Todd's Blog

Google announced today that it will no longer support anything lower than IE9 -- pulling all support for IE8 and below in all of its applications (for example, GMail).

Here is a good news story about it

What is the biggest obstacle for you to upgrade beyond IE8?  WINDOWS XP.

If your computer is still running the ancient Windows XP, you cannot get anything higher than IE8.  That means if you are a Windows XP user, and you are unwilling to either upgrade to something like Windows 7 and you are unwilling to use an alternate Web browser (such as Google Chrome or Firefox), then you can't run any of the multitude of important Google services after October.

On the other hand, if you have Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8, you can get at least up to IE9.  And you should be sure you have IE9 installed immediately.  (Upgrade here.)

If you have Windows XP and you want to upgrade to Windows 7, your options are to either buy a new computer or puchase an upgrade.

(If you have Windows Vista, I'd recommend you upgrade to Windows 8 when it comes out in October.  Just about any Windows Vista computer should be fully capable of running Windows 8.)

If all this upgrade talk sounds annoying, it is because you have put off the maintenance that your computer requires for far too long.  It's a fact of life that if you want to use a computer, you must be willing to perform maintenance on it every once in a while.  Like your car requires new tires and an oil change every so often, your computer also requires new parts and service.  People who stay on top of the required maintenance are rewarded with a much smoother and hastle-free experience -- just like a car.

Saw this today on a FB page that I admire from afar.  It made me laugh.

Today is Windows 8 release day for developers.  (LIKE ME!)

It's called the "RTM" (Release to Manufacturing), and Windows 8 has finally reached that point.  The general public gets their release day in October.  That's when you can go to the store or online and buy a copy.

Microsoft's download channels have been really difficult to penetrate this afternoon, with perhaps hundreds of thousands of developers trying to download the release all at the same time, but I finally got a download started.  Almost half-way finished now.

Like when any new version of Windows comes out, lots of people will moan and complain about "how bad it is" and how they should leave it alone, so I don't expect anything different this time.  Actually, when Windows gets transformed so radically, like it did in Windows 8, those complaints will be even louder than normal.

Some will love it, some will hate it, but either way I am very glad that Microsoft is continuing to innovate.  Using Windows 8 on a touch-screen tablet is a great experience.  I think using it on a desktop touch screen and touch screen laptop will be just as good, and I can't wait to try it out on those.

For mouse and keyboard users, it is a big adjustment.  But as applications more and more are installed as modern UI apps (formerly known as Metro-style apps), the adjustment will become less and less.  In any case, the changes are important so that Windows continues to evolve as people use computers differently, and on different types of hardware.

Anyway, the download's now at 75% complete — installing soon!

Today Twitter experienced several hours of downtime, due to "bugs" in their system.  Seems they installed a new version of their software that completely messed up everything, and nobody had access to Twitter, everywhere around the world, for several hours.

The next time Lottery Post is unavailable for a minute or two due to an upgrade, think back to what happened at Twitter today -- with their billion dollar technology budget -- when they did an upgrade.

Microsoft has just released the latest version of its excellent Security Essentials software — version 4.0.

Even though it is not yet available through Windows Update, anyone looking to install it or upgrade their existing version to it can do so now from the download page:  http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5201

You would select the "amd64" version if you run 64-bit Windows, and the "x86" version if you have 32-bit Windows.

I don't see any significant difference on the surface, other than the interface looks a little simpler.  But according to Microsoft it is quicker and has some bug fixes.  The last version was already fast, so it's amazing they were able to make it even faster.  Not bad!

To be honest, when it comes to security software, I would much rather use software that does not "make a big deal of itself" by having splashy graphics and popup messages.  I want security software to be very unobtrusive and quiet.  And Microsoft Security Essentials is exactly that.

If you are unfamiliar with it, Microsoft Security Essentials is anti-virus/anti-malware software that replaces all the useless, overblown "security" software on the market, like Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, Sophos, AVG, Avast, Avira, Bitdefender, F-Secure, Panda, G-Data, Bullguard, NOD32, and the thousand other "Internet Security" software packages on the market.  And did I mention it is FREE?

Unlike all those other packages that try to up-sell "premium" versions and get you to buy security subscriptions every year, Microsoft Security Essentials installs in a very quiet and unassuming way, silently updates itself all the time with new virus definitions, and keeps absolutely quiet unless there is a problem.

It is always very highly-ranked when it comes to virus and malware detection, because it uses exactly the same definition files that are used by Microsoft's security software that protects millions of business servers around the world.

