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Opinion Journal has a long statistic laden article about the Roe effect. OpinionJournal - Extra
The hypothesis is the abortion kills voters, and that the aborted voters are more likely to have been liberal. As a result, the conservatives are going to gain a substantial edge in the next several years.
Tell you daughters to stay away from Kenny Hall. According to the L.A. Daily News, he is a cheater.
Apparently you can now join alibi and excuse clubs via your mobile phones, and people all over the country will call and lie for you.
Reading this article, I noticed how it mentioned the immorality of these services twice, but had a totally dismissive tone.
Funny how liars cannot trust other liars.
"I didn't want him hitting on her or telling her what I was up to," Hall said. But now he is a believer in the power of the cell phone assisted alibi. "It worked out good, actually."
Well Kenny, It worked out good until you told the newspaper reporter about it I would suppose. Now the gig is up. Nobody can trust you anymore.
I find it amazing how out of control our intelectual property rights are getting in this country. It seems like our lust for money has overtaken our lust for knowledge, and we are willing to forgo the later in order to protect the interests of a few with deep pockets.
If you invest your time in solving a problem, then you should be entitled to whatever rewards the marketplace is willing to pay for your solution. Nobody should be allowed to steal your solution and sell it, or give it away. On the other hand, people who face the problem that you are trying to solve should be allowed to solve their problem on their ownwithout paying you.
The issue that we are facing today is that a lot of people are trying to solve very simple problems, but in solving their problems, they are risking getting sued by somebody who also solved the simple problem.
A 7 year old in St. Paul owns a patent on Sideways Swinging
Clearchannel recently won a patent for selling recordings of concerts immediately after completion. Much like the churches I have been attending have done for years.
Microsoft apparently now owns the rights to mouse double-clicking
Of course Amazon owns the 1-click
Washington Mutual Bank was granted a patent for their Banking approach
According to the patent's description, embodiments of the invention include the teller towers which remove the traditional barrier of a teller line and allow easier interaction between the customer service representative and the customer. Also described were the circular or oval layout of the retail banking stores, the concierge desk where customers are greeted and guided to the appropriate service area, and a kids' play area included in many of the company's stores. Further noted was the access to online banking through wamu.com and bank employees who are hired for their high sales aptitude in order to cross-sell the company's financial products.
My question is what good can come from this? Now if Wells Fargo decides to put toys or a receptionist in their branch they are risking getting sued? If I own a bank, and I want to be successful, I don't think I will be stealing WAMU's idea if I hire employees "for their high sales aptitude in order to cross-sell the company's financial products"
As long as we have problems, people are going to think of solutions. We need to take action to insure that we are allowed to do so without getting sued at every turn.
The government should be doing everything it can to ecourage problem solving. Not inhibit it. Right now, I think innovation is being stiffled by needless litigation.
Another voice suggesting that people check out non IE browsers:
Virus Designed to Steal Windows Users' Data (TechNews.com)
CERT recommends that Explorer users consider other browsers that are not affected by the attack, such as Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape and Opera. Mac, Linux and other non-Windows operating systems are immune from this attack.
According to this article, US-CERT is a division of the Department of Homaland security. I bet somebody loses some Microsoft PAC money over this.. ;-)
After losing my patience with Gentoo, I installed Suse Linux 9.1 this weekend on one of my spare systems Thursday. So far I am happy with it. It took me about 1 hour to install, but all of my Hardware seems to work the way it is supposed to.
I have been using Linux nearly exclusivly at home for the last year or so. I am mostly using it as a commitment to learn the skillset. I believe that Linux is becoming established enough to be able to compete with windows in the workplace. When it does, I would like to be capable of supporting it.
Quite a few schools are migrating to Linux using K12LTSP Using this technology allows them to substantially reduce their investment, as they can use their old computers as terminal clients, and do not have to replace them. It also reduces the time it takes to rebuild a workstation to one or two commands from the command line.
As children grow up being familiar with Linux, the fear and resistance to it will be deminished. Add this with the reduced cost of using terminal services and opens source apps, and it will be a difficult product for businesses to resist. Many employers such as IBM and the city of Munich are forging the trail by putting open source products on the desks of their employees It think that it is only a matter of time before other companies see that it is possible to survive without paying Microsoft.
To the end user, I think the transition from Microsoft to linux is pretty minor. Within a few days, I think that the competent computer user could adapt to the new tools that they would need to use. Using Linux with KDE is pretty simular to using Windows or Mac. Point and click.
In the IT shop the transition would certainly be more stressful, but an IT shop is paid to handle transitions like this, and for the long term savings, they should be willing to make the switch.
Downtown Spokane turned on their Wifi today. Sounds like they are offering 2 hours per day for free! My Way News
Spokane seems to be an interesting place for Technology. There are a lot of innovators here, and there have been some successful companies, but It doesn't seem like much sticks for long. Hopefully the aggressive broadband strategy will work. The Terabyte Triangle has been around for 7 or so years., and seems to be encouraging quite a few small tech businesses.
