I have been less the NPR / Politics junkie than I have in the past. And in the February 5 primary, it doesn’t take much thought for a Democrat from Chicago to prefer Barack Obama. I have already had the privilege of voting for him twice to get him in to the Senate. I just really like the guy: he is eloquent and he seems like and honest, good-hearted, hard-working guy who can pull things off.
But I don’t know much for him on the substance, so I have kept kind of quiet on the matter.
I want, for once, someone I can vote for not because I dislike the other candidate, but because I’m proud of mine. Obama is the real thing.
Obama has shown a real commitment to open government. When putting together tech policy (to take an example close to home for xkcd) others might have gone to industry lobbyists. Obama went to Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons (under which xkcd is published) and longtime white knight in the struggle with a broken system over internet and copyright policy. Lessig was impressed by Obama’s commitment to open systems — for example, his support of machine-readable government information standards that allow citizens’ groups to monitor what our government is up to. Right now, the only group that can effectively police the government is the government itself, and as a result, it’s corrupt to the core. Through these excellent and long-overdue measures, Obama is working to fight this corruption.
Obama stands against bad governing not only in his support of specific practices like open data standards and basic network neutrality, but in his work against corruption from day one. He’s sponsored legislation to restrict gifts to Congress by industry representatives (which also carried a whole slew of anti-corruption measures that were a breath of fresh air). He’s fought against vote fraud. He’s been pushing for election and lobbying reform from the start, and in his campaign he’s refused to take lobbyist money.
[…]
The Democratic party has a long, painful history of nominating unlikable, uncharismatic ‘default’ establishment candidates who are eventually swatted aside by the voters. Nominating Clinton would be continuing that tradition at the very time when we have a chance to do so much better. Let’s not let that chance slip by.
I like Hillary Clinton, as well. Don’t know much about her, but the thing is we have had “Clinton” or “Bush” in the White House for two decades now, and it is time to do something different. I liked the Clinton years, but they could have been . . . more inspired.
I can’t say that the system won’t grind Barack down in his first year in office, but you gotta dream, right? And Barack Obama is the candidate who inspires me most.
I have been playing with Google Trends, which will be happy to generate a pretty graph of keyword frequency over time. A rough gauge to the relative popularity of various things. This evening, I was riffing off a post from the Royal Pingdom, regarding the relative popularity of Ubuntu and Vista, among other things.
We’re basically looking at LinkedIn (they even import your LinkedIn profile) except that you can set a price at which you would be willing to interview with a prospective employer. The idea being, maybe you are happy where you are but you’d be happy to talk about being somewhere else, though your time is valuable. (Employers, of course, already know that recruiting is an expensive undertaking . . . it is not hard to see them pony up . . .)
Apparently this is from “Peerflix refugees” so I’d peg it as “an interesting innovation that rips off an existing proven idea that is probably ahead of their ability to execute.”
I accepted the invite, to check it out but mainly so I could invite a friend who is job hunting. I figured if Powerset and Yahoo giving it a go . . .
First Impressions:
Very rough: when I declined to invite everyone I know on LinkedIn the site closed its own window.
Lame: the “invite-only preview” site is protected by a shared HTTP authentication username and password . . . then you log in.
Also Lame: you can’t view any of their web site (like “About Us”) without the HTTP authentication credentials. Amateurs!
Steals your LinkedIn profile very nicely, but requires your password. Wonder how soon LinkedIn will block them.
I don’t see why LinkedIn couldn’t just add the “set price to interview” as a feature within about two months.
Feels very much like a LinkedIn rip-off.
Snickering towards Doom: Their own “Jobs” page reads, in total: “VP of Business Development”
Doomed: The site is very slow, even as a limited preview. Methinks their engineers aren’t so great.
Actually, now I feel dirty. I’m changing my LinkedIn password . . .
“If you just want equipment you’re not ready,†Mr. Egami said in an interview. But, he added, James Freeman, the owner of the cafe, is different: “He’s invested time. He’s invested interest. He is ready.â€
“Siphon coffee is very delicate,†[James Freeman] said. “It’s sweeter and juicier, and the flavors change as the temperature changes. Sometimes it has a texture so light it’s almost moussey.â€
I have long preferred brewed coffee to espresso. That is a combination of my proletarian roots and my experience as a barista: I have a strong sense of what I want from a dry cappuccino or dry cafe-au-lait, but this sense is not easily found in a cafe, and I lack the technology to do it myself, so let us keep it simple, right?
(In Japan, siphon coffee masters carve their own paddles to fit the shape of their palms.)
So, in the unlikely event that you are reading this, and trying to score a job at Tellme, I stumbled upon a little tip while trying to debug something else: check out their HTTP headers, particularly the X-Great-Jobs: header.