And unlike typical "Internet Security Software", Security Essentials does not stupidly warn you about "evil cookies" and other nonsense.  The only reason other software makes you think cookies are "evil" is because they want you to think their software is worth upgrading.  Cookies are with us all in just about every web site we visit, so there will always be an endless supply of "evil cookies" to stupidly eliminate.  The only thing you are doing by deleting "evil cookies" is making your web browsing much more difficult and troublesome.  But making it any safer?  Not in a million years.  The concept is just dumb, dumb, dumb, and it's 100% designed to make you BUY SOMETHING.

I actually didn't intend to take this direction with this blog entry, but once I got into it I realized that there are many people reading this who still use overblown, overhyped security software that they PAY for.  Those people are paying for a worse experience.  That's a horrible thought. 

I hope this helps such people — in addition to helping existing MS SE users find the latest version.

All the reviews are correct: the new iPad has the best screen you can imagine on a mobile device.

I am typing this right now on my new iPad, and I must say, Lottery Post has never looked better.

On any tablet, web pages get shrunk down to a screen typically between 9 and 10 inches in size. When text gets shrunk down like that on a tablet screen, the low resolutions of tablet screens makes the text seem fuzzy and not very legible.

But on the new iPad screen, it has such high resolution that the text when shrunk down remains razor sharp -- and I mean razor sharp.  It's like you put on a pair of glasses, and suddenly everything is clear.

Animations on the device also seem smoother than the iPad 2 (also because of the high resolution), but they are a hair slower.  Probably because it requires a lot more processor power to move all those pixels.

Anyone who is very accustomed to an iPad 2 will notice that the new one is ever so slightly heavier and thicker than the old one, but everyone else probably wouldn't notice the difference.

Apple has once again set the bar very high, and every other company will get very tired trying to catch up.

I was happy to see this morning that Lottery Post is now listed among the most popular IE9 add-ons in the official Microsoft IE9 Add-Ons Gallery:  http://www.ieaddons.com/en/popular/  (Counting down from the top, it is #18 right now.)

When you use IE9 with Lottery Post, you a couple of extra features:

• Search accelerator, which lets you highlight any text on the page and click the little accelerator button that appears next to the highlighted text, for instantly searching for the highlighted text anywhere on Lottery Post.  For example, if you're reading a news story about a winner who's won the lottery more than once, you can highlight the lottery winner's name with your mouse, click the accelerator button, and instantly search the entire site to find any other places that person's name is mentioned on Lottery Post (for example, in other news stories, forum posts, blog posts, etc.)  As another example, I clicked the word "anonymous" on a page, and was able to instantly locate all the various pages the word "anonymous" appeared on Lottery Post.
• Pinned icon support, which lets you drag the little LP icon that appears next to the address (URL) in IE9 to your Windows 7 task bar, and get a dedicated Lottery Post icon right next to your other task bar icons.  (That's called pinning a site.)  When you open Lottery Post by clicking the pinned site icon, you get a nice color-coordinated version of IE9, and an extra LP icon in the browser that brings you right back to the LP home page when you click it.

IE9 usage is still not as high as the number of people who continue to use IE8, but it's slowly getting there.  I continue to be baffled by people who refuse to update their computers with the latest version of IE, but I guess some of that is Microsoft's fault, for not automatically doing the updates.  I wish Microsoft would update IE the way Google automatically (and silently) updates Chrome.

As IE9 usage continues to increase, I will look to implement other features that take advantage of its abilities.  For example, I am able to do things like present a notification on the icon if/when private messages arrive, and some other neat tricks.

But it is nice to see Lottery Post getting some good attention already among IE9 users, based on our position in the popular IE9 add-ons gallery.

The technology industry has lost a true creative genius and a fierce competitor.  A sad day.

www.apple.com

I am watching a live stream of the keynote for Microsoft's BUILD conference, and they are demo'ing everything about Windows 8.

Holy mackerel, Windows 8 is going to revolutionize computers.

Everything is touchscreen, every piece of software written today will be compatible, and Windows is going to run on everything from tablets to powerhouse PCs.  And all the software looks and works the same on every type of computer.

Microsoft is my best friend again. 

Here is a fantastic article describing some historical perspective on random number generation, and how it has morphed into Intel's latest digital random number generator, which soon will be embedded within Intel microprocessors.

The new process generates random numbers at the rate of 3 gigabits per second!

There will no longer be a need for analog random number generators, such as radiactive decay and the random movement of lava lamps.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/behind-intels-new-randomnumber-generator/0

About 20 minutes ago, the world around me sprang to life again, with real working light bulbs and appliances and air conditioners.  After being without power for two days, one feels a leap of joy when suddenly your world is re-energized.

I still don't have my primary Internet connection, but getting power is a darn good start.  It's been a pretty tough couple of days keeping everything on the site working smoothly without power or a real Internet connection. 

Thank God I invested in a generator this year.  Despite the noise level and incredible annoyance of dealing with a maze of extension cords of every variety, I must say that the new generator saved the day.

