Time for a change? - USA changes their Daylight Savings Law
The USA has decided it's high time to take time by force. Just watch them, this time the US federal government is passing a bill that extends Daylight Savings Time into March and November, which gives American children about another 60 days to get up and go to school in the dark, while making sure business executives have more daylight hours on the golf course after dinner. "Supporters say extending daylight saving time would save about 100,000 barrels of oil a day because offices and stores would be open while it was still light outside and therefore use less energy." - boston.com "A government study [conducted in the mid-1970s] estimated the additional energy savings at the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil a day, or about half of 1 percent of the nation's daily oil consumption." - suntimes.com When was the last time you saw an open store not using their lights when it was high noon? What business turns off lights when it is bright outside? Besides professional sports I can't think of one.
OK, I guess you have to start somewhere, and every little bit can help right? Well let's take a look at their numbers and put them into perspective. 60 days of savings X 100,000 barrels of oil = 6 million barrels of oil saved. How does that amount compare to what is typically used in the USA in a day? "Gasoline demand has averaged almost 9.5 million barrels a day over the last four weeks, 2.5 percent more than the same period last year." " Oil prices today are 46 percent higher than a year ago." - bloomberg.com
What that means is that after 60 days, the USA will have saved less than 1 day's worth of oil [using the conservative 100,000 barrels/day estimate from the 1970s study]. Is it worth it? Maybe.
If you consider the wild media claims that billions of dollars are spent every year after cleaning up after a computer worm or virus attack, the expense at reprogramming everything computerized that is time sensitive is going to be astronomical. The man-hours to reprogram everything is going to be much greater than any time wasted on malware. It's like a self-imposed Y2K problem that has already been fixed, and we're going back to tinker with it in the guise of saving oil. You could say that the US legislative branch has put in motion a ticking time bomb. This bomb is going to blow this November, and is a potential cash cow for Microsoft [a heavy Bush supporter by the way], IBM, and many other computer programmers. Although it will leave your "smart" VCR or DVD player guessing the wrong time for two months out of the year thanks to its hard-wired clock programming. And it will burden airlines with yet another scheduling nightmare to worry about. And hurt the Canadian transportation industry if we don't standardize our time with the new American DST system.
So this boils down to a huge waste of time, over an obviously insignificant amount of oil. Before the US government decided to plunge North America [and their other trading partners] into temporal chaos, it'd be nice if they considered the negative consequences of their actions. And it would also be nice if they took meaningful steps to reducing oil consumption such as strict fuel milage laws for new cars. But they don't have time for that I guess.
What's interesting is that you can still go into a library, take a book off the shelf, photograph it [since the photocopier might be bugged] put the book back on the shelf, and there's no record of you using that book.
I hope I didn't break the DMCA or Patriot Act by revealing this brain-dead simple detection evasion method. I guess I'm not welcome in the USA anymore.
The father of the black box of computing is thrown out of the black box of HP.
I mean he showed that if you design a computer program into objects that contain both the methods and the data, then you can piece together programs more easily, and replace broken or outdated components. I'm not saying that Kay's broken, but HP has swapped the Kay object out of their program.
Re:Wikipedia beat you to it...
on
Top 10 Web Fads
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Thank you for contributing the new Wiki cliche, you insensitive clod.
No wait, that's not insensitive of you. Thank you.
" The real question is, can we trust the weapon operators to use this responsibly?"
We can't even trust prison guards not to beat defenseless prisoners... good luck stopping trigger happy 19 year olds from zapping protesters with stones.
As soon as someone makes a program that automatically backs up someone's picture collection, and Instant messenger/email settings, that can be dumped into a Linux system that runs their camera and other devices, I'm sure there will be millions of people switching.
My pride and joy computer is powered by the 1800+ and I think it's far too fine a chip to be sitting idle. I think the thing hampering PC sales is that just about anything the basic user wants to do on a computer can be achived by the 1800+ and anything faster than that is really just marketing. So people have perfectly adaquate computers sitting in their closet should their primary machine break [which costs a future sale].
The real money in computers is only in spyware and USB 2.0 stuff.
