Our company is the same way. There are one or two legacy applications (nothing I wrote, mind you, third party stuff) that require IE6. They won't work with IE7, IE8, or FireFox. So we're waiting on the vendors before we can upgrade IE. I'm thinking of recommending that we upgrade to IE7 or IE8, however, and set up those people that need IE6 with Xenocode's IE6 sandbox ( http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ ).
Google has the resources to make it happen. To beat Microsoft on the desktop market. The question is will they?
They don't even have to beat Microsoft on the desktop market. Right now, Microsoft has somewhere around 88% of the desktop market. Apple is a distant #2 at about 10% and Linux makes up about 1%. If Google's ChromeOS could take 20% of the market from Microsoft, we would have a 68% Windows, 20% Chrome, 10% Apple, 1% Linux market. In a market like that, Windows seems a whole lot less dominant, applications authors look to writing their application for different systems, more people seriously consider non-Windows alternatives, and the Windows marketshare declines more. Even if those non-Windows alternatives happen to be Apple or Ubuntu Linux and not Chrome, Google's marketing might with Chrome might put the cracks in Microsoft Windows' armor that is needed for other OS's to dismantle Microsoft's lead.
And I must be the most in-pain person I know. I don't swear. Ever. (Except for that one time while driving with my friend. I decided to go for the biggest reaction possible, so I used the "C word." He almost drove off the road!) My wife, on the other hand, does plenty of swearing which is a point of contention between us. I don't mind her swearing, but not around our young (5 and 2) children. They're all too likely to repeat the curses and I would rather them not be swearing up a storm at their age.
As someone who lost 80 pounds while not exercising much and having a desk job, let me tell you that it can be done. If you don't mind a few pointers:
1 - Drink lots of water. A lot of times when you think you're hungry, you're actually thirsty. Get one of those 32oz Nalgene water bottles, fill it up, bring it to work, and drink as needed. (If you have a water cooler at work, refill it as often as needed.) I've actually gone through 100oz of water some days. Water is very filling.
2 - Eat high fiber foods. Foods higher in fiber will make you feel fuller. These can be fresh fruits/veggies or prepackaged high fiber bars. Chocolate Chip Fiber One bars are great. Find ways to add more fiber to your foods. For example, if you're eating Chinese Food, bring in some Fiber One cereal (great BTW, never thought I'd say that about a fiber cereal) and mix it in the Chinese food instead of those fried noodle things. It'll provide a satisfying crunch *and* add fiber to your diet.
3 - Find lower calorie/fat alternatives for the foods you crave. Ignoring cravings is a recipe for disaster. If you ignore your craving for ice cream, you'll just wind up at Friendly's ordering the biggest sundae they make. Instead, find foods that fit those cravings but with fewer fat/calories. A few of the ones I've found: For an ice cream craving, try Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches of Blue Bunny fat free frozen yogurt. For a brownie craving, make a batch of No Pudge Fudge. For a chocolate craving, put a Hershey's Kiss in your mouth but don't bite it. Just let it slowly dissolve.
I'll admit, I didn't have to deal with food allergies, but while it does post a complication, it shouldn't be a show-stopper. It sounds like pre-packaged foods are the biggest issue, so forget about them. Instead, make your own meals at home from raw ingredients and leave out the garlic/onion/etc. Find which brands of which foods you can use and then search through Allrecipes.com for recipes to fit those items.
One of the things I've found is that reducing your calories too much is counter-productive. Remember that our bodies evolved over millions of years where food supplies weren't constant. The body has to be able to deal with lack of food without completely failing. So, when you radically cut your calorie intake, your body senses this as a famine. It then reduces your metabolism to conserve energy. You burn less calories and retain more fat. During an actual famine, this is a good thing. You certainly don't want to burn off that one meal quickly if it is the only meal you can scrounge together for the whole day. During a modern times diet, however, it is a bad thing. It means that you will need to work out harder, and diet more just to drop a few more pounds.
This is one of the reasons why people find themselves yo-yo dieting. They go on a diet and lose some weight. The body senses the weight loss as an impending famine and reduces the metabolism. The dieter then goes off their diet and resumes their normal eating patterns. Unfortunately for them, the increased calories in coupled with the decreased calories burned results in rapid weight gain.
