Posts by Richard 39 publicly visible posts • joined 8 Oct 2008
I worked for a telecom company when SBC (the company that took over AT&T) took us over. One of the projects I was on involved removing old switches from our software. When SBC took over, they were MOVING TO that switch in certain areas.
I still have friends who work there. They say that the technology has not advanced in the ten years that SBC has been in charge.
Gunning for the 911 in terms of performance and ... practicality? How about something really practical, like a pickup truck or a hot hatchback or a delivery van? Oh, wait, the tech can't handle it yet.
Nevermind that Daimler has been as trustworthy as Kim Jong Il and acted like a Chicago politician towards Chrysler; nevermind that Tesla has had a higher rate of recall than either British Leyland or AMC; this will be genius and heaven on earth, using electricity to power small cars! I'm investing in coal mines and power cable manufacturers ... except the former have all been closed by greens and the latter have all been shipped to China.
Boy, I never thought dealing with Texans and Arabs would make oil look good ...
Shudder to Think was a band in the DC/Baltimore area years ago. One of the best band names I can recall.
And yes, here in the United States of Mewling Petulance, we simply canNOT infringe on the privileges of people just because they have taken the lives of innocents. As it stands, the only amendment to the Bill of Rights that still stands is the fourth (we're not required to house members of the military), and that's only because we spend all our money paying for housing for people who don't work (folks on the dole, teachers, civil servants, etc)
Paris, because she would shudder if she ever thought.
"he was excluded for engaging in unacceptable behaviour by making comments that might provoke others to serious criminal acts and foster hatred that might lead to inter-community violence."
Talk about open-ended. Given the crime statistic studies I've seen, wouldn't voting for expanding more social programs be tantamount to the same thing? Or if fostering hatred through words is a crime, shouldn't all politicians of all stripes be thrown in jail?
I am shocked, SHOCKED I say, to hear that there is corruption in New Orleans! Why, you'll be saying there's corruption in Chicago politics, next.
Seriously, for all the crap that Bush and the US Federal government got for their handling of Katrina, and some of that was deserved, most of the "credit" should go to the governor and mayor. They had no plan for this sort of thing (a hurricane on the gulf coast! unpossible!). What's more, Florida had developed plans and infrastructure to handle this sort of thing because of their experiences. They offered it for free to other states in the area and offered free consultation. By and large, the states readily accepted (and have gone back to Florida for extra help and to provide them with extra data). Louisiana never asked, never wanted the information, and from what I gather, has not worked with anyone else since then.
One example: some of the states around Louisiana offered their national guard to come in and help keep order. This isn't unusual for a big natural disaster. It provides a way to show authority, gives people an authority figure to go to in case of trouble, allows an efficient (and guarded way) to get supplies in and distributed, they have heavy equipment to get work done, etc. But you can't have one state just sending in troops; that won't end well. So Oklahoma, Texas, and even Arizona had national guard troops on the border and asked the governor repeatedly if they needed help. She never responded. She was too busy blaming the federal government for all the infrastructure woes. And waiting for her cut in bribes, I suspect.
Huey Long once said that the people of Louisiana were going to get democracy one day, and they weren't going to like it one bit.
"It's all very well the *nix fanbois having a laugh about this but this affects operating systems that are at least 7 years old now."
Um, isn't the 7+ year old OSes the one that MS users prefer because MS hasn't produced a non-steaming pile of OS since? (Not that I conder XP, aka The Longhorn Stopgap, all that great, either.)
Won't this mean, in a lot of urban environments, a big massive tangle of expensive power cords since you can never find a parking spot in front of your own place? Would you need to buy cords that are blocks long? And what about vandals? Or are my experiences in Chicago, Denver, DC, and Indianapolis different than those of everyone else in the world?
Tell me they have blue hair. (You gotta have blue hair.)
As for the anti-vivisectionists, perhaps they'd like to google the name "Thalidomide" to see why tests are done on animals. (Personally, I think we should do the tests on political activists, but I understand that rats and marmosets are much closer to humans.)
First, Britain, thank you for reminding me that US politicians don't have the First World's monopoly on stupidity and time-wasting.
Second, if she's going to ban people for being offensive and hateful, why not go after Jeremy Hardy? He's funny, but has an automatic hatred for anyone even vaguely middle class.
I've owned Macs since you were a gleam in the pool boy's eye, Mr Anonymous Bosch; we have half a dozen OS X machines in the house now. The only problem I've had with an upgrage/update is that one non-supported feature of Time Machine went away on an update. (Obscure thing involving updating to a USB drive over wireless when it was supposed to be direct-via-Firewire only.) When I contacted Apple, they escalated quickly to a SME and he said "That really worked?!"