A better question of course if if they'll have one that can take on an ergonomic shape, and also if keyboard trays are going to accomodate the extra keys on the left side.
Not only power concerns, but the first thing I thought when I saw those keys is, "That's not going to clean up very well." And we thought grimy keys were noticible now, just wait until you actually have to see the lettering on them to be sure you're pressing the right thing...
In North America at least, the radio stations are locked into deals I've heard where they are bound to play primarily what's on the "charts". The charts are determined by Billboard and other RIAA shills, so an independent artist is unlikely to get real radio play over a wide area from chain-owned stations.
This makes it hard for any artist trying to break through without signing over their soul to the RIAA.
And you're so confident that your phony information is true, that you posted anonymously?
Rove's own lawyer has admitted Rove's involved, and Bush has more than once promised to fire anyone involved so Bush is a liar on top of this scandal too. And to remind you, this scandal is about tricking Congress and the American people into thinking Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa. Wilson knew that wasn't true, and by going over Bush's head, he prompted Karl Rove to take revenge on him and his family.
That's why we're talking about this, because it's a big smelly scandal by a big smelly group around Bush.
Still, it's clearly a letter asking for a response at the bottom, and it wouldn't kill him or his staff to reply that he received it and would get back to me if I called or wrote on tree killing paper. Since it has a summary at the top, it wouldn't be hard to take in the gist as well, and personallize a blow-off reply.
My lazy MP is too busy crusading against homosexuals to reply to my letter:-@
So I'll have to email him for a 3rd time, and if he doesn't reply it will just be good fodder to defeat him in the coming 2006 election.
DMCA for Canada is not acceptable Written Friday March 25 2005
Please write your MP on this matter. Use my letter below if you don't want to write your own.
Send your letter for free (no postage necessary when parliament is in session; But in Summer send it to their constituency office I'd reason), to your MP at the following address: [your MP's name] M.P. House of Commons Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Dear Mr. Breitkreuz
To summarize the issues in this letter: 1. Internet Service Providers should not be required to keep extensive logs of private and legal online communications.
2. The government must not stop Canadian citizens from making personal-use copies of their legally purchased software, music, and movie media.
3. Internet Search engines such as Google.ca, and Libraries must not be subject to penalties for providing direction to copyrighted materials.
Here is the reasoning:
The purpose of the Copyright Act is to support creativity and innovation in the arts and culture. To design a new Act on the failed and draconian Digital Millenium Copyright Act of the United States of America, would be a disaster for Canadian culture, and innovation. Also our court system could become clogged with law abiding citizens who make personal use copies of their music, software, and movie collections for no personal financial gain. An implementation of the proposed changes to the Copyright Act would unleash another "Gun Registry boondoggle" onto the Canadian people - creating criminals out of law abiding citizens at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.
Internet Service Providers like Sasktel should not be made to keep extensive client usage logs for possible future prosecution by various copyright-based industries. I don't want to pay for that system to be put into effect, and I don't think most people do. The phone companies are not forced by the government to record the content of phone conversations, only police can do that with a proper warrant. ISP logs are going to be equivalent to phone-taps, and that's a violation of my privacy. It's doing the job of the police, and is for the sole benefit of an industry basing its profits on an outdated business model that is no longer realistic for the Canadian government to protect.
The current version of Bill C-60 suggests it could be illegal for anyone to provide copyrighted information through "information-location tools," which includes search engines like Google.ca. This anti-business, and anti-information clause, is very un-Canadian.
It is completely unfair to be paying a levy to artists organizations for purchasing blank CD media to make home-use private copies of legal CD music, and now to also be unable to legally copy the music I've paid for off of Digital Rights Managed CDs. If copying CD music is going to be illegal, why is the government collecting money from the product for an illegal activity? I'm satisfied that the current levy is helping to compensate artists from illegitimate copying, and no new law is required to prevent me and other people from making sensible backups of our legal music, software, and movie collections.
Your representation in the House of Commons on this matter is greatly appreciated by me, and other sup
Since it is Heritage Canada -the beauracrats- that are behind the bill, it will show up each time a new government comes to power, and if it's a majority government it will pass. The war will not be over if the Liberals crumble.
