I say get rid of it entirely. I grew up in Saskatchewan and we don't subscribe to DST.
While most of North America is wringing hands and wasting time (oh the irony!) changing clocks and figuring out if it is ahead or back and fighting with children who now don't want to go to bed when it is light outside, the people of Saskatchewan simply go on; happily oblivious to the storm that engulfs its neighbours twice a year.
Of course the one funky thing that we DO have to deal with is tv broadcasts from out of province shifting time slots...but soon we'll all have the technology that will make that a problem of the past.
China buys more than $1,000,000,000 worth of US Treasury Bills EVERY WEEKDAY. Not only has this propped up the USA where it would clearly have financially faultered years ago under the unsustainable GW Bush budgets. Now that China has the USA in its back pocket, there are no worries that there will EVER be a peep of complaint from the 'big three' networks about ANYTHING that China does.
Amazing how cheaply freedom of speech, democracy, heck even a country! can be purchased, eh?
I own one of those watches as well, and I will be sad to see the technology go away. These watches had four significant shortcomings;
1) Coverage - SPOTty coverage outside of major cities. They need to be something that is as universal as a pager.
2) Watch quality - The watch that I own is the third one after the first two died a very premature death. Microsoft should have had Casio and Timex on board with devices not the likes of Fossil.
3) Price - Even though the cost was minimal, there WAS an annual fee to be paid. This should have been an ad-based service as I doubt that it would be difficult to cover the costs of the system with ads that are delivered to a user's wrist.
4) Lack of a hack - when techno users can easily hack and improve a system (especially something as geek-oriented as a SPOT Watch) the more likely they are to take it up with enthusiasm.
Well, here's to SPOT...may he live on and come back better, stronger, smaller and more accessible in 2.0
The comment below the original Commodore PET keyboard (The 'Chicklet' style) says that for reasons 'lost to history' belies the failure of the article's author to do any substantive research. The reason why Commodore selected this awful keyboard was to use internal economies by making use of calculator keyboards and that technology that Commodore (which was a big calculator manufacturer in the 1970s) already owned. Further information behind this design decision can be found in the excellent book of Commodore history by Brian Bagnall called: On the Edge - The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore
Yes we DID learn something from the last 5000 years of record keeping. In fact we have a report right here...uh, it WAS here last time I looked...ah, never mind...nothing to see here...move along.
Would have to be Solitaire for the Windows platform. Billions of games played by secretaries and bored office workers the world over...and I've NEVER seen it crash. I only wish that the person (people) who wrote that had been assigned to the Windows OS instead.
I guess there is still hope that they will FINALLY open up the code to Bob! I can hardly wait! I'm dizzy with excitement over how I can apply this awesome technology and UI breakthrough in my Vista apps!
The 'about to be photographed' point is moot. Photos of all residences (in Canada) are already complete. I must say that I was quite impressed by the server hardware they had....and the fact that the database of photographs grew by 20 gig a day! (a rather large amount 6 years ago)
I've never understood how some can dismiss faith in God as foolish while holding on steadfastly to a belief in 'little green men'. At least what I hold faith in (God) has taken the effort to get in touch with us here on Earth.
Your comment; "Every iteration changes the language in some crazy way. I started pre-VB, but for the VB line, I started at VB1.0. I've watched it "grow" (I perfer mutate) over the years. I now still do about 90% VB. But I have tired of the language changing every few years." is very odd. It has me questioning if you are being entirely honest.
As a VB developer since 1993 (and a commercial software developer since 1983), I can say that the language (pre.NET) hasn't changed in the way you present that it has. The only significant variant in the VB 'Family' was VB for DOS (yes, I'm one of a select few who actually built apps with this before it was killed off by Microsoft), but even then the product was vastly superior to any other DOS-based language editor that I'd ever encountered. In general I can take an application that I coded in VB 2 and open it with VB 6 and it will run without complaint. This is an accomplishment that your comments ignore - if you really are a programmer who builds 90% of your product in VB (pre.NET I assume), I'd think that you'd have to admit that the language did remain remarkably backward compatible..NET isn't VB and therefore it really isn't fair to try to measure language evolution when the species tree is jumped rather than extended.