I lost about 80 pounds a few years back and one of my secrets was completely revamping how I looked at/considered food. I went on an "unofficial Weight Watchers" program. (Unofficial in that I did all the calculations/tracking myself and didn't join up with Weight Watchers.) Food was no longer just some tasty thing that I stuffed in my mouth. It had a number value ("points") attached to it representing how much Calories, Fat and Fiber were in it. Calculating this number turned out to be a perfect fit for my inner math nerd. Eventually, I would see at a tasty looking donut and not think of how delicious it would taste, but of how many points it was. Sure that donut would be tasty, but it just wasn't worth the huge points hit when other treats would suffice for much less. I didn't stop eating food, I just changed what foods I was eating. This shift in thinking helped me keep off my weight even after I stopped actively tracking my points. Yes, I still gain weight from time to time and go back on the program to take the weight back off, but my weight gains are much slower (30 pounds in a year, if that) and are much easier to catch early on.
Hard work? But that's too hard! Why can't we just let the police listen in on everything we say, look at everything we do, and not "tie their hands" with time-wasters like warrants or evidence rules. Eventually we can simplify things down to "police shoot person they say was doing something wrong, officer given a raise for great work." There's no downside to that, right?;-)
I'd point out that software is covered under copyright. If I make a great new program and you copy it, I can sue under existing copyright laws. Giving that program patent protection "protects" it twice which isn't needed and merely reduces competition. Instead of you needing to write, from scratch, your own competitor to my "great new program," you're locked out of the market because it is patented.
Add to that the vast number of patents that are too vague, aren't enforced until a technology becomes popular (aka patent trolls), or just cover some mundane thing done "over the Internet" or "using a computer," and you can see why people don't like software patents.
I agree. Why would they object? If they're not hiding anything, they've got nothing to fear from constant surveillance. (Said with a huge dose of sarcasm as that's the exact justification given to put normal citizens under constant surveillance.)
Well, part of parenting is teaching your kids how to react to things that you don't usually allow. If you'd rather your kid not look at nude photos of women or play extremely violent video games, you don't just keep them out of your house and pretend that they don't exist. At some point, your child will discover them. Instead, you have a talk with them about why you consider those things bad (kids aren't too fond of "because I said so") and how to react if they should come upon something like that. It's what I do with my five year old son (and will do with my two year old son when he gets older).
It's not even "a single breast being exposed during a Superbowl half-time show" but a single nipple. You can show much of the breast on TV and in print without being called porn. Just look at all of the bikini shots that show nearly the entire top of the model. But show one female nipple and you're in "won't someone think of the children" territory. I still haven't quite figured out how that small patch of skin on a female qualifies as obscene while the same patch of skin on a male is mundane. I keep envisioning a test to see how the "think of the children" folks react. Put a woman in a modified burka. It would cover her from top to bottom so you wouldn't be able to tell anything about her shape but cut holes in the burka so that only the woman's nipples showed. (Some tape may be in order to keep any breast from showing.) Would people think this was lewd? What if a similar woman walked around in a string bikini?
You could use IETab for the sites that still need Internet Explorer. It can be set up so that the tab automatically uses IE for certain websites. The other sites will use FireFox as normal and users won't need to worry about firing up a second web browser. Then, if you update a web application so that it doesn't require IE6, you can remove that site from IETab's list. Users won't need to change their habits at all, but will get the FireFox rendering engine.
So am I apparently with less than a month before I turn 34. But don't worry, because Marc Anderson is even more obselete than we are. This Wednesday (July 9th), he'll turn 38. That's positively ancient. By his own reasoning, he should be checking into a retirement community soon.
So what happens when I load this site up, load up Firefox within the "OS in a browser", navigate to the site, and load up Firefox within the "OS in a browser in an OS in a browser"?
Unfortunately, I believe it. Not vaccine related, but there was that case recently of the kid with treatable cancer who was dying because his parents insisted on using "natural remedies" instead of chemo. The courts ruled he needed to have chemo so he and his mother fled. They were eventually caught and he was put on chemo. Sure enough, his tumors shrunk. Did the mother suddenly realize the benefits of chemo? Of course not. She attributed it to their natural remedies. The same ones that didn't work all that time just suddenly kicked in right then and took out the tumor. The fact that it went away when chemo began was just a coincidence to her.
Or because they fear it'll cause autism (ala Jenny McCarthy). Combine the two and you have premarital autistic sex! We can't have that! Won't someone think of the children?
I'd modify your advice. Check with your pharmacist if you're not sure. Doctors will often not be as up-to-date on the latest drug interaction/recommendation literature as pharmacists are. My wife's brother is a pharmacist and we routinely ask him - and not our doctor - about OTC drug dosage or interactions.
