Archive for November, 2007

RE<C

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

Google is getting into the energy game.  I wish them as much success there as they have with every other business they’ve entered.  But isn’t it ironic that they chose a non-Googleable name for the initiative? Searching for RE<C turns into a search for RE C, and the punctuation is ignored.

Tasers

Saturday, November 24th, 2007

There have been quite a few stories lately about “taser deaths”.  Basically, police say they’re using them correctly, Taser International says they’re non-letal, yet sometimes, people die after being tasered. Often the stories that make the news as controversial are the ones where a taser is used on someone who is already restrained, basically to […]

Canadian Retailers Not Doing Well?

Friday, November 23rd, 2007

The Ottawa Citizen has an article entitled “Canadian Retailers Take a Hit”, which talks about bad retail sales numbers for this past quarter.  The gist of the article is that the economy is slumping and we need to fix it with an interest rate change. “Overall, the report suggests some noticeable weakness in consumer spending” […]

Space Mountain

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

Now this is a cool video.  Space Mountain with the lights on.

HDMI cables

Monday, November 19th, 2007

A long time ago in a mall far away, I used to work in computer retail. One of the most profitable items we sold was printer cables. A parallel cable that sold for $79 would cost the store under $10. This dwarfed the profit on the printer. You’d think we as a consumer electronics buying […]

Three More Red Lights

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

Well, as I predicted when I wrote Microsoft Must Like Exchanging Xbox’s, my 360 has died again.  This is my fourth exchange, so the new box will be my fifth Xbox 360. I’m going to try to get them to cross-ship me a new one, let’s see how that goes. … well, it didn’t go […]

MFC and real-world software

Monday, November 12th, 2007

It’s great to see a serious update to MFC coming.  Check out this video with Pat Brenner where he describes some of the new stuff happening, with demos. I’m really torn on C++ these days.  Some people believe it should basically be retired, in favour of one of the better alternatives like C# or Java, […]

Fixing Digital Software Distribution

Monday, November 12th, 2007

Jeff posted on The Sad State of Digital Software Distribution.  I think the path to fixing it is pretty clear. The root of the problem is that most mainstream software is sold at retail.  Nobody is willing to lose the retail channel.  So if you can’t beat em, join em. If Best Buy were made […]

Colbert and Stewart vs the Writer’s Strike

Thursday, November 8th, 2007

I’ll admit I was a little disappointed to tune in to the Colbert Report and see re-runs the day the writer’s strike started.  In case you haven’t been paying attention, there’s a writer’s guild strike going on that’s taken Hollywood’s writers offline (or “Pencils Down” as they say).  This means the behind-the-scenes folks who come […]

Taking Sides

Monday, November 5th, 2007

An Ottawa Sun poll: Do you agree with the latest transit expert who says that Ottawa should continue to expand the bus rapid transit system rather than focus on light rail transit? 59% said they agree. I wonder if the number had been different if the question had included the fact that the transit expert […]