Bernard Daines has started several companies here in the last few years. He seems to have the ability to bring a lot of capital and a lot of experienced personel into the area.
Perhaps in 5-10 years, the tech industry will be red hot here..
Yahoo! News - Bank Says Emphasize Sex, Sleep -- Not Money
A major investment bank is advising clients to have sex, get more sleep and stop equating happiness with money -- turning the industry image of hard-nosed dealmakers on its head.
Money can't buy happyness.. I don't think sex will do the trick either however. I think sex is a pretty stressful recreation. Especially outside of the marriage.
One of my high school teachers (in a public school I might add) used to say every friday "too much of a good thing is not a good thing -- Just ask Noah."
Laziness and innovation run in my family... I think it is genetic.
Look at my son's first inventions (1 meg Windows media file)
Apparently scientists have figured out to cure Promiscuous Voles of their urge to fornicate.
DNA Tweak Turns Vole Mates Into Soul Mates (Registration required)
Visiting Oregon frequently, The reactions in this article do no surprize me at all..
CBS 11: City Cracks Down On Naked Lawn Mowing
Thanks to Dave Barry for the link.
This is a very well presented case regarding Iraq.
It is impressive how many things we forget when we summarize our justification for war into a 30 second soundbyte.
So, today I looked over at my Blogroll, and I have decided it is a mess.. The Blogroll is the What I am reading section on the right margin of the website. I wonder what the best method is to present that part of the website. Bloglines is pretty helpful in automatically creating it based on the Blogs that I am subscribed to. But they do not automatically present them in a nice format.
I like to read a lot of stuff that I don't agree with. Usually the stuff that I read is well written (unlike this blog). I would be happy to share these good writers with the blog world, but I don't want my link to be an endorsment of them. I enjoyed reading about the impending end of the world the other week for example. I didn't believe that it was true, but it was entertaining.
Also, I figure it is my duty to subscribe to at least one intersting start up blogger per day. Some may be worth reading, and some may not. Some may be gone in a week.
Anyway. Leave a comment if you have a suggestion on the best way to organize the links.
I agree with this wholeheartedly:
Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer - Lockergnome's Tech News Watch
If you switch to Mozilla Firefox, you will not regret it, and you will be annoyed each time you have to use IE again.
But perhaps someday soon you can buy a happiness implant.
FDA Panel Backs Implant To Counter Depression (washingtonpost.com)
Weblogs.com strands it's bloggers
More evidence that sometimes you get what you pay for.
Sometimes it is dangerous to follow the crowd.. Every political issue that I hear about, I like to test against scripture. Often, we can see the whole picture, and want to change something in the big picture. If we compromise our beliefs in the means in which we try to accomplish our higher goal, the ends will not be what we expect them to be.
Regarding communion: Christ allowed Judas to take communion although he knew the sin that he was about to commit. In LUKE 22:21; Christ says "But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. "
I don't understand the Catholic tradition of communion enough to get into this too deeply. I can understand treating an unrepentant sinner as you would a pagan or a tax collector. What that means is probably a whole different study.. Without doing adequate study, I would venture to I say it means that we should pray for them, and avoid being corrupted by them.
Regarding Faith based initiatives:
24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
Faith based programs work. I think that much of the reason that they work is because they only exist based on God's providence, and love. Government money will drive out love as the motive for these ministries.
I feel that many of the social problems exist because the church has abdicated many of it's roles to the government. The Goverment's cold, inefficient mechical touch cannot change hearts. (At least not for the better.)
The church needs to reach out to the community and give to everyone, not just to it's own. The motive should be sharing the love, not growing your congregation, or garnering headlines or making yourself feel good.
With the Reagan funeral hording the headlines, nobody seems to be noticing that banned Iraqi weapons are now begining to show up. Missile engine find stirs concern over Iraq proliferation - The Washington Times: World - June 11, 2004
The UN is finding these, not the US.
The U.N. team also discovered some processing equipment with U.N. tags — which show that it was being monitored — including heat exchangers, and a solid propellant mixer bowl to make missile fuel, he said. It also discovered "a large number of other processing equipment without tags, in very good condition."
Watch how fast Bush's critics change their criticism. Here is what the UN guy is saying:
"The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks ... thereby also rendering the task of the disarmament of Iraq and its eventual confirmation more difficult," Mr. Perricos said.
So, apparently Bush was right to believe that these weapons existed. He didn't lie to us after all. Saddam as been shipping them out for quite some time Another source: WorldTribune.com
I have not tested out the file upload on this website yet. Figured since I have a new photo of Julia and Nathan, I should give it a try!
More evidence that we live in a drug culture:
ABCNEWS.com : Dad Investigated for Taking Son Off Meds
I think that chemical dependancy is chemical dependancy. There may be some cases where it is the best option, but those cases are probably quite rare. Chemical dependancy is sad. It is selling yourself into bondage in order to remove an annoying problem. Our culture doesn't look at it that way, but it is true.
