When I was a little kid I remember my Dad telling me about using incandescent light bulb(s) to prevent the pump and pipes from freezing when the winter temperatures would fall well below zero. Granted the pump house was well insulated to retain the heat. I can also see using a backup bulb placed in a fixture governed by light sensor that turned on only if the first bulb died to provide a backup.

I recall seeing light bulbs used for their heating properties in a couple of other situations. I recall a mechanics trouble light turned on and placed under the hood of a car in winter to keep the engine block from getting too cold to start. I seem to recall a blanket and tarp also place over the hood of the car. I recall using the heat from a light bulb to soften plastic parts to mold them for a custom fit (plastic models and later car parts). Not to mention the easy bake oven application.

So I would have to say their is plenty of prior art to support light bulbs imported as heating devices.

But Shatner did do a fun "I am Canadian" routine! Seriously, I would agree he is not in the same league as dozens of truly deserving Canadians who have worked hard for a better Canada.

I found I already owned a router that allowed me to control we access hours I just set static IP's on the target machines and gave them restricted access to the web...

I use OPENDNS.com for the parental controls... I direct the router to OpenDNS for its dns lookups...

and I have installed a opensource program called iTalc to monitor the users on the machines... iTalc requires a small client on the users machine and an admin install on the teachers machine... you can then view what is going on, take control of a user or shut them down...

Remember to have the kids login as users not admins... take away those admin rights!

Easy to install, very inexpensive and remarkably effective... Especially with the users knowing I can monitor what they are doing at any time, even from work... Remember you don't always have to go so far as to cut access off, often all the user needs is to know and see you have all the tools to do it.

I have lived and worked in various IT environments over the last couple of decades and I have observed a very interesting thing... The best programmers I have had the pleasure to work with/for were also musicians. Usually amateur musicians, but musicians.

It seems there are very important skill transfers between the two.

I am also able to watch my own kids... and the musical one has chosen to go to university to get a software engineering degree... and is doing amazingly. By the way he also took every math he could get in high school and first year university.

because it provides a far more intelligent and useful way to interact and be part of society. However, it will more likely happen because it will give those folks who want to control us a better way to do just that. Of course as long as you can turn the devices off then you have some control.

I recall having capacitors blow in power supplies... often results in fudge production... Don't want to be on that bus when the capacitor blows. Good idea though.

I had a teacher years ago who when asked why we had to learn to do math manually instead of just using our calculators replied "what happens when your battery dies in the calculator? Do you put your life on hold?"

I agree with him. For all those folks who abdicate everything to devices and computers, they give up control of their lives. I just recently went on a road trip with a PHD and she relies on a satnav device. It was entertaining and reasonably functional, but it wasn't perfect. No we didn't drive over the cliff or any of the other fun stories that have been shared about when these devices go bad. We did however end up have a few interesting moments when the device said to do something and of course that wasn't possible. "Turn left here!" into the concrete wall?

Not that this will happen, but what if the US military degrades the accuracy of the system these devices depends on? It was done in Desert Storm. What if funding disappears. What if a solar flare takes out a handful of the satellites? What if a corporation or government agency wants to manipulate the data on the device in order to manipulate you? What if... Well for me nothing changes since I have chosen to retain the processing power for these and thousands of other functions between my ears. For my kids I hope nothing will change since I am a hard-ass and demand they use their brains for navigation or they don't drive my vehicles.

From a larger society standpoint there will always be people who chose to relinquish control and responsibility for many aspects of their lives, look at voting turnout rates. There will also be people who tenaciously hold onto control of their lives... and I suspect, get to live them more fully.

I have always found that when you are walking a puppy through any university or college campus you get approached by girls and the puppy is the catalyst. So go borrow or (if you are seriously a dog person) get a puppy and go for a walk. Cute puppies are babe magnets. Hey you could even select the part of campus you walk according to the interests you could share with a female friend... history, science, geography, psychology, engineering, etc...

Years ago I learned that most managers are so remarkably ignorant of what good IT workers do, you know preventative work that ensures users can do their jobs without interruption, that the only way to get ahead is to be a bad IT worker.

Meaning if you let all sorts of bad stuff happen and then rush in and be the savior of the day you will be rewarded with promotions and bonuses.

