Tag: complaint

Unexpected consequences of killing the gun ban

Techdirt | Supreme Court Decision On Guns May Cut Promoting Progress Out Of The Constitution

Again, so whether or not you’re happy with the way the court decided the Heller case, the fact that it has no problem deciding that a clause in the Constitution can be ignored as “preamble” could have very bad consequences for those of us pointing out that dangerous innovation-hindering intellectual property systems are against the Constitution.

A lot has been said about the Supreme Court’s decision that the DC gun ban is unconstitutional, but this is the first time I’ve heard mention of the effects that this precedent might have on other legislation. I don’t much like guns in the house. I don’t want them in my house. I don’t think you should have them in your house, either, but I think you should have a right to have them if you want to. And I don’t think the repeal of the gun ban is going to have a significant effect on the number of guns in the city. My feeling on the constitutionality of the law is that it probably wasn’t. As written, I think you can make a strong argument that the amendment doesn’t say that everyone should be allowed to have a gun. However, it has been interpreted for years to say that it does. Unless we amend the amendment, I think we have to allow people to posses guns. I think we should amend it – not necessarily to ban guns, but to remove the controversy. It should be very clear what the amendment does and doesn’t allow. We’ve been arguing over it long enough. I’m not sure I’d be happy with what the present political climate in the federal government would come up with, though, so maybe we should wait until things are a little more sane. In any event, I hope this doesn’t open the floodgates to picking and choosing which parts of the Constitution are relevant and which aren’t. Awful intellectual property laws are bad, but there are a lot of other parts of the Constitution that we’d all be even sorrier to be without.

Is Brandon Fahey the worst hitter ever?

Just watching a bit of the Orioles-Nationals game. It seems so far that we have Evil Daniel Cabrera rather than Unhittable Daniel Cabrera. He didn’t walk a batter in the two run first inning, but just about every ball he threw was hit hard, and only some good anticipation by Brian Roberts to get a double play got them out of the inning only down 2-0. But Brandon Fahey. Do you understand what it means to have a career OPS+ of 50? This guy must have photos of the O’s GM doing something really, really awful. I know it was time to get rid of Miguel Tejada, but I think I speak for most Orioles fans when I say that we expected you to replace him with a real major league player. Now the bases are loaded for the Nats with two outs in the bottom of the first. I need to go find a bottle of tequila.

Why do you think I’m stupid, Microsoft?

If you read any of the blogs that I do, you’ve probably already seen Bill Gates’ 2003 complaint about Windows Update. Windows Update is a piece of junk. It’s always been a piece of junk. It probably always will be a piece of junk. What’s really disappointing is that it doesn’t have to be. Take a look at the package manager in Ubuntu Linux. It’s probably the same in many other flavors of Linux, but I don’t have experience with them. Anyway, package manager is simple. When there are new versions of software or new patches to the operating system, it puts a little notification in my taskbar. When I click the notification, it tells me what is available for update. It even separates them into recommended vs optional, and tells me a little bit about each update. I can choose some, all, or none of the updates to apply. When it’s finished updating, sometimes I have to restart. It puts another notification in the taskbar, and then that’s it. I can restart when I’m ready. Windows, on the other hand, is much more obnoxious. By default, it doesn’t want to tell me what it’s doing. When it finishes, it pops up a window that tells me to restart now or later. If I say later, it pops up again in a couple of minutes. And again. And again. Look, Microsoft, sometimes I’m at work and don’t have the time to restart. Sometimes I’m in the middle of something and just don’t feel like restarting. Why can’t I have that option? Why can’t you just show me a little “You need to restart at some point” notification and leave it at that? And we’re not even talking about Vista here. This is XP on my work computer. And the only reason Windows is on the computer at all is because it’s a work computer. I’ve restarted now, and everything seems to be fine. I don’t know what update it did, but everything still works, so it can’t have been too big a deal. Nice to see Microsoft still patching XP – I guess they realize that Vista sucks, and most people who don’t have to upgrade haven’t (and won’t).

Another ebook reader set to fail

Teleread | Astak E Ink readers: Five- and six-inchers due in July; 9.7 inch flexi screen and Walmart and Costco e-stores in ‘08?

Models with five- and six-inch screens are tentatively scheduled to be offered for sale at the Astak Web site around July 28. That’s next month, yes, not this one as Astak originally wanted, but it is still an acceptable delay, given all the technical and business variables. Astak hoped to sell the five incher for less than $200 but now plans to start out at $229-$249 in order to allow pricing flexibility for the big chains, which Bob hopes will start selling Astak products around October.

The word on this ebook reader just a month ago was that there were three sizes, with the smallest starting at about $150. That was awesome. The $300+ ebook readers out there now are just too expensive to change the market. Sony and Amazon, as well as some lesser known players, already have expensive e-paper devices. To beat them, you have to either change the experience of reading a book, or blow the doors off them on price. This latest news suggests that Astak is doing neither. I see wifi and bluetooth and touchscreen and I cringe. I can get a cell phone with all these things. None of these are going to change the market for reading books. Having Walmart and Costco on board is good for mass adoption, but convincing shoppers to pay $250 to be allowed to read a small subset (for now) of all available books that aren’t even cheaper than their much-more-expensive-to-produce paper brethren is something that even the gifted marketers at Apple would have a hard time accomplishing. So it looks like I’m back to waiting for something that may not come for a while. I thought I could hold out until the end of July, but I thought I was getting change back from $200. As priced (Assuming the linked info is accurate), this one is a pass just like Amazon’s Kindle.

