The Nexus of the Universe

I'm surprised the media hasn't mentioned this, but there's a significant issue with daylight savings time coming up in March.  Basically, the federal government chose to extend DST, and now everyone is scrambling to update a wide variety of operating systems and applications to contain the new date range.

This issue is certainly not going to cause the potential catastrophe predicted for the Y2K "bug" (read: lazy programming).  But, it could cause headaches.

The frustration here is that vendors/software providers are waiting until the last minute to provide software updates when they've had a year-and-a-half (I believe) to be developing these fixes.  In fact, Microsoft is still working on updates for Exchange server, which will be directly effected because of its calendaring functionality.  There's a real risk that systems and applications will be missed, or vendor-supplied "fixes" won't function as promised.

At first glance, one might just think, "Oh, this just means that some of my meetings might get screwed up because people have the wrong times."  Well, I'd bet this affects much, much more than just simple calendaring applications.  Think of interdependent scheduled jobs that run routinely at a set time on different computers, and the effects one box not being properly updated might have on that overall process.

It seems like many vendors have failed to provide timely updates.  In fact, one of the vendors I deal with hasn't yet finalized whether they are going to bother with an update for the version of a piece of software I work with.  So, I either "let go and let God" provide me with the patch, or forcefully and rapidly upgrade our system.  (No, I'm not religious -- the "God" comment is completely sarcastic.)

Furthermore, the federal government is waiting on statistics from the Department of Energy to see if this new DST range has benefits before determining if the DST extension will carry on in future years.  So, we may have to go through all this in another year.

Check out this news item:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17011630/

Basically, a Snickers Superbowl ad showed two men going after the same snickers and accidently kissing (a la Lady and the Tramp) while working on a car engine, and both immediately jump back and decide to do something "manly" (one man pulls out some chest hair, forget what the other does).  People liked the ad, and it was in no way targeting or attacking anyone.

But, some gay and lesbian rights groups attacked the company stating that the ad was offensive, blah blah blah.  Give me a fucking break.

Gay and lesbian folks:  you should have the same rights as everyone.  Simple enough.  And you have the freedom of speech, which allows you to voice your concerns, and affect the marketplace (like the Snickers company deciding to now pull the ad).

But there are too many groups out there (including the ones in this news article) who think that freedom of speech and certain personal liberties guarantee freedom from being offended.  It is leading us into a society which is so scared to say anything (in order to be politically correct) that, in a way, we're actually losing our freedom of speech.  These groups also begin to feel they can control other people's opinions.  What's amusing is that I bet many gay folks didn't give a shit about the ad; perhaps the only ones who cared were the activist groups which say they represent the gay community.

Am I just crazy?  I think I'm a pretty reasonable person when it comes to personal liberties, but grow up people -- you're going to encounter opinions with which you disagree, and you're not going to be able to change those opinions.  Grow some balls (yes, I know that's not politically correct...)!

My comments area is open to anyone who now wishes to berate me.  :-)