> I assume "hard usage" won't burn out as a porch light every 6 weeks?
The 100W "hard usage" incandescent bulbs are rated at 10,000 hours, compared to 8,000 hours for a GE 26 watt CFL. Just sayin'. Moreover, as "hard usage" bulbs are intended for harsh environments, a porch light would be a good place for one. (How harsh that gets depends on where you live, of course.)
As to the rest, um, you have a good rant going there. I don't have a comment at this time.
In fairness, The life span of early CFLs, back when they were, oh, $12 each, was pretty good. I have two that are still working almost 20 years later with daily use. But the CFLs you buy today in the blister pack of six for $9.99 are pretty much crap. Lots of infant mortality, and on the average they don't appear to last any longer than incandescents used to.
I like the LED technology, but I'm afraid they'll follow the same path.
Enh. If you say so. Save this article, it'll be interesting to see if you feel the same in a few years. Former CFL proponents are already starting to admit that CFLs have problems now that LEDs are becoming more common.
Not really. Vacuum tubes were a viable solution at the time and have uses even today. (I was reading just the other day that a vacuum tube will still handle higher voltages than semiconductors. Or something like that.)
Specifically, I meant trading one type of pollution for a different, potentially longer lasting type of pollution.
Does this go all the way back to the 100W bulbs that were banned a while back? Or only the recent banning of >40W?
I'll let you in on a little secret: 100W incandescent bulbs are still available. The ban had a loophole for "hard usage incandescents" used in (for instance) outside industrial applications. They're available on Amazon, cost about $2.50 each, and last significantly longer than commercial incandescents. Now that the longevity of CFLs have been value-engineered to worthlessness, I'm switching back to "hard usage" incandescents as my CFLs burn out. I'm interested in LEDs, but I suspect that by the time the price drops significantly, they will also have lost much of their longevity advantage.
> I don't see that in the article. He went to complain to the theater manager.
Correct. It seems from the sequence of events that (because a manager did not return with him) he either couldn't find a manager, or the manager did not respond quickly enough. (Possibly because the movie had not started yet.)
> Both guys sound like assholes.
Agreed. But one asshole was armed and shot an unarmed asshole when (according to TFA) there didn't seem to be any major indications that the armed asshole's life was threatened. The armed asshole is now charged with second degree murder. (Again, from TFA.) Because being an asshole, in and of itself, shouldn't be a capital offense.
Something else occurs to me. I freely admit this is speculation based on my own experiences with law enforcement. You know how LEOs are trained -- they take command of a situation and use intimidation to keep the citizen (or perp -- to a LEO the terms are often synonymous) in line. So it stands to reason that a retired LEO, a Captain I think TFA said, would be using this mode with the victim. But he's not wearing a uniform, and he has not in any way identified himself as a LEO (because he wasn't one at that time), and so, to the other asshole (the one who got shot) he must have seemed a particularly livid asshole of the first degree. It would then (it seems to me) be natural for the unarmed asshole (the one who got shot) to object to the armed asshole getting in his face.
Like a lot of IT people here, I'm on call, which means I sometimes get a text or alert or (rarely) a call (on vibrate) in a theater. I always leave the theater to deal with it, as I realize that being accessible has to be balanced with not being an asshole. I'm now a little bit concerned, though, that if a prod system goes offline and I get a text, some retired LEO might take a shot at me.
The part I don't understand is why the retired officer felt he had to confront the patron? This is a job for management, not for mob justice. The "turn off your phones" message explicitly states (at least in our area) that management will remove patrons who violate the rules. (Which, one could argue, the patron had not yet violated, as the feature had not started.) So the retired officer could request the patron to stop texting, and then report him to the manager, and that's the end of his involvement.
We won't know all the details until after the trial, and maybe not even then, but it sounds to me, from the few articles I've read so far, that the retired officer confronted the patron, then went outside to report him to management, (*not* to "retrieve his gun from the car" -- as a retired LEO he would have had it on him) and then, not getting an immediate response from management, (probably because the feature had not started yet!) went back to the theater and confronted the patron again. I suspect this is going to look bad for him in court.
