That's what this 'calendar' essentially says. Let's just call it what it is, a simple algorithm for a few celestial body movements. It's rail-minded development applied to the solar system, with only a nod to the Gregorian lunar-based system. (28-day months, or approximately one lunar rotation) Also, and let's be honest here, the whole "timemods" idea is just a gadget. It's not practical outside of the inner-workings model. I mean c'mon... calendars are supposed to work for everyone.

All that doesn't mean it's a bad idea.

On the contrary, it's a great start. But if it's to become a great system, worthy of usurping the Gregorian calendar, then it has to embrace the natural marks of celestial time frames... not just one solstice per year.

• First improvement would be to include both solstices in measurements. This already doubles the accuracy of the system.
• Take it one step further and include both equinoxes for additional reliability.
• The previous two suggestions annihilate the 13th "mini month" idea, (which BTW is horrible) so tack those on to the quarterly ends as 'meta months'. See? Quarters are now built-in!
• The whole point of a standard calendar is to be predictable, so making corrections four times every year means the next cycle is always more reliable than the last. (though it will never be perfect, because entropy)
• We also open up the possibility that sub-diurnal adjustments can now be quarterly, semi-annual or annual. Another leap-second in June, why not?

This system then retains the single greatest advantage of the Gregorian calendar; division by the most factorials. (!12=1,2,3,4,6,12 -vs- !13=1,13) And now it has more frequent course corrections. Consider this programmatically with the above suggestions, and the system is still computationally simpler than our legacy Gregorian system. So there it is, an accessible system that everyone can use.

Seems to me like there must be something to it. If the ISP's are threatening to sit on their asses (believe me, they'll do it, those crazy bastards) then there's got to be something proper and fair about that bill.

The ensuing pity party will undoubtedly be called the thumb-up-the-ass-mageddon.

Either that, or face the rise of a Chart-warner-cox-cast abomination, sure to be renamed the Cable Operators Commision Kabal. The acronym should make it obvious.

It didn't start that way. In fact, there's a distinct correlation to the increasing age of George Lucas and the increasing "hijinks" of his characters and/or the ephemeral nature of the characters he introduces. JarJar is just the cataclysmic conclusion of a string of bad decisions that had a truly promising start.

In order, ep. 4 has witty repartee between Threepio and Artoo, somewhat diluted by SE retcons. This is the par excellence of their performances. You'll see that ep. 5 is where Threepio starts "hamming it up", but in a self-aware manner. A caricature of uptight British absurdism that doesn't take itself too seriously, played well as the "straight man" opposite of Artoo's escapades. Then in ep. 6, we get a par performance from Threepio with somewhat more heroic notions from Artoo. In a way, the Ewoks took the burden from the droid duo for providing the comedy/tragedy aspects of the third film. For the droids, those performances worked well enough and didn't take away from the story.

It all goes to shit with the prequels. Artoo is immediately framed as a "tragic hero" in ep. 1 because of the apparent slavery/fodder undertones of Astromech Droids overall. Thereby delivering a heavy-handed message of oppression and strife, "humanizing" this artificial-life character. Threepio, as the invention of young Anakin, is supposedly imbued with the values and morals of young Anakin, but doesn't explain how Threepio is unique from the protocol droids have been mass-produced for millennia. It's like building a toaster out of Erector/Technix parts... what was the point, exactly? Oh, right... it's a conveniently close-knit origin story that way. This film does little more than get principal franchise characters (Anakin, Obi Wan, Artoo, Threepio and Yoda) together by the end of the story. JarJar is introduced. He's inserted into the story as both a "CGI triumph" and as the sad clown. (I. Hate. Clowns.) In a way, it was JarJar that pushed Threepio into the "uptight ninny" niche that ultimately doomed him as a character and prevented any kind of humorous moments from Artoo throughout the prequel films. JarJar took over that job... kind of appropriate, considering the outsourcing epidemic that was happening at the time.

Then we get to the travesty of ep. 2; the Republic Army of Clones. (they didn't "attack" anyone, really... and it's a clear evasion of the obvious "Clone Wars" title, which would have made tons of sense based on canon, but was "strategically reserved" for a later animated television series.) If you can somehow manage to keep your last meal down and endure the frigid romance of Padme and Anakin for at least an hour, you'll see that the relatively minimal screen-time with the droids has been "lubed up" with predictable, over-the-top and depressingly corny gags. These two characters are ruined for being made into even shallower caricatures of themselves. There are zero moments with Artoo and Threepio that had to be written that way for the sake of storyline. Zero. Their abominable performances in this film were entirely by choice, and it was a very, very poor choice indeed. JarJar didn't even make up for it, he's now just a piece of the background. There's nothing less satisfying than to see a pathetic comedy-relief character turn into bland scenery. There's no real dichotomy here; JarJar doesn't offset Threepio in any way. And at this point, neither does Artoo. It's all ruined.

