Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude. (c) Ruffin Bailey 2001-2021

And here I was naive enough, coming back to web dev after a brief academic hiatus, to believe that the browsers had converged enough to think the design horrors of 2000 were over. No such.

If there's one thing I'd like to see implemented, it's this text-shadow CSS property that the w3c proposed quite some time ago. Here's a page at w3c with "Readable White Text" using the property. Below, I'll include the code that should do the same thing.

This should have a shadow. Without Safari, though, you're likely not seeing it -- or you're from THE FUTURE.

*sigh* Just for fun, here's what you should be seeing, taken from Safari on Windows:

A little bigger now for effect...

That's really a pretty nice effect.

Mozilla had a bug filed for its lack of support in 1999. With any luck, it appears it may have, within this weekend, finally gotten a patch. I tried the nightly build (2008042004) on my Mac, however, and no dice.

Here's the best workaround I can find for IE.

This should have a shadow. But only on IE, regardless of whether you're from THE FUTURE or not. Unless it's STEVE BALLMER'S FUTURE, where every browser is IE.

Not only does it stink visually, it inexplicably seems to require a style value for height. Here's a picture for the IE challenged.

And the code. Note the difference between using "text-shadow" and the "Direction" and "Strength" jive for the IE "filter".


<center>
<div style="background-color:blue;padding:10px;width:70%;text-align:left">
<h3 style="color:white; text-shadow: black 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em;">
This should have a shadow. Without Safari, though, you're likely not seeing it
-- or you're from THE FUTURE.
</h3>
</div>
</center>


<center>
<div style="background-color:blue;padding:10px;width:70%;text-align:left">
<h3 style="color:white;height:100px;filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color='#666666', Direction=225, Strength=4)">
This should have a shadow. But only on IE, regardless of whether you're from
THE FUTURE or not. Unless it's STEVE BALLMER'S FUTURE, where every browser is IE.
</h3>
</div>
</center>

EDIT: Some play in the search for a solution.
Better yet, works towards a possible patch for Firefox, with a test build.

Labels: browsers, css, html

I've been using my DTV converter box for some time now, and I've got its pros and cons down fairly well now.

The pros are numerous. The picture, when you have a good signal, is superb (though, honestly, a perfect analog signal (have you seen one? I get Fox *very* well if I try) is just a small step down). I'm able to get three extra channels (two on educational TV and the CW network) with the multicasts, which is also nice. Finally, now that it's digital, there's really nothing much in the way of getting TVs that, say, will download an Excel file or html page related to the stats you see on a news story or something similar. AppleTV anyone?

The cons still outweigh these positives for me. The first and worst effect of DTV is the horrible "Ivory Tower" engineering it evidences. When the weather's perfect, reception isn't bad. When there's wind, my signal goes to heck every time and I end up watching analog again. From give or take 1-3pm, every day, my signal degrades enough that I start watching analog. Again, I'll mention that the way DTV sound doesn't gain static but completely cuts out instead. This is the single worst part of the DTV system; without consistent sound, a serviceable signal because useless.

Worst about DTV is the impossibility of tuning your antennae. With analog, each minuscule move of the antennae is immediately reflected on your screen, letting you easily and quickly find the best location to get a signal. With digital, you've got no idea if you're getting close or not. It's an impossible task.

Let's remember to add all the VCRs that are rendered nearly obsolete, at least in the market of recording ("time warping") shows being shown over the air. You can route your converter box's signal into channel 3 or 4 your VCR, but your VCR can't change channels. You can only do timer recordings of whatever channel happens to be coming out of the converter box by taping channel 3 or 4, and you won't be able to watch another channel while you're taping. Figuring that much out takes a tiny bit of out of the box thinking, though. Essentially, you're in the market to replace a second major piece of electronics you already own thanks to DTV.

If you've got a lab where you can control the transmitter and the receiver, you can get decent results. If you're in the "real world" trying to grab seven over-the-air channels, swapping back and forth from one to another, well, it's another story entirely. DTV, in this case, STINKS.

Who does this affect? Not those who use cable or satellites. No no, cable companies must love DTV. When you get aggravated enough, do you buy a $300 antennae for your roof or shell out $40 a month for a clear signal and extra channels? I'm betting a decent percentage choose the latter. I feel sorry for ~~older~~ folk who might have a hard time understanding how to hook up a converter box and buy a new TV instead -- much less those that shell out for a TV and can't figure out why the reception, when it's not coming in well, has gone from so danged good to absolutely unwatchable. And I feel a little anger that there will be thousands, I'll bet, of people too out of the loop or just plain too poor to keep watching TV after the switch.