This article's advice to ejaculate every day would be an interesting combination with this article's suggestion that human sperm can help diminish wrinkles.
One of the conspiracy nuts who popped into BadAstronomer's comments one time tried to argue that the International Space Station was a fake and didn't actually exist. I'm sure that level of conspiracy nuttery is extreme even among moon landing denialists, but it was still an impressive display of ignorance to see someone argue that something you can see with a decent telescope actually isn't there.
That'll teach me to post quickly to Slashdot when I'm sleep deprived.... Should've been "to make a 100 day story short" not "to make a year-long story short." Though, there was another couple who did it every day for a year.
My wife bought me the book Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) for my birthday last year. To make a year-long story short, the couple decided to have sex at least once per day for 100 days. The book is actually quite good. Very humorous and not as dirty as you might expect a book about doing it every day might be. In fact, my only disappointment with the book was that it wasn't a sign that my wife wanted to try her own 100 day challenge! (Heck, I'm not greedy. I'd go for a 30 day challenge. Or even a 2 week challenge.)
I had to deal with an ant invasion in my office just recently. I work in the back of the server room and turning the AC on kept them away, but then froze me out of my office. The exterminator my company sent was useless. He put down some ant bait, they ate it and came looking for more. I didn't want to spray ant poison in my office, but I had to do something. Then I noticed the can of Lysol in the bathroom. I borrowed it and laid down a nice blanket of Lysol on my rug and a thick Lysol barrier by my door. That kept them at bay for a day or two before it needed reinforcing. Those ants were persistent, but all their scurrying was in vein. There was no food in the back of the server room. (At least none that I'm aware of.) Finally, after a month or two of battle with the ants, they moved on. I'm guessing they found another place with a better food source.
The answer that I'm sure that the state governments would love to hear: "The sale occurred simultaneously in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Arkansas, New Hampshire, and Illinois. This means that each state gets to charge their sales tax rate on the sale."
Of course, this would mean that online commerce would get ridiculously expensive, but each state government would be too blinded by short term green to notice.
Slashdot Mirror
You forgot: Sue the companies for allowing employees to play music. (ala http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090709/1827455502.shtml )
Our company is the same way. There are one or two legacy applications (nothing I wrote, mind you, third party stuff) that require IE6. They won't work with IE7, IE8, or FireFox. So we're waiting on the vendors before we can upgrade IE. I'm thinking of recommending that we upgrade to IE7 or IE8, however, and set up those people that need IE6 with Xenocode's IE6 sandbox ( http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/ ).
But honey, it wasn't really me! Someone hacked into my brain and *MADE* me do that!
They don't even have to beat Microsoft on the desktop market. Right now, Microsoft has somewhere around 88% of the desktop market. Apple is a distant #2 at about 10% and Linux makes up about 1%. If Google's ChromeOS could take 20% of the market from Microsoft, we would have a 68% Windows, 20% Chrome, 10% Apple, 1% Linux market. In a market like that, Windows seems a whole lot less dominant, applications authors look to writing their application for different systems, more people seriously consider non-Windows alternatives, and the Windows marketshare declines more. Even if those non-Windows alternatives happen to be Apple or Ubuntu Linux and not Chrome, Google's marketing might with Chrome might put the cracks in Microsoft Windows' armor that is needed for other OS's to dismantle Microsoft's lead.
At least if their XBoxes and PS3's keep them inside, they'll stay off my lawn.
And I must be the most in-pain person I know. I don't swear. Ever. (Except for that one time while driving with my friend. I decided to go for the biggest reaction possible, so I used the "C word." He almost drove off the road!) My wife, on the other hand, does plenty of swearing which is a point of contention between us. I don't mind her swearing, but not around our young (5 and 2) children. They're all too likely to repeat the curses and I would rather them not be swearing up a storm at their age.
As someone who lost 80 pounds while not exercising much and having a desk job, let me tell you that it can be done. If you don't mind a few pointers:
1 - Drink lots of water. A lot of times when you think you're hungry, you're actually thirsty. Get one of those 32oz Nalgene water bottles, fill it up, bring it to work, and drink as needed. (If you have a water cooler at work, refill it as often as needed.) I've actually gone through 100oz of water some days. Water is very filling.
