Nobrainer’s Think Tank

Allow me to follow up on my initial review of Thunderbird 3.

The new Thunderbird is growing on me. I’m getting used to the new position of buttons at about the same rate I adjust to the change in year. By April, or July if it’s a bad year, I should have it all figured out.

Since my last review, I installed Expression Search, which has made my email searching experience much more pleasant; in fact I like using this form of search far more than both the default Thunderbird and Google Desktop email searches. It appears that my quest for email search nirvana continues.

One bonus of the new Thunderbird is the ability to view email conversations. Sort of. From what I’ve observed, you can see all the participants and their initial remarks, but you can’t view the entire thing. Moreover, the format of the “conversation” in the reader pane is so devoid of contrast that I find it difficult, at least initially, to easily discern who is saying what to whom.

The most important improvement is the ability to open emails in tabs rather than in new windows. I like it for the same reason I liked the inclusion of tabs in the web browser. However, now that Thunderbird has tabs, I feel like there needs to be the option to incorporate Thunderbird directly into Firefox.

onsider this scenario I regularly encounter. In the morning, I awake to find dozens of new messages in my inbox. I triage them by opening the important or interesting ones in tabs. Once I make it through all the new messages, I attack the tabs. Frequently, the message in a tab is a Google News Alert, which, for the unfamiliar, includes possibly dozens of links of which there are a few worth clicking on.

As it happens now, those links open in new tabs in Firefox meaning I have to switch back and forth between the Firefox and Thunderbird windows. I would rather have those tabs open next to the email message I’m reading. There is a clunky extension for Thunderbird called ThunderBrowse, that accomplishes the task of opening web pages in Thunderbird. But it does not do so well. So rather than incorporating the browser into the email client, I think it needs to move in the other direction. It also needs to be more incorporated than the email/browser clients in SeaMonkey, where they’re basically separate programs where one can be used to open the other.

I would like to see the ability to create a dedicated Thunderbird tab, maybe that can be assigned a specific tab position, within Firefox. Then, email messages can be opened in tabs within FF and moved, sorted, maybe even bookmarked, in the same way that web pages are.

This really runs counter to the light, agile, browser concept. I accept that, which is why it should be an optional add on. But considering that 99.9% of the time I have Thunderbird and Firefox open anyway, I doubt there will be much of a change in system performance.

Thanks, Nanny State.

Microsoft was forced to introduce the browser “ballot box” following a ruling by the European Commission that Microsoft’s practice of pre-installing Internet Explorer on every new computer was anti-competitive…

“Millions of European consumers will benefit from this decision by having a free choice about which web browser they use,” said Neelie Kroes, the EU’s competition commissioner.

As opposed to opening your browser and freely downloading any of the plethora of free options?

This is what I’ve never understood about the governmental anti-competitive rulings against Microsoft & IE. Users have, I won’t say always, but for as long as I can remember, had the option to download & switch to any browser of their choice. It wasn’t as though Windows ever vetoed a browser and refused to use it.

The snowstorm headed for the provided little more than a light dusting (WOOHOO!).

Nothing to see here. Please move along.

Good stuff.

The snow from the last two February storms is still melting here in Northern, VA (I’ sure that some areas still have piles leftover from the big December storm). So what better time to have another winter weather event.

• Fortunately, this is one looks like it will be remarkable only its inferiority compared to other storms this winter. “ACCUMULATIONS… POTENTIAL FOR SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 5 OR MORE INCHES.” That is unless you live in say, New York, then you may get to bypass the uber-cool thunder-snow phenomenon and go straight into HURRICANE SNOW, snow so intense it makes me think of POWERTHIRST.
  See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

• In NASCAR news, someone has accurately captured the Danica-enomenon.
  
  Ok. That’s not entirely fair. But then again, neither is the media coverage of her which, at least up to this point, has constantly been a disservice to her driving skills because it typically only highlights how not-good she is as a driver.
• In news of the nanny-state, we learn of the roadblocks faced by Boulder, CO, in becoming some kind of green Mecca.
  

  City officials never dreamed they’d have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors.

  Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about the limits of good intentions.

  “What we’ve found is that for the vast majority of people, it’s exceedingly difficult to get them to do much of anything,” says Kevin Doran, a senior research fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

  But hey, don’t worry. Despite being dedicated to spending their own money to have the Green Police invade people’s homes, they’re only getting an additional “$370,000 in federal stimulus money”. I think $370k is a fair amount for the American taxpayer to spend to bribe pay greenies to be green.

• A bit late, but here are the hot stocks for a new decade. Actually they were the hot stocks of 1999. Those include companies like AOL, TI, and MCI. In other words, the last decade was bad news for the idiots who invested too late in the hot trends of the day. Fortunately people don’t invest that stupidly nowadays.
• In legal news, the case of Jeffrey Skilling, that Enron guy, is going to the Supreme Court. There’s at least a compelling argument that the federal prosecutors who convicted Skilling were overreaching a bit.
  

  the Government’s repeated acknowledgement that Skilling’s case has no precedent in pre-McNally case law (GB17, 49) confirms that this special crime is its own new category, created for the first time in the Government’s brief in this Court.

  It is time for prosecutors to stop making up crimes under this statute. If § 1346 is not invalidated altogether, it should be limited to the single category of conduct universally recognized in the case law and hence largely immune from manipulation—quid pro quo bribes and kickbacks.

• Finally, this song has been my favorite song of the last week or two. Here’s Stevie Wonder performing Superstition live on Sesame Street.
  

I wrote to a certain organization I do business with because their FAQ says “[a] spreadsheet showing the methodology used” yada yada yada “is provided for your information.” Unfortunately they don’t link to the spreadsheet. I simply requested they update the page to link to the spreadsheet.

I just received notice of resolution.

The links… are no longer avaialble [sic].

Yup. The issue is resolved now.