So bye-bye, Java goodbye
Drove my Dalvik to the levee,
but the levee was dry
And them Oracle boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye
Larry Ellison was obviously really high
Singin', "this'll be the day that java died..
"this'll be the day that java died."

Kodachrome died for a few reasons, but in large part because better films came along. Fuji's Velvia being one of them. I LOVE shooting film. It's also interesting how long some of the best engineered films will last, compared to dvds or hard drives.

I shoot medium format film (6x7 cm, about 9000x11000 at 4000dpi, 550MB 16 bit compressed tiff). And while I love digital for some things (spray and pray, and low light action), interpolated digital doesn't come anywhere close to what is captured on a transparency. Though getting all that greatness off the transparency is difficult. But when done right, even a $10 20x30" print from costco or elcocolor can be spectacular.

I currently scan with a Nikon 9000. I'd kinda like to get together with some folks to work on an open source drum scanner project. Drum scanning with a photomultiplier tube (or similar) is a great alternative to the deficiencies of CCD sensors.

I also like prints. While it is nice to view images on a screen, they don't become tangible until they are embodied in a print.

And, btw, digital images archived on common photo sharing services rarely have enough resolution even for a good 8x10" print (300dpi). So I don't think that is viable.

Some ip thief stole my idea for first post.

The law that moved Michigan's franchise authority to the state level lacks any provision for resolution or mediation of consumer disputes. What a wonderful gift to comcast - no complaints to deal with. Prices go up and up, and in some areas comcast's hardware is oversubscribed, so image quality is poor. Analog quality was better than their digital.

Thank you Governor Granholm. Maybe you can further stimulate Michigan's economy by converting even more waterfront public parks to private golf courses. And when your final term soon ends, maybe Comcast will have a nice job for you.

The FTC gave TM a slap on the wrist for doing the same thing, and then they approved TM's acquisition of Live Nation. Their conduct was arguably much worse.

Ticketmaster Reaches Settlement on Complaints of Deceptive Sales

The Federal Trade Commission has reached a settlement with Ticketmaster over complaints that the company used deceptive tactics to steer Bruce Springsteen fans to more expensive tickets through its own reseller last year.

The complaints stemmed from 14 Bruce Springsteen concerts last year where fans were steered to a Web site with inflated prices.

The settlement, announced Tuesday by the F.T.C.'s chairman, Jon Leibowitz, came after an investigation into 14 Springsteen concerts last May and June in which thousands of customers on Ticketmaster's Web site were pointed to TicketsNow.com, an eBay-like resale marketplace with no price caps, that offered similar tickets at inflated prices.

In some cases, brokers on TicketsNow advertised tickets they did not have, and the fans never got the tickets they paid for.

Under the terms of the settlement, Ticketmaster must pay refunds to fans and disclose the availability of tickets it resells through its subsidiary.

"TicketsNow.com sold phantom tickets without letting consumers know that the tickets did not exist," Mr. Leibowitz said in a statement. "Then, the company held onto consumers' money, sometimes for months, when it knew those fans weren't going to see Springsteen. Clearly consumers deserve better. They deserve to know what they're buying, including the risk that their tickets won't materialize."

I like Open Office right up until the point where I have to edit documents using those keybindings. Unfortunately, the features don't include any mention of improved alternate keybinding support. Surely not everyone wants to adapt to Windows keybindings?

As an example, Firefox supports emacs editing keybindings via a simple Gnome option.

Having to create keybinding files from scratch is a chore. Worse, new OO releases often don't support past keybinding files. I don't think it would be a major effort to include alternate keybinding files, and make switching a bit easier? I'm sure quite a few of us would volunteer to make that happen.

Whenever I see yet another Flash security issue, I wonder if Adobie Gillis is their CEO, or maybe they should change their name.

The best project manager I ever had, had weekly meetings in which you were assigned lines in Microsoft Project- had to give an estimate when assigned- and then were asked to give percentage done for anything currently in progress, and reasons for missed deadlines.

Too bad it was a government job

Whew! For a moment you had me worried I might encounter her!

The question here is this: did the sub-human wankers who created this ever consider this possibility? Now that it's happened, do you think they give a shit? Is there a chance that someone is saying, "Gee, maybe this wasn't such a good idea..." right about now?

No, they're saying "Windows 7 will be more secure, and even better for medical devices"

Or did you mean the Conficker authors?

Someone is going to get a promotion for this. Because people who "work" in government almost never, ever get fired.

Maybe they'll find a low level grunt to blame it on..

More sites should provide an option for https, like gmail does. Some still don't even provide it for authentication.

Once upon a time there were wimpy CPUs, and https was a more significant computational burden. Now, not so much. Especially when compared to the resource requirements of most dynamic page generation systems.