Now there's that lingering aftertaste; ep. 3. It's almost embarrassing to think of it, but it's the latest SW franchise feature-length motion picture to date. (*shudder*) While it has a most heroic opening, (Artoo... yes, again) this story later unfolds with almost no droids at all, and doesn't even really leverage them for comic relief. This was like putting ep. 5 after ep. 6 -- giving us a dark finish to a hopeful segway. The visual-gag moments we're given with Artoo and Threepio only reinforce the two-dimensional cutouts we laboriously endured in ep. 2. Nothing new to see here. JarJar is all but missing... but unfortunately, we see that he's still alive and doing rather well for himself; again, thoroughly unsatisfying.

If I were to visualize this progression, it would follow the chronological timeline of motion picture releases. (4 > 5 > 6, then 1 > 2 > 3) Under ep. 4, you would see the iconic image of Artoo and Threepio from the final "commencement" ceremony of ANH. (shiny and presentable) As you move to the end of the first trilogy, you would see them become more like drawn caricatures (anyone remember that animated "Droids" that assaulted us for a few Saturdays back in the '80s? Yeah, a bit like that) As we move into the prequel trilogy, we would see the stripped-down "naked" Threepio alongside a burnt-out Artoo, and as if Anakin himself had drawn it. In the second film, we see Threepio with plating (finally) but also amateurly hand-drawn... perhaps JarJar is trying his hand at it? (kinda like how Dub-yah tries his hand at painting) By the sixth film, the images of Threepio, Artoo and JarJar are just hand-drawn by a toddler, who is the only member of the audience impressed by their performances.

Thanks for the legacy, Mr. Lucas. May we please do it the right way now?

It's nice to see that some things never change.

Introduce a profound article on /. and the community... bickers about something completely different.

I, for one, applaud the policy described in TFA. Calculating the median time to crack weak passwords, then requiring the password to be replaced within that time frame, is nothing short of brilliant. It's a practical approach to security; something they should have been doing all along. Can't wait until this elevates to law-of-the-land status.

Until then, please, keep discussing whatever it was you felt was so important.

This is exactly why shopping for a router isn't as simple as finding the best bang/buck. It's a concerted effort of finding good deals (generally refurb/overstock, avoiding rebates) along with verifying open firmware support. Finding that HW version can be tricky. Just apply Occam's razor to it; there's probably a good reason that gigabit N-600 dual-band router only costs thirty bucks.

My house runs on DD-WRT (one main router, one dedicated for WiFi, both D-Link) and I've never looked back. I'm on DD-WRT forums at least quarterly to check for important updates, and it just keeps getting better. The conversations may be less-than-friendly, but they do make solid firmware.

If climate change is WMD, it must be wielded by a certain faction

The most potent element in climate change is methane gas.

The greatest living producers of methane gas are bovines, (cattle) on its own, contributing up to 30% of world greenhouse gas emissions [EPA report

The number of bovines in captivity (in US, Europe and Asia, excluding India) tend to outnumber those in the wild

For the captive cattle population in the US, roughly 1/3 are converted to foodstuffs each year [source: "download fact sheet"]

We've got them right where we want them, but somehow they still manage to execute their global-climate attacks. Time for a diplomatic solution?

(j/k ... this is 'Murica, we don't do diplomatic solutions.)

Quite true! The current convention of excited-gas luminescence (High Intensity Discharge, or HID) is very bright indeed. Sports venues are looking into feasibility of replacing stadium and indoor-arena lighting with HID or something similar for the sheer savings in energy consumption.

Headlight glare from HID is only dulled for oncoming traffic by shaping the beam. The technology for laser-bombarded phosphors will probably have the same optical harnessing as HID. (most likely due to cost-efficiency by automakers so they don't have to fully replace their precision manufacturing) As for the 'annoyance' factor, there will continue to be hill-crest and sharp-rise blindness from oncoming traffic until such a time as when all cars are equipped with a solenoid-controlled lens assembly tied to a comprehensive pitch-sensing array. It's also clear that, unlike LED light sources where luminescence is hard-wired in the manufacturing, laser-excited phosphors can be precisely controlled through the phosphor material and packaged optics. As this report shows, the exact nature of the phosphor-impregnated material affects the color and amplitude of the light emitted.

Are they potentially brighter? Quite possibly. Would manufacturers be able to easily mitigate that effect as they roll-out production? Absolutely.

In the meantime, I doubt I am the only one that's concerned with the term, "laser headlights". The emitted light is not actually laser light, it's the broad-spectrum light (as correctly stated by PP) emitted by energized phosphors. The laser only energizes luminescence, the phosphor is what actually emits the light. But it's the "laser headlights" term that implies that the beams are made-up of laser light. Sure, it's a finer point, but I think it stands for comprehensive accuracy. This tech should be known as "laser-powered headlights" or even "Laser Energized Phosphor Emission | LEPE headlights".In fact, I sense a good marketing angle in the latter, at the very least for laser-energized-phosphor emission manufacturers.

