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Hey,

When I get really stuck on a design problem, I go for a walk in some very beautiful woods about three miles from my office.

I don't know why most employers don't acknowledge problem-solving techniques like this: ...Parker warns against following the technique of the Estonian telescope designer Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt. He would access his subconscious mind by drinking alcoholic beverages for several days until he entered a coma. Although Schmidt did often find a solution to his problem after emerging from the coma, he ended up damaging his brain beyond repair and spent his last days in a psychiatric unit.

Interesting, eh?

-c

Another piece of evidence: The Al Jazeera story on slashdot does not appear in the main story, but in yesterdays archives. I try posting to it, and get a "Maximum Comments Exceeded!" error... inspite of this being my first post in a week!!! Read a Salon article on similar attempts at censorship. Spread the word. This is no longer the land of the free. Ashcroft rulez here.

Many thousands of FL residents were "scrubbed" from the voter rolls, because they had the similar names to convicted felons. This disproportionately hurt Gore, because most of the people scrubbed were minorities which leaned towards Gore in the election. The scrubbing was overseen by the FL secretary of state, who happened to be in charge of Bush's campaign in FL.

And the information they used came from...Texas.

Florida contracted out their Jim Crow disenfranchisement to a company called Choicepoint, a company whose board has strong Republician ties:

ChoicePoint's board and executive roster are packed with Republican stars, including billionaire Ken Langone, a company director who was chairman of the fund-raising committee for New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's aborted run against Hillary Rodham Clinton. Langone is joined at ChoicePoint by another Giuliani associate, former New York Police Commissioner Howard Safir. And Republican power lobbyist and former congressman Vin Weber lobbies for ChoicePoint in Washington. Just before his death in 1998, Rick Rozar, president of a Choicepoint company, CDB Infotek, donated $100,000 to the Republican Party

Choicepoint says the information they used to deny basic human rights to thousands came from the state of Texas.

No offense, but it blows my mind how relatively small the ACLU membership is. They address issues like this all the time and have a new action alert about CAPPS II which is related to this. Expect something from them about this soon.

After 9/11 it was interesting to predict what would go up more: votes for Republicans or ACLU membership. Both did, but one group is truly in need of smart, passionate people to fight crap like this. The democrats don't seem like they want to do anything critical of Bush (at least as a group) and SCOTUS just turned down a review of the secret wiretap court. (to their credit it may come before them after more appeals)

Related and thought-provoking salon editorial here.

What does marital fidelity have to do with the job of President of the United States? What business is it of yours (or Ken Starr's) who Clinton sleeps with? Wasn't Newt Gingrich sleeping with a House of Representatives employee at the same time that he was preaching "family values"? Mr. Family values was twice divorced the last time I read about him. And his successor-to-be, Bob Livingston, resigned after word of his affair leaked out. And let us not forget Henry Hyde, who headed up the Clinton Tribunal, and who also had an affair with a married woman, destroying her marriage.

As to the "honesty" issue, I'm sure that Clinton is not the first man alive to ever lie about having an affair.

I'd much rather have a President whose idea of "getting some on the side" does not involve massive campaign donations from Enron and who does not think "Kenneth" every time he hears the word "lay."

I grabbed it off of Salon. No idea why it got scored down as offtopic though -- the whole question of the original post was about alternate news sources. Unbiased coverage of this war is unlikely to be found. The best I hope for is to understand what bias a reporter comes with.

I agree with you. The same thing is true regarding the protests yesterday in San Francisco. Most people who live in San Francisco are against the war already. So the protesters come and block intersections and prevent exit off of the interchanges?? The purpose of protests should be to convert people, not piss off people who already believe the same way you do. Unfortunately, this stuff makes national news... so they continue their behavior today.

Not to forget the internationally banned chemical weapons the US government used to kill its its own people. See here and here.

More info than 99.9999% of others out there. Yes. Of course. Well let's review the special information he has that he's seen fit to reveal, shall we?

1) The weed whacker.

The U.s>, apparently, "knew" about a remotely piloted drone aircraft that could be used to spread chemical weapons. Colin Powell made a big fuss about it in a speech, and the U.s. ambassador to the UN bitched that Hans Blix didn't do the same in a speech of his own. Turns out, the thing was made of plywood and duct-tape with some weed-whacker engines attached to a propellor. Maximum range: 5 miles. Chemical weapons? Yeah, right.

2) He has nukes! He doesn't have nukes.

So every speech, document, press release etc made by the White House re Saddam until a certain point in time mention nukes. The "special information" Bush had was a document that said Saddam tried to buy nuke material from Niger. So the US finally releases this document since everyone's a little antsy about nukes, and gee-whiz, its forged. What a shame, oh shit, remove all mention of nukes from future speeches, press releases, etc.

