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March 28, 2006
McCain and Falwell
Kos links to news of McCain giving the commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty U
Actually, this may be a good thing if it gets mainstream press, to break the remaining moderates out of their McCain daydream. I liked the guy for a long time, but he's thrown out any moderate cred he had this past year.
So, Obama/Stewart, 2008?
Posted by griffjon at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
McCain and Falwell
Kos links to news of McCain giving the commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty U
Actually, this may be a good thing if it gets mainstream press, to break the remaining moderates out of their McCain daydream. I liked the guy for a long time, but he's thrown out any moderate cred he had this past year.
So, Obama/Stewart, 2008?
Posted by griffjon at 10:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 27, 2006
"Straight Rights"
Savage Love has an interesting spin on recent GOP policy pursuits:
Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family-planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told the Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is okay." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine-a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year-from being made available....
What's it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas is seeking to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking Holy War, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!
Posted by griffjon at 07:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 23, 2006
Our Veep
The Smoking Gun provides the Internet with a copy of the tour instructions to hotels housing Cheney:
Now, OK, all TVs tuned to Fox news -- hardly surprising. Whatever. A pot of... DECAF??? I'd've never guessed. Scribbled in: Newspapers: NYT, USA Today, WSJ, Local Paper, (Wash Post?) Sure, makes sense.
At the end: "Extra Shampoo."
...?
(Via This Modern World)
UPDATE: My bad, I believe it actually reads "lamps" which makes slightly more sense.
Posted by griffjon at 08:12 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2006
Net Regulation
The Miami Herald has an interesting article on some emerging problems of regulating things such as discriminatory housing ads on the Internet, particularly CraigsList:
The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights recently filed a lawsuit against Craigslist for allowing ads the group deems discriminatory.The suit argues that since July 2005, Craigslist has allowed more than 100 ads to run unchallenged on its Chicago-based site. The ads include such language as ''No Minorities'', ''Christians only'' and ''Non-Women of Color need Not Apply.'' Similar ads have appeared in South Florida postings on Craigslist.
$375 -- Christian Female to Share 1-Bedroom Miami Beach Apt.
I am looking for a Christian female to share a clean and simple 1-bedroom apartment two blocks from the beach.
Internet companies have long argued that they are immune from any liability based on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Their interpretation of federal law: Internet providers are not liable for users' postings because the sites are merely facilitators and not publishers. Although sites such as Craigslist derive income through partnerships with other Internet companies, many of the services provided are free.
Of course, who's to blame? CL doesn't moderate posts, CL users do, sporadically, and generally only for the worst offenders. It seems like the posters themselves are the most liable party, but then the burden of prosecuting it will be piled on the person discriminated against.
Buckmaster posted on the site a lengthy defense to the lawsuit: ``These lawyers demand that we impose ill-conceived, mistake-prone and potentially illegal controls on the Craigslist community, which if adopted would actually reduce fair housing opportunity while eroding important free speech and privacy rights.''The suit, Buckmaster writes, ``ignores the fact that Craigslist is not a publisher but, rather, a community-moderated commons run by its users, who self-publish and . . . use a flagging system to police the site.'
[...]
The lawsuit has rekindled the debate about how best to regulate the Internet -- if at all.
Michael Masinter, a law professor at Nova University who specializes in constitutional, civil rights and anti-discrimination law says Congress -- not the courts -- should make such decisions.
Until then, Craigslist and others should be allowed to exist as they are, Masinter said. ``The Internet has to be permitted to flourish, otherwise we would all be reduced to an Internet serviceable to 12 year olds. If they were required to prescreen the millions of ads posted on their site, it would be the end of Craigslist.'''