A few years ago, just before I left my last job, I demanded a job review having gone 6 years without one. I got to sit through my review by the VP in charge of the division I supported and my direct IT boss from Denton Tx, only to be criticized for not socializing with some techs who came up from Denton to help with a move of the office 80 mile to a new city. I had elected to do my appointed tasks for the move, baby the servers and double check backups prior to taking them down packing them up and reinstalling them in the new sites server room.

Had I done the socializing I would have ignored my duty to the corporation but not been f*cked over during the review. If the servers had not come up I would likely have been heralded as a saint had I been able to resurect them too.

It makes no sense but my advice is don't bother with looking at meaningful metrics unless it is to satisfy your own needs. Focus on the only metric management sees... Crisis frequency and crisis resolution... be the superhero!

How to look someone straight in the eye and tell then that their problem has cropped up alot lately in their department... and it is a PEBKAC or ID10T error... and it will be fixed as soon as possible... To not become the BOFH be sure to talk to other Tech guys over a few brews and laugh at the idiocy of (L)users... the L is silent.

A short tale to illustrate this... back in '97 I had a co-op student from one of those "Get your IT credentials here in 6 months" schools... one morning we were walking throught the front office where the lowest IQ's but highest egos sit... and the secretary to the VP Sales asks to have one of those hand help manual scanners setup on her pc. Well the scanner wasn't company property and wouldn't work worth a dam (that's why I wouldn't buy one). I said we didn't have time to setup her toy, but the PFY co-op chirped up and said he'd give it a try. So I left him there and went outback and got the first aid kit out... He found me in about an hour and was next to tears. The whole time he was graciously trying to setup the illegal equipment for this "Bitch" she was walking up and down the hall in front of all the exec offices bitching about how "IT was preventing her from doing her job" and "IT was all fucked up"... After explaining to him that she is naturally a bitch and will do whatever she can, hurt whoever she can, lie, steel, kill to advance her career... he started to feel a little better.

I then pointed out to him a few basic rules.
1. If the more senior person answers the question keep silent. Ask in private why the answer was given. You can always go back later and be a hero.
2. If the job takes more than 10 minutes. Take it back to your desk to do. Don't sit in their office and be fodder for their ego development.
3. Listen to what I say. I know what is going on.
4. Finally, never listen to crazy people and get the f*ck out of my way.

Instead of adding more crap to vehicles lets start taking some of the crap out of them. Let's make vehicles safer by making them simpler. I am not suggesting we take stability control or antilock breaks out of cars or the other true safety features. Let's remove the crap that interferes with the drivers ability to actually focus on the task of driving. Remove all cell phones, video screens for navigation and entertainment, complex controls, richly featured stereos, etc. Let's remove the complex crap that doesn't directly add to the drivers ability to drive safely. Next let's train our new drivers better. The last time a vehicle hit my vehicle it was a taxi driven by a fresh off the boat imagrant who just that day got his drivers license and felt it was OK to try and push other vehicles out his way at stop signs. That is how it worked back in the old country. Granted this example I hope is rare, but it did happen. So before we put more crap in cars look at what really needs doing to improve safety.

Who cares how it will do... More important is what they did with it... Forking the time line so they don't have to pay attention to the original was brilliant. It makes follow up movies open to anything. Introducing Kirk's propensity to bed the Jolly Green Giant's sister early in the show was hilarious. Character development was spotty at best with Bones being nothing more than one line jokes and Scotty being an afterthought... Nice to see Leonard Nimoy show up too... I do wonder why all the crew seem so bloody young? They also really do need a pizza hut or McDonald's on the ship to get a little meat on the crews bones. Visually, this was fun... not the best, but definitely fun. Final verdict, this was fun! Anyone want to bag-off work this afternoon and see the matinee?

I worked for 8 years in a company that went from family owned to major corporate ownership. When family owned there was never a problem when I ran network wire or made drop cables. I was trained by an electrician who knew how to do it right and cared to actually do it right. I do it right. Never a problem with the stuff I ran. Go ahead a few years and now under multinational corporate ownership the call comes to run wire and a company of cable monkeys needs to be hired. I am not allowed to do it. I watch the monkeys. I point out the kinks in the wire, where it gets to close to danger areas... etc. I get a call from head office "WTF am I doing?" Making sure the wire is run properly, I reply. Then the conversation degrades into the head office telling me everything they have ever been told by wire monkey salespeople. I give up. I know to pick my battles and this one isn't ever going to go my way. Seems if a manager type doesn't know how to do it they all to frequently assume that no one can do it. (Or did I miss the kickback memo?) Good thing they ran two drops to each location ...