Also from the 17 December eWeek:
" Microsoft Windows Vista officially launched to much fanfare, and it was received with a resounding ... thud. Eschewed by consumers who thought that XP still had the right stuff, and virtually ignored by corporations whose applications weren't ready for the new OS, Vista made news in 2007 for all the wrong reasons."
Looks like me and my daughter aren't the only ones attempting to avoid Vista. Who wants copy protection and extreme sluggishness?
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
IT can do all, see all, be all...
In the 17 December eWeek (an IT trade magazine) Eric Lundquist wrote:
"The technology shortcoming of 2007? Despite their continued investment in technology, the finance companies looked increasingly foolish as the sub prime mortgage crisis intensified. Banks and financial institutions -- traditionally the most robust technology buyers-- continued an embarrassing dance of writing down billions of dollars in debt without the ability to track and estimate how much greater their losses might grow."
Eric is clearly a believer of the "Corporate IT can predict the future, travel in time, and leap tall buildings with a single bound" theory. The sub prime mortgage mess was caused by wheelers, dealers, and scammers who finally got caught. Investors finally wised up and stopped buying "bonds" (actually IOU's) "backed" by pools of sub prime mortgages. The holders of these IOU's know they cannot sell them, so their actual cash value is zero. Nobody reports that, 'cause that loss is so bad as to force the reporters of same into bankruptcy. The holders hope that maybe, some time in the future, on a sunny day, they might be able to sell them for something, but nobody knows what. So rather than report the ugly truth, they report a small and not too hurtful ugly, or say that they don't know.
Anyone who thinks that a clever piece of software could have prevented the sub prime meltdown is kidding himself.
"The technology shortcoming of 2007? Despite their continued investment in technology, the finance companies looked increasingly foolish as the sub prime mortgage crisis intensified. Banks and financial institutions -- traditionally the most robust technology buyers-- continued an embarrassing dance of writing down billions of dollars in debt without the ability to track and estimate how much greater their losses might grow."
Eric is clearly a believer of the "Corporate IT can predict the future, travel in time, and leap tall buildings with a single bound" theory. The sub prime mortgage mess was caused by wheelers, dealers, and scammers who finally got caught. Investors finally wised up and stopped buying "bonds" (actually IOU's) "backed" by pools of sub prime mortgages. The holders of these IOU's know they cannot sell them, so their actual cash value is zero. Nobody reports that, 'cause that loss is so bad as to force the reporters of same into bankruptcy. The holders hope that maybe, some time in the future, on a sunny day, they might be able to sell them for something, but nobody knows what. So rather than report the ugly truth, they report a small and not too hurtful ugly, or say that they don't know.
Anyone who thinks that a clever piece of software could have prevented the sub prime meltdown is kidding himself.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Ordering a new Laptop withOUT Vista Pt 2
After more googling favorite daughter found a mail order place, Compusource Inc, in Swedesboto NJ. The guy on the telephone knew how many laptops they had in stock, at which warehouse, which ones were loaded with XP, and promise a before Christmas delivery. Gave 'em my credit card number, and lo and behold, UPS drops the machine off on the porch. It powered up, runs well, detects the wireless router, and isn't completely overloaded with craplets. Comes with a real Windows XP CD in case you need to re install after some terrible catastrophe. In fact, only ONE icon, the recycle bin is on the desk top.
So we do some cleaning. Zap Norton antivirus, the trial version of office, and some other stuff. Try out the recommended backup utility. The backup utility asks for 18!!! CD's or a mere 3 DVD's. We feed it the first blank CD. A lot of backing happens, but we only get thru the first DVD and the backup util cannot move onto the 2nd and 3rd. Three DVD's is 15 Gbytes of stuff, and it is unclear how much of it we care about. The Windows XP disc has all the HP drivers and Windows on it. What more do we care about on a virgin machine?
