Bus error: Jake Billo’s weblog

Background: Denon produces an expensive Ethernet cable, much like the kind Monster are known for. It goes for $500 for 1.5 meters.

Body: Story hits Digg, the Consumerist, and a variety of other self-righteous forums that really should focus less on “ohpleaseohpleaseohplease check my ID when I hand over a credit card”, “they sent me too big of a box”, and “lol, I have to pay taxes?” and focus more on wireless data prices, large companies screwing people over, and how not to be a chump. Commenters race to tell users all about the ridiculously cheaper alternatives and suggest Belkin. (Really?) I shamelessly promote my consulting business here to tell you about a site called Monoprice, which we’re happy to refer clients to for their cabling needs.

Plot Twist: Amazon reviews get spammed for the product, per this Slashdot article and attached comment. This should be expected, though, because people have too much time on their hands but are still chumps - don’t expect them to venture outside of the comment field.

(Hell, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister today expressing my displeasure with Bill C-61, studied some calculus, and cleaned up after a dishwasher explosion. And still had time to tell all you chumps about this nonsense.)

Punchline: From the Amazon reviews, in case it gets taken down and you don’t see it:

If I could use a rusty boxcutter to carve a new orifice in my body that’s compatible with this link cable, I would already be doing it. I can just imagine the pure musical goodness that would flow through this cable into the wound and fill me completely — like white, holy light. Holding this cable in my hands actually makes me feel that much closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. I only make $6.25/hr at Jack In The Box, but I saved up for three months so I could have this cable. It sits in a shrine I constructed next to my futon in Mother’s basement.

I only gave it four stars in my review because I can’t find music that is worthy enough to flow through this utterly perfect interconnect.

Appendix: Check out G.P.’s other reviews, specifically the one where he bashes Cooper Lawrence’s book (the woman partially responsible for that Fox News Mass Effect sex-in-videogames scandal.)

Chump count: three

I think I’ve found a group of people just as annoying as elitist Mac users. This group would be the no-holds-barred Firefox/Mozilla zealots who hang out at Spread Firefox and post Diggbait articles about the state of browser compatibility. Yes, Firefox has done great things for Web standards and interoperability of sites; it’s also nice to have the same browsing UI on Windows, OS X and Linux boxes. Yes, not everyone at Spread Firefox is drooling with glee as they report sites for misplacing a LI tag. Unfortunately, today’s target of my wrath does not meet the criteria for exemption.

It’s specifically this list that irks me today, written by a guy whose interests apparently include bashing “Micro$oft”, South Park boot screens, and writing about browser incompatibilities.

The only reason I even bring this up (and since I refuse to go into the Digg comments; they’re already at over 110 and I don’t think I’ve seen one intelligent one yet) is because Nathan links to blackberry.com as one of the sites that’s incompatible with Firefox.

Wait, hold up. blackberry.com (the consumer/promotion site for the devices) is about one of the most likely sites to comply with Web standards, since it’s also designed to be viewable on a BlackBerry device. What’s this guy on about? His complaint is specifically the Google Talk instant messenger download page:

http://www.blackberry.com/GoogleTalk/index.do Uses obsolete ActiveX junk. And Google is somehow involved with this?!?

For reference, here’s what the website says when I go to it using Firefox:

Notice

Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or above is required to download this Instant Messenger.

This web page uses ActiveX controls that work only in Microsoft Internet Explorer. To ensure that Google Talk for BlackBerry devices is correctly downloaded to your BlackBerry, this site is not designed to work with any other Internet browsers.

This page is a separate application with an ActiveX control, designed to connect to your device using USB and load a Java MIDlet (which can’t be done with conventional web scripting language, so ActiveX is really the only way to go.) Furthermore, anybody accessing this page can also do it from their BlackBerry device, which also properly loads the application without the IE requirement.

For the record, I use both IE7 and Firefox at work, each for about 50% of typical usage. All my custom development works equally well in both browsers, except for SharePoint/Project Server integrated plugins (and that’s a Microsoft limitation.) Yes, it’s not entirely great that you can’t load MIDlets with Firefox, but the reality of the business world is such that you can count on a Windows/IE combination for corporate desktops; a Firefox extension/plugin for the same functionality doesn’t really make sense when there’s already a browser-agnostic way of performing this task.