Chrome on Ubuntu

I've started using Chrome on one of my Ubuntu Linux machines, and kinda like it. It's fast, and pointing it at a PeopleSoft SA page doesn't lobotomize it (Firefox 3 slows to a crawl when SA is visited and remains at a snail's pace until the browser is closed--generally a mercy killing). A few minuses to date:

1. The formatting on some of the PeopleSoft SA pages is sufficiently messed up as to be unreadable. It's not as though they were all that readable to begin with, though.
2. It doesn't seem aware of my Flash installation, which may be a simple configuration issue.
3. I can't right-click on an image and ask it to never load images from that particular server ever again. Thus I see a lot of ads I've trained Firefox to not fetch.

The Bombe: Prelude to Modern Cryptanalysis

There is a small mistake in the NSA publication The Bombe: Prelude to Modern Cryptanalysis available at the National Cryptologic Museum at Ft. Meade. The bibliography lists Isadore Jacob "Jack" Good as J.I. Good rather than I.J. Good. Anyone active in the Va. Tech Philosophy Club circa 1980 knows the correct ordering of the initials. Another error in the same publication has been noted in Cryptologia.

Web Pages by People Who Don't Understand Algorithms

I've used the Online Etymology Dictionary a few times and basically like it. But it's used to look up words. Words have spellings. To browse, picking the first letter, then the second, then the third, etc. would make the most sense. Did I mention that words have spellings? This would be easily implemented as a trie. Instead, we're expected to pick the first letter, and then use a number, like page 23 of the letters starting with 'b'. Two explanations: (1) whoever designed the page didn't care; (2) whoever designed the page didn't have a software background, and so never thought to use a trie.

Improving Usability of myUMBC Continued

In February I talked a bit about improving myUMBC usability. I've gone a bit farther, by partially disabling the spotlight "feature." Here's my up-to-date UMBC-specific karma blocker code:

# Block myUMBC 404 not found chipmunk
[group]
score=10
rule=$url$='dramatic_chipmunk.flv'

# Block UMBC Alerts
[group]
score=10
rule=$url=='https://my.umbc.edu/modules/dashboard/images/alert_bubble.png'

# Block myUMBC Rotating Banner
[group]
score=10
rule=$url^='https://my.umbc.edu/shared/modules/spotlight/'

# Block myUMBC Rotating Banner
[group]
score=10
rule=$url^='https://my.umbc.edu/modules/spotlight/'

This is for the Firefox Karma Blocker add-on, which works nicely.