My local theatres displays the "please turn off your phones" banner *after* the previews and before the main feature just to reinforce this point.
As do the theaters in my area. In fact, it's common to see phones out until the feature starts. Most are probably trying to remember how to silence their phones.
> However, if you had the power and means to restrain the attacker without causing harm and delivering him to authorities for arrest, then THAT would be the correct option, not shooting him.
Speaking as a self defense instructor, (part time in the evenings, when I'm not being paid to do IT geek stuff) there are lots of ways for a restraining situation to go wrong, especially if you don't know the person's strength, training and weaponry. I might try it were it only me at risk, but if my family is threatened with severe injury or death, It would be irresponsible for me to wrestle with someone if I had more effective means at my disposal.
That said, one does have to do a risk assessment; someone throwing popcorn in a theater is clearly not threat of bodily harm and doesn't justify a lethal response. My understanding of self defense laws boils down to: If a reasonable person would be afraid for their life (or a loved one's life), lethal force is justified. Else, no.
But I'll grant you that lethal defense of loved ones isn't something to feel good about. It's just better than the alternative.
The real question is whether it ordered by a rogue official(s), or the governor himself. If information comes out that the governor was involved then he just lost himself a chance at being president.
I dunno, the way the media works it doesn't really make a difference. What I expect will happen is that this will quiet down, the media will support him until he gets the nomination, and then at the last moment they'll hammer on this to affect the outcome of the general. Christi pretty much doesn't have a chance at the white house, although it'll be entertaining to watch him try.
Before the usual suspects all start yelling at each other about texting in theaters, I'd like to point out that according to several accounts, the movie had not yet started.
> in fact, it could be quite some time before Microsoft locks down any new features, although it might double down on Windows 8's controversial 'Modern' (previously known as 'Metro') design interface. Yet if Thurrott's reporting proves correct, Microsoft isn't abandoning the new Windows interface that earned such a lackluster response—it's betting that the format, once tweaked, will somehow revive the operating system's fortunes.
(Emphasis mine.) Oh man. If true, Microsoft is dead. [1] Doubling down on Metro (or whatever they choose to call it) plays to a market they're never going to significantly occupy, while starving their cash cow. It would be the worst possible decision in a string of bad decisions.
On the bright side, this will be very entertaining. I'll have to stock up on popcorn.
[1] Ok, not dead dead, that's hyperbole. But completely misunderstanding their user base to that extent for two major releases in a row over six years, they're likely to become a smaller company as a result. Perhaps much smaller.
We are using windows 7 at work, also macosx and linux, but the windows machines are running windows 7, almost no windows 8 almost no windows XP.
And now Windows 9 is showing... tell me why should I upgrade my windows 7 machines ? The faster they release the less I want to upgrade. I prefer to wait until the dust settles. Even the users can understand this. Windows 7 have become a comfort zone.
That's very true. I'm mildly interested because this will tell us what direction Microsoft is going and whether they learned anything from the mistakes on Windows 8. If 9 is still 8 with some minor improvements, this reinforces my deathgrip on Win7, and what I recommend to users. But if 9 has what purports to be the performance improvements of 8 (which I never got to test, as before I had figured out how to make it work, I realized I didn't care anymore and went back to 7) and a reasonable KVM-centric GUI paradigm, then not only does it become a candidate to upgrade Win7 boxes, but it becomes a panic upgrade for Win8 boxes.
There needs to be conventional analogs (read: actual menus) to those funny bars that are swiped in from the sides, because you do not swipe with a mouse. Conveyance needs to be improved -- it should be obvious what is clickable and what isn't. And -- feel free to scatter admin tools throughout the touch menu system; I don't care. But every single thing I need to do to a machine had better be in control panel. The machine should detect the absence of touch hardware on boot and automatically boot into desktop -- a real desktop, with a real menu system, not that retro-DOS "just type the command".
