy with that. It seems to me like they're effectively trying to charge a premium by holding profitable content providers to ransom. The antidote to that should be other competitors stepping in and not premium-charging. Perhaps the fact that there only a few carriers means they expect to be able to establish a cartel to enforce this premium pricing?

Pushing for regulation is appealing, least of all because on the face of it, doing so appears to be in the interests of end-users. Ultimately any extra profits made by network carriers would come from our pockets.

Having said that, I'm deeply suspicous of any attempts to regulate a market, and this is no exception. South Africa's telecomms industry is proof enough of what regulation does. True, the providers are trying to charge a premium on certain traffic, but shouldn't supply and demand for normal and/or premium services drive pricing? Shouldn't telcos have the right to provide data services on their own terms, and shouldn't customers be allowed to decide whether they're willing to accept that or not? What unseen negative effects would come from forcing the telcos to act in certain ways? Or is the US telecomms industry so regulated and distorted already that one can't rely on a market outcome in this particular case?

It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few months and years.

I'm not sure what to make of this M&G article: Hamas spends $180k on an image makeover. Basically, Hamas needs some image work if they're going to be taken seriously as a political force, so they hired someone to help out.

I mean, a lot of it is common sense, really. Stop the anti-Semitic talk. Stop blowing people up. Portray a softer side:

Hamas is also attempting to soften its image at home with the launch of a television station in Gaza that includes a children's show presented by "Uncle Hazim" and men in furry animal suits. The station, named al-Aqsa Television after Islam's third holiest site, says it intends to put across the group's message "but without getting into the tanks, the guns, the killing and the blood". It will instead focus on religious readings, discussion programmes and a talent show.

Hehehe. Hehe. Um.

It would be easy to be cynical about this, but as I've said before, the South African experience, where 'terrorists' become 'the government', casts a different, marginally optimistic light on this. I don't think one can directly equate Hamas with the ANC, but it raises the question: can an organisation with a blood-spattered history make the change to becoming a legitimate political movement? And no matter how strongly one might feel that they're a bunch of bloodthirsty religious nuts, is it not a good thing if they are able to make the change, and to hope that they do?

Oh no. May as well go back to eggs and bacon. Rice Krispies aren't healthy:

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ordered SA's largest breakfast cereal producer, Kellogg, to stop claiming its children's cereals are "healthy", following a complaint by rival Bokomo, a division of Pioneer Foods.

The ruling is the latest chapter after a string of complaints the rivals have taken to the ASA over advertising tactics in the R1,2bn "ready to eat" breakfast cereal market. Kellogg and Bokomo dominate the market, with shares of 47% and 43% respectively.

Bokomo has complained about Kellogg's advertisements for high-fibre cereals and cornflakes, while Kellogg has taken issue with Bokomo's advertisements for Pronutro and chocolate-flavoured children's cereal.

The ASA's ruling on Kellogg's Kids Cereals range means it must remove the term "healthy" from its packaging for Coco Pops, Coco Pops Jumbos, Strawberry Pops, Frosties, Froot Loops and Rice Krispies, and cannot make the claim in future advertising.

Interesting article. Didn't realise breakfast could be such a cut-throat industry.

I now have a real craving for Strawberry Pops.

Oooh boy. So after ducking and diving the past week, Deputy Prez Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka has now admitted she was in the wrong with her Great Arabian Holiday Adventure:

With the threat of another probe by the public protector looming, and as details of the controversial R500000 taxpayer-funded trip steadily emerged in the media, Mlambo-Ngcuka said: "The way I have messed things up this week I really don't want to say anything anymore. There's really true meaning to the statement that everything you say will be used against you."

Don't excuse what she did, but part of me respects the fact that she's fessed up to it, and not taken the usual 'up yours minions' approach.

Great PR for the ANC though. Hoof one deputy president for corruption, and replace him with someone whose record, as the Business Day article points out, is a little on the dodgy side too.