Requiring moderation would definitely kill CL's business model, and in fact most of "Web 2.0," where the motto is to let the user do all the work. Suing CL would be like suing the owner of an unprotected community bulletin board because someone had posted a racist housing ad on it. Suing the posters of these ads, similarly, is a difficult proposition, as it ends up placing the burden on the already-discriminated-against. I'd argue further that for the peer-to-peer world of craigslist, why bother? Even if the selection process for a new roommate was colorblind, I can't imagine many people interested in living in such a hostile environment. As a white male I wouldn't want to live with some mouthbreathing racist (though admitedly, I'm speaking from the position of being a white male, with very, very few housing opportunities being ruled out for me because of that (OK, the Christian ones would fail to get me, but I could potentially lie about that situation).
The obvious underlying problem is racism, which, sadly, will take education and contact/familiarity to get past, which these people are depriving themselves of. From a policy standpoint, however, focus should be on systematic racism (does an apartment complex have racist policies?) over people looking for roommates (or mates, for that matter -- does a dating service that allows filtering based on race/religion cross the same line? Shouldn't it?). This is hard for me to say, though, because it's still unfair, and it presumes that there are other viable housing/roommates options, which may not be the case in some (many? most?) areas.
For CraigsList, perhaps it should further the effort to remind not just posters, but people browsing the housing ads about the illegality of race in housing decisions, and enable/encourage the user community to flag these racist posts as such.
Posted by griffjon at 09:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2006
Your Copyright > My Security?
The usual band of consumer-haters, the RIAA, BSA, and MPAA, have rejected a plea to the copyright office in the wake of the Sony/BMG debacle (remember, the audio CD that installs a rootkit backdoor into your computer, and if you try to remove it, it disables your CD drive?)
The request was for an exemption to the DMCA (Which makes tinkering with copy-control mechanisms illegal) in the case that the "threaten critical infrastructure and potentially endanger lives."
The media industry associations responded that this just made things too confusing for them, and restricted their ability to cook up reliable DRM (which may or may not threaten your privacy, security, and/or critical infrastructure).
Read more at Freedom to Tinker
Posted by griffjon at 10:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 17, 2006
suBtle hacks
I enjoy activities that put the 'b" in subtle. This Greasemonkey script for FireFox translates dollar figures in webpages you view into Oil Barrels:
Oil Standard is a Greasemonkey plug-in for Firefox that translates prices from dollars to barrels of oil equivalent, based on current spot prices; this means that the oil equivalent price fluctuates daily. "Networked Performance" art website Turbulence created the script, which works exactly as promised. Hit any web page that shows prices in dollars -- Amazon.com, the New York Times stock pages, even your bank account info -- and Oil Standard will show you how many barrels of oil it would take to match that amount of money.
I think that's ingenious. But I think there's room for improvement and expansion. I think there are tons of further currencies to look into, based on this idea. Easily (temptation to dive into this and hack it out.... increasing), you could not just the oil barrel cost, but the number of terrorist agency recruitments and/or the human loss of life per barrel of oil, calculated on per-annum rates in Iraq, Nigeria, etc. conflicts ... e.g. This iPod costs 6.4 barrels of oil, which translates into .5 terrorist recruitments and the loss of one human life.
Looking at CheapGas would certainly be interesting, to say the least.
With significantly more difficulty in calculation, you could also try to expose other externalities, such as:
*Environ impact of materials
*Free trade impact of labor costs
*Sweatshop labor hours
One of the biggest problems in development is having people understand the impact of their decisions and the policies of their government in the first world/OECD nations. Most American citizens guess that the US spends up to 15% of its budget on foreign aid -- the reality is that it's less than 1%, so it's no surprise when they then presume that it's not doing any good and should be cut back.
This plugin is a good example of how the geekier development professionals can use ICTs as information sharing, and teaching tools to engender support on the home front for development projects abroad.
Posted by griffjon at 05:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 16, 2006
Worst. Tech Support. Evar.
So, I wss trying to print out my 1040 from TurboTax to fill out my Fafsa more easily (it gives all these hints e.g. (line 37 on 1040...) ). Since I'd entered my DC filing information (before I'd figured out that I could file to get it all back as a nonresident), TurboTax wouldn't let me print my Federal filing without paying to print my DC filing. You'd think that'd be a simple thing to communicate and perhaps come to some sort of conclusion.
