I'm such a cheap drunk that I voluntarily observe a limit of zero when I'm driving. I remember one night when I was tired and hungry and managed to get completely blasted on one can of american beer. :-)

For flying the limit is zero as well, with the requirement of eight hours from the last drink to takeoff.

The real solution is social: make it utterly unfashionable to drink and drive.

...laura

For my immediate family my computer-savvy Mom does first-level tech support. I'm second-level support.

Most of us use Macs, so the tech support requriements are minimal. :-)

...laura

Customers have choice. If you make content available under reasonable terms, they may be your customer. If not, they won't. I decided a couple of years ago that the cable company's terms were unreasonable, so I cancelled my cable. With over the air HD, internet streaming and DVDs, I don't miss it.

While many tv shows people have mentioned are from U.S. cable tv networks, I've seen top-quality stuff from other sources. Recent faves include Borgen and Scott & Bailey, both from "regular" (albeit European) TV channels. Who would have thought Danish parliamentary democracy would make such gripping drama? And Janet and Rachel can arrest me any time they like. :-)

I've watched Borgen on DVD, and am currently streaming S&B on youtube. When ITV get around to releasing series 3 on DVD I'll buy it. Reasonable terms, remember.

...laura

While I think of it: a few years ago I was talking to people about some recent historical events, and the subject of 11 September 2001 came up. One person had an interesting response:

"Give me a break. I grew up in Northern Ireland."

...laura

The news coverage leaves a lot to be desired, IMNSHO.

Something terrible happened. People were hurt. People died. Not good.

The authorities are investigating. As they should.

They caught the pricks. They wasted one in the process. Good.

The hysterical saturation coverage of all of this, however, gives these sick fucks and their filthy ilk exactly what they want: free publicity, plus public fear.

I've tried to avoid the coverage. It's difficult at times...

...laura

I view the point as moot: almost all food already is genetically modified, through selective breeding. Many things we eat bear little resemblance to their wild ancestors.

I'm more concerned about companies asserting intellectual property rights to food.

I'm also concerned about the "oppose everything" mentality. Some day something will come along that really is worth opposing and people will tune out because the tinfoil hat brigade have cried wolf too many times.

...laura

In the universe, yes. On Earth, no. All the helium on Earth has been here from the beginning, and no process on Earth is creating more. Once it's released in to the atmosphere, it's gone.

I'm always envious of stuff like this. Where I live (southwestern British Columbia, Canada), it would be very difficult to retrieve a payload that came down 100 km away, in just about any direction. A steerable RC glider is an option I've thought about. Live video, GPS and telemetry would make me even more motivated to get the aircraft back.

...laura

Indeed.

One of those legacy applications here is a customer service web page. The search function is particularly useless: it returns nothing at all, every document on the site, or a random selection of dead links. I've suggested to its maintainer that it should be rewritten (if it serves any purpose at all, which is debatable...). He's dragging his heels.

...laura

...but I've followed them closely.

A long time ago I noted that the biggest challenge of the Internet was going to be finding things. As an undergrad I earned a bit of extra money working in the university library, and was told, on my very first day, that if you don't put something in the right place you might as well throw it away, because it's unlikely anybody will be able to find it otherwise. Now we have Google. Dave Cheriton was one of my undergrad profs, BTW, a 2nd year course in data structures that used Pascal.

Another lesson from my undergrad days is that the structure of a product is isomorphic to the structure of the group that created it. I currently support legacy software that was created by people who never talked to each other, who never even sat down for a chat over lunch. It shows. The interface specs read like legal contracts. The product line worked for a while, but is now unmaintainable, unsupportable, well in to its end of life bug explosion, and we are actively developing replacements.

The company imploded in 2001. What was left tried a looser development process. It sort of worked, but eventually failed. The biggest issue was a couple of extremely forceful people who steamrollered their own pet ideas and who refused to listen to others. The bosses needed to rein them in, and didn't. It cost us the company.

Our current development model is basically a surgical team in a skunkworks sort of environment. Head office is in Dallas. I'm in Vancouver. The physical separation is helpful. There aren't enough of us in the company to do much else. It works. We're doing good work. The company is making money. The bosses are happy. We're happy.

I like a lot of what Google is doing. I like the encouragement to be creative. Good people are creative, and if they're going to be creative, you might as well get them to be creative for you. And you have to take some risks. Not all decisions are right. Not all products are winners. But if you don't risk failure, you don't risk success either.

I have issues with the work/life balance implicit in the Googleplex work environment. Maybe I'm too old or something (I'm 51), but I expect to have a life apart from my work.

...laura

Reminds me of the old joke:

Q: What's the best way to tell the difference between a Canadian and an American?

A: Casually comment that there isn't any.

...laura, proudly Canadian

I'm nominally right-handed but can do most tasks (except for writing) left-handed.

I currently have two vehicles, one left-hand drive, one right-hand drive. So I'm used to shifting gears both ways.

I recently had my first experience flying an airplane from the right seat and working controls (throttle, prop, mixture, etc.) with my left hand. In this case it was a regulatory thing, a tourist who didn't have time to do the paperwork with the local aviation authorities. Advanced student flight training involves a lot of right seat flying, because one's first job is almost certainly going to be a co-pilot or a flight instructor in the right seat. You need to get used to it.

...laura

It's interesting to be able to put faces to names. But I've always had the nagging suspicion that the producers started out making a film about something else, ran out of money, and edited what they had in to Revolution OS.

...laura

The sad thing is that there are enough people buying this shit to keep the robocallers and spammers in business.

I routinely get robocalls wanting to reduce my credit card debt. A good trick, since I don't have any. I always wonder how the political polling people can possibly pretend their conclusions have any validity, since everybody hangs up on them.

And so on. A medium that used to be useful has been poisoned by abuse.

I view Do Not Call as intrinsically self-defeating. Like "opting out" of spam, it provides a list of known-good phone numbers. If the robocalls originate from offshore, there is little the local authorities can do about it anyway.

...laura

Many countries, not just the U.S.A., have provisions that legislation must be passed by both a majority of population and a majority of geography. Hence congress allocated by population, but each state has two senators, whether it's Wyoming or California.

Canada doesn't. Our Senate is appointed by population (by regions on paper, but by population in practice), so Ontario has the most MPs and the most senators. Here in B.C. we have similar issues: the vast majority of the population live in the southwestern corner of the province, but the happening industry is in the northeast, which feels more kinship with neighbouring Alberta. Including using the same time zone.

We've also looked at proportional representation in B.C., but that didn't get off the ground. I would have welcomed it.

...laura

Are Amazon deliberately trying to discredit the USPTO, or even the entire patent system?

This patent fails on so many criteria: prior art, lack of novelty, obvious. If it's granted, it's a crock.

...laura