More Politics as Usual

December 1st, 2003 I had an excellent Thanksgiving. I never thought that I'd be having such a mature evening until I was well into my thirties.

So I was trying to figure out what to blog today. I hit upon politics, specifically the Democrats use of filibuster, which translates to sitting around wasting our money and time, to block the new entitlement legislation. I heard the Democrats claim that they were exercising their Constitutional right and even doing their duty to the American people. I cry foul. Although the members of congress may have the ability within the Constitution to act in this manner, at the drafting of the Constitution there was not a two party system. The system was designed for majority rule, pretty much exclusively, and such clauses and practices grew out of the need to allow individual representatives to be heard, and get the word out to the people about what the government was doing, not to allow a group of herd animals to deadlock the American government. Personally I am getting sick of Republican vs. Democrat and all the party politics in this country. It is time for a change, some return to the ideals of the founders of our government. Although the Democrats may be well within the letter of the law, I convict them, in this instance, of running far afoul of the spirit.

While doing some searches for the links in this post I came across the following article. A Filibuster Proof Senate. I think that this approach may restore some of the functionality to our very disfunctional government.

So I went and read Ztuff and he has some great points about politics as usual. Masters and slaves. This builds on his earlier comments on our need for a Digital Bill of Rights. Although I didn't think about it then I'm starting to agree with him. Constitutional convention here we come?

December 2nd, 2003 So I was over at Joel on Software, reading his latest article. And stumbled across the following link on The Problem With Threads. Which uses Why Threads Are A Bad Idea as a source. Click here if you want a single page. Or click here for a pdf version.

December 8th, 2003 Before the release of Pirates of the Caribbean Blockbuster had an offer for Seven rentals and the movie for $29.99! I thought that this was a great deal, especially due to the nearly $5.00 rental fee at my local Blockbuster. So I went in to read the fine print. What a bust this was. The deal was that you got One free rental at the time of purchase, and One free rental per week for the next six weeks. Blockbuster was basically counting on me to forget to get my free video. This brand of marketing is a real turn off for me. Similar to every "Free Trial Offer" where they take your credit card up front, or every mail-in rebate sale you've ever seen, this is a ploy for companies that are either too greedy or too poor to offer an actual price break. My advice to Blockbuster is that if they cannot afford to offer seven "free" rentals for the additional $12.00 dollars I was paying over the price of the film, they should not rely on the consumers' forgetfulness to make up the difference, they should either lower the number of rentals, and thereby the value, or they should simply not make the offer in the first place. The rising price of rentals, combined with the shrinking selection at my local Blockbuster make Netflix more and more attractive all the time. Any bets on how long Blockbuster will last?

Looks like my original arcade version may have some competition as Taito Corp re-releases Space Invaders.

A co-worker sent me this link to a Heliodisplay. It reminded me of Speakers in mid-air and the 3D Globe Display. And another tech, which I haven't been able to find a link to.

I was out for two days, so I was not able to post this. It looks like Hollywood maybe doing something right for a change. The Passion of Christ gets Billy Graham's approval.

December 10th, 2003 Go read Civil Wars an article spraked by Newsweek's Latest Cover Story on 'Lawsuit Hell'. I think that a discussion on legal reform is long over due. Common Good maybe a good place to start reading about some possible alternatives to our current multi-million dollar fear inducing and corrupt system. And although I have not read the book myself, I am comming to respect the author of The Death of Common Sense. I don't think that Howard Dean would be any good for our country, especially after reading The Mysterious Stranger, but maybe I can get behind his comment on Congress, "a bunch of cockroaches", between all the punitive damage suits, and the grevious abuse of Intellectual Property law by big business... ugh.

Ahh yeah, this is almost as good as Hampster Dance was, at least for the next week or two. The Goolum Rap.

Is anyone surprised that there is another IE Flaw? Will Microsoft ever be able to write secure software? Will they go the route of Blockbuster and start offering rebates? (both from Blogdex)

I've been holding onto this link to The Devniad, a sci-fi/fantasy writting convention fan zine, I think. The quotes section is worth the checking out the whole thing.

December 11th, 2003 Every day we should learn a little, and live a little. Today I read Packin' It In: Picking the best packing for your holiday shipping, and Art of the New Machine. So who wants to pack me in popcorn and send me to see one of these cool machines?

December 12th, 2003 The SecurityFocus article on the The Rise of the Spammers, is the best exploit article I have read to date. With all the clever spammers out there the algorithim described in A Plan for Spam looks better and better. I should really get back to implementing a C# Outlook plugin version.

December 15th, 2003 I always suspected this, now there is some evidence that PowerPoint Makes You Dumb

Joel on Software put up Biculturalism, an excellent review of The Art of UNIX Programming. The review is a micro-article in itself, containing many interesting links and a great introductory discussion of the differences between UNIX and Windows programming. Even if you are only interested in the computer field, and not a dveloper, you may want to hop over for a quick read.

Decmber 17th, 2003 So much interesting content is appearing on the internet today. In my continuing coverage of copyright law: Wired Magazine's Copyright Doesn't Cover This Site demonstrates how collaboration and, at minimal, restoration of fair use can improve a community, and presents a potentially bright future for a new creative commons in the public domain.

Even after seeing Return of the King last night, I was surprised to read how much computer work was actually done. Computer Soldiers Smarter than Orcs

I enjoyed some of the perspectives, though not all, in Remarks to the Commonwealth Club. This sentiment seems to be in response to something akin to The Skeptical Environmentalist.

And the last one from Blogdex: Books I Did Not Read This Year, has a link to an interseting party game I hope to try over Christmas.