26 Miles

Brian Zins Claims Record Seventh Pistol Title at NRA National Matches

// August 14th, 2005 // 2 Comments » // Shooting Sports

U.S.M.C. Gunnery Sergeant Brian Zins has claimed his seventh National Pistol Championship at Camp Perry, Ohio.

This performance sets him apart as the only person in the Championships’ century-long history to win seven times. Congratulations to Gy. Sgt. Zins on his outstanding performance and distinguished shooting legacy.

The NRA National Championships are held every July and August at Camp Perry, Ohio. Over 700 individuals typically compete in the pistol division.

For more information:
Zins Wins Historic Seventh Title at NRA National Matches
NRA National Championship Results
John Dreyer’s Bullseyepistol.com

Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 – The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

// August 13th, 2005 // No Comments » // Technology

IE Logo Microsoft recently announced the Beta 1 release of Version 7 of their next-generation Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

Early reviews are mixed, and seem to indicate both a great leap forward over IE6 while still missing some of the features long since standard-fare on alternative browsers like Mozilla’s Firefox and the Opera browser.

The Good:
IE7 will add support for tabbed browsing and improved standards compliance, including Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) improvements and RSS support. It will also add a number of much-needed security enhancements, including taking a proactive approach to protect users from phishing sites. A built-in search feature was also added to the top-right corner of the window, which supports the major search engines and eliminates the need for a separate add-on toolbar from the search vendors.

The Bad:
Microsoft announced some time back that no improvements would be made to support browsers on platforms older than Windows XP. There are a lot of people still running Windows 2000 who will be left out in the cold. This ensures the continued widespread takeover of Windows 2000 PC’s by scammers and spammers taking advantage of IE6 security holes, which will continue to provide a nice living for the geek crowd, and cost companies a lot of money.

The Ugly:
Reviewers have also pointed out that most of the web-standards improvements in IE7 revolve around bug fixes in their implementation of CSS. That said, by Microsoft’s own admission, IE7 will still fail to support the latest CSS standards, instead continuing to use a proprietary implementation. They also admit that IE7 won’t pass the Acid2 browser-compliance test, designed by the Web Standards Project to help vendors ensure their browsers support web standards.

Overall, it likely will be a major upgrade to the Internet Explorer browser, especially with respect to security. But no backwards compatibility with older (and still widely used) operating systems and lack of formal support of common web standards still leave it severely lacking in comparison to the other freelyavailable commercial browsers on the market.

For more information:
IE7 Beta Site
IE7 Reviews Mixed
Microsoft Admits IE7 Doesn’t Make Progress In Standards Support
Web Standards Project
Mozilla Firefox Browser
Opera Browser
Netscape Browser

Build Your Business With Open Source

// August 11th, 2005 // No Comments » // Technology

Slashdot has a post discussing an InfoWorld article about building business based on open source software (OSS).

This is something I advocate and have been doing myself for the past 6 years. Those of us on the “inside” of the OSS arena sometimes forget that there are a lot of people who still haven’t heard of it or if they have, don’t understand it’s advantages or worse, are misinformed about it.

It’s a good set of articles, and brings up a lot of good points for using OSS throughout your enterprise, not just in your application platforms, where OSS traditionally excels.

For more information:
Slashdot Post
InfoWorld Article

USA Shooting Announces Selection Procedures For Next Olympic Quadrennium

// August 10th, 2005 // No Comments » // Shooting Sports

USA Shooting, the national governing body for Olympic-style shooting in the United States, has posted the selection procedures for the 2006 World Championships and the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

The main departure from this past quad is that one of the two slots available for each event for the 2008 Olympic Games will be selected based on a points system athletes can begin accruing starting in 2006 that rewards international competition experience. The final slot will be selected based on performance at Olympic selection matches. In this past quad (for pistol at least), selection for both slots was based on performance at selection matches. In lay terms, this means that at least one of the two slots will be filled by an individual with at least two years of experience competing on the “big stage” against the same people they’ll face at the Olympic Games.

My kneejerk reaction is that this is a good thing if winning medals is what we’re after (and it most certainly is). It provides a balance between sending someone with a pedigree of international competition experience and offering an opportunity to talented up-and-comers to make the Olympic team.

There have been lengthy discussions in the last few years about the inconsistency in the US Shooting Team selection process and in how good shooters are developed into great shooters. I hope this is a step in the right direction.

For more information:
2006 World Championship Selection Information
2008 Olympic Selection Information