Turning opaque is hardly on par with exploding, but I understand you were talking about DIVX DVDs that didn't get the market share the MPAA was hoping for [thank goodness]. What a waste of material that idea is.
I was thinking of mentioning Divx, but I was afraid I'd confuse the younger generation who is used to that being a codec [possibly even forgetting the illegal hacked verion 3 of Divx]. Thanks for providing the link. At least they just deteriorated, or were locked or something, and it wasn't a matter of them blowing up as if you'd placed them in a microwave or hit them while spinning at high speed.
DRM is referring to copy protection or replication manipulation and restriction in the DIGITAL computer age. Sure we could have had DRM on a "digital clock" before microcomputers became common and Sierra Games started fiddling with their floppies, but no one means that when they say DRM these days.
How would you apply DRM to a digital clock anyway? Perhaps have a colour filter that is required to be placed over the display so the red numbers will show up?
ARGGGGHHH! Please Mr. Submitter, know the terms you are using. Yes DRM is bad, but the first DRM I am aware of is floppy disks with copy protection. That's the oldest there is, everything else before that was just "rights management".
Slashdot Mirror
Time for a change? - USA changes their Daylight Savings Law
The USA has decided it's high time to take time by force. Just watch them, this time the US federal government is passing a bill that extends Daylight Savings Time into March and November, which gives American children about another 60 days to get up and go to school in the dark, while making sure business executives have more daylight hours on the golf course after dinner. "Supporters say extending daylight saving time would save about 100,000 barrels of oil a day because offices and stores would be open while it was still light outside and therefore use less energy." - boston.com "A government study [conducted in the mid-1970s] estimated the additional energy savings at the equivalent of 100,000 barrels of oil a day, or about half of 1 percent of the nation's daily oil consumption." - suntimes.com When was the last time you saw an open store not using their lights when it was high noon? What business turns off lights when it is bright outside? Besides professional sports I can't think of one.
OK, I guess you have to start somewhere, and every little bit can help right? Well let's take a look at their numbers and put them into perspective. 60 days of savings X 100,000 barrels of oil = 6 million barrels of oil saved. How does that amount compare to what is typically used in the USA in a day? "Gasoline demand has averaged almost 9.5 million barrels a day over the last four weeks, 2.5 percent more than the same period last year." " Oil prices today are 46 percent higher than a year ago." - bloomberg.com
What that means is that after 60 days, the USA will have saved less than 1 day's worth of oil [using the conservative 100,000 barrels/day estimate from the 1970s study]. Is it worth it? Maybe.
If you consider the wild media claims that billions of dollars are spent every year after cleaning up after a computer worm or virus attack, the expense at reprogramming everything computerized that is time sensitive is going to be astronomical. The man-hours to reprogram everything is going to be much greater than any time wasted on malware. It's like a self-imposed Y2K problem that has already been fixed, and we're going back to tinker with it in the guise of saving oil. You could say that the US legislative branch has put in motion a ticking time bomb. This bomb is going to blow this November, and is a potential cash cow for Microsoft [a heavy Bush supporter by the way], IBM, and many other computer programmers. Although it will leave your "smart" VCR or DVD player guessing the wrong time for two months out of the year thanks to its hard-wired clock programming. And it will burden airlines with yet another scheduling nightmare to worry about. And hurt the Canadian transportation industry if we don't standardize our time with the new American DST system.
So this boils down to a huge waste of time, over an obviously insignificant amount of oil. Before the US government decided to plunge North America [and their other trading partners] into temporal chaos, it'd be nice if they considered the negative consequences of their actions. And it would also be nice if they took meaningful steps to reducing oil consumption such as strict fuel milage laws for new cars. But they don't have time for that I guess.
What's interesting is that you can still go into a library, take a book off the shelf, photograph it [since the photocopier might be bugged] put the book back on the shelf, and there's no record of you using that book.
I hope I didn't break the DMCA or Patriot Act by revealing this brain-dead simple detection evasion method. I guess I'm not welcome in the USA anymore.