I got hired there back when it was in stealth mode, and they left a “secret” message as an HTML comment on the front page of the web site. It is nice to see an old tradition is still around. It is also weird to see that their present “cover image” is an intersection on the same street my grammar school was on, back in Chicago.
Some months back, I was visited by a well-meaning relative, who cheerfully informed me that “Ron Paul is the only candidate who wants to abolish the IRS!” I gritted my teeth, and declined to take the bait. Arguing with Libertarians is kind of like bragging about that awesome dump you took: it is just way too easy and you really aren’t going to impress anybody. That, and it is impolite to shit all over family.
I got some positive feedback, though, for my brief contribution to a “Ron Paul” thread:
Libertarians are no different from anyone else who figures the government ought to address only their needs, and neglect all others. The generic term for this is “asshole.”
Just like Religious people who want their point-of-view enforced to the exclusion of others. “Gays can’t marry! That violates my beliefs!” Or, for that matter, uhhh, Liberals, who are somehow oppressing people in ways I can not presently fathom.
I have been Googling for numbers from New Hampshire. I favor Obama, and I’m curious what the GOP is up to. I finally found actual numbers, for the Democrats and and the Hephalumps:
With 96% of precincts reporting, Clinton beat Obama, 39%-36% — followed by Edwards at 17%, Richardson at 5%, and Kucinich at 1%.
With 96% of precincts reporting, McCain got 37% of the vote, Romney 32%, Huckabee 11%, Giuliani 9%, and Paul 8%.
So, my man Obama, arguably the underdog, is still giving Clinton a run for her money. And even if he doesn’t make it, I am content to vote for Clinton.
(I’d just like, after two decades, to put the Clinton-Bush dynasty behind us.)
And, I admire John McCain. If there’s going to be a Republican in the White House . . . my Googling turned up this gem from Tom DeLay:
“There’s nothing redeeming about John McCain.”
As I recall, Tom DeLay is a massive sleazeball. If a massive sleazeball finds nothing redeeming in you, that means that either you are a more massive sleazeball, or, perhaps a decent human being.
I was startled by this YouTube video, where we discover that Bill Gates can make fun of himself. Or, at least, his people can assemble a video where Bill Gates makes fun of himself. Good for Bill! I was then reassured at the consistency of the universe, when it was revealed that Bill really can’t make fun of himself without at least a dozen star cameos to reassure us that it is not so much that he is poking fun at himself, but that he is “acting”.
It is telling that Al Gore has the funniest line.
I hope Bill’s foundation does much good in the world. I almost feel sorry for Microsoft that after all the effort, Vista has proven to be a cold turkey. For what its worth, from a UI and performance perspective, I prefer Windows XP to Mac OS X. Though I’m not sure that this is praise for Microsoft as much as it is an aversion to the Smug Cult of Apple.
(Yes, I am a contrarian. People hate contrarians. Especially Mac people, who think they have the contrarian cred: the last thing a contrarian wants to encounter is a contradicting contrarian!)
But the UX, the name of Untergunther’s parent organisation, is a finely tuned organisation. It has around 150 members and is divided into separate groups, which specialise in different activities ranging from getting into buildings after dark to setting up cultural events. Untergunther is the restoration cell of the network.
The idea of a secret network with a “restoration cell” just makes me grin. In a way, very French . . .
I remember reading a description of Paris as a “Museum City” and then an explanation that that is not necessarily praise: if the culture of Paris is stuck in the past and not dynamic, that implies that the city is not vibrant. It is good to see that there is some vibrancy to the “Museum” culture.
Friday afternoon. Sick two days this week, but got important stuff done today in preparation for a little work on Saturday. Drinking a beer. At work. Before heading home. It’s Friday!
And then this comes across the work IRC channel:
Awesome!
For the record, I am these days working at a once-startup that has already sold out to a larger company. Decent hours, good pay, and an awesome team. No complaints here!
Problem: You have logins to a bajillion things and that is too many unique passwords to remember. Maybe you remember a half dozen passwords, if you’re lucky, but you would prefer to have a unique password for each account so the hackers can’t get you.
One approach is to always generate a new password when you get access to a new account, and store that somewhere safe. Sticky notes on your monitor? A GPG-encrypted file with a regularly-changing hash? Either way, you have to account for what happens if someone else gets access to your password list, or you yourself can not access this password list. I am not fond of this approach.
My Tip: I suggest instead of storing passwords, you come up with a couple of ways to “hash” unique passwords depending, on say, a web site’s name.
For example, if you were really lame, and you used the password “apple” for everything, you’d make things better if instead, say, you replaced the the ‘pp’ part with the first three letters of your web site’s name.
Now, you can get a lot more creative than that, like using a non-dictionary word, mixing up letter cases and punctuation, etc.