Take-home point: Bush's special information == bullshit.

Now I know you're going to attack me for having links to salon articles. Yes, salon is a liberal magazine. But read the articles, bucko -- they're AP, not salon.

More info than 99.9999% of others out there. Yes. Of course. Well let's review the special information he has that he's seen fit to reveal, shall we?

1) The weed whacker.

The U.s>, apparently, "knew" about a remotely piloted drone aircraft that could be used to spread chemical weapons. Colin Powell made a big fuss about it in a speech, and the U.s. ambassador to the UN bitched that Hans Blix didn't do the same in a speech of his own. Turns out, the thing was made of plywood and duct-tape with some weed-whacker engines attached to a propellor. Maximum range: 5 miles. Chemical weapons? Yeah, right.

2) He has nukes! He doesn't have nukes.

So every speech, document, press release etc made by the White House re Saddam until a certain point in time mention nukes. The "special information" Bush had was a document that said Saddam tried to buy nuke material from Niger. So the US finally releases this document since everyone's a little antsy about nukes, and gee-whiz, its forged. What a shame, oh shit, remove all mention of nukes from future speeches, press releases, etc.

Take-home point: Bush's special information == bullshit.

Now I know you're going to attack me for having links to salon articles. Yes, salon is a liberal magazine. But read the articles, bucko -- they're AP, not salon.

When I moved out to go to university last year and got my (off-campus, non-university) broadband internet connection up, I signed up for a little service called Audiogalaxy. Anyone remember Audiogalaxy? It was a community-oriented p2p music-trading service. The community-oriented bit, I found fantastic. Yes, you could just use it to download songs. You could also, however, join groups of people with similar musical tastes, who would forward you songs from artists you may never have heard before. Had it not been for Audiogalaxy, I might never have been introduced to artists like Pedro the Lion, Onelinedrawing, and The Weakerthans.

In the last year, I bought two CDs by The Weakerthans, one by Onelinedrawing, I have an order form filled out for a pair of Pedro the Lion CDs, some Pedro the Lion and Onelinedrawing merchandise, and I have tickets to see The Weakerthans in Calgary this weekend.

Is this a bad thing for the artists and labels? Do they just not want my money? I wouldn't have spent that money on Eminem and Britney Spears, sorry. If I hadn't been introduced to these other bands I wouldn't have spent that money on music at all. Peer-to-peer could be an absolute goldmine for the recording industry. It's free advertising. Do you know how much the recording industry spend on advertising last year? I don't even want to look it up. I'm afraid the incredible size of the number would cause this library computer to crash. It's probably written with scientific notation.

The funny thing is, the people who have the most lobbying power within the RIAA aren't the small record labels like Jade Tree or G7 or Vagrant or Deep Elm, the little guys who are attempting to run an honest business, support good artists, and bring good art out so that the public can enjoy it. They're the giant conglomerates, the ones who are responsible for Toni Braxton going broke despite selling $188 million dollars worth of CDs. These people don't care if I want to listen to good music. These people hate that I spend my money on bands I like, rather than no-talent pop-sensations. These people do not represent legitimate artists and recording companies - these people represent parasites, who take advantage of artists in able to fill their own pockets.

I can't use Audiogalaxy now. It got turned into a pay-service, and copyright restrictions wrecked the entire service. I buy far fewer records now, because I have less exposure to new artists. My friends still recommend bands to me; I'll read about a show someone went to in their livejournal, and I'll download an mp3, and if I like the band, I may end up buying a CD or some concert tickets. I'm a pirate, a felon, and a thief for that. This is insane.

Yes, there will be people out there who will never buy music, ever. They'll steal mp3s and burn hundreds of CDs. Whatever. There are people out there that pirate dvds, too. Yes, it does hurt the industry. What will hurt the industry more, though, is clinging to outdated business models and preying upon the artists that provide the foundation for the entire industry. These mega-corps could be capitalising upon free advertising, diversifying their portfolios. They could have a Spears for every genre going platinum, and without having to spend millions on full-page ads in Vanity Fair and putting giant billboards up in Times Square.

It won't happen. The big-wigs will continue to bleed their artists dry and fight all calls for change. And I'll continue to steal mp3s, listen to who I like, and buy CDs from talented artists who can't whore themselves out on Coca-Cola commercials, people whose success is based on actual artistic merit. So it goes.