We face challenges for a reason. If we mask all of our problems by taking pills, our journey still awaits us, We just don't have any road signs left to guide us.
I hate it when I make mistakes like this one:
Tampa Tribune Struck By Lightning - June 8, 2004
You would think a newspaper would double check a detail like that.
Drudge posted this link today: Remarks at an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas It is from a Reagan Speech at a prayer Breakfast in 1984
I think Reagan had this issue pretty much dead on. It is amazing to see how intolorance of faith is growing each day in this country.
A couple of choice quotes:
"Religion played not only a strong role in our national life; it played a positive role. The abolitionist movement was at heart a moral and religious movement; so was the modern civil rights struggle. And throughout this time, the state was tolerant of religious belief, expression, and practice. Society, too, was tolerant."
"Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."
I think that the courts have definately forgot where they sit in the heirarchy. If we continue to allow the courts to legislate from the bench, it is only a matter of time before this self-rightousness becomes acceptable and normal.
Ok parasiteware stinks!
I have spent most of the day fighting with a computer that is infected with Parasite software.
Parasite software is usually installed sneakily onto your computer under the pretense of providing some service to you. Usually these offer to provide a cool search bar in your browser, Sync your computer clock, or accellerate your browsing. In reality the software often watches where you browse, then presents nasty pop up ads. Usually the software is difficult to uninstall, and is next to useless to the user.
This software often is totaly legal as the user either pressed a button saying that they wanted to install it, or didn't read the license agreement for another piece of software that they where installing and that license authorized installation. It would be nice to legislate this stuff away, but doing so would put a burden on legit software producers. You bought it even if it was a lemon.
If you don't know anything about buying a car, take somebody who does when you go shopping for one. The same goes for software. Check with somebody who knows computers before making a deal with a pop-up ad.
A good website I found today on this topic was doxdesk.com
If you find yourself recieving pop up ads when you visit civilized websites such as "google.com" or "fingertoe.com", then most likely you are infected with something. You computer is making those pop-ups, not the website.
If you notice that your homepage changes all of the time, you are most definately infected.
Anyway, Even if you are not infected, I suggest you take preventitive measures. I trust myself to avoid this stuff, but my wife and daughter use my machine as well, so I would rather be safe than sorry! Here are my favorite precautions. In order from the nerdiest to the un-nerdiest
1. Run linux - not enough people run linux, so it is not economicaly effiecient to exploit. If you are not nerdy enough to do linux, perhaps I could interest you in a Mac?
2, Run Mozilla. I use firefox . It is much nicer than Internet explorer, and doesn't have nearly hijackers written for it. Firefox has pop-up blocking turned on by default. I love the tabbed browseing feature. I also love the mouse gestures extension. Anyway if you switch, you will not ever want to run IE again. Plus you will not risk being infected by this stuff.
3. Download free software to combat the problem. Don't install from one of those pop-up ads though. Those include parasite-ware themselves. Try Spybot to remove this stuff. There are lots of other options available as well. The doxdesk website mentioned above covers them.
Also, if you are an unsophisticated computer user.. (Many people happily admit they are.) Please, Please, keep your Antivirus software paid up... If you don't want to pay, use AVG's free edition
Having just experienced a Loan accounting upgrade at my employer, I am very glad that I don't work at Royal Bank of Canada!
If you are a bank, it is always a good idea to know how much money you are holding for each of your customers. Otherwise, your customers begin burying money in mason jars in the backyard.
Apparently there is quite a bit of chatter on the internet about the world coming to an end in the next month or so.. According to the latest, the earth is going to be pelted with comets over the next month or so. The world's goverments know about it, and are taking all possible precautions, but they are not telling anyone about the impending doom.
Please note that I do endorse these websites or the ideas presented. I have never read any of these sites until a friend pointed out that the world was ending. I am just posting them for your enjoyment.
Conspiracy theories are always entertaining. Seems like every couple of years we get someone telling us the end of the world is next week. One of these days someone will be right.
Looks like another govermnent is forgetting about the first amendment: CNN.com - Public baptism sparks controversy - Jun 2, 2004
The first amendment says: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
It amazes me that goverment places so much effort into heeding the one clause, while pretty much ignoring the rest.
Gmail works pretty good as a meathod of dealing with my disorganization. I am pretty happy with it. I hope that they implement a method to allow you to edit the documents saved in the database.. That is really the only drawback of my system. If I have out of date information, I have to copy and paste it in my own mail client, edit it, send it back to my gmail account, then delete the original.
I wonder if Google figured anyone would use the account this way. I would guess that very few people have questioned the established heirarcial filing system that we have become so accustomed to in computer systems over the last few years. It is obvious that a few of the folks who have questioned the norm work at Google.
I feel that it is probably easier to type 'notepad' into a command line than it is to click on "Start", then click on "Programs", then click on "accessories", then click on "notepad". (I think that is how you do it. I am using Linux today) Most people would probably agree if they thought about it, but few think to think about it.