If these things happen, I mean, *really* happen, not just a "start" button that takes you back into touch-only mode, then sure, I'd consider Windows 9.
Parenthetically, someone I know that actually likes Windows 8 (there are a few) said that she puts up with the confusion because on her laptop, she can see those big squares in Metro mode, whereas she couldn't really tell the icons on her desktop apart in Vista without her reading glasses.
This got me thinking... does Metro look like that because.... Gates and Ballmer have gotten... OLD? Because big splotches of color are easier for old tired eyes to see? Are they flat because elderly eyes can't distinguish shading? Is Win8... the GERIATRIC OS?
Oh, here I thought it was horribly psychopathic and inept management. Oh well...
Well, that too. But my point was that the least of the components available currently are more than enough for 90% of what people do with computers, and being that computers are commodity items, margins are going to be razor thin.
And then, there's Apple, who charges boutique prices for trendy brushed metal cabinets stuffed with the same components everyone else uses.
Aluminum casing is nice but I suspect it's more for show, because, having seen lots of Apple guts, I have to say the guts are not really top notch.
> I like to use hardware as long as it lasts and as long as it's useful to me.
Bravo. Mod up.
Incidentally, the batteries are also available on amazon. There's a special tool to split the case. It's available online, sometimes in the same kit as the battery. I recommend getting one if you don't have one yet. Advantage is that you'll be able to put new batteries in friends' ipods also.
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> I assume "hard usage" won't burn out as a porch light every 6 weeks?
The 100W "hard usage" incandescent bulbs are rated at 10,000 hours, compared to 8,000 hours for a GE 26 watt CFL. Just sayin'. Moreover, as "hard usage" bulbs are intended for harsh environments, a porch light would be a good place for one. (How harsh that gets depends on where you live, of course.)
As to the rest, um, you have a good rant going there. I don't have a comment at this time.
In fairness, The life span of early CFLs, back when they were, oh, $12 each, was pretty good. I have two that are still working almost 20 years later with daily use. But the CFLs you buy today in the blister pack of six for $9.99 are pretty much crap. Lots of infant mortality, and on the average they don't appear to last any longer than incandescents used to.
I like the LED technology, but I'm afraid they'll follow the same path.
Enh. If you say so. Save this article, it'll be interesting to see if you feel the same in a few years. Former CFL proponents are already starting to admit that CFLs have problems now that LEDs are becoming more common.
Like vacuum tubes instead of transistors?
Not really. Vacuum tubes were a viable solution at the time and have uses even today. (I was reading just the other day that a vacuum tube will still handle higher voltages than semiconductors. Or something like that.)
Specifically, I meant trading one type of pollution for a different, potentially longer lasting type of pollution.
Does this go all the way back to the 100W bulbs that were banned a while back? Or only the recent banning of >40W?
I'll let you in on a little secret: 100W incandescent bulbs are still available. The ban had a loophole for "hard usage incandescents" used in (for instance) outside industrial applications. They're available on Amazon, cost about $2.50 each, and last significantly longer than commercial incandescents. Now that the longevity of CFLs have been value-engineered to worthlessness, I'm switching back to "hard usage" incandescents as my CFLs burn out. I'm interested in LEDs, but I suspect that by the time the price drops significantly, they will also have lost much of their longevity advantage.
I really suspect that generations from now, the human race will look back at CFLs and say WHAT were we THINKING?
Hahahahaha NRA shill spotted already.
"Who knows what happened" and then proceeding to paint the victim in the worst possible manner, despite witness testimony of the transpired events.
How does that make him an NRA shill? Perhaps you meant a LEO shill?
According to TFA, the former LEO was charged with second degree murder.
> I don't see that in the article. He went to complain to the theater manager.
Correct. It seems from the sequence of events that (because a manager did not return with him) he either couldn't find a manager, or the manager did not respond quickly enough. (Possibly because the movie had not started yet.)