As someone who continues to make a living in the VB 6 / VBA world, I'm very interested in learning about VB 2005 because I can see that the life of VB6, while still currently healthy, is beginning to wind down. My corporate clients won't be going to Python or Ruby or any other OSS-based platform anytime soon. These multinational businesses don't worry about the peanut costs of an OS, nor do they worry about the hegemony of Microsoft. If anything, the dominance of Microsoft is a comfort, as it helps to give them assurance that the company will be around for the foreseeable future, therefore betting on Microsoft technology will likely result in a win. Betting on marginal (from a business perspective) language like Ruby or Python et. al. is a sure-fire way to be fired as a technology manager. I'm not saying that this is how I like it, but more that this is the reality that I see around me in the Oil and Natural Gas sector in Canada.
The source of innovation and transference to a new computing platform will not begin with large corporations, but will only (through financial necessity) begin within smaller cost aware businesses. Perhaps once all of the mice are on OSS will the fat cats begin to notice?
Man, who would have thought that working at Disneyland would be so rough?
The REAL reason why America is going to the moon
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 1
The Chineese have declared that they want to go to the moon, hopefully before 2025. The thought of another communist country establishing a moonbase has forced America's hand. Face it, there is no economic reason to go (other postings here on earth-based HE3 production prove it). The reason is one of image, America is the ONLY country to send humans to the moon and military supremacy. In the same way that Sputnik launched the space race in the 1950s, China's declaration of a moon project spurred NASA to declare that it too will return to Luna.
Nice. So now do I have to rewire my BIOS to accept some key combination other than Control-Alt-Delete? It seems like they've squandered the use of so many of these keys! On a keyboard of only 53 keys, WHO needs two Sym keys next to each other? My 105-key keyboard doesn't even have ONE Sym key! This layout MIGHT work if they got over the Qwerty bigotry and simply offered us a super-compact solution, with a Del key...but I guess that'sbeendonebefore.
After reading the article, the controls / restrictions on recording and playback sound very similar to the restrictions on my recently purchased ColdPlay X&Y CD and my Paul McCartney (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) CD. I've not tried to play these CDs on my PC, nor have I tried to rip them to MP3 yet... I wonder if anyone would know if these EMI discs use the same *cough* wonderful DRM *cough* scheme as the Sony Disc from the article?
My CD collection exceeds 1000 titles - I've no need to steal ANY music...but I'd be happy to pay a $1.00 'tax' per future CD purchases to cover the loss of revenue from people who steal music - IF that will eliminate all this DRM crap. (hopeless dreamer, I know)
Of all the dribble and drab comments in this message history, yours appears to be the most erudite and excellent analysis of the whole series. Thanks for putting it so well, you've enhanced my enjoyment of the movies!
The comment in this posting; "Why use Microsoft if you have a broadband connection and combine Firefox with powerful web services like Google's Gmail?" show an incredible naivety. If you visit any common business you'll discover that applications other than the 'big three' (Word, Excel and Powerpoint) are more likely to be running than the big three. Why? Well, for almost any business there is need for tools that perform a specific function that is tuned to a particular business or industry's needs. Sure everyone needs and uses a browser, email and a word processor, but until there is the ability to cleanly move all of the custom tools and solutions (for which the world's business have paid us programmers trillions to build) to an alternative platform without great loss of time or expense, Microsoft and Windows will continue to win.
Perhaps in the not-too-distant future there will be some tool out there that will ensure 100% compatibility and transferability of proprietary systems to open solutions. Sure, there are jumps and fits today in that direction, but we are not at that magical point yet.
To that end, it really is Microsoft's challenge to 'innovate' enough to stay ahead of the Linux pack while not biting off so much that the product never ships (aka Longhorn).
I found this great site that gives you an instant measurement of your fuel mileage QuickDrive.com The mileage calculator for your cell phone can be found at the same URL.
My sister first began to present symptoms of Schizophrenia about 15 years ago, and the intervening years have not been kind. The sister that I grew up with is gone, and what is left is a tragic figure. She's been in and out of treatment time and again, and she exibits the all-too-common response of being on medication for a while and then feeling 'healthy' or tired of the mind-dulling effects of another medication, she goes off of drug treatment.
She's 34 now and she's very single, unemployed and the last time I checked, she still had a place to live. She is quite intelligent and high-functioning at times, even holding down jobs (she's an award-winning hairdresser), but the demon of disease always is there to drag her down. It is really freaky to see her in full delusion, it isn't fun and she's physically attacked our mother a few times
What do I recommend? Well, I have nothing positive to offer you, sir. My experience has been purely negative. Here is what I can suggest:
1 - Watch the movie a few times, it is VERY insightful and can help you understand your sister's plight.