I could have been killed

Have you ever walked south on 16th Street on the right hand side across U Street? You have a light there, but then you have to cross New Hampshire with a crosswalk and no light.
View Larger Map The wife and I do it just about every day on the way to work. It’s not a problem to cross U Street, but crossing New Hampshire is a little dicey. Almost every day, someone assumes that, because they aren’t turning at a 90 degree angle, they don’t have to yield to pedestrians. Twice in the last month or so, we’ve had a car actually slow down or pull over to yell at us for getting in the way. This is all while walking in a crosswalk, by the way. The wife, being more confrontational than I, has exchanged words with some of these drivers. I emailed Jim Graham yesterday, and he has tasked a staff member with looking into it. I want them to put up a sign reminding people that they have to yield. I know it’s a funny intersection, but it’s an area with a lot of foot traffic, and it’s dangerous. It doesn’t help that many pedestrians will yield their right of way to cars. I understand the reasoning there – if you get hit by a car, your broken bones and whatnot don’t really care about the stand you were making for pedestrian’s rights. However, when you give up your right of way, you are also taking mine, because now the drivers think they’re right. So stand up for your right of way. And if you’ve ever had this trouble at this intersection, or any other, write to your councilmember. I don’t actually know who’s in charge of that area – Ward 1 and Jim Graham’s turf ends just north of there at Florida Avenue. But your councilmember would no doubt be aware of who needs to be notified. I’ll keep you posted on what he intends to do about it.

The weather around here is whack

Two hours ago it was sunny. Half an hour ago, it was raining hard enough to fill up the entryway to DCUSA (With people trying to escape the rain, I mean). Now the sun is coming back out. Normally, I wouldn’t care too much, but we got my company’s Nationals tickets tonight, and they’re the newly upgraded seats with access to the Stars and Stripes Club, whatever that is. Last time we tried to go to a game, we got rained out. And tonight the game is delayed an hour and a half, but is scheduled to start at 8:30. So we’re cooking dinner (read: I sautéed some vegetables and now the wife is putting them on a pizza) and getting ready to give the game a shot. I find it a little ridiculous that I’ve had tickets to two games this month, and both have been affected by rain. Although while the first game was one that I chose months ago, these tickets were handed to me this afternoon because no one else wanted to go. Perhaps the weather report had something to do with that. In any event, John Lackey is scheduled to pitch for the Angels tonight, and he’s having a fantastic season (When he’s not on the DL) – his 0.92 WHIP means he’s pretty much not allowing any baserunners. And while Vlad Guerrero is having an off-year by his standards (.289/.348/.506), he’s in the middle of a 13 game hitting streak. There are probably going to be some Nationals players involved in the game, too.

So we meet again

ShysterBall | Cito Gaston’s Second Coming

Gibbons is out in Toronto. Cito is back!

I hate Cito Gaston. Ever since the 1993 All Star Game, when he picked half the Blue Jays team and didn’t put hometown hero (Well, before he jumped ship to the Yankees) Mike Mussina into the game, I’ve hoped that bad things would happen to him. Not bad like losing a limb or a child or anything like that, but bad like losing an inordinate amount of socks in the dryer, or living next door to a really bad teenage garage band. And now he’s back as the manager of the Blue Jays. He was reasonably successful ten to fifteen years ago, but that’s a long time ago. Anyway, I wish him the worst possible luck in his continued management career. But, you know, nothing really bad.

Email Etiquette

We have a user email list at work that people can send mail to and have it distributed based on some permission algorithm that I don’t understand. It’s convenient for system status updates and whatnot. Today, someone with a higher admin level than I would have expected him to have sent an email FROM that email address to about 60 people. Within thirty seconds, I had fourteen autoreply emails from people on the list who were out of the office. Within ten minutes, the number had jumped to 29. First of all, why in the world are 50% of the people in that organization (The State Department) who use our tool out of the office? Second of all, who sends an email FROM a group address? It just means that any replies go to all, even if the replier doesn’t hit “reply all”. Third of all, it’s 3pm on Friday. I should totally not be thinking about work anymore.

Bring on Game 4

The Lakers won Game 3 at home last night, to the surprise of pretty much no one. However, if you’re a Lakers fan, you can’t possibly be happy with that game. Paul Pierce was in foul trouble the whole game, and wasn’t hitting his shots when he was in the game. Garnett didn’t shoot well. And it still took 20 points from Sasha Vujacic to beat Boston. I’m going to go ahead and go out on a limb and say that he doesn’t repeat that performance in this series. In any event, I feel good about the series. Pierce (2 for 14) and Garnett (6 for 21) will play better tomorrow. Kobe got to the line plenty of times and still didn’t dominate the game like the announcers keep saying he will. By the way, I am pretty tired of hearing about him the entire game. He is being contained. 36 points is nice, but nothing special for him, and he had one assist. If Odom and Gasol don’t step it up, this is going to be a tough run for the Lakers when Vujacic, Pierce, and Garnett go back to normal.

Just let me do my job

LifeHacker | IM Can Reduce Workplace Interruptions, Study Shows It has always driven me crazy that so many workplace IT departments block various web pages deemed as harmful to productivity. My philosophy is:

  • If I’m using too much bandwidth, reprimand me
  • If I’m not doing my job, reprimand me
    Otherwise, trust me to be an adult and do my job. Who are you to say what web sites I might need to do my job? At my previous job, we used GTalk all the time for legitimate work purposes (In addition to non-work purposes) before they blocked it. Dozens of times I’ve been researching a work problem and come up against a blocked website. I spend A LOT of time on the computer. Too much, some might say. And some of it is time spent at work on non-work things. I freely admit this. But I get my job done. Sometimes, GTalk helps me do that. Sometimes some sketchy-looking forum helps me do that. Sometimes Google Documents helps me do that. And sometimes I just want to putz around on eBay for fifteen minutes to clear my head. I think if employers started worrying more about actual employee productivity than micromanaging internet access, we’d all be a lot better off.