Firefox Nightly (6.0a1 2011-04-25)

I have been using the Nightly browser for some time now, and I have found it to be very stable (no significant crashes anyway). As such, I am very pleased with Mozilla's ability to keep their most unstable browser working 98% of the time. Since there are no user interface changes at this time, I am going to give a quick rundown on my feelings for the nightly browser, and what a HTML5 test has told me.

It has more support for the HTML5 specification--I'm just tested Firefox 4.0 on the http://html5test.com website, and got 240 +11 bonus points which is the same for Firefox 5.0a2 and 6.0a1.

This is better than Firefox 3.6, which obtained a score of 155 +4 bonus points.

However, even that is far beyond IE 8, which got a score of 32 +0 bonus points. I am not going to test anything before IE 8 due to the poor performance of IE 8. I also cannot test IE9 since I do not have a copy of Vista that I can use.

On the other hand, Chromium got a score of 273 +13 bonus points--which is higher than the latest Firefox's score by 33 +2 bonus points. Therefore, overall Chromium is the best choice for HTML5 support.

However, none of the browsers have the extensive environment for addons like Firefox, and that is where Firefox shines. Also, there is now no significant difference between the speeds of the browsers to the average person, and now it is features and not speed that browser vendors will have to compete for.

Ubuntu 11.04, "Natty Narwhal"

I have been beta testing Natty Narwhal for the past month, and so far I have been pleased with it. It did upgrade some key packages, but due to the graphics limitations on that PC that I have been testing it on, I have been unable to see what the new Unity interface looks like.

The replacement music player for Natty Narwhal is Banshee, and I like it better than RhythmBox, which was not as powerful. Ubuntu has also upgraded the python language that all of the programs built into Ubuntu have to 2.7 (it used to be 2.6 until recently).

Ubuntu still doesn't support programs written specifically for MS Windows, but WINE has been changing that for the past 10 years (at a slow rate however), and WINE is now into its 1.3 development stage.

I personally look forward to Natty Narwhal's release since it will mean that Ubuntu has consolidated the Netbook and Desktop editions, thus allowing me to use only one installation disk for two different computer types.

When Ubuntu 11.04 comes out, I would recommend that you upgrade to it if you use one of the earlier distributions of Ubuntu-stick with MS Windows for now if you have any software that will not run under Linux or WINE.

Modifying the blog's look

I have been modifying the look of the entire blog, in order to do three things.

1. Load the page faster on slow connections--the picture of the planet was large and took long times to load on slow connections
2. Make some of the text more readable (I noticed that the link in the sidebar was the same color as the background)
3. Modify everything else so that it looks better (i.e., gives feeling of depressed button when hovering over the navigation bar, which is proving to be difficult with Blogger)

There will be some more changes, which may take awhile becuase Blogger won't let me upload my own code (specifically my CSS and modifying the underlying HTML so that my CSS works with it).

President Obama and whether or not he was born in the U.S.

If the allegations that President Obama is not a natural born citizen, as some people believe or suspect, the consequences could be disastrous for both the country and the constitution.

If President Obama is not a natural born citizen, then what happens?

According to the U.S. constitution, he never could have been president, under Article II, Section 1. As such, what would happen to the laws that were signed, vetoed, or not vetoed or signed within 10 days (Article I, Section 7)? I suspect that every bill passed by congress since 2008 would become law, since President Obama could not have been president during that time period. It would have been Vice-President Biden, who never signed or vetoed a single bill during his Vice-Presidency. The constitution does not specifically state that there has to be a sitting president when a bill is signed; it just gives the president 10 days to sign.

On the other hand , President Obama could not have run for the presidency in the first place, potentially putting the Republican party or other third parties into the presidency. We would still have the bills passed by congress during that time put into law, since they would not have been returned or signed by the president. The constitution did not foresee the potential for someone not naturally born in the U.S. or its territories becoming president. However, there are already amendments to the constitution which specify whom becomes president if the president should become unable to discharge his duties, which means that Vice-President Joe Biden would take over--regardless of whether or not he wanted to or anyone else wanted him to.

So, we have to ask ourselves, how would the Supreme Court rule a lawsuit against President Obama in all likelihood, again if it could be conclusively proven that he was not a natural born citizen?

It is my belief that the Supreme Court will have a ruling on party lines, with a 5-4 ruling saying that President Obama could not have been president if sufficient evidence is gathered. What happens to the bills and positions that President Obama passed or created while in office, and what happens to the bills that he vetoed is uncertain.

If it is decided that all bills that were vetoed while President Obama was president are de-facto law due to the 10 day clause, then all bills that were passed by congress during that time period are also law.

Post your comments on what you think would happen if President Obama was not a natural born citizen.