2 - Encourage her to STAY on her medication. Be her advocate with the health care system, NOBODY cares about her like you and the rest of your family does. Consider that many doctors view (perhaps as a way to mentally survive?) patients with no more compassion and individual attention than a quality mechanic may treat a BMW. In the end, your sister is just another 'thing' to be worked on. Your sister needs an advocate, and will ever more across the years ahead.
3 - I don't know how old she is, or how bad the disease has attacked her, but consider community living options, where she can live with professional care-givers and others who have other mental-illness challenges. These environments give her a level of independence, while also giving her the caring environment that you and your family may not be able to supply her. She WILL be a needing person for the rest of her life.
4 - Read, read, read, read up on the disease. Get to know the medication options / effects and what new developments there may be for treatment. You (or some person) will have to be there for her in a long-term, hands-on way to help and protect her.
What you are up against is almost as life-changing for you as it is for her. Nobody appreciates the loss you will experience, nor will they care much either. This will either make your family stronger, or it will pull it further apart (which has happened in my case)
This doesn't mean that all is bleak, as even flowers can grow from the most pungent dung. Our youngest son just celebrated his first birthday last month...he was my sister's third child and he is such a blessing.
I've faced the very same situation in many different permanent and contract positions, and I simply disclosed what I was doing (as this was all prior and external to my employment), and I stated that they did NOT have a right to own this work. They agreed and further agreed to modify the document to state that what I created during my own time was my own, as long as it did not directly compete with the work I was being paid to do, which I felt was fair.
If a company wants to own your personal time efforts, then they should be willing to pay you for your personal time at the same rate as your regular work hours.
To give in to a demand that your personal time creations are owned by the company reduces you to nothing more than a slave, with no property rights whatsoever. Western society escaped that viewpoint a long time ago, no matter what a work-contract may have you believe.
I thought that Micro$oft was the evil empire? I thought that we were supposed to boycott their products? I didn't know that it was ok to use the empire's products when they are *FREE*....kind of funny to see all this whining now.
If you are anti-Micro$oft, then DON'T use ANY of their products, no matter how convienent, cheap or good they may be. It strikes me as a bit two-faced to see people exaulting the open-source and free software religion while they are actually in bed with the devil. Be pure or be silent.
Perhaps the reason why the FTC hasn't acted is because of the horrendous writing style and inadequate proof-reading of the EPIC authors. While I will never present myself as an accomplished speller or grammar fanatic, even I see poor use of our language in this document.
Perhaps the most galling is the line: "over 100 hundred of the largest online retailers" (which can be found in the third paragraph). So, is that 100 or 100,000? These guys at EPIC are complaining that Microsoft doesn't pay enough attention to the details (which is true), while putting out this grade-school effort in communication.
Slashdot Mirror
I say get rid of it entirely. I grew up in Saskatchewan and we don't subscribe to DST.
While most of North America is wringing hands and wasting time (oh the irony!) changing clocks and figuring out if it is ahead or back and fighting with children who now don't want to go to bed when it is light outside, the people of Saskatchewan simply go on; happily oblivious to the storm that engulfs its neighbours twice a year.
Of course the one funky thing that we DO have to deal with is tv broadcasts from out of province shifting time slots...but soon we'll all have the technology that will make that a problem of the past.
Apple would NEVER write any software that made Windows® look bad, would it?
Amazing how cheaply freedom of speech, democracy, heck even a country! can be purchased, eh?
I own one of those watches as well, and I will be sad to see the technology go away. These watches had four significant shortcomings;
1) Coverage - SPOTty coverage outside of major cities. They need to be something that is as universal as a pager.
2) Watch quality - The watch that I own is the third one after the first two died a very premature death. Microsoft should have had Casio and Timex on board with devices not the likes of Fossil.
3) Price - Even though the cost was minimal, there WAS an annual fee to be paid. This should have been an ad-based service as I doubt that it would be difficult to cover the costs of the system with ads that are delivered to a user's wrist.
4) Lack of a hack - when techno users can easily hack and improve a system (especially something as geek-oriented as a SPOT Watch) the more likely they are to take it up with enthusiasm.