2 - Eat high fiber foods. Foods higher in fiber will make you feel fuller. These can be fresh fruits/veggies or prepackaged high fiber bars. Chocolate Chip Fiber One bars are great. Find ways to add more fiber to your foods. For example, if you're eating Chinese Food, bring in some Fiber One cereal (great BTW, never thought I'd say that about a fiber cereal) and mix it in the Chinese food instead of those fried noodle things. It'll provide a satisfying crunch *and* add fiber to your diet.
3 - Find lower calorie/fat alternatives for the foods you crave. Ignoring cravings is a recipe for disaster. If you ignore your craving for ice cream, you'll just wind up at Friendly's ordering the biggest sundae they make. Instead, find foods that fit those cravings but with fewer fat/calories. A few of the ones I've found: For an ice cream craving, try Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches of Blue Bunny fat free frozen yogurt. For a brownie craving, make a batch of No Pudge Fudge. For a chocolate craving, put a Hershey's Kiss in your mouth but don't bite it. Just let it slowly dissolve.
I'll admit, I didn't have to deal with food allergies, but while it does post a complication, it shouldn't be a show-stopper. It sounds like pre-packaged foods are the biggest issue, so forget about them. Instead, make your own meals at home from raw ingredients and leave out the garlic/onion/etc. Find which brands of which foods you can use and then search through Allrecipes.com for recipes to fit those items.
One of the things I've found is that reducing your calories too much is counter-productive. Remember that our bodies evolved over millions of years where food supplies weren't constant. The body has to be able to deal with lack of food without completely failing. So, when you radically cut your calorie intake, your body senses this as a famine. It then reduces your metabolism to conserve energy. You burn less calories and retain more fat. During an actual famine, this is a good thing. You certainly don't want to burn off that one meal quickly if it is the only meal you can scrounge together for the whole day. During a modern times diet, however, it is a bad thing. It means that you will need to work out harder, and diet more just to drop a few more pounds.
This is one of the reasons why people find themselves yo-yo dieting. They go on a diet and lose some weight. The body senses the weight loss as an impending famine and reduces the metabolism. The dieter then goes off their diet and resumes their normal eating patterns. Unfortunately for them, the increased calories in coupled with the decreased calories burned results in rapid weight gain.
I lost about 80 pounds a few years back and one of my secrets was completely revamping how I looked at/considered food. I went on an "unofficial Weight Watchers" program. (Unofficial in that I did all the calculations/tracking myself and didn't join up with Weight Watchers.) Food was no longer just some tasty thing that I stuffed in my mouth. It had a number value ("points") attached to it representing how much Calories, Fat and Fiber were in it. Calculating this number turned out to be a perfect fit for my inner math nerd. Eventually, I would see at a tasty looking donut and not think of how delicious it would taste, but of how many points it was. Sure that donut would be tasty, but it just wasn't worth the huge points hit when other treats would suffice for much less. I didn't stop eating food, I just changed what foods I was eating. This shift in thinking helped me keep off my weight even after I stopped actively tracking my points. Yes, I still gain weight from time to time and go back on the program to take the weight back off, but my weight gains are much slower (30 pounds in a year, if that) and are much easier to catch early on.
Hard work? But that's too hard! Why can't we just let the police listen in on everything we say, look at everything we do, and not "tie their hands" with time-wasters like warrants or evidence rules. Eventually we can simplify things down to "police shoot person they say was doing something wrong, officer given a raise for great work." There's no downside to that, right? ;-)
I'd point out that software is covered under copyright. If I make a great new program and you copy it, I can sue under existing copyright laws. Giving that program patent protection "protects" it twice which isn't needed and merely reduces competition. Instead of you needing to write, from scratch, your own competitor to my "great new program," you're locked out of the market because it is patented.
Add to that the vast number of patents that are too vague, aren't enforced until a technology becomes popular (aka patent trolls), or just cover some mundane thing done "over the Internet" or "using a computer," and you can see why people don't like software patents.
I agree. Why would they object? If they're not hiding anything, they've got nothing to fear from constant surveillance. (Said with a huge dose of sarcasm as that's the exact justification given to put normal citizens under constant surveillance.)
Well, part of parenting is teaching your kids how to react to things that you don't usually allow. If you'd rather your kid not look at nude photos of women or play extremely violent video games, you don't just keep them out of your house and pretend that they don't exist. At some point, your child will discover them. Instead, you have a talk with them about why you consider those things bad (kids aren't too fond of "because I said so") and how to react if they should come upon something like that. It's what I do with my five year old son (and will do with my two year old son when he gets older).