> Both guys sound like assholes.
Agreed. But one asshole was armed and shot an unarmed asshole when (according to TFA) there didn't seem to be any major indications that the armed asshole's life was threatened. The armed asshole is now charged with second degree murder. (Again, from TFA.) Because being an asshole, in and of itself, shouldn't be a capital offense.
Something else occurs to me. I freely admit this is speculation based on my own experiences with law enforcement. You know how LEOs are trained -- they take command of a situation and use intimidation to keep the citizen (or perp -- to a LEO the terms are often synonymous) in line. So it stands to reason that a retired LEO, a Captain I think TFA said, would be using this mode with the victim. But he's not wearing a uniform, and he has not in any way identified himself as a LEO (because he wasn't one at that time), and so, to the other asshole (the one who got shot) he must have seemed a particularly livid asshole of the first degree. It would then (it seems to me) be natural for the unarmed asshole (the one who got shot) to object to the armed asshole getting in his face.
Like a lot of IT people here, I'm on call, which means I sometimes get a text or alert or (rarely) a call (on vibrate) in a theater. I always leave the theater to deal with it, as I realize that being accessible has to be balanced with not being an asshole. I'm now a little bit concerned, though, that if a prod system goes offline and I get a text, some retired LEO might take a shot at me.
Or an unarmed man being confronted by an armed former LEO?
The part I don't understand is why the retired officer felt he had to confront the patron? This is a job for management, not for mob justice. The "turn off your phones" message explicitly states (at least in our area) that management will remove patrons who violate the rules. (Which, one could argue, the patron had not yet violated, as the feature had not started.) So the retired officer could request the patron to stop texting, and then report him to the manager, and that's the end of his involvement.
We won't know all the details until after the trial, and maybe not even then, but it sounds to me, from the few articles I've read so far, that the retired officer confronted the patron, then went outside to report him to management, (*not* to "retrieve his gun from the car" -- as a retired LEO he would have had it on him) and then, not getting an immediate response from management, (probably because the feature had not started yet!) went back to the theater and confronted the patron again. I suspect this is going to look bad for him in court.
My local theatres displays the "please turn off your phones" banner *after* the previews and before the main feature just to reinforce this point.
As do the theaters in my area. In fact, it's common to see phones out until the feature starts. Most are probably trying to remember how to silence their phones.
> However, if you had the power and means to restrain the attacker without causing harm and delivering him to authorities for arrest, then THAT would be the correct option, not shooting him.
Speaking as a self defense instructor, (part time in the evenings, when I'm not being paid to do IT geek stuff) there are lots of ways for a restraining situation to go wrong, especially if you don't know the person's strength, training and weaponry. I might try it were it only me at risk, but if my family is threatened with severe injury or death, It would be irresponsible for me to wrestle with someone if I had more effective means at my disposal.
That said, one does have to do a risk assessment; someone throwing popcorn in a theater is clearly not threat of bodily harm and doesn't justify a lethal response. My understanding of self defense laws boils down to: If a reasonable person would be afraid for their life (or a loved one's life), lethal force is justified. Else, no.
But I'll grant you that lethal defense of loved ones isn't something to feel good about. It's just better than the alternative.
The real question is whether it ordered by a rogue official(s), or the governor himself. If information comes out that the governor was involved then he just lost himself a chance at being president.
I dunno, the way the media works it doesn't really make a difference. What I expect will happen is that this will quiet down, the media will support him until he gets the nomination, and then at the last moment they'll hammer on this to affect the outcome of the general. Christi pretty much doesn't have a chance at the white house, although it'll be entertaining to watch him try.
He was studying how playing traffic god would impact his political career
There really needs to be an Android game called "traffic god".
And that's a life or death matter to you?
Before the usual suspects all start yelling at each other about texting in theaters, I'd like to point out that according to several accounts, the movie had not yet started.