Labels: DTV

title: Put the knife down and take a green herb, dude.	descrip: One feller's views on the state of everyday computer science & its application (and now, OTHER STUFF) who isn't rich enough to shell out for www.myfreakinfirst-andlast-name.com Using 89% of the same design the blog had in 2001.
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Sunday, April 27, 2008
Java Blogger/Google Code Step Google left a step out of its description of how to set up ant 1.7. If you stop at their instructions without following the following link, you'll still be using ant 1.6.5 (or whatever) rather than 1.7 if it wasn't already there by default. Wooden Fish :: Installation of Ant on OS X: Assuming the default shell of your Terminal is bash; make sure the following lines are in the bashrc file. You can find the file under /etc. 1. export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant 2. export PATH=${PATH}:${ANT_HOME}/bin posted by ruffin at 4/27/2008 03:11:00 PM

Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Not 'Vista Capable'? Whadd'm I missin? From Macworld UK: The year-old case alleges that many of the PCs labeled with a Vista Capable sticker in the months before Vista was released were able to run only Home Basic, a version the plaintiffs say lacked some of the most heavily promoted elements of the new operating system. Microsoft has disputed the charges. I've got Vista Home Basic. What am I missing again? I mean, there are some REALLY dumb omissions, like playing and burning watchable DVDs, but those are only with limitations related to Microsoft's software. VLC gets me around the first, and I'm sure Roxio and/or friends could get me burning DVDs for my DVD player. Is it the Aero interface they're missing? I'm not sure that's one "of the most heavily promoted elements" of Vista. If it is, it's nothing to sue over, is it? Guess I should read up more. Personally I thought Vista was about a secure MS OS (oxymoronic phrase legitimized!) and the ability to code in (and run apps that need) .NET. posted by ruffin at 4/23/2008 03:54:00 PM

Get creative, SETI SETI@Home just sent me a whiny message asking me to start back up crunching units. Ever since BOINC, I quit. It wasn't as smooth an install as the old screensaver, and, well, at first it wasn't a password protected screensaver either. It looks like that might be fixed now, but I still wonder about this: On most computers, SETI@home's graphics use the graphics coprocessor (such as NVIDIA or ATI), and don't significantly slow down computation. Maybe I'm missing something, but doesn't that tell us there's more ET crunching power going to waste on most computers? Get in there and utilize those cycles the right way, SETI! Every cycle is sacred! ;^) posted by ruffin at 4/23/2008 12:54:00 PM

Sunday, April 20, 2008
Ah, CSS, Readable White Text, and the Horrors of Browsers And here I was naive enough, coming back to web dev after a brief academic hiatus, to believe that the browsers had converged enough to think the design horrors of 2000 were over. No such. If there's one thing I'd like to see implemented, it's this text-shadow CSS property that the w3c proposed quite some time ago. Here's a page at w3c with "Readable White Text" using the property. Below, I'll include the code that should do the same thing. This should have a shadow. Without Safari, though, you're likely not seeing it -- or you're from THE FUTURE. sigh Just for fun, here's what you should be seeing, taken from Safari on Windows: A little bigger now for effect... That's really a pretty nice effect. Mozilla had a bug filed for its lack of support in 1999. With any luck, it appears it may have, within this weekend, finally gotten a patch. I tried the nightly build (2008042004) on my Mac, however, and no dice. Here's the best workaround I can find for IE. This should have a shadow. But only on IE, regardless of whether you're from THE FUTURE or not. Unless it's STEVE BALLMER'S FUTURE, where every browser is IE. Not only does it stink visually, it inexplicably seems to require a style value for height. Here's a picture for the IE challenged. And the code. Note the difference between using "text-shadow" and the "Direction" and "Strength" jive for the IE "filter". <!-- w3c's Way (Safari only right now) --> <center> <div style="background-color:blue;padding:10px;width:70%;text-align:left"> <h3 style="color:white; text-shadow: black 0.1em 0.1em 0.2em;"> This should have a shadow. Without Safari, though, you're likely not seeing it -- or you're from THE FUTURE. </h3> </div> </center> <!-- Microsoft's Way (IE only right now, and likely forever) --> <center> <div style="background-color:blue;padding:10px;width:70%;text-align:left"> <h3 style="color:white;height:100px;filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(color='#666666', Direction=225, Strength=4)"> This should have a shadow. But only on IE, regardless of whether you're from THE FUTURE or not. Unless it's STEVE BALLMER'S FUTURE, where every browser is IE. </h3> </div> </center> EDIT: Some play in the search for a solution. Better yet, works towards a possible patch for Firefox, with a test build. Labels: browsers, css, html posted by ruffin at 4/20/2008 09:25:00 PM

Friday, April 18, 2008
IE:Desktop Icon::Safari:iTunes Software Update Macrumors.com brings us... Apple Modifies Software Update for Windows: Safari now occupies a place in the 'New Software' box, but continues to be offered to all Windows iTunes users. Even still, Mozilla's Asa Dotzler believes Apple should not leave the software checked by default. Dotzler is absolutely right. The checked by default move in Software Update to install new software is the same sort of logic as the "undeleteable" Internet Explorer icon on Windows. posted by ruffin at 4/18/2008 06:52:00 PM

USB, !Floppy, LCD, now LED From Macworld UK: The MacBook Air has become the best advertisement for why companies should use LED (light-emitting diode) backlights in notebook screens, and is driving adoption, according to market researcher DisplaySearch. Is Apple so good at leading the way into new technologies (or ridding old ones) because they can predict what's cool, or do things become cool because Apple says so? And who fields the R&D cost for things like this -- that is, do other companies get some sort of benefit because Apple's already gotten Asia to mass-produce this jive? posted by ruffin at 4/18/2008 03:44:00 PM

Wifi Phone Home This, from lifehacker.com, is my optimistic picture of the future of phone: For the privilege of making phone calls with your iPhone, you have to pay $100 more upfront to Apple for the device itself, plus a minimum of $60/month to AT&T for the next two years. Let';s say you didn't need that kind of firepower from your iPod touch, but that you would like to use it make a phone call every now and then. You can, and today I'm going to show you how to make VoIP phone calls from your iPod touch or iPhone using a freeware application called SIP-VoIP. That's the power of unregulated bandwidth, even with the tiny hole in legislation that 802.11 utilizes. Imagine if people were able to create radio towers that gave wifi. I've used a shortwave modem before, which isn't nearly fast enough for voice, but gives me some idea of the power of wide area to add to unregulated methods of wireless (read:"radio") transmission. There are already dedicated wifi Skype (and other service) phones, but by themselves they don't take off. The beauty of digital is ease of bundling functions into one device. the iPod touch, unlocked to run Skype or the like, should really make AT&T squirm and Apple salivate. Where is my officially supported iLongDistance? What drives me mad is that there's no reason we can't all have inexpensive wifi phones in our pockets right now that use free online voice chat services to get our talk across. It's painful that whatever the heck Web 2.0 becomes, it seems to be trending away from F/free and towards erecting as many barriers to entry for the little feller as possible. That wifi even exists is a mixed blessing for these corps. It's been a great frontier for experimentation, and has shown corporations where there's money to be made on larger scales, but to do so, F/free wifi has had to keep enough room to be a competitor for those same corps' markets. I'd like to see the US government deregulate a large portion of, heck, I don't know, the TV spectrum to allow anyone to do whatever they want short of intentional jamming. I think we'd all be happy with the results. Well, minus a few unimaginative CEOs and their employees. posted by ruffin at 4/18/2008 11:20:00 AM

Wednesday, April 16, 2008
I hate spin Seriously, you lose 10% of your customers in a few months and someone's got the cahones to say, Amazon no threat to iTunes: Amazon's MP3 service may be growing, but it's not taking much of a bite from iTunes, according to the analysts at NPD. The analysts are reporting that just 10 per cent of those buying music from Amazon's US digital download store are defectors from iTunes. NPD analyst Russ Crupnick explained this as a 'healthy indication that the digital music customer pool can expand into new consumer groups who have not yet joined the iTunes community'. Who is paying Crupnick off here? Of course the more interesting question is where were the Amazon mp3 buyers getting their music before? Are these losses from Napster? Freeloaders on Limewire and KaZaA style services? I know I've largely defected from iTunes, and I get aggravated at myself when I've purchased from iTunes and begin to burn an mp3 CD, as my car's mp3 player don't play that AAC jive. I've rented a 99¢ movie from iTunes recently, but that's about it. As I've said before, finding my music for me quickly is worth a premium. If you don't want to play AAC, Amazon is your best bet. So if you were searching Gnutella networks before, maybe you're throwing a few bucks Amazon's way? Regardless, losing 10% of your market is a big deal. If we believe the whole barrier to entry deal, Amazon's one barrier to entry away from about %20 of the market, two from 40%, and three from tipping. One of those is the iPod. What are the other two? The news.com article just happens to add: Amazon has at least one major advantage over Apple: Apple's DRM-free tracks are available only from EMI Music, while Amazon offers unprotected MP3s from all four of the major record labels. Also, Amazon sells digital music at a higher bit rate and its songs are often cheaper. If I'm Amazon, I'm impressed with that quick a move to 10%, and those benefits are exactly what's powering the siphon-ige. Labels: amazon, apple, DRM, iTunes posted by ruffin at 4/16/2008 03:08:00 PM

And boom goes the NVu My favorite feature of NVu was the ability to highlight part or all of a page in Firefox, cut, and paste something that looked pretty much the same in NVu. Then I could either steal the html or WYSIWYG it right there in NVu. Yes, I know NVu has been dated for quite some time (which also means Kompozer's no good), but until now still played nicely with FF. With Firefox 3, however, the cutting and pasting no longer works; the html comes out as plain text. I don't believe the current Moz Editor has a standalone release, though there are some docs on doing it yourself, beyond me. Perhaps I'll download Moz with Composer by itself, eh? EDIT: Talk about intuitive. If you put `document.designMode='on';` in a script tag somewhere in your page, you can use Firefox to edit your page. I'm betting there are other calls for getting the editor toolbar to show up too. Strange. Labels: mozilla posted by ruffin at 4/16/2008 12:37:00 AM

Sunday, April 13, 2008
When do we get to see Google Print, ur, LaserJet? When I look at Gmail's interface, there seems an obvious omission in there when you've got the option "Open as Google Document", which is "Print". Why download the file locally? Why have it live on your terminal at all? I've got a print server on a wireless network at home. I wouldn't mind installing something from Google that allows me to route printing there. In fact I'd much prefer it. The interface could be a pretty easy one, I think. If you had a specialized Google Talk application, perhaps running on port 80 relying on the client pulling more than Google's servers pushing jobs, I think you'd have it. Labels: gmail, Google posted by ruffin at 4/13/2008 12:48:00 PM

Saturday, April 12, 2008
DTV letdowns I've been using my DTV converter box for some time now, and I've got its pros and cons down fairly well now. The pros are numerous. The picture, when you have a good signal, is superb (though, honestly, a perfect analog signal (have you seen one? I get Fox very well if I try) is just a small step down). I'm able to get three extra channels (two on educational TV and the CW network) with the multicasts, which is also nice. Finally, now that it's digital, there's really nothing much in the way of getting TVs that, say, will download an Excel file or html page related to the stats you see on a news story or something similar. AppleTV anyone? The cons still outweigh these positives for me. The first and worst effect of DTV is the horrible "Ivory Tower" engineering it evidences. When the weather's perfect, reception isn't bad. When there's wind, my signal goes to heck every time and I end up watching analog again. From give or take 1-3pm, every day, my signal degrades enough that I start watching analog. Again, I'll mention that the way DTV sound doesn't gain static but completely cuts out instead. This is the single worst part of the DTV system; without consistent sound, a serviceable signal because useless. Worst about DTV is the impossibility of tuning your antennae. With analog, each minuscule move of the antennae is immediately reflected on your screen, letting you easily and quickly find the best location to get a signal. With digital, you've got no idea if you're getting close or not. It's an impossible task. Let's remember to add all the VCRs that are rendered nearly obsolete, at least in the market of recording ("time warping") shows being shown over the air. You can route your converter box's signal into channel 3 or 4 your VCR, but your VCR can't change channels. You can only do timer recordings of whatever channel happens to be coming out of the converter box by taping channel 3 or 4, and you won't be able to watch another channel while you're taping. Figuring that much out takes a tiny bit of out of the box thinking, though. Essentially, you're in the market to replace a second major piece of electronics you already own thanks to DTV. If you've got a lab where you can control the transmitter and the receiver, you can get decent results. If you're in the "real world" trying to grab seven over-the-air channels, swapping back and forth from one to another, well, it's another story entirely. DTV, in this case, STINKS. Who does this affect? Not those who use cable or satellites. No no, cable companies must love DTV. When you get aggravated enough, do you buy a $300 antennae for your roof or shell out $40 a month for a clear signal and extra channels? I'm betting a decent percentage choose the latter. I feel sorry for ~~older~~ folk who might have a hard time understanding how to hook up a converter box and buy a new TV instead -- much less those that shell out for a TV and can't figure out why the reception, when it's not coming in well, has gone from so danged good to absolutely unwatchable. And I feel a little anger that there will be thousands, I'll bet, of people too out of the loop or just plain too poor to keep watching TV after the switch. Labels: DTV posted by ruffin at 4/12/2008 09:48:00 PM

Friday, April 11, 2008
Hello VImness, my old friend. Been using VIm to edit php-ige recently, and need to grab some links that seem useful. First, how to get rid of the finger travel to the escape key. You can always hit ctrl-[ for escape in VIm, apparently, which is nice. If Ctrl is too far away, you can map the Caps Lock key to control. Here's how in Mac OS X. http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=1083 amix _at_ amix.dk, December 24, 2005 2:18 I know how to turn caps off in Tiger (or turn it into a CTRL key): - Open System Preferences - Goto Keyboard & Mouse - At the bottom of the panel there is a "Modifier Keys..." button, click it - Choose "No Action" or "^ ctrl" for caps-lock Very nice. Fringe benefit: No more accidental caps lock in VIm. Fringe drawback: No more caps lock. For now I'm sacrificing the benefit and trying out control as caps lock. Alternately... http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Avoid_the_escape_key: `imap <D-space> <esc>` works even better in Mac! <D-space> means the "apple" key and the space key. Have fun! I've also found an elementary autocomplete for VIm when editing html with the xml-edit plugin. To install into VIm.app, open the Package Contents and nav to the internal ftplugin folder. I'm also interested in the surround.vim plugin. Surround.vim is all about "surroundings": parentheses, brackets, quotes, XML tags, and more. The plugin provides mappings to easily delete, change and add such surroundings in pairs. While it works under Vim 6, much of the functionality requires Vim 7. ... Emphasize hello: ysiw<em> <em>Hello</em> world! Finally, let's try out visual mode. Press a capital V (for linewise visual mode) followed by S<p class="important">. <p class="important"> <em>Hello</em> world! </p> This plugin is very powerful for HTML and XML editing, a niche which currently seems underfilled in Vim land. (As opposed to HTML/XML inserting, for which many plugins are available). Adding, changing, and removing pairs of tags simultaneously is a breeze. Happy VImming, etc. Labels: editing, html, vim posted by ruffin at 4/11/2008 10:45:00 AM

Thursday, April 10, 2008
Viva la analog! From Macworld UK: Digital music will account for 40 per cent of the global music market by 2012, the latest In-Stat research claims. Oh really? Guess it's a good thing I kept my Walkman, turntable, and 8-track player around. CDs are DRMless digital, folk. Let's not forget it, okay? Precision, writers, precision. posted by ruffin at 4/10/2008 05:08:00 PM

Monday, April 07, 2008
Argh. The Apple Intel Tax I know, I know, my G4 iBook is a little long in the tooth, but I really, really like it. I don't want to buy a Mac[In]tel, but I'm, to say the least, really curious about the iPhone. Guess what ADC has to tell me?: Technical Requirement [for "Free iPhone SDK"]: Intel processor-based Mac running Mac OS X Leopard I don't regret buying my Vostro, yet, but I sure would like to give the SDK a shot. Guess I'm going to have to talk myself out of another new Mini once they're updated. sigh Once you factor in the price of iLife ($79) and Leopard ($129), the Mini's only (599-(79+129)=) $391. Not too shabby, and if I really was a serious developer I couldn't complain. Heck, I'd've purchased a MacBook Pro months ago if I'd had that much kool aid. I hate you Apple. ;^) Labels: apple, iphone posted by ruffin at 4/07/2008 10:08:00 AM

Saturday, April 05, 2008
Firefox complaints from a real Mac user There's no getting around that Gruber is a real Mac user: Text Editing Shortcuts — Firefox 3 still doesn’t support certain standard Mac text editing key bindings. For example, in a one-line text field, the Up and Down Arrow keys should move the insertion point to the beginning and end of the line, respectively. Drives me nuts. Man, you've got to be pretty Mac centric to have that bother you. I'm not sure I've noticed, and believe, from memory, that I just hit up followed by a quick "home" when I'm Firefoxin'. Still, the make it or break it feature for me remains the find-as-you-type in Firefox. I love browsing without touching the mouse. Flashblock is a wonderful extension to Firefox as well, though I'm sure there's some equiv on Safari I haven't found. The problem is that I haven't found it because I use Firefox more. I enjoy the quickness of Safari on old Macs, but that's about all the use it gets now. Ah yes, I caught a blurb on LowEndMac that Opera will let you reduce page rendering -- not just text -- which is a way to cheat and have a better screen resolution on your older machines. I'm looking forward to trying it out on my 1024x iBook G4. posted by ruffin at 4/05/2008 08:57:00 PM

Thursday, April 03, 2008
Never trust your sources Welp, a few hours of writing were lucky enough to find a home on LowEndMac.com under the title "Mother of the MacBook Air" (not my title, but a very good one) which is great. Unfortunately I made a pretty serious factual error in it which, like raising your hand to ask a question only to have the extra blood in the brain allow you to answer it yourself, only presented itself to me the second after it was too late to say I knew better. From David Pogue's review of the MacBook Air: In other words, there's no Ethernet networking jack, dial-up modem, audio input or FireWire connector. Welp, I'm an idiot. I saw a few reviews that said the Air had an audio-in port. It doesn't. I couldn't find evidence of audio-in on Apple's site on the Air's "Tech Specs," but stupidly figured the audio-in omission was just an oversight and sent in the article. The Air does have a microphone, which was a -- if not the -- main complaint against the iBook clamshell once iChat A/V came out, but true audio-in still ain't there. For someone who tapes streaming audio as often as I do by routing the audio out back into my Vostro's audio-in (no Audio Recorder app on Vista like on my iBook, and Audacity can't find the Vostro's system sound for some reason), I should've caught that one. Labels: apple, idiot posted by ruffin at 4/03/2008 10:08:00 PM

Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Lenovo's "Thinkpad Air" vs. Apple's hats of profit Prices for Lenovo 's ThinkPad X300: ThinkPad X300 with DVD Burner From: $3,330.00* Sale price: $2,997.00* ThinkPad X300 with additional 3 cell bay battery From: $3,225.00* Sale price: $2,902.50* ThinkPad X300 with Mobile Broadband From: $3,375.00* Sale price: $3,037.50* There's no getting around that its features walk all over the MacBook Air, minus the ability to run OS X, of course, but its price, which is approximately a MacBook Air and a well-equipped Dell Vostro, has me thinking maybe, just maybe, Apple's simplistic approach to thin isn't just about cool. Man, I'm a tool. Of course they coulda gotten more in the Air, as the extra USB slots on the mobo show. That cheap can just happen to be made to look cooler too is a fringe benefit. Them guys in Cupertino is smart. posted by ruffin at 4/02/2008 05:09:00 PM

Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Gmail Custom Time: Google's approach to 4/1 Gmail: Google's approach to email: Is there a limit to how far back I can send email? Yes. You'll only be able to send email back until April 1, 2004, the day we launched Gmail. If we were to let you send an email from Gmail before Gmail existed, well, that would be like hanging out with your parents before you were born -- crazy talk. ... "I just got two tickets to Radiohead by being the 'first' to respond to a co-worker's 'first-come, first-serve' email. Someone else had already won them, but I told everyone to check their inboxes again. Everyone sort of knows I used Custom Time on this one, but I'm denying it." Robby S., Paralegal This is one of those deal where it's funny because it's true... That is, there's really nothing about an email's format other than a few fairly involved, but accessible, ASCII edits that prevent you from sending emails that, for all anyone could check them for, appear to have come from the past -- or future. You may have noticed spammers doing this to send messages from the future that stay atop your Inbox essentially until you deal with them, or there's the issue of when I've let my laptop's battery die and send a few emails before the clock syncs back up online. Hello, forty year-old email dates... If the recipient doesn't have their inbox arranged by "date received" to deal with this and the spamming issue (or even more rare, a clean inbox!!!), these "antiques" might never be seen. So though Google thinks they're joking, they really aren't. I wonder if their SMTP server does anything about wacky send dates in emails... Labels: 4/1, email, gmail posted by ruffin at 4/01/2008 11:07:00 AM

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