Now I do know people how customize/configure the heck out of their machines with enough third-party add-ons to choke a horse. Sometimes one of them will run into an issue, but that's not really a shock, is it?
... that this whole movement took off on college campuses after the Berlin Wall came down. When Communism collapsed like a Cubs fan's World Series hope, people were walking around like ideologically lost lambs. (I was in graduate school at a very lefty campus at the time.) As soon as things like "ozone hole" and "warming" showed up, these folks jumped on how Evil Corporations and Taxpayers were the source of all evil in the world. The government institutions started throwing money at such research and where there's money, people go. Thus those who were professing in Feminist Dance Therapy suddenly were applying for large research grants tenuously associated with global warming. That sounds ridiculous ... and it is ... but people have applied for grants this way. If you are interested in studying, say, ravens, the easiest way to get money is to study how global warming affects the beahvior of ravens.
In the earliest part of the 20th century, most American universities were funded by private and corporate donations of money and stocks; the universities were largely pro-capitalism. As education became more available to the masses, they became either more egalitarian or more elitist as best suited their funding. When government funding became the main source of revenue, they became actively leftist. When massive amounts of money were pumped into global warming research, ... you guessed it.
This may be sound economics, but is it sound science?
Personally, I think the earth is warming; it's been doing so for many many years, before humans were widespread. Yes, human activity does affect the global temperature, but so do algae, the main net source of oxygen on the planet.
If you want to raise the hackles of the green weenies, ask them why Mars and Saturn have warmed since the 1970s (when we started tracking these things), and why the sun has warmed over the same time. No, it's still humans causing the earth to heat, that's just a coincidence.
Then ask why Europe and North America have gotten cooler since the peak heat year of 1999, a time when the sun has gone into a serious sunspot minimum. At best, you'll get the sound of crickets chirping. At worst, you are branded a heretic and blasphemer and a tool of the man.
Paris, because for all her faults she's not an ecomentalist.
"Isn't it ironic that a country that was founded because it didn't like paying taxes without voting rights has managed to develop an institution like the IRS over the years."
The American Revolution was a bit more complex than that, though the taxation part is about all the minds of teachers can handle. And they don't like to talk about it because they get paid by local property taxes.
The IRS was originally created in that grass-roots, reform-minded, hate-the-wealthy muckraking period near the beginning of the 20th century. Whatever their arguments, the main impulse was to stick it to the rich. This nation has come so far in 100 years.
For the record, I am a Unix/Oracle programmer/analyst by trade and we have Macs and Linux boxes at the house.
First, Microsoft has a point that we're talking beta and RCs here. This isn't a purchasable product. And can you imagine the uproar if they didn't provide a browser? The one solution would be, on configuring a system, asking whether you wanted (from a list) IE, Firefox, Mozilla, Opera, Safari, etc. However, when you first fire up a system, particularly Windows, your priority is downloading the patches, correct?
Also, while people claim they like choice, if you give them too many choices they vapor-lock and tend to choose a default. That would be IE.
At the same time, I can see that MS is a convicted monopolist and should be held to different standards because of it. However, that train has left the station because Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson liked media attention and f***ed the deck so MS could declare a mistrial. At that point the case against MicroSoft became much, much less winnable. If you need a scapegoat, call up Judge Jackson and ask him if he thinks lawyers are an evil monopoly.
Oh, wait, I'd better not type that, in case literacy is now a requirement for judges in the US.
Personally, I blame Jeremy Clarkson.
So many people are interested in twitter, but has anyone figured out a way to make money on twitter itself? I know some people make money/marketing using it; I can think of four or five local companies as examples of using it to boost sales/marketing/promotions. However, how does twitter itself make money? When this many businesses are this interested in something that's a money sink, it's usually sports-related.
At least, not as netbooks are seen in the Windows space. While this is a growth area for the industry, it is not a profitable area. The margins are very small, the hardware (at least the three I played with) seems cheap and lacking in durability, and the screens and keyboards are small enough that usability is an issue. That seems to be outside Apple's game plan. Netbooks' biggest charm is that they are cheap, but only in their upfront cost.
Apple's ultraportable is the Macbook Air, which is a nice piece of kit.
IT? because I don't get IT when it comes to netbooks ...
... don't anyone take this the wrong way, but it is rather comforting to know that bureaucrats are idiots regardless the country. I'm wondering if Prussia had the right idea, that incompetent and corrupt government officials could be tried twice for the same crime. That's against the constitution here in the US, but hey, the US government has shown repeatedly that it doesn't have to follow its own laws
Remind me, British type folks, isn't this the sort of thing they mocked on Yes, Prime Minister? I have a Gen 2 iPod (10Gig) that is still running fine and has not had the battery replaced. Replaceable batteries are generally crappy and I would likely have had to replace it three times by now. This is an improvement?
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