You'd be wrong:
Terence A: Hi, my name is Terence A. How may I help you? Terence A: Hello, how may I help you today? Jon: I am having problems printing/viewing my completed federal forms Jon: I also have entered a state form, but I don't currently want to print that Jon: TTonline is requiring me to print and pay for the state forms to print the federal form Terence A: Jon, we apologize for the inconvenience/delay that this had caused you. Let us see what we can do to help you out with this one today, okay? Jon: great Terence A: And just to confirm Jon, what version of Turbotax Online product are you using? Is it Turbotax 1040EZ, Deluxe, Premier, Ultimate or the Free File Alliance Program? Jon: FreeFile Terence A: Jon, did you get any error messages/error codes during the process? And if any, what was the exact error code/error messages that was generated so that I could take note of it? Jon: it doesn't seem to be an actual error, it just won't let me choose to only print/view my federal return Terence A: Jon, have you tried searching the Help options on the Support web site of TurboTax first for answers before contacting Technical Support? What steps did you take and what were the results?Jon: Yes, they all instructed me to follow the path I had already taken to get to the print for my records menu, but nothing beyond that
(10 minutes go by. Did I break the chatbot and it had to go call for a real human?)
Jon: hello?
Terence A: Yes Jon, let me make sure I understand your concerns, you wanted to print and view your completed federal return and you can't. You also have entered information on your state but don't want to print that, is that correct?
Jon: Yes
Terence A: Jon, did you save first your federal return as a PDF FILE (".pdf" format) prior to viewing and printing?
Jon: I can't get to that step because it's asking me to pay for my state file
Terence A: Jon, can you please click on "state taxes" main tab.
Jon: ok
Terence A: Jon, what sub tabs under "State Taxes" can you see?
Jon: Your State Returns and State Review
Terence A: Jon, did you access your Turbotax Free File Alliance Edition through the IRS or is it through www.taxfreedom.com site?
Jon: IRS
Terence A: Jon, were you able to take note at the taxfreedom.com site below the red flag or red button that says "State available, fees apply" just below that red button?
Jon: I realize that the state print/filing costs moneyAm I just being mined for demographic info, or is their help script truly this bad?
Terence A: But Jon, were you able to take note of that-"State available, fees apply" just below that red button?
Jon: I did not use the taxfreedom.com site, I came through the IRS. I do not know which red button you are talking about
Terence A: Jon, accessing
Terence A: Jon, accessing Turbotax through the IRS site will direct you to www.taxfreedom.com. You can double-check that later on to see the information that I was mentioning you after we troubleshoot your issue.
Terence A: Now Jon, can you please click on "Your State Returns" sub tab.
Terence A: Jon, what does it say on your screen?
Jon: it lists my DC return
Terence A: Jon, does it give you option to "edit" it or "delete" it?At this point I'm fed up. I've already filed my DC request for reimbursement offline, but was just reluctant to actually delete it after putting the effort in, but the cost/benefit tipped somwhere during the last 20 minutes chatting with Terrence, and though I continue talking to him, it's out of spite to see how far we can go
Jon: Yes. I just deleted it so I can continue to print my federal return. I will just use the DC Gov't form for my DC return instead of filing through TurboTax
Terence A: Yes Jon. Can you please save it first as a PDF FILE before going through the process of printing?
Jon: NOW I can because I DELETED my state return. It was NOT POSSIBLE to do this previously without paying for the state return.
Terence A: Yes Jon. Please take note to save your return as a PDF FILE and to back up your returns as a TAX FILE using the "My Return" option at the lower mid-left portion of your screen and select "Other Options" then select "Download My Tax File" option.
Jon: that option does not exist on my screen
Terence A: In that way, you can have a reference for the next tax season and saving also your return as a PDF FIle will allow you to view or print a hardcopy of your return.