Well, here's to SPOT...may he live on and come back better, stronger, smaller and more accessible in 2.0
The comment below the original Commodore PET keyboard (The 'Chicklet' style) says that for reasons 'lost to history' belies the failure of the article's author to do any substantive research. The reason why Commodore selected this awful keyboard was to use internal economies by making use of calculator keyboards and that technology that Commodore (which was a big calculator manufacturer in the 1970s) already owned. Further information behind this design decision can be found in the excellent book of Commodore history by Brian Bagnall called: On the Edge - The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore
Yes we DID learn something from the last 5000 years of record keeping. In fact we have a report right here...uh, it WAS here last time I looked...ah, never mind...nothing to see here...move along.
Would have to be Solitaire for the Windows platform. Billions of games played by secretaries and bored office workers the world over...and I've NEVER seen it crash. I only wish that the person (people) who wrote that had been assigned to the Windows OS instead.
I guess there is still hope that they will FINALLY open up the code to Bob! I can hardly wait! I'm dizzy with excitement over how I can apply this awesome technology and UI breakthrough in my Vista apps!
The 'about to be photographed' point is moot. Photos of all residences (in Canada) are already complete. I must say that I was quite impressed by the server hardware they had....and the fact that the database of photographs grew by 20 gig a day! (a rather large amount 6 years ago)
I've never understood how some can dismiss faith in God as foolish while holding on steadfastly to a belief in 'little green men'. At least what I hold faith in (God) has taken the effort to get in touch with us here on Earth.
Isn't the safest nuclear weapon the one you DON'T make?
As a VB developer since 1993 (and a commercial software developer since 1983), I can say that the language (pre .NET) hasn't changed in the way you present that it has. The only significant variant in the VB 'Family' was VB for DOS (yes, I'm one of a select few who actually built apps with this before it was killed off by Microsoft), but even then the product was vastly superior to any other DOS-based language editor that I'd ever encountered. In general I can take an application that I coded in VB 2 and open it with VB 6 and it will run without complaint. This is an accomplishment that your comments ignore - if you really are a programmer who builds 90% of your product in VB (pre .NET I assume), I'd think that you'd have to admit that the language did remain remarkably backward compatible. .NET isn't VB and therefore it really isn't fair to try to measure language evolution when the species tree is jumped rather than extended.
As someone who continues to make a living in the VB 6 / VBA world, I'm very interested in learning about VB 2005 because I can see that the life of VB6, while still currently healthy, is beginning to wind down. My corporate clients won't be going to Python or Ruby or any other OSS-based platform anytime soon. These multinational businesses don't worry about the peanut costs of an OS, nor do they worry about the hegemony of Microsoft. If anything, the dominance of Microsoft is a comfort, as it helps to give them assurance that the company will be around for the foreseeable future, therefore betting on Microsoft technology will likely result in a win. Betting on marginal (from a business perspective) language like Ruby or Python et. al. is a sure-fire way to be fired as a technology manager. I'm not saying that this is how I like it, but more that this is the reality that I see around me in the Oil and Natural Gas sector in Canada.
The source of innovation and transference to a new computing platform will not begin with large corporations, but will only (through financial necessity) begin within smaller cost aware businesses. Perhaps once all of the mice are on OSS will the fat cats begin to notice?
Man, who would have thought that working at Disneyland would be so rough?
The Chineese have declared that they want to go to the moon, hopefully before 2025. The thought of another communist country establishing a moonbase has forced America's hand. Face it, there is no economic reason to go (other postings here on earth-based HE3 production prove it). The reason is one of image, America is the ONLY country to send humans to the moon and military supremacy. In the same way that Sputnik launched the space race in the 1950s, China's declaration of a moon project spurred NASA to declare that it too will return to Luna.
Ikea - Sweedish for particle board
Nice. So now do I have to rewire my BIOS to accept some key combination other than Control-Alt-Delete? It seems like they've squandered the use of so many of these keys! On a keyboard of only 53 keys, WHO needs two Sym keys next to each other? My 105-key keyboard doesn't even have ONE Sym key! This layout MIGHT work if they got over the Qwerty bigotry and simply offered us a super-compact solution, with a Del key...but I guess that's been done before.
After reading the article, the controls / restrictions on recording and playback sound very similar to the restrictions on my recently purchased ColdPlay X&Y CD and my Paul McCartney (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) CD. I've not tried to play these CDs on my PC, nor have I tried to rip them to MP3 yet... I wonder if anyone would know if these EMI discs use the same *cough* wonderful DRM *cough* scheme as the Sony Disc from the article?