I have finally found a browser that can successfully generate and load the full set of 6/49 combinations using Lottery Post's Lottery Combinations Generator!

This is no small feat, as the browser — using just some clever JavaScript code — needs to generate almost 14 million combinations, and load all those combinations into memory at one time, so that they can be displayed on the page.

For every other browser I've tested, the best they can do is generate the combos, but when it comes to loading them all onto a page, the browser page eventually runs out of memory and gives up.

What a nice surprise to see that not only can Opera finish the whole task, but it did so in tremendously good time.

Here is the summary after it finished:

Finished!
Calculation time: 20.906 seconds
Load time: 34.335 seconds
Total processing time: 55.241 seconds
Numbers in set: 6
Minimum number: 1
Maximum number: 49
Sample frequency: 1
Display type: Non-scrolling
Total combinations: 13,983,816

Under one minute! WOW!

And I didn't run this on a super-fast computer — I used a 3-year-old laptop.  That's pretty incredible, considering many stand-alone programs written in a fast, compiled language would take much longer.

So then it was time to test getting those combinations from the browser into another program.  For my test, getting them into my favorite text editor (Notepad++) would do the trick.

I clicked the Select All button to select all the text, and then waited.  22 seconds later, all the combinations were highlight.  (It is important to click the button one time, and then sit back and do nothing until the browser responds.  Since it is using so much memory, it can take a while, and if you click again while the browser is "thinking", it may cancel the Select All.)

So then I pressed Ctrl+C to copy, and the browser came back to life about 25 seconds later.  The problem was that when I went into my text editor, there was nothing to paste. So copy failed.

I tried it a number of different ways, but nothing worked.  My instinct is that Windows does not let me copy that much text to the Clipboard, and so Windows is not allowing it.

But not to be deterred, I figured out another way!

I figured if I could just save the page contents as a file, I could open the file in my text editor.  So I clicked the "Opera" menu in the upper-left corner (much like the Google Chrome "wrench" button or the "Firefox" button in that browser), then selected the Page menu, and then (after about 20 seconds waiting for the Page menu to display), clicked Save As...

One of the options under Save As is to save the page as a Text file.  Perfect!

So I saved the page contents in a text file to my Desktop, then opened it in Notepad++.  Then, I just had to delete the "junk" text before and after the combinations, and there I had it — a text file with all 14 million 6/49 combinations, and which I could generate next time within about 2 minutes using Opera.

Browsers are coming along so quickly these days, becoming real workhorses capable of incredible things.  I am so happy to see that a browser — Opera 11.5 — has become the first to accomplish the milestone task of generating the full 6/49 combination set and getting the combos into a text file.

If you want to download Opera, it is available for free at: http://www.opera.com/ 

By the way, Opera is all-around extremely fast, and Lottery Post works very well in it.  You might see a small glitch here or there, but certainly no show-stoppers.

(News story link is below.  First-up is my commentary.)

This is a fabulous idea!  There's no reason it should have required a regulator to force them, it just makes sense.  All the network infrastructure is in place, and it costs very little at this point to deliver basic broadband Internet access to a house.

So now low-income households will have a means to get on the Internet too.  These days it is really impossible (OK, improbable) to use the Internet using a dial-up connection, and the Internet has become an essential tool for everyone.

Imagine being a school-age kid in a household that cannot afford Internet access because it costs $50, $75, or $100 per month.  Teachers assign homework and projects these days assuming that everyone has Internet access at home.  That kid who doesn't have it is incredibly disadvantaged vs. the rest of the class.  Even if they can go to a public library, we all know that presents a number of huge obstacles.

Now, lest you all think I have flipped my lid and gone soft, I assure you I have not.  This just makes sense.  Nobody loses anything -- in fact, the cable company will make money from it.  And the low-income households will definitely be helped.

This would be a lot different if the president suddenly ordered that the government borrow $500 billion to install Internet access for every town in America because low-income households don't have Internet access.  Don't laugh, he's proposed crap like that.  Instead, this is a win-win that directs the help at the people who demonstrably need it, without imposing new taxes or borrowing more money (God help us).

Comcast is currently in 39 states, so this will help a lot of people.  I hope other cable companies follow suit!

News story link:

Comcast rolls out $10 web access for low income households

I have been tapping my toe waiting for Google to release version 13 of Chrome, and today they finally did.  As always, you can quickly upgrade by clicking "About Google Chrome" in the "wrench" menu.

Version 12 of Chrome had a nasty bug that forced the browser to NOT scroll down automatically on several of Lottery Post's pages.  (Like when you clicked the green arrow next to a post on the Home page.)

Version 13 thankfully fixes that problem, and the auto scrolling works again.

Whew!