Jon: ah, now I see it
Jon: but when I had my state return entered it was still asking me for payment
Terence A: Would you agree that we have completely resolved your issue today?
Jon: yes
Terence A: Yes Jon. Federal is free but for State, there is a fee for that.
Terence A: Is there anything else I can help you with today?
Jon: no
Honestly. I'm actually still not convinced that I wasn't dealing with an advanced version of ELIZA.
Posted by griffjon at 05:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Dotting i's
Obviously, I'm not in DC. I'm rescheduling for a more convenient-to-everyone time in May I think. It'll also give me a bit more time to plan my attack on The Big Apple.
So instead I telecommuted in for a few hours to work on a programming project for work, and made some definite headway on that, to the tune of saving us tons of time and volunteer-arm-twisting to get our ancient phone system's log files from a human-readable file into a data structure to run statistics against. Yay for changing boring tasks into interesting problems. (If anyone needs to extract reports from an Executone system, now you know where to go)
I then filed my FAFSA renewal as an important step in getting more loan monies for next year and avoiding that whole being poor phenomenon.
I meant to get a lot of reading done outside today, but these above items ended up taking a lot more time than I'd meant for them to (see entry on tech support from hell).
Posted by griffjon at 05:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 13, 2006
Punctuation matters.
" Please Note: We are not responsible for lost or stolen packages From all of us at Washington Deluxe - Have a safe trip!!"
I guess tipping isn't exactly a voluntary action?
That being said, I'm off to NYC next weekend ("Spring Break!"). Whee.
Posted by griffjon at 08:48 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Web 2.0
You've heard the hype about Web 2.0 and the social web. Well, that was last year. Meet Web 2.1
Posted by griffjon at 06:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 12, 2006
Yay, anti-productivity
This weekend has been a practice in getting non-school stuff done.
Friday night, I hung out with various an sundry friends at Island Jim's, an odd place within extended, if not exactly safe, walking distance from my house. It had decent drinks, and a good atmosphere -- it was an inside/outside patio place that will be fanstastic further into the spring and summer, and it ajoins a British pub type place, which will do well for next Winter. Bonus: it has free wifi. Is this my DC "default"? The crowd is an eccentric mix of NorthEast DC locals, students from Catholic University, and staff from the nearby hospitals. It's about a 15-20 minue walk from my house, but unfortunately it's not exactly a great neighborhood to be stumbling home through (Hasn't stopped me yet, mind you).
In celebration of an early sneak-preview of Spring, Saturday, I and some other grad students headed out into deep VA to visit the Virginia wine country. Three tastings and four bottles later, we were happily buzzed and well informed on Virginian wine. The short story is: their whites are decent, their reds suck ass, but it's a great way to spend the day.
That night, I linked up with a fellow ex-RPCV from Jamaica who's becoming my most reliable dancing partner in DC, and we and her friend from even deeper Virginia hit Havana Village for their salsa bands--Havana is definitely a good salsa club. You can usually avoid cover if you arrive there not-even-that-early, and even then it's $5-10, so not unheard of. They have three floors, two bands, and a DJ, serve excellent Mojitos and Caipirinhas, and are usually crowded enough to see some excellent salseros, but not so crowded that you can't squeeze in and join the dancing.
This morning, I forced myself to get out of bed instead of lounging in, and met my uncle at the Smithsonian for some museuming and lunch. He was in town on his way through NYC to see the Smithsonian's presentation of Dada on his way to Paris to work on his Dada book/project (you might say that he wrote the book on Max Ernst.
The remainder of the day, I'm doing some much-needed laundry, working on trip-planning for next weekend, and perhaps some catch-up work, planning my schedule for next semester, and whatnot. Whee.
Posted by griffjon at 05:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 09, 2006
China v US
It's a sad state of america when International organizations of doctors and China are BOTH dissing on your human rights.
