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User: dballance

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  1. You have to be kidding me. on Starbucks' Music Is Driving Employees Nuts (www.cbc.ca) · · Score: 1

    OMG, seriously? Muzak on repeat has been around for how long now? I think we'd have seen the negative long-term effects of it by now if there truly were any. Stop being little whiners in your warm, comfy coffee-shop. You have it so much better than most people and you just proved that by finding the muzak as something you need to complain about. Totally a first-world, pampered worker problem. If only that was all so many less fortunate people had to complain about. Instead of the dirty, cold, damp, dangerous conditions on many jobs.

  2. They chose a single variable, denying others on Climate Modeller Wins $10,000 Wager Against Solar Physicists, Fails To Collect (blogspot.com) · · Score: 2

    Look, if you're going to put all you money on sun activity and say that the temps will drop then you are denying human activity is a factor. Otherwise you're not very good scientist with modeling. You cannot bet on temps dropping without being a climate science denier. The two are mutually exclusive.

  3. As if people are not already living in their own little bubbles as it is. This will just make it easier for people to only see and hear what they already believe. They should offer an extension that recommends diverse articles, not just the same thing people are already reading.

  4. Scanning everything to Digital Sounds Great. BUT.. on Microfilm Lasts Half a Millennium (theatlantic.com) · · Score: 1

    I have a customer who paid a company to scan their microfiche records to CD. Makes sense, sounds good. They got indexed and were searchable. The company promised the CDs would be readable forever. "Forever" was apparently until Windows XP was no longer supported. Now, we have to keep an XP VM around for them to read the old CDs because they can't be used any other way. Yes, we tried compatibility mode with no success. The program on the CD for reading the index database to locate the .tiff images would not run any other way except on the VM. The company that bought the original company which digitized the records offered to help us for a $150/hour or to convert the old CDs for a price. I am sure someone will correct me if I am wrong but I believe the Mormons have chosen to keep their microfiche records at Granite Mt. even though they are digitizing them for easier use. The technology turnover in digital storage is happening so quickly that you cannot pick a digital technology and be certain it will be readable for 20 years, much less 500. There is still a need for offline backups that do not require a computer to read them. We are quite vulnerable to hostile nations using large EMPs against our digital tech and power grid. A microfiche or microfilm reader is nothing more than a projector. Simple, easy to reconstruct because it does not require electronics. Seems like a very good way to keep records for the next several hundred years to me.

  5. Totally agree. They're not going anywhere soon, but it's nice to see them get a little slap here and there. Oracle pretty much eliminated the competition through their practices so it's fun to see it happen to them.

  6. Buy the pizza and go home on When Developers Work Late, Should the Manager Stay? · · Score: 1

    As a manager who is not qualified in the development language and tools my team uses I feel impotent. That should not translate to me being a busy-body and hovering over my team-members. I think it's much more empowering to let my team know I trust them and respect their ability. Let your people know you have the utmost respect for their skills. They'll do everything possible to meet your expectations. They usually are much harder on themselves than you would ever be.

  7. Will The Lawyers Never Learn? on Adam Savage Revises Claim of Lawyer-Bullying On RFID Show · · Score: 1

    Talk about confirming and bolstering Adam's story. Don't the marketing/PR and legal teams at any major corporation actually talk to one another before someone strong-arms a popular personality?

  8. What Are People Smoking? on Do the Blind Deserve More Effort on the Web? · · Score: 1

    Early in the years of the "web" things were text-based. That could probably have led to easy accessibility for the blind. Also, the deaf were not an issue since everything was visual. Now, things are VISUAL. As in "Visual Basic" and so many other GUI tools. Yes, that means GRAPHICAL user interfaces - not BraileUI's or BUIs. Will we decide to limit or slow the development of sites and tools because they are not accessible to a few people out of the greater population? I hope not. Sorry, but the .4% (that is .004 of 200+ million people) in the USA should not win out over the 98.006% of the people. Sorry I'm an ass but let's get real. No one has the resources to accommodate every minority group. The minority groups should band together and work out a method to accommodate their people.