My CD collection exceeds 1000 titles - I've no need to steal ANY music...but I'd be happy to pay a $1.00 'tax' per future CD purchases to cover the loss of revenue from people who steal music - IF that will eliminate all this DRM crap. (hopeless dreamer, I know)
Of all the dribble and drab comments in this message history, yours appears to be the most erudite and excellent analysis of the whole series. Thanks for putting it so well, you've enhanced my enjoyment of the movies!
Perhaps in the not-too-distant future there will be some tool out there that will ensure 100% compatibility and transferability of proprietary systems to open solutions. Sure, there are jumps and fits today in that direction, but we are not at that magical point yet.
To that end, it really is Microsoft's challenge to 'innovate' enough to stay ahead of the Linux pack while not biting off so much that the product never ships (aka Longhorn).
Well, the 25th is MY birthday (and I'm 13 years older than you!) and I'm the guy who posted this article!
I found this great site that gives you an instant measurement of your fuel mileage QuickDrive.com The mileage calculator for your cell phone can be found at the same URL.
My sister first began to present symptoms of Schizophrenia about 15 years ago, and the intervening years have not been kind. The sister that I grew up with is gone, and what is left is a tragic figure. She's been in and out of treatment time and again, and she exibits the all-too-common response of being on medication for a while and then feeling 'healthy' or tired of the mind-dulling effects of another medication, she goes off of drug treatment.
She's 34 now and she's very single, unemployed and the last time I checked, she still had a place to live. She is quite intelligent and high-functioning at times, even holding down jobs (she's an award-winning hairdresser), but the demon of disease always is there to drag her down. It is really freaky to see her in full delusion, it isn't fun and she's physically attacked our mother a few times
What do I recommend? Well, I have nothing positive to offer you, sir. My experience has been purely negative. Here is what I can suggest:
1 - Watch the movie a few times, it is VERY insightful and can help you understand your sister's plight.
2 - Encourage her to STAY on her medication. Be her advocate with the health care system, NOBODY cares about her like you and the rest of your family does. Consider that many doctors view (perhaps as a way to mentally survive?) patients with no more compassion and individual attention than a quality mechanic may treat a BMW. In the end, your sister is just another 'thing' to be worked on. Your sister needs an advocate, and will ever more across the years ahead.
3 - I don't know how old she is, or how bad the disease has attacked her, but consider community living options, where she can live with professional care-givers and others who have other mental-illness challenges. These environments give her a level of independence, while also giving her the caring environment that you and your family may not be able to supply her. She WILL be a needing person for the rest of her life.
4 - Read, read, read, read up on the disease. Get to know the medication options / effects and what new developments there may be for treatment. You (or some person) will have to be there for her in a long-term, hands-on way to help and protect her.
What you are up against is almost as life-changing for you as it is for her. Nobody appreciates the loss you will experience, nor will they care much either. This will either make your family stronger, or it will pull it further apart (which has happened in my case)
This doesn't mean that all is bleak, as even flowers can grow from the most pungent dung. Our youngest son just celebrated his first birthday last month...he was my sister's third child and he is such a blessing.
If a company wants to own your personal time efforts, then they should be willing to pay you for your personal time at the same rate as your regular work hours.
To give in to a demand that your personal time creations are owned by the company reduces you to nothing more than a slave, with no property rights whatsoever. Western society escaped that viewpoint a long time ago, no matter what a work-contract may have you believe.
I thought that Micro$oft was the evil empire? I thought that we were supposed to boycott their products? I didn't know that it was ok to use the empire's products when they are *FREE*....kind of funny to see all this whining now. If you are anti-Micro$oft, then DON'T use ANY of their products, no matter how convienent, cheap or good they may be. It strikes me as a bit two-faced to see people exaulting the open-source and free software religion while they are actually in bed with the devil. Be pure or be silent.
Perhaps the reason why the FTC hasn't acted is because of the horrendous writing style and inadequate proof-reading of the EPIC authors. While I will never present myself as an accomplished speller or grammar fanatic, even I see poor use of our language in this document. Perhaps the most galling is the line: "over 100 hundred of the largest online retailers" (which can be found in the third paragraph). So, is that 100 or 100,000? These guys at EPIC are complaining that Microsoft doesn't pay enough attention to the details (which is true), while putting out this grade-school effort in communication.