So we do some cleaning. Zap Norton antivirus, the trial version of office, and some other stuff. Try out the recommended backup utility. The backup utility asks for 18!!! CD's or a mere 3 DVD's. We feed it the first blank CD. A lot of backing happens, but we only get thru the first DVD and the backup util cannot move onto the 2nd and 3rd. Three DVD's is 15 Gbytes of stuff, and it is unclear how much of it we care about. The Windows XP disc has all the HP drivers and Windows on it. What more do we care about on a virgin machine?
Sunday, December 16, 2007
Why don't they make furnaces with external combustion air?
It's all relative, humidity that is. Heating season is always dry, dry, and dryer indoors. The dryness causes all those winter colds and sniffles, does evil things to wood in the house, and creates all that static electricity. It gets so bad that merely stroking the cat gives you, and it, a 20KV jolt, most upsetting to cats.
The house gets dry, 'cause humidity is relative. Air feels moist when it is carrying all the moisture it can hold, and feels dry when the air is short on moisture and is sucking moist out of everything in the room. Magic science fact: Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. The house is dry 'cause cold outside air was warmed by $3 a gallon furnace oil. As the air warms, it can hold more moisture, so it starts sucking moist from everything in the house. Eventually the warm air picks up enough moisture from people, showers, sinks soaking the dirty dishes, evaporation from toilets, humidifiers, and ceases to feel to damnable dry.
About this time, the furnace lights off. The burner takes air (a lot of expensively heated air) from inside the house, and sends it up the stack. Zip. Nature abhors a vacuum (Magic science fact #2) and so cold outside air slips into the house thru cracks around the doors and windows, leaks in the walls, somewhere. The new air is cold, and as it warms up it does the moisture sucking thing and the house gets drier.
Why not make furnaces with an combustion air inlet? You run a air duct to the outdoors and then the furnace sucks its combustion air from the cold outdoors rather than the expensively heated indoors. The indoor air stays moister, which is nicer. The cat approves.
The wood stove people understand this already. Good woodstoves are sealed and have a single air inlet which gets ducted to the outside. What is holding the furnace people back?
The house gets dry, 'cause humidity is relative. Air feels moist when it is carrying all the moisture it can hold, and feels dry when the air is short on moisture and is sucking moist out of everything in the room. Magic science fact: Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air. The house is dry 'cause cold outside air was warmed by $3 a gallon furnace oil. As the air warms, it can hold more moisture, so it starts sucking moist from everything in the house. Eventually the warm air picks up enough moisture from people, showers, sinks soaking the dirty dishes, evaporation from toilets, humidifiers, and ceases to feel to damnable dry.
About this time, the furnace lights off. The burner takes air (a lot of expensively heated air) from inside the house, and sends it up the stack. Zip. Nature abhors a vacuum (Magic science fact #2) and so cold outside air slips into the house thru cracks around the doors and windows, leaks in the walls, somewhere. The new air is cold, and as it warms up it does the moisture sucking thing and the house gets drier.
Why not make furnaces with an combustion air inlet? You run a air duct to the outdoors and then the furnace sucks its combustion air from the cold outdoors rather than the expensively heated indoors. The indoor air stays moister, which is nicer. The cat approves.
The wood stove people understand this already. Good woodstoves are sealed and have a single air inlet which gets ducted to the outside. What is holding the furnace people back?
Getting the lead out
I loose track of the number of TV news stories about this or that child's toy recalled for "excessive" or "dangerous" amounts of lead. The toy maker is inevitably Chinese, the effects are always dire, and good luck finding Christmas toys that aren't made in China.
Never is the amount of lead mentioned. Are we talking about 40 percent lead? 1% lead, 1 part per million? one part per billion? Modern chemical analysis equipment is so sensitive that it can detect tiny levels of anything, in anything. Are we talking about a trace amount of lead that might be detected by modern equipment, or are we talking about a thick coat of pure white lead oxide paint? Modern newsies are innumerate, so we never get the real facts of the story, numbers, just the opinions. Opinions are like a**h***s, every one has one.