The father of the black box of computing is thrown out of the black box of HP.
I mean he showed that if you design a computer program into objects that contain both the methods and the data, then you can piece together programs more easily, and replace broken or outdated components. I'm not saying that Kay's broken, but HP has swapped the Kay object out of their program.
Thank you for contributing the new Wiki cliche, you insensitive clod.
No wait, that's not insensitive of you. Thank you.
"
The real question is, can we trust the weapon operators to use this responsibly?"
We can't even trust prison guards not to beat defenseless prisoners... good luck stopping trigger happy 19 year olds from zapping protesters with stones.
In his honour, I hope that everyone finds a favourite drink that is green.
... green."
"What is this?"
Scotty looks at bottle of liquor: "It's
Now Google's server is made out of swiss cheese. Just zoom in on their moon pictures and see for yourself.
As soon as someone makes a program that automatically backs up someone's picture collection, and Instant messenger/email settings, that can be dumped into a Linux system that runs their camera and other devices, I'm sure there will be millions of people switching.
My pride and joy computer is powered by the 1800+ and I think it's far too fine a chip to be sitting idle. I think the thing hampering PC sales is that just about anything the basic user wants to do on a computer can be achived by the 1800+ and anything faster than that is really just marketing. So people have perfectly adaquate computers sitting in their closet should their primary machine break [which costs a future sale].
The real money in computers is only in spyware and USB 2.0 stuff.
It was a joke. http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/layout.html
A better question of course if if they'll have one that can take on an ergonomic shape, and also if keyboard trays are going to accomodate the extra keys on the left side.
Not only power concerns, but the first thing I thought when I saw those keys is, "That's not going to clean up very well." And we thought grimy keys were noticible now, just wait until you actually have to see the lettering on them to be sure you're pressing the right thing...
I don't speak Sweedish Chef so I wasn't able to RTFA.
What exactly is this keyboard good for? Are they thinking of making a non-querty version?
In North America at least, the radio stations are locked into deals I've heard where they are bound to play primarily what's on the "charts". The charts are determined by Billboard and other RIAA shills, so an independent artist is unlikely to get real radio play over a wide area from chain-owned stations.
This makes it hard for any artist trying to break through without signing over their soul to the RIAA.
And you're so confident that your phony information is true, that you posted anonymously?
Rove's own lawyer has admitted Rove's involved, and Bush has more than once promised to fire anyone involved so Bush is a liar on top of this scandal too. And to remind you, this scandal is about tricking Congress and the American people into thinking Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa. Wilson knew that wasn't true, and by going over Bush's head, he prompted Karl Rove to take revenge on him and his family.
That's why we're talking about this, because it's a big smelly scandal by a big smelly group around Bush.
Yes he is. I don't know of a Conservative MP who isn't against homosexuals.
They are a party AGAINST anything the Liberals propose, so I find it odd that he'd not be against their DMCA proposal.
A quicker correction to your correction.
The 3rd episode of New Voyages is the one with Chekov, and is also written by D.C. Fontana, and the fourth is written by the DS9 writers.
Still, it's clearly a letter asking for a response at the bottom, and it wouldn't kill him or his staff to reply that he received it and would get back to me if I called or wrote on tree killing paper. Since it has a summary at the top, it wouldn't be hard to take in the gist as well, and personallize a blow-off reply.
My lazy MP is too busy crusading against homosexuals to reply to my letter :-@
So I'll have to email him for a 3rd time, and if he doesn't reply it will just be good fodder to defeat him in the coming 2006 election.
DMCA for Canada is not acceptable
Written Friday March 25 2005
Please write your MP on this matter. Use my letter below if you don't want to write your own.
Send your letter for free (no postage necessary when parliament is in session; But in Summer send it to their constituency office I'd reason), to your MP at the following address:
[your MP's name] M.P.
House of Commons
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Find their email address, but write by paper mail too.
