Posts by Richard 102

Health and Safety

I work in a place where there are genuine concerns about H&S, given the industry we're in and what we do. I mean, we can kill and maim people with chemicals, heavy equipment, etc. That's valid, and no one would deny it. However, the H&S people go a bit far. There was one pompous twerp at a previous job, where we were all just shifting bits and not dealing with dangerous substances, who kept writing up everyone with a clipboard. One day he got above himself and aggressive to a young lady who was a black belt candidate in tae kwan do. In front of witnesses.

It did not end well; an HR person saw what he was doing and he was gone that minute. (Turns out he also had a bunch of naughty things on his PC. Shocking, huh?)

Thank you @Duncan

Yes, we are running out of oil. Back in '88, I had a geology class in college. The prof told us we had 20 years of reservers left. When he started teaching at the college in '68, we had 20 years left. When he started college in '51, we had 20 years left.

Oil won't last forever, of course, but guess what? It replenishes itself! A few years ago geologists at some university in the northeast US were shocked, SHOCKED, to find that old, dead oil fields had oil back in them thirty or forty years later. The oil companies knew about this years ago.

Heck, by drilling and removing oil off the coast of Louisiana, they're keeping it from seeping out of the rock and into the Gulf.

By the time we run out of oil, we won't notice it. Heck, think about whale oil. We ran out of that a century ago. I can't even think of where you'd go to get whale oil these days. (Maybe a hippy-dip holistic lesbian dance therapy natural food store in the Bay Area.) By the time we ran out, no one noticed, because oil and gas had replaced it, just as plastics, bakelite, etc, replace the whalebone that was once ubiquitous. As long as people are allowed to make money, this won't be an issue.

And by the way, @scotchbonnet, that shale formation extends all under the Midwest to the Appalachians. My grandfather once shocked me, when we were deer hunting, by lighting a piece of shale from a road cut. The problem is that, right now, it's expensive to extract. As technology improves and prices increase, though, that will change.

Still a hateful car

Former boss had one and bragged how he got 40MPG. He drove like an old lady, and I get 45MPG in my six year old VW Golf Diesel driving like a bank robber on his way home from work.

Clarkson might have been over the top on the Prius/Land Rover comparison, but he isn't far wrong. Nickle mining creates a LOT of eco-schmutz that has to be dealt with, and that's before they ship it to Iceland for refining. (Love that geothermal.)

One interesting thing came up within the last year. GM and Toyota were ending some deal and were trying to square the books. Toyota offered GM the Prius and GM said "thanks but no thanks" because Toyota loses money on each one. (My source for that is an awfully damn reliable one.)

And I recall the Top Gear where the M3 had better mileage than the Prius. The point was that whatever you buy, you need to drive it rigth to get the claimed mileage out of it. Plus they have to lug around those heavy, heavy batteries whereever they go, even on the interstate/M1 where the batteries aren't doing much.

@The Original Ash

MS won because they cut a jaw-dropper deal with IBM, because they did everything possible to kill competitors, because IT managers knew "no one got fired for going with IBM" and that meant DOS, because people bought what was used at work, and because the cost of entry (it not total cost of ownership) was relatively low, and because competitors (Commodore and Apple, mainly) kept shooting themselves in the foot. Plus, Compaq's BIOS hck helped.

In a business sense, they earned their success, because MS understood the market better than anyone. However, they didn't earn it with quality products. Ever.

A few reminders

1) This shouldn't apply to Apple (at least at the moment) because Apple did not use a monopoly in one area to kill off competition in another area.

2) It was neither Bush nor the US Government per se that screwed up the case against MicroSoft. It was Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson who opened his yap to the press and thus screwed up the whole case. A lot of the evidence against MS couldn't be used after that, so the government decided to just throw in the towel because what they could use wouldn't get a conviction and would only waste time and money. (You know, so many people accuse the government of wasting time and money on useless investigations; the one case when they do the sensible thing is the one where people accuse them of selling out.)

3) Opera is a nice enough browser, and they've figured out a way to get enough paying niches to stay in business.

I wonder ...

Could this somehow be intentional? I mean, surely such oppressive regimes like Russia, China, and the Chicago Board of Aldermen already have this. Could be like that line in Yes, Prime Minister:

ARNOLD: Are you suggesting I leak highly confidential information?!

HUMPHREY: No no! This is highly confidential DISinformation.

ARNOLD: Ah. That's different.

Correction

The government doesn't care about corporations. The government cares about the government. The corporations just happen to be the ones with money.

Not bad ...

I still prefer Fliq Notes, though.

Yeesh

The longer I live, the more other people seem like bit characters from The Goon Show.

Hate to say it ...

... but I tend to side with The North Face here. I'm not pro-big business, and I wouldn't be caught dead in their clothing, but the way that the lawyers have written the laws here in the United States of Litigation, they have to pursue something like this or every man jack and woman jill will try to make use of their name and logo. If they weren't to pursue it, and it was shown that they knew about South Butt, it could be used against them in court. They're rather backed into a corner, and from the story it seems they haven't been too heavy-handed about it.

Not trekkie

Spike Milligan fan, perhaps?

(And FWIW, my parents gave me a first name that, coupled with my last name, was the same as a very famous actor at the time. However, as I was named after a friend of my father's who died in Vietnam, I enjoy making hippy-dips uncomfortable when they mock my name.)

