Tim Blair: SAFETY AT ALL COSTS: “”

(Via .)

the joys of youth…

No Child Unrecruited: “”

Historians Against the War: “”

(Via .)

http://media.hugi.is/hahradi/fyndnar/dungeons_n_dragons.wmv

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reno p.d…. funny…

Democrats United:

Who’s in?

“

(Via Michael Bérubé Online.)

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can’t we just buy a nice middle american country and move there and make our own utopia? it would be cheaper and easier…..

bush secrecy

(Via .)

this outlines the secrecy measures that the current administration is implementing to stop citizens from knowing what the government is doing….. in a representative democracy or republic, government needs to be accountable to its citizens and to do that, it must be transparent.

Amateurs and professionals: “The distinction between professionals and amateurs is one that’s so familiar today as to seem perfectly natural. Professionals are serious, amateurs are dilettantes; professionals know what they’re doing, and have credentials and training, amateurs don’t; professionals get paid, amateurs are hobbyists. Of course, in a few fields there are exceptions to the rule: astronomy, for example, continues to have a place for amateur comet-watchers. —snip—

(Via Future Now.)

——

I generally term this the professionalization of leisure in the DIY culture. this theory fits with some of my thoughts though.

Open source’s next frontier: “

Open-source software, increasingly popular with budget-conscious companies, is beginning to expand into a new area: The lucrative infrastructure-software market dominated by industry giants such as Microsoft.

http://news.com.com/Open+sources+next+frontier/2100-7344_3-5460334.html?tag=nefd.pop

“

(Via Information Policy.)

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it has never been clear, other than in the sense of ‘if you buy ibm, no one will fire you’, why companies pay for software. i can see paying for specialty software, hiring someone to write it, or customize something. however, there are huge costs in the purchase of software that can be freely had…. this is nonsensical…..

Bloglines Broken (Not Anymore): “

Like many others, I use Bloglines RSS Reader to both read RSS feeds and provide a blogroll for my blog. Well, the mobile version is now having errors, with seemingly someone forgetting to close a tag:

An error occured:

Traceback (innermost last):
File “cgi.c”, line 1391, in cgi_display()
File “csparse.c”, line 291, in cs_parse_file()
File “csparse.c”, line 438, in cs_parse_string()
ParseError: [/var/bloglines/current/content/web/myblogs_subs.mobile.cs:29] Missing end ?> at evar:Lang.subXNew)

The Lesson Is: Check your code before putting it in production environment.

UPDATE: Five minutes after contacting Bloglines, I received a response that the problem has been fixed. Double checking it, indeed it has. Thanks guys!

“

(Via NetWizard’s Blog.)

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i think that conceptually bloglines has always been broken because it allows readers to make private their blogroll, which they could always do, but i find it more interesting to see blogrolls in public. so for me, bloglines is always broken.

The great Social Security swindle: “”You’re thinking of this place all wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house . . .(to one of the men) . . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can.”

Christmas season is “It’s a Wonderful Life” season, and anyone who has seen that movie — which ought to be pretty much everyone by now — will remember Jimmy Stewart’s plain-spoken explanation of banking, delivered to angry customers who have begun a run on the bank where he works.

Today it’s the Bush administration that’s started a run on the institution of Social Security. And so far no one in Washington has had the gumption or the forthrightness to get up, like Jimmy Stewart’s George Bailey, and tell the American people what’s really going on.

Maybe seniors — and the rest of us — should be scared.”

(Via Scott Rosenberg’s Links & Comment.)

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yes we should be scared, concerned, etc. but you know as a voting block, we are nothing in comparison to the boomers. their policies will govern ours well past the point of no return…. you can see this with the deficit spending. it is not that we have to pay it back, but we do have to pay interest…. it can’t go on forever and it can’t be allowed to outpace our theoretical productive growth, which…. should fall as the boomers retire.