This made me laugh today…

Apple today announced the Safari 3 public beta for Windows. I just want to run through some quick numbers of test I did on a Vista machine.

First test, New York Times. The favorite screen shot for apple.

NYT may be a favorite for apple and the results show. 3.11 seconds for Safari and 3.25 seconds for Firefox. Winner - Safari

Let’s try someone we know should not be in bed with Apple. Microsoft.com

4.40 seconds for Firefox and 4.15 seconds for Safari. Winner - Safari

On to popular tech sites… Digg.com

9.32 seconds for Firefox and 7.38 seconds for Safari. Winner - Safari

Last, what I always considered a beefy page… Yahoo.com

1.94 seconds for Firefox (not quite as beefy as I thought!) and 1.93 seconds for Safari. Winner again, Safari

In every test, Safari was marginaly quicker, except for Digg.com, all results were very close. However, the claims apple has made about Safari being quicker is, for the most part, true.

Look for more updates on this post soon.

Next time you want to vomit after filling up your tank, remember we pay less than the rest of the world.

I have been using WordPress as my blog CMS for several years now. I love how far they have come with their product, and the community online for wordpress is amazing. Some of the best things about wordpress are the nearly infinite plugins and themes, and of course, their love for open source. So, why am I saying movable type 4 is a wordpress killer?

Let’s be honest, when you make titles that anger people, get on their nerves, or make them think twice about something, they are more likely to read. When I read that movable type 4 was coming out, I read the blog… Their product has been going downhill, or should I say, stalling since this new item was mentioned. Tons of people went to wordpress for their CMS, but before wordpress, movable type was the king of the game. If their coders are half as good as this press release, I will certainly be paying attention to the details of MT4.

Open ID, different types of page management, memcache, integrated user registration, and rich media. Almost all of these are available with wordpress. One big difference, all of these will be integrated with MT4. So the problem I have is, do I try out the MT4, or stay with WP? Of course I will try it out, but am I willing to switch back? If Brad Fitzpatrick is involved with MT4 as much as the press release is insinuating, (Open ID, memcache) I am willing to jump on board.

Possibly one of the funniest videos I have seen in months. Apparently Bob Dylan is responsible for every popular song over the last 35 years. Some of his hits include Drop it like its hot, Big Butts, and My Humps, yep, you guessed it, all written by Bob Dylan. No Direction, Period.

Just as a historical note, I never knew Joan Baez was the inspiration for the now popular song, My Humps.

Yesterday a feature report was done by Ted Koppel on NPR about the number of deaths US troops sustained in Iraq. Koppel made the comparison of the number of U.S. Troops killed in Iraq to the number of people killed in car wrecks every year in America. The numbers alone are damning. 791 US Troops were killed in Iraq in 2006, in comparison, 44,027 people were killed in car accidents during the same time frame. Koppel uses these numbers to prove the death rate in Iraq is not why people want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq, rather there is another, more political reason. On the surface, these numbers appear to be a stark contrast, but these numbers are without base, and therefore mean absolutely nothing.

The death rate in Iraq is nearly 20 times that of the rate of people killed in car wrecks every year. According to GlobalSecurity.org, the number of troops killed in 2006 was 791. Seattle PI reports there were 162,000 troops in Iraq before the surge. With these two numbers, we can deduce there is on average a 0.4% death rate. In comparison, the U.S. averages 44,027 people killed in car accidents every year according to the American Academy of Neurology. For the last piece of information, the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency reports (PDF) there are a total of 194.3 million licensed drivers in the US. This gives us a 0.022% death rate. (This number should actually be a lot lower if taken from the total population of the United States, for consistency we will assume only people killed in car wrecks are licensed drivers.)

Once we take both of those rates and place them next to each other, the damning numbers before now show the same thing, but in the opposite direction. With these rates, a soldier is 18 times more likely to be killed in Iraq than driving a car in the US. This just goes to show how there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. You can make statistics work to your advantage in almost any situation. Before giving numbers out, and expecting people to digest them, take a second and look at what they really mean. While I believe the movement to have the US pull out of Iraq is fueled politically, the number of deaths is also staggering.