AT&T is horrible

Anecdote <> Evidence, BUT:

I've heard and seen some complaints about Sprint, but honestly, I had very few drops with them over the course of 4-5 years. When we switched to AT&T, it's been Drop City. This has been with four or five different phone models; the iPhone is actually the best of the lot, and it's still not good.

Redux

1) Apple has a copyright on OS X and its software. In other words, they have a right on every copy and how it is used. This would be true (in the legal sense) since Queen Anne's day ... assuming software was made back then.

2) As such, Apple can put their own terms and conditions on the sale of the software. They can give it away for free (a la BSD, Linux). They can sell it with a service package (Red Hat, etc). They can sell it to any and all who sign a contract (MicroSoft) or any select group. Or they can be the only ones to sell it, which is what they do, on conditions and terms they set, which they do.

3) OS X is available for purchase seperately from their hardware.

4) If you have a spare box and want to purchase OS X and try to install it there so you can try it out, Apple won't come after you. Remember, Jobs and Woz were hobby-ists, that's how the company was founded. And if you are buying OS X to try it out on old hardware, that's another copy they sold that they wouldn't have otherwise, and you probably wouldn't have bought an Apple machine anyway.

5) Just don't expect any support from Apple. If I tried to put fuel injectors from a Ford Focus into my VW Golf, and things go badly, tough. I can't sue VW nor Ford, nor can I expect much sympathy, because I was using the two products in ways they weren't intended.

6) If I then try to re-sell that machine with OS X, then I'm in violation of the terms of agreement of the sale of OS X to me. Remember, Apple retains the right to that copy (just as MS would with a Windows install and Torvalds would with Linux). Apple has chosen not to allow such resale, and for a good reason. The clone program of the 90s were nearly the coup de grace for the company.

7) Psystar violated the point in 6). And they continued to do so after a desist order.

@Rob

I'm with you, the Veyron is way cooler than any other car. (Except maybe that '35 Duesenberg I saw at the museum the other day ...)

And I thought, based on what I'd heard on Top Gear, that the c*cks had moved from the BMW to the Aston Martin. Although around here, they tend to drive a Lexus or Prius.

Blame AT&T fot this one

I contracted with them back when they were called SBC. Useless and about as high-tech as a a Soviet record player. I think that they were using tomato cans and string in some backwards, third-worldish places like Arkansas, Louisiana, and Oakland.

.3 of a lover

"How do you get .3 of a lover?"

Screw a civil servant; they all have shlorts. At least, they act like they have small units. (Even the women.)

MS "Genius" Bar

CUSTOMER1: "My Windows Mobile phone keeps crashing."

GENIUS1: "Call the manufacturer or the network provider."

CUSTOMER2: "My wireless card doesn't work with my new router."

GENIUS2: "Call the manufacturer of the router. Or the manufacturer of the card. Or the manufacturer of the PC."

CUSTOMER3: "My tablet won't synch with my laptop."

GENIUS3: "You need to upgrade to Windows 7 Super Ultimate Professional with Lemon Fresh Scent. On both. That's $700."

CUSTOMER4: "The battery on my Zune just died."

GENIUS4: "You bought a Zune? Really?"

CUSTOMER5: "My XBox got hot, quit working, and then blew up, killing two children and a puppy."

GENIUS5: "Call the game company."

CUSTOMER6: "I can't get Office x to read files created with Office y."

GENIUS6: "You need to upgrade to Windows 7 Super Ultimate Professional with Lemon Fresh Scent. On both. That's $700."

CUSTOMER7: "The latest Windows upgrade bricked my iPhone."

GENIUS7: [TAKES iPHONE AND STOMPS IT REPEATEDLY] "Developers, developers, developers, developers!"

CUSTOMER7: "Hey, weren't you the monster in 'Young Frankenstein'?"

Well now ...

"Come on - what else would it be doing on the on-ramp of an interstate highway????"

Begging for money, of course.

Hm

"This is one of the least complete Technical Previews that I have known Microsoft to release".

Gad. That's like being the most corrupt politician.

The latency issue that the AC brought up is a good point. I wonder if Google/MS/whoever will start licensing their office server so people can host these in-house. This would be great for large enterprises. Of course, it would require an infrastructure investment ...

In related news ...

Shawn Kemp could not be reached for comment.

BTW, instead of prison, could the idiot be sentenced to ten years of hard labor in a daycare facility? Let the punishment fit the crime, I say. (Or would that be considered cruel and unusual?)

Hm

Actually, I've seen some interesting uses of twitter. There is an improv comedy troupe here in town, IndyProv, which will sometimes accept suggestions over twitter, depending on the improv game that they're playing. A lot of stuff on there is junk, but you could say that about anything, really.

Heard a Rumor

that the encryption witll be either in Navajo or Bureaucratese, two languages that no normal human can understand.

Lack of ice on the moon?

Obviously from over-idustrialization by blue eyed white men, as the president of Brazil would say. Quick, light the bat-signal so everyone from all over the world can fly here to protest all the pollution caused by industrialization (though, of course, the pollution from the plane flights that we're on is different.)

Luckily

... she's hired Obama's aunt to take over the job.