Try a more advanced hash:
– Start with a pass-phrase “apples are delicious, I eat one every day”
– Take the last letter from each word: “sesiteyy”
– Capitalize the last half of the passphrase: “sesiTEYY”
– Stick the first three letters of the web site’s name in the middle: “sesi___TEYY”
– If the third letter you insert is a vowel, follow it with a “!” otherwise, add an “@”
– Change the first letter that you can from the substitution: a becomes a 4, e becomes a 3, i becomes a 1, and o becomes a zero
Now you get:
Yahoo: sesiy4h@TEYY
Google: sesig0o!TEYY
Amazon: sesi4ma!TEYY
MSN: sesimsn@TEYY
Apple: sesi4pp@TEYY
It is best if you have a few different schemes you can use: some web sites reject strong passwords, so having a really bad password handy is good, and some places you’ll want extra secure. For example, use a different “hash” for your bank passwords, just in case your “every day” hash is compromised.
My obviously-gay cubicle-neighbor spent the day listening to show tunes at low volume. I hate show tunes but I’m just back from vacation and I forgot to bring my own over-the-ear headphones so I figured I’d keep it to myself. At one point we overheard some other coworkers debating whether the one guy’s Audi TT convertible was “girly”. My cubicle neighbor confided in me that “in the gay community” this car is known as the “power bottom” car. I felt that this would be pretty much the final word in such a debate, but he wasn’t sure that he wanted to make that contribution to the discussion, which is why he confided in me.
I think that such information is too precious to keep to myself, and that this information is exactly what blogs are for.
I’m a pretty liberal, open-minded, adventurous guy, but I’m not entirely sure I know what a “power bottom” would be. I’m actually slightly pleased about that. And although I am fond of the idea of all-wheel drive, I have always thought the TT was is kinda ugly, like a New Beetle that had been chopped off a bit.
So, a quick briefer: the girlfriend recently bought a new car, and wanted to give her old car to her brother, who lives in New York. Instead of merely shipping it, I suggested that driving it across the continent is indeed a fine undertaking, and this is what we did for Thanksgiving week, taking a southern route through Barstow, CA to Chinle, AZ to Durango, CO, and stopping to see my relatives in Pueblo, CO, her relatives in West Des Moines, IA, Thanksgiving with my folks in Chicago, and on East to spend some time with her family in New Jersey, where we also got to explore New York City together. We flew home on Virgin America Tuesday evening.
The trip itself was not easy, but you could say that we covered considerable distance in space and in heart. The gory details are a story for another time and medium. Here I share an anecdote.
The girlfriend demonstrated her cool little Eee PC to my father, who was of course impressed with the little bugger running Linux. I told him that I myself had ordered from the OLPC “Give One Get One” program and he said he had wanted to do that himself. Unfortunately, times are a little tough for his family just now and they can’t really afford it.
When we got to New Jersey, the girlfriend’s brother wanted to reimburse us for some of our travel expenses–the girlfriend and I viewed the trip as our own vacation, but the brother had budgeted something to ship the car. I thought a moment and accepted some payment, which I then turned around and sent to OLPC to ship a computer to Dad. “A gift begets a gift begets a gift . . .”
(Today happens to be Dad’s birthday, too!)
I had worried that the Give One Get One program had concluded, but according to their web site the program has been extended through December 31st, so no difficulties ordering another for Dad. Then I got another e-mail today:
Your XO laptop is on the way.
Your donated XO laptop will soon be delivered into the hands of a child in Afghanistan, Cambodia, Haiti, Mongolia or Rwanda. In one of our recipient children’s own words, “I want to thank you people because you had given us the laptop and I love it so much.” Your generosity will make a world of difference in these children’s lives, and in the future of their respective countries.
Thanks to your early action, your XO laptop is scheduled to be delivered between December 14 and December 24. Our “first day” donors are our highest priority and we are making every effort to deliver your XO laptop(s) as soon as possible. We will send you an update upon shipment.
Sweet! This is the first new laptop I have ever ordered for myself! I’ve been following the HDL-cum-OLPC project for a while now, and the eBook functionality has always sounded sweet to me. I’m eager to check this gear out:
Give One Get One
Between November 12 and November 26, OLPC is offering a Give One Get One program in North America. This is the first time the revolutionary XO laptop has been made available to the general public. For a donation of $399, one XO laptop will be sent to empower a child in a developing nation and one will be sent to the child in your life in recognition of your contribution. $200 of your donation is tax-deductible (your $399 donation minus the fair market value of the XO laptop you will be receiving).
For all U.S. donors who participate in the Give One Get One program, T-Mobile is offering one year of complimentary HotSpot access.
I’ll probably post something once I receive and get to play with it a bit, but I figure that’s a month away . . .
The Girlfriend is set to receive her Eee PC today.
