Day: October 28, 2004

Would You Buy Web Hosting from These People?

This is one of my personal pet peeves and something that should never happen in 2004. I’m visiting a site and most of the files are clearly hosted on a second, specialized web hosting company — in this case the web hosting companie specializes in hosting multimedia files and markets itself as such. So I try to visit the website’s hosting page to see if they have a directory of other sites they host, but it comes up 404. I try it again in case I misspelled the domain name. Again 404.

Then, even though I think it can’t possibly be the problem, I add the www. to the domain name, and it works. Maybe I’m picky but if www.genericwebhosting.tld works, but genericwebhosting.tld does not, I’m looking elsewhere for a webhost. There’s just no excuse in my mind for that to happen, but a surprising number of web sites are configured this way (I have even heard clueless people argue that it is *bad idea* to configure www.domainname.tld to work if the user just types in domainname.tld. Sure, and make sure you add a big ass splash page and lots of Flash navigation to really add to the usability).

The Screensavers — Just How Much Suckage Can One Show Tolerate?

There used to be a regular schedule in my house that my wife absolutely hated — 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. was reserved for watching The Screensavers on TechTV. This used to be a great show, but nobody actually watched the channel so gaming cable channel G4 bought it out and merged the two networks. With the exception of X-Play which has remain untouched by the G4 virus, the result is unwatchable.

G4’s main contribution has been to up the level of juvenile, testosterone-fueled crap. I’ve only watched Screensavers twice since the switchover. The first time, new host Alex Albrecht thought it appropriate to reference his testicles during a segment of the show. Thanks Alex, my 7 year old daughter was watching.

The second time, this week, featured mention of a “hottest geek girlfriend contest”. What’s next, “John Romero’s About to Make You His Bitch” sound clips?

Well, the viewing experience of the new Screensavers is very Daikatana-ish, so why not?

(And WTF ever happened to John Romero — oh yeah, he’s designing games for cell phones these days. Guess he needs a new tag line — how about “John Romero’s about to make you a long distance call, bitch.”)

Can Bush Win Michigan?

If you’d asked me a few months ago, I’d have said that Bush’s chances of winning Michigan were about the same as the Detroit Lion’s winning three straight road games this season. Ooops.

National Review notes that Kerry is going to be campaigning here on Sunday or Monday. National Review quotes a Bush campaign volunteer as saying internal polls show Bush ahead in Michigan, which they pretty much were guaranteed to say regardless, but Kerry making a last minute stop here is a bit odd given that it should be a shoo-in for Kerry.

Or to put it another way, if Kerry can’t win Michigan he has little chance of capturing the presidency. This is a state that has lost thousands of manufacturing jobs, is heavily union and has a substantial urban minority population. If Kerry can’t win in this state, he’s going to have a horrible election night.

Kerry’s probably coming here late to try to boost turnout. Bottom line — if he can get heavy turnout in Wayne County (Detroit), Kerry’s going to win. If people think he’s faltering or don’t find him that compelling and don’t turn out, he’s going to lose.

And unlike the 2000 election, there isn’t any major contentious statewide ballot issue to drive voter turnout (in 2000 there was hotly disputed school choice proposal). This year the only major statewide ballots are related to gambling and gay marriage, neither of which has caused anywhere near the level of controversy that the school choice measure did.