Rants

I have an asshole. I have an opinion. Any questions?

SCO sells company so they can continue litigation: how very American!

SCO used to sell operating systems and related software based around Linux, Unix, and in their early years Xenix. A few years ago they decided to start suing everyone they could think of with the claim that companies like IBM, Novell, and RedHat had “stolen” their Unix intellectual property. You can read all about the legal history of it here at Groklaw. After years of losing every legal battle they started, facing counter-suits from the people who *really* own the Unix intellectual capital, and filing for bankruptcy, they are doing the only reasonable (at least in America) thing: they are selling all of their real assets so that they can continue the legal battle

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Auto workers union says “no cuts!”

The auto industry is suffering. The U.S. auto industry, all three main manufacturers, are all on the verge of bankruptcy. Sales have dropped 15% in 2008, and another 15-20% is expected in 2009. There is no doubt that the problems have been building for decades, with fat-cat auto executives selling Hummers and Quad cab pickups to the lazy and rather ignorant Joe Sixpack customer. Whatever the cause, the whole industry stands on the edge of the abyss: in a couple of years, there could be no “made in America” cars whatsoever.

A part of the conditions for the U.S. government bailout was that automakers have to reach agreements with their unions to cut wages and reduce staffing levels. Yet the unions say “we won’t take cuts!”

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Hard drive failure + Vista’s broken image backup = unhappy geek

I seem to attract hardware failures like rotten meat attracts flies. Maybe it is because I sometimes run slightly “bleeding edge” gear, or perhaps it is something environmental (* /em looks accusingly at seven cats shedding hair into computer intakes*) Whatever the cause is, I take steps to make sure I have reasonably current backups of my systems. Unfortunately, that rarely seems to save me from frustration…

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The economy: why am I optimistic?

The global economy has collapsed, the stock market is decimated, we are all going to lose our jobs, and the sky is falling! Oddly, none of the recent economic turmoil has scared me. In fact, when stocks bottomed out (presumably) a couple of weeks ago, I started buying shares. I’m not Warren Buffett, but I now own a couple hundred shares of GM, and twenty-some shares each of Apple, Microsoft, and RIM.

Am I crazy? I’m hearing of people selling their houses and buying gold, stocking up on tinned goods and toilet paper, and most of all desperately trying to convert any equity investments they have into or some kind of guaranteed investment. There must be something wrong with me that I keep feeling this strange compulsion to go buy more stock…

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Power outages: Lower mainland BC = third world?

We just had another power outage exceeding an hour in duration here at our house. That makes about six this year here after perhaps one per year of that duration during the seven previous years. You could argue, I guess, that I live in a suburb, and so perhaps the occasional power outage is to be expected. However, at my workplace in the heart of the corporate district in Burnaby, with BCIT on one side of the road and Telus/IBM/etc on the other, there have been three multi-hour outages this year as well. I know it is an exaggeration bordering on the insensitive, but I’m beginning to feel like BC Hydro has degraded lower mainland British Columbia into a third world power district.

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Why I haven’t “realized the mobile Internet”- and why I think Rich Miner is on the wrong track

Mobile phones and “smart” phones have a ton of features: things like taking pictures, browsing the Internet, and playing games. Studies have shown, however, that only somewhere between 10 and 50% of the users of these feature rich devices know how to do more than make phone calls with them. Rich Miner of Google mentioned recently that the reason for this is mainly “bad UIs”. I think, however, that Rich is probably on the wrong track, at least for some users. Maybe even the majority of them.

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200 pound Actor, Joseph Petcka, claims self defense in killing of 8 pound cat…

I am continuously amazed by the human capacity for cruelty and stupidity. Here we have a man, a former professional baseball player and sometime-actor by the name of Joseph Petcka, who claims he brutalized and killed his (presumably ex) girlfriend’s cat because “he attacked me”.

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Is NASA playing with global temperature statistics?

Liars, damned liars, and statistics. Apparently, several of the most “reliable” temperature recording surveys in the world indicate that the Earth’s average temperatures are actually showing a downward trend during the last decade. But the single most quoted source, NASA, says exactly the opposite. From an article on The Register…

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