Posted by griffjon at 09:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 08, 2006
Patriot Act
Dear US Gov't,
Please give us our civil liberties back, they are important to us. Thanks.
--Citizens.
14 of the 16 expiring Patriot Act provisions have been made permanent, with the last two getting four year extensions.
Posted by griffjon at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
S. Dakota, look at your future
Pregnant rape victims are intimidated, insulted and threatened.Humiliation drives over 90% of women away from ever even reporting their rape
For example, some public prosecutors have told rape victims that having an abortion would kill them.
Human Rights Watch likens this to a second assault.
It says rape victims may feel reluctant to approach prosecutors for fear of being humiliated or thought to be reporting a rape in order to get an abortion.
"That humiliation drives over 90% of women away from ever even reporting their rape. And as a result, without reporting the rape, they're not entitled to an abortion," says executive director, Kenneth Roth.
The report says that this forces many into having backroom abortions at great risk to their health.
-- Mexican rape women 'denied help', BBC
Posted by griffjon at 09:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 07, 2006
DC Area Trivia
Localities in the DC area are so deeply ... FUBARed and confuzled.
There's a Chevy Chase neighborhood in DC, which is seamlessly integrated into Chevy Chase (city), Maryland, which overlaps mostly with a census-designated place called, also, chevy chase, and these border Chevy Chase Village. Chevy Chase the actor, born Cornelius Chase, was reportedly nicknamed Chevy and stuck with it into acting. Similarly, there's a Takoma Park, Washington, DC (No relation to Tacoma, Washington), and Takoma Maryland, which is one "city" that spans two "states" -- I've even found one of the boundary stones set in place by the original city planners, no doubt so the evils of the federal government could be kept in check through enchanted means or somesuch.
Also, zip codes cross municipality borders. I don't actually know if this happens in other dense cities, but a zip code could encompass 2 or three separate municipalities, which breaks my mind on how they should be laid out.
This, no doubt, is what happens when you let the French design your cities -- and it only makes it worse when you let Virginia reneg on the deal and take back (retroceded is the term, it seems, in 1847) half of the District.
More DC info at Wikipedia, including why there's a sculpture of Darth Vader on the National Cathedral
Posted by griffjon at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Filtering for our Military
Wonkette reports that Marines are also subject to filtered news ... along somewhat curious lines:
Unfortunately anonomizers don't work out here (never have). Anyway, I had a few minutes today and thought I'd look and see what else was banned on the Marine web here. I think the results speak for themselves:
- Wonkette - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.”
- Bill O’Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
- Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
- Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
- ABC News “The Note” - OK
- Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.”
- G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK
- Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - “Forbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies.”
Posted by griffjon at 02:54 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 06, 2006
Because Republicans like restricting financial flows
Capitol Hill Blue reports that paying down your credit card debt can mark you as a terrorist.
So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called."When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.
They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
Posted by griffjon at 08:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
A new argument
Firedoglake, via DailyKOS:
I brought up one of my favorite forced birth conundrums the other day, guaranteed to make wingnut "life begins at conception" heads explode. If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with five blastulae or a two-year old child, which do you save?We just love Mike Stark, who takes this stuff to the streets. He called Andrew Wilkow's radio talk show and put the question to him, and Wilkow's head did, in fact, explode. He was reduced to a sputtering rage, screaming that he would not, in fact, save the two year-old child. Mike hung right in there with him and the results are predictably hilarious. You can just feel Wilkow's listeners flipping the channel and saying "fuck that noise, that guy's insane." It's a brilliant little sound clip.
Five? Let's raise the stakes. One hundred. A thousand. A million. A million fertilized blastulae, or a two year old child. Choose one, and then make your argument about abortion to me again.
Posted by griffjon at 08:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
States I don't like
S. Dakota, Mississippi, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.
S. Dakota just passed it's anti-woman law, the others have similar laws in the works.
Posted by griffjon at 08:23 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack