Over the years, Microsoft has played with several different paradigms–usually within its Office suite–and the result has always been the same: commands that won’t stay in place so you can find them! One major attempt a few years ago was the hiding of “less often” used menu commands under an arrow. Which items were considered “less often” used of course changed over time as you used them, causing the various commands to jump around in the menu. How this “feature” ever made it out of beta testing is a mystery to me. Perhaps watching users’ frustration over menus that constantly changed was what made them decide to ditch menus altogether a few years later. (Rather than, say, stick with normal menus that users already know how to use.)

Fast forward to Office 2007. Menus are gone. Well, except there’s one under that big round Orb thing in the corner. Between the short row of “most common” commands that has been inserted into the title bar (?!) and the Ribbon. The Ribbon is Microsoft’s latest attack on the traditional menu paradigm, removing menus entirely and replacing them with something akin to tabbed toolbars. Only these toolbars feature items that dance around in place as you shrink and expand the window. Check out this silliness:

Dancing Commands

The different sizes of the “chunk” (there are several “chunks” per “ribbon”) reflect what happens as you shrink the window. Notice that at smaller sizes you don’t even get a textual description of the command anymore–and keep in mind that this is the ONLY way to access a command from now on. The goal of this design was to make commands “easier to find”. Huh? I think the fact that Microsoft has posted a Flash application on the Office website which shows people how to find a command based on where they knew it to be from earlier versions of Office is proof enough of the epic fail involved here. I had thrown up my hands in frustration on several occasions, unable to find a command, until I found this application. Thanks, MS!

Contrast this situation with Apple. Mac programs universally feature a menu bar at the top of the screen. Mac guidelines state that menu commands are not to appear or disappear at random. The upshot is that commands are always in the same place and you are not forced to hunt around for them–no matter where on the screen your window is or what size it is. In the latest version of OS X, Leopard, they even added a search box to the Help menu which allows you to find commands by typing in part of the name. What could be easier?

Easy Help

You can of course choose to ignore Mac guidelines if you wish, but then no one will use your software because the stereotype that Mac users are pickier than Windows users is true. Applications that conform to standards established by Apple and other major software vendors are prized over applications that try to “do their own thing”.

In the meantime, another project–one which would serve a vastly greater number of (ostensibly less well-connected) city commuters seems to be languishing: the Second Avenue subway. It too costs many billions of dollars, but at least it serves a real purpose–to relieve the severely overcrowded Lexington Avenue line–and extends from 125th Street all the way down to the Wall Street area. Oh, and it’s been on the drawing board for eighty years. Which means that the next time you’re packed like a sardine on the 4/5 and it’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, you can console yourself with the fact that it was never meant to be this way.

Well, the good news is that this stupid line is about to run out of money due to the MTA’s perennial money shortage. At seven billion dollars to tunnel one mile, it’s easy to see why there’s no money. One can hope that in the meantime somebody else will come into power–someone not beholden to suburban commuter demands–and put a stop to this nonsense before it sucks in any more of our tax dollars.

“People define themselves by their real-estate holdings much more than their ZIP codes.”

Well, that’s a relief. For a second I thought people were being shallow.

Agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entered the Agriprocessors Inc. complex in northeast Iowa Monday morning to execute a criminal search warrant for evidence relating to aggravated identity theft, fraudulent use of Social Security numbers and other crimes, said Tim Counts, a Midwest ICE spokesman.

Agents are also executing a civil search warrant for people illegally in the United States, he said.

Anyone who’s been following the immigration issue in America during the last few years knows that one of the two paragraphs above is true, and the other is horseshit. The answer is below the fold.

A moment’s thought should give the answer. The ridiculously-named “ICE” is in the business of rounding up illegal aliens, not going after identity theft and “other crimes” against which all levels of government already have a bountiful supply of law-enforcement agencies and alphabet soup from which to choose.

No, what happened is the county sheriff got fed up with all the townsfolk complaining about the Hispanics in town (they’ve got enough trouble already dealing with all the Jews…), called up one of his buddies in whatever the capital of Iowa is, who called one of his buddies in Washington, who pulled some strings and got the migra to make take a little trip to northeast Iowa. There is no evidence of identity theft, no evidence of fraudulent use of Social Security numbers. Unless by “evidence”, they are referring to the presence of large numbers of Spanish-speaking people, among which one can reasonably guess there might be some illegals. However, a guess is not evidence. But in today’s climate of rounding up the foreigners who do our shit jobs for us at low wages, and sending ‘em back where they came from, so that you and I can pay higher food prices and enjoy a Spanish-free environment, a “guess” is good enough.

Mr. Murdoch said Wednesday that the company was taking separate steps to stem losses at The Post. He said the paper would raise its cover price within the next two weeks to 50 cents, from a quarter.

Some of us haven’t forgotten that the Post dropped its price to a quarter several years ago in an attempt to… turn a profit. I guess that hasn’t worked out. No mention of Mr. Murdoch having any interest in, I don’t know, improving the paper’s dreadful content, which combines the lowest of low-brow trash journalism unworthy of the weekly gossip and alien-abduction rags with the hard-right pro-war conservative editorial content Mr. Murdoch is known for. My guess is Mr. Murdoch isn’t actually concerned about turning a profit at his vanity press – otherwise it would have folded years ago.

It seemed to be a constant during most of my childhood, the late seventies and early eighties. A candy bar cost a quarter and a bag of chips was 89 cents. (I ate a lot of both.) Well. Today I purchased a bag of Lay’s (the most disgusting chips on earth; and considering I live in New York City and have so many better options, like Utz or Herr’s–hey, all I can say is sometimes I get nostalgic for the extra-salty, flavorless chips of my youth) and received quite a shock when I looked at the weight of the bag.

Now I’ve noticed the gradual shrinkage of the standard potato chip bag (and many other products; the coffee can comes to mind) over the years. But I think we’ve reached a new milestone. The size of today’s $1.49 bag of Lay’s? 3 7/8 ounces. That is not a misprint. The standard bag is now less than half the size it was in my youth. If pressed, I would have guessed around five ounces. That’s the last size I recall specifically noticing. And here I thought there was something wrong with me because I finish a bag of chips in one or two days instead of the usual four or five. I knew the bags were getting smaller but less than four ounces?

What’s going on here? I think the snack food conglomerates are preying on Americans’ occasionally correct assumption that productivity increases are providing us real savings. After all, the price of a bag of chips has remained a constant $1.49 for what, a decade now? Given the inevitable inflation, they’re doing a great job keeping the price constant. Except… it’s all a pack of lies. Every couple years, shave off another quarter or eighth of an ounce. Keep the bag the same size, fill it with a little more air. No one will notice the difference. Well, bollocks on that. I am not stupid. I do not need to be fooled into thinking that Frito-Lay is doing me any favors by holding the line on the price of a bag of potato chips.

Just give me the damn eight-ounce bag and charge an honest price for it. I can handle it. The price of everything else has quadrupled (or more) in twenty-five years. Stop treating me like a child. Thanks.

Around March each year, North Korea typically asks the South to provide it with about 300,000 tons of fertilizer for its spring planting and 500,000 tons of rice to help overcome its chronic “choongoong,” or spring hunger.

“Spring hunger” must be Commie-speak for “our thoroughly discredited ideology seems to be causing another famine, please feed us”.

North Korea’s “leadership” is in fact so evil, that even China comes out smelling like a rose when it offers aid to the chronically undernourished population. China’s aid typically goes to regimes as evil as its own, such as the one currently practicing genocide in Sudan, presumably on the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend theory, in which the enemy in question is of course the United States. North Korea and China are naturally ideological pals too, but even the odious “Dear Leader” or whatever the fuck he’s calling himself these days knows there’s a limit to how many of his “subjects” he can allow to die in order to prop up his personal supply of hookers and cigars. Based on what we saw in the 1990′s, that limit appears to be at least 10%. It’s possible even the revered Mao himself didn’t reach such a dizzying percentage of deaths on his hands*.

Now it seems the Dear Leader wants to gamble the lives of his people on yet another pissing match with the South (and by extension, the United States). How many millions will die this time?

*In sheer numbers, Mao is generally regarded as the all-time leader in deaths caused by famines, purges, etc. The figures I’ve seen range from 20 to 60 million. With a population of roughly half a billion in the mid-twentieth century, we’re looking at around 10% for that bastard too. Could be more or less, as the numbers are very rough. Still vying with Stalin for evilest human ever, I think. The Kim klan never seems to make such lists, I think, only because the raw number of corpses is smaller.