The way it's written in those articles is, plainly put, misleading to just about everyone on that point.

Indeed! Executives are just politicians without the need for public vetting; their job is essentially to look smarter than they really are, because they make the decisions behind millions, if not billions, of shareholder dollars.

If that analogy applies to Ballmer, then heaven help us. He's been outed time and time again as one of the most monkey-brained, bull-headed and chair-throwingest XOs of all time.

I often mirror exec-u-speak to the challenge of a/v content of the early Internet era. Those tiny, blocky, postage-stamp videos of the 90's and early millennium. In the sub-48kbps MP3 era, the sounds and music bits were just crap; a tinny, hissing cacophony of some approximation of the original piece. This blew the comprehension of many podcasts, back when they were just starting out.

So, we all remember those experiences. Now, consider that the executive "dialect" is much like that over-compressed media. The XO types just believe that the words they pick are somehow so concentrated and potent that they simply must represent the exact ideas they have. The reality is the sheer ambiguity of the semantics is a minefield of confusion, miscomprehended statements and basically invites rampant guesswork to their entire organization.

Then again, maybe there's an art to it? Consider for a moment that the ambiguity, obscurity and guesswork has been infused into these speeches by design. What we view as incompetence is instead a patchwork of intentional obfuscation, the clear and present question-mark of words that could mean something, or nothing at all. In the end, is it really about communication, or a thinly disguised non-committal of accountability? You decide.

Check out the bit under How We Work: (from the memo)

Bringing the word champion to the table seems like a noble and heroic undertaking, but listen to the undercurrent. It says each champion will be "a direct report to [Ballmer] or one of [his] direct reports." Hrm... is there an historical precedent for such a caste? I think so, and their uniforms had pairs of matching letters; I believe it's the letter just after "R" and just before "T". (and depicted in the 1970's Detroit Arena Costumed Rock Band fashion)

Now note the second statement, how these champions will "organize to drive a cross-company team for success," but he also makes a point of informing how "[Ballmer's] whole staff will have commitment to the initiative's success." Is the parallel getting through yet? This is moving from an inefficient dog-eat-dog tribal model--as Ballmer previously molded MSFT in the early millenium--into a clear model of Gestapo fascism. It's lovely how this "initiative" is not named at all; might it be called "The Final Solution" at some point? (If you haven't grasped the insinuation by now, then I can't help you any further without degrading this into a trite labeling of a particular historical world figure that has vilified so many in the past decade.)

And before anyone pulls out the "welcome to corporate culture" card, just be clear that this is MSFT, or an equivalent to the population of a small first-world nation we're talking about here. The gravitas is a bit greater than some tri-state, regional or even continental US conglomerate. The scope of this one corporation is like a moderate-sized government with world-wide reach, and one which reasonably and in all practical sense can (and does) have a major influence on world affairs. This isn't just name-calling here.

Later in that paragraph:

If you get the implications of the former passage, then this one should chill you to the bone. Great, just what we need... a 'champion' for "serious fun" and "information assurance."

That's not how you submit a bug for the /. mod system!

(There, now you're back on-topic.)

The fact that you need 'expert' users to effectively utilize the bug system says less about your users and more about your system.

Indubitably, so why aren't your methods getting any easier? Ah! Maybe you haven't tried everything after all!

• If they're calling someone they know, then why else do they have that number? (same goes for direct email)
• Why is that capture address visible at all?
• Uncivil behavior between employees is a matter for HR, don'cha think?
• Email chains, tickets, log files... you're gonna have to sift through some crap at some point, right?
• Who doesn't complain to coworkers?
• Now, doing nothing is the worst offense, but only because the user feels like she has no viable options.
• What sort of ticketing system allows "call me" as a sufficient description? If anything, that's a clear "cry for help" about your ticketing system.

So, what you're saying is that the users don't make your job any easier, and in return, you're going to make your workflow less accessible and make their job even harder? I'm feeling sorry for someone in this story, and it isn't you.

I think what you're trying to say is:

I think the point is more: Why are your users not working for you?

As for the bit about frustration, that's more of an overall issue. That's a bug in the human system; not the user, the whole organization.

If users had an approachable, understandable and friendly way to report bugs, there wouldn't be such stress. The frustration comes from the expectation of how a bug report (or opening a ticket, or calling IT, etc) will play out. Often, for them, it's an exercise in futility and exasperation, dealing in a great many things that they don't understand and, more to the point, don't care to understand.

If the process wasn't so confusing or demeaning, it wouldn't be considered as a "last resort" for so many users.