> in fact, it could be quite some time before Microsoft locks down any new features, although it might double down on Windows 8's controversial 'Modern' (previously known as 'Metro') design interface. Yet if Thurrott's reporting proves correct, Microsoft isn't abandoning the new Windows interface that earned such a lackluster response—it's betting that the format, once tweaked, will somehow revive the operating system's fortunes.
(Emphasis mine.) Oh man. If true, Microsoft is dead. [1] Doubling down on Metro (or whatever they choose to call it) plays to a market they're never going to significantly occupy, while starving their cash cow. It would be the worst possible decision in a string of bad decisions.
On the bright side, this will be very entertaining. I'll have to stock up on popcorn.
[1] Ok, not dead dead, that's hyperbole. But completely misunderstanding their user base to that extent for two major releases in a row over six years, they're likely to become a smaller company as a result. Perhaps much smaller.
Windows XP? If only. I haven't seen a Target POS machine reboot, but the ones I've seen in other stores display the Windows 98 splash screen.
> [...] that malware was used in attacks that compromised the company's point of sale registers.
See?? There is still a market for Windows 98 programmers!
We are using windows 7 at work, also macosx and linux, but the windows machines are running windows 7, almost no windows 8 almost no windows XP.
And now Windows 9 is showing... tell me why should I upgrade my windows 7 machines ? The faster they release the less I want to upgrade. I prefer to wait until the dust settles. Even the users can understand this. Windows 7 have become a comfort zone.
That's very true. I'm mildly interested because this will tell us what direction Microsoft is going and whether they learned anything from the mistakes on Windows 8. If 9 is still 8 with some minor improvements, this reinforces my deathgrip on Win7, and what I recommend to users. But if 9 has what purports to be the performance improvements of 8 (which I never got to test, as before I had figured out how to make it work, I realized I didn't care anymore and went back to 7) and a reasonable KVM-centric GUI paradigm, then not only does it become a candidate to upgrade Win7 boxes, but it becomes a panic upgrade for Win8 boxes.
There needs to be conventional analogs (read: actual menus) to those funny bars that are swiped in from the sides, because you do not swipe with a mouse. Conveyance needs to be improved -- it should be obvious what is clickable and what isn't. And -- feel free to scatter admin tools throughout the touch menu system; I don't care. But every single thing I need to do to a machine had better be in control panel. The machine should detect the absence of touch hardware on boot and automatically boot into desktop -- a real desktop, with a real menu system, not that retro-DOS "just type the command".
If these things happen, I mean, *really* happen, not just a "start" button that takes you back into touch-only mode, then sure, I'd consider Windows 9.
Parenthetically, someone I know that actually likes Windows 8 (there are a few) said that she puts up with the confusion because on her laptop, she can see those big squares in Metro mode, whereas she couldn't really tell the icons on her desktop apart in Vista without her reading glasses.
This got me thinking... does Metro look like that because.... Gates and Ballmer have gotten... OLD? Because big splotches of color are easier for old tired eyes to see? Are they flat because elderly eyes can't distinguish shading? Is Win8... the GERIATRIC OS?
Good name. An even better name: Tipping point.
Oh, here I thought it was horribly psychopathic and inept management. Oh well...
Well, that too. But my point was that the least of the components available currently are more than enough for 90% of what people do with computers, and being that computers are commodity items, margins are going to be razor thin.
And then, there's Apple, who charges boutique prices for trendy brushed metal cabinets stuffed with the same components everyone else uses.
Aluminum casing is nice but I suspect it's more for show, because, having seen lots of Apple guts, I have to say the guts are not really top notch.
> I like to use hardware as long as it lasts and as long as it's useful to me.
Bravo. Mod up.
Incidentally, the batteries are also available on amazon. There's a special tool to split the case. It's available online, sometimes in the same kit as the battery. I recommend getting one if you don't have one yet. Advantage is that you'll be able to put new batteries in friends' ipods also.
Why?