It's not even "a single breast being exposed during a Superbowl half-time show" but a single nipple. You can show much of the breast on TV and in print without being called porn. Just look at all of the bikini shots that show nearly the entire top of the model. But show one female nipple and you're in "won't someone think of the children" territory. I still haven't quite figured out how that small patch of skin on a female qualifies as obscene while the same patch of skin on a male is mundane. I keep envisioning a test to see how the "think of the children" folks react. Put a woman in a modified burka. It would cover her from top to bottom so you wouldn't be able to tell anything about her shape but cut holes in the burka so that only the woman's nipples showed. (Some tape may be in order to keep any breast from showing.) Would people think this was lewd? What if a similar woman walked around in a string bikini?
You could use IETab for the sites that still need Internet Explorer. It can be set up so that the tab automatically uses IE for certain websites. The other sites will use FireFox as normal and users won't need to worry about firing up a second web browser. Then, if you update a web application so that it doesn't require IE6, you can remove that site from IETab's list. Users won't need to change their habits at all, but will get the FireFox rendering engine.
So am I apparently with less than a month before I turn 34. But don't worry, because Marc Anderson is even more obselete than we are. This Wednesday (July 9th), he'll turn 38. That's positively ancient. By his own reasoning, he should be checking into a retirement community soon.
So what happens when I load this site up, load up Firefox within the "OS in a browser", navigate to the site, and load up Firefox within the "OS in a browser in an OS in a browser"?
Unfortunately, I believe it. Not vaccine related, but there was that case recently of the kid with treatable cancer who was dying because his parents insisted on using "natural remedies" instead of chemo. The courts ruled he needed to have chemo so he and his mother fled. They were eventually caught and he was put on chemo. Sure enough, his tumors shrunk. Did the mother suddenly realize the benefits of chemo? Of course not. She attributed it to their natural remedies. The same ones that didn't work all that time just suddenly kicked in right then and took out the tumor. The fact that it went away when chemo began was just a coincidence to her.
Or because they fear it'll cause autism (ala Jenny McCarthy). Combine the two and you have premarital autistic sex! We can't have that! Won't someone think of the children?
I'd modify your advice. Check with your pharmacist if you're not sure. Doctors will often not be as up-to-date on the latest drug interaction/recommendation literature as pharmacists are. My wife's brother is a pharmacist and we routinely ask him - and not our doctor - about OTC drug dosage or interactions.
This article's advice to ejaculate every day would be an interesting combination with this article's suggestion that human sperm can help diminish wrinkles.
One of the conspiracy nuts who popped into BadAstronomer's comments one time tried to argue that the International Space Station was a fake and didn't actually exist. I'm sure that level of conspiracy nuttery is extreme even among moon landing denialists, but it was still an impressive display of ignorance to see someone argue that something you can see with a decent telescope actually isn't there.
That'll teach me to post quickly to Slashdot when I'm sleep deprived.... Should've been "to make a 100 day story short" not "to make a year-long story short." Though, there was another couple who did it every day for a year.
My wife bought me the book Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!) for my birthday last year. To make a year-long story short, the couple decided to have sex at least once per day for 100 days. The book is actually quite good. Very humorous and not as dirty as you might expect a book about doing it every day might be. In fact, my only disappointment with the book was that it wasn't a sign that my wife wanted to try her own 100 day challenge! (Heck, I'm not greedy. I'd go for a 30 day challenge. Or even a 2 week challenge.)
I had to deal with an ant invasion in my office just recently. I work in the back of the server room and turning the AC on kept them away, but then froze me out of my office. The exterminator my company sent was useless. He put down some ant bait, they ate it and came looking for more. I didn't want to spray ant poison in my office, but I had to do something. Then I noticed the can of Lysol in the bathroom. I borrowed it and laid down a nice blanket of Lysol on my rug and a thick Lysol barrier by my door. That kept them at bay for a day or two before it needed reinforcing. Those ants were persistent, but all their scurrying was in vein. There was no food in the back of the server room. (At least none that I'm aware of.) Finally, after a month or two of battle with the ants, they moved on. I'm guessing they found another place with a better food source.
The answer that I'm sure that the state governments would love to hear: "The sale occurred simultaneously in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Arkansas, New Hampshire, and Illinois. This means that each state gets to charge their sales tax rate on the sale."
Of course, this would mean that online commerce would get ridiculously expensive, but each state government would be too blinded by short term green to notice.