Latest lead story, this morning, reports Christmas lights with the bulbs soldered together with standard 60-40 tin-lead solder. The precautions recommended over the radio were more appropriate for handling plutonium or beryllium. To be hazardous the child would have to remove the light bulbs, put them in the mouth, and suck on the soldered tip for about a month. All without breaking the glass bulb, sharp fragments of which will cut. Somehow I don't worry about children sucking on light bulbs as a hazard. Surely the most ignorant parent would not allow their kids to chew on light bulbs.
How much of the lead in toys furore is really safety related and how much is anti Chinese imports related?
Especially as metallic lead isn't terribly dangerous, so long as you don't eat it. According to the MSDS lead is not terribly reactive with anything. Half the water pipes in the US are copper tubing soldered together with 50-50 tin lead solder. The water in the pipes doesn't dissolve out enough lead to matter. We survived 50 years of gasoline spiked with tetra ethyl lead. The major hazard connected with lead was the use of white lead as a pigment in house paint. The paint would peels and small children would eat the chips cause the lead dioxide tasted sweet. White paint was converted over to titanium dioxide in the 1960's.
Never is the amount of lead mentioned. Are we talking about 40 percent lead? 1% lead, 1 part per million? one part per billion? Modern chemical analysis equipment is so sensitive that it can detect tiny levels of anything, in anything. Are we talking about a trace amount of lead that might be detected by modern equipment, or are we talking about a thick coat of pure white lead oxide paint? Modern newsies are innumerate, so we never get the real facts of the story, numbers, just the opinions. Opinions are like a**h***s, every one has one.
Latest lead story, this morning, reports Christmas lights with the bulbs soldered together with standard 60-40 tin-lead solder. The precautions recommended over the radio were more appropriate for handling plutonium or beryllium. To be hazardous the child would have to remove the light bulbs, put them in the mouth, and suck on the soldered tip for about a month. All without breaking the glass bulb, sharp fragments of which will cut. Somehow I don't worry about children sucking on light bulbs as a hazard. Surely the most ignorant parent would not allow their kids to chew on light bulbs.
How much of the lead in toys furore is really safety related and how much is anti Chinese imports related?
Especially as metallic lead isn't terribly dangerous, so long as you don't eat it. According to the MSDS lead is not terribly reactive with anything. Half the water pipes in the US are copper tubing soldered together with 50-50 tin lead solder. The water in the pipes doesn't dissolve out enough lead to matter. We survived 50 years of gasoline spiked with tetra ethyl lead. The major hazard connected with lead was the use of white lead as a pigment in house paint. The paint would peels and small children would eat the chips cause the lead dioxide tasted sweet. White paint was converted over to titanium dioxide in the 1960's.
The great Nor'easter, gets way up north
Started snowing in the early AM. Town plow went by at 8 am. Kept snowing hard. By 10:15 I decided going down three mile hill to church was a bad idea, too much chance of dinging DeVille somewhere. Town plow made a second pass at 11 AM. No sign of Ken King who plows my driveway, but on the other hand, I have no pressing need to go anywhere. So far we have 8 to 10 inches down and we may get more. It has slacked off in the last few minutes, but the weather radio&TV is threatening more for this afternoon. Skiing is superb, best snow before Christmas in a long long time.
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Hazards of being a winter squirrel
We have a nice fresh snowfall on the ground. All bright white with a brilliant sun. We need the sun, it's nearly zero outside. Bunch of chilly squirrels scurrying about on the snow. Legs are too short to reach thru the powder snow and touch the ground, and they are so heavy that they sink right in. You can see 'em struggling in the deeper parts. They are all dark, and stand out on the brilliant white snow, making themselves perfect targets for any kind of hawk. Dunno what brought them out today, usually they hibernate thru the winter. If they were truly into being active-in-the-winter critters you would think they would grow white fur coats.
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