[fix URL gap] http://www.parl.gc.ca/information/about/people/hou se/PostalCode.asp?lang=E
Dear Mr. Breitkreuz
To summarize the issues in this letter:
1. Internet Service Providers should not be required to keep extensive logs of private and legal online communications.
2. The government must not stop Canadian citizens from making personal-use copies of their legally purchased software, music, and movie media.
3. Internet Search engines such as Google.ca, and Libraries must not be subject to penalties for providing direction to copyrighted materials.
Background:
http://pch.gc.ca/progs/ac-ca/progs/pda-cpb/reform/ statement_e.cfm
Here is the reasoning:
The purpose of the Copyright Act is to support creativity and innovation in the arts and culture. To design a new Act on the failed and draconian Digital Millenium Copyright Act of the United States of America, would be a disaster for Canadian culture, and innovation. Also our court system could become clogged with law abiding citizens who make personal use copies of their music, software, and movie collections for no personal financial gain. An implementation of the proposed changes to the Copyright Act would unleash another "Gun Registry boondoggle" onto the Canadian people - creating criminals out of law abiding citizens at the expense of Canadian taxpayers.
Internet Service Providers like Sasktel should not be made to keep extensive client usage logs for possible future prosecution by various copyright-based industries. I don't want to pay for that system to be put into effect, and I don't think most people do. The phone companies are not forced by the government to record the content of phone conversations, only police can do that with a proper warrant. ISP logs are going to be equivalent to phone-taps, and that's a violation of my privacy. It's doing the job of the police, and is for the sole benefit of an industry basing its profits on an outdated business model that is no longer realistic for the Canadian government to protect.
The current version of Bill C-60 suggests it could be illegal for anyone to provide copyrighted information through "information-location tools," which includes search engines like Google.ca. This anti-business, and anti-information clause, is very un-Canadian.
It is completely unfair to be paying a levy to artists organizations for purchasing blank CD media to make home-use private copies of legal CD music, and now to also be unable to legally copy the music I've paid for off of Digital Rights Managed CDs. If copying CD music is going to be illegal, why is the government collecting money from the product for an illegal activity? I'm satisfied that the current levy is helping to compensate artists from illegitimate copying, and no new law is required to prevent me and other people from making sensible backups of our legal music, software, and movie collections.
Your representation in the House of Commons on this matter is greatly appreciated by me, and other sup
Since it is Heritage Canada -the beauracrats- that are behind the bill, it will show up each time a new government comes to power, and if it's a majority government it will pass. The war will not be over if the Liberals crumble.
Remember when your Mom told you not to sit too close the the TV or you'd wreck your vision. Well it's time to start listening to your Mom's advice.
I won't be surprised when devices like this start wearing out people's eyes.
And can you imagine the first car wreck from someone using their cell phone in this new manner? And you thought cell phones caused accidents now!
Turning opaque is hardly on par with exploding, but I understand you were talking about DIVX DVDs that didn't get the market share the MPAA was hoping for [thank goodness]. What a waste of material that idea is.
I was thinking of mentioning Divx, but I was afraid I'd confuse the younger generation who is used to that being a codec [possibly even forgetting the illegal hacked verion 3 of Divx]. Thanks for providing the link. At least they just deteriorated, or were locked or something, and it wasn't a matter of them blowing up as if you'd placed them in a microwave or hit them while spinning at high speed.
"Haven't you seen the 60's Bond movies? Where the messages *always* selfdestruct? :)"
Don't give the MPAA and RIAA any ideas please. Can you imagine what the next home rental media will look like if they read that!
DRM is referring to copy protection or replication manipulation and restriction in the DIGITAL computer age. Sure we could have had DRM on a "digital clock" before microcomputers became common and Sierra Games started fiddling with their floppies, but no one means that when they say DRM these days.
How would you apply DRM to a digital clock anyway? Perhaps have a colour filter that is required to be placed over the display so the red numbers will show up?
This isn't Digital Rights Management
There is no "Digital" in PRINT books.
ARGGGGHHH! Please Mr. Submitter, know the terms you are using. Yes DRM is bad, but the first DRM I am aware of is floppy disks with copy protection. That's the oldest there is, everything else before that was just "rights management".