An unknown number of innocent people were put on the original list of 100,000 names

Of that unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties that actually used the list

Of that unknown number, an unknown number were actually removed from the voter registration lists by the county election supervisor

Of that unknown number, an unknown number failed to dispute the removal

and of that unknown number, less than 50% turned out to vote anyway (general voter turnout)

Really- there is NOTHING to this story.

So were minority voters specifically targeted? The NAACP, who came in to represent these minorities, stated VERY plainly in this settlement that there is no allegation of discrimination or misconduct in regards to this voter list. They did file suit because of the sloppy implementation of the list, but they admitted that most of the changes that they were seeking were already implemented by the state of Florida by the time the suit was filed.

If innocent people were prevented from voting, that is a tragedy, but it is not the huge scandal that Mr Palast wants it to be. It also has nothing to do with the parent's claim about the US Supreme Court.

I won't pretend that they are unbiased, but the news-related sites I read are the AP wire on Salon, Google news, Metafilter, and especially WRT recent events: Truthout, Common Dreams, and also Disinformation.

reed

They tried diplomatic pressure and other means with America alongside. It didn't work.

But it did work, in the end there were results and that's why a lot of countries wanted the weapons inspectors to go on with their work. If there is proof, that the Iraq has a significant number of B- or C-weapons the USA never presented it. In the end the Iraq was complying (though grudgingly) with the demands layed down by the UN. In the meantime north Korea more or less publicly announced their intention to produce nuclear bombs, so shouldn't Bush et al. strike at north Korea before going for the Iraq?

So when Bush couldn't convince the world that Iraq was threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction he switched rhetorics and talked about having to free the Iraq of that evil dictator Saddam. Now Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, but that's none of the USAs business, as it hasn't been for the past 20 years (like when the USA even supported the current Iraqi regime). The last demand that Saddam now leave the country within 48 hours is not an ultimatum, it's a joke. Everyone can imagine that that'd be suicide for Saddam.

This war isn't about terrorism either, it's easier to construct a link from Osama bin Laden to Bush than to Saddam Hussein, and war isn't a means to get at terrorists who're probably not even in the attacked country. As a result of the war even more terrorist attacks are expected in the US and the threat level is raised.

So the war isn't about chemical weapons or terrorists, neither is it an idealistic mission to free the Iraq people from their evil dictator (or do the USA now intend to attack any country where the government isn't to their liking?). Many people (even inside the US) see it that way and that's how they arrive at the conclusion that the war isn't justified but is just about oil and distracting the american people from their problems at home.

This war is also a very bad precedent, as it shows that the USAs government doesn't care what the UN have to say on the issue, they do what they damn well please anyway. So now whenever any country wants to start a war all they need are some unsupportable and made up reasons and then they can go ahead? Or is that only right for the USA but noone else?

Also the arrogant way the USA dealt with the UN and other nations (and also opposition at home) has weakened the UN and hurt diplomatic relationships worldwide. More and more the USA is percieved

So let's see, something fishy is going on with those votes, but we've got a deadline. Which is more important: the deadline or the fishiness?

The supreme court ruled the deadline, but that wasn't obvious.

By fishy I don't mean the hanging chads, I mean the African Americans that brother Jeb Bush struck off the register for having names that *sounded like* convicted felons.

Read this story if you don't believe me.

Salon has a story on the hijacking here.

I'd argue that the H1 program should just be *enforced*. H1Bs, as written in law, *require* the visa holder to be paid prevailing wages, and *require* something called 'Labor Certification', which supposedly proves that there are no available native workers in the local market who can perform those functions.

Well that sounds just lovely on paper... but how do you think companies go about making sure that there are no native workers available in the local market who can perform the job? They make a very specific job posting where they specify the requirements in such a way that no one (or perhaps only the H1B they have in mind) has the right mix of qualifications, for examples see the recent article Take This Tech Job and Shove it in Salon.

Salon disagrees with you about Normal. The review's author, herself the daughter of a transsexual father, points out several flaws in the presentation.

Personally, I'd like to see something combining the storyline of a good RPG with the action of a good FPS. Open ended would be nice, something like Privateer or Freelancer but in a fantasy or military setting rather than as a space sim.

Not that I'd mind any of those things, but when you can refer to the genre of your game in shorthand ("FPS") and you want to re-make existing games in a different setting, that's hardly breaking new ground. Do we want the open community to produce nothing but less-polished takes on overpriced, over-card-dependent consumer boxed titles?

(Anyone who can come up with a worthy successor to M.U.L.E. would have my blessing, such as it is.)

"Don't steal music."

OtisAardvark writes "With the recent cancellation of Salon, this Salon story discusses the creative ways fans are trying to save Salon. Specifically it talks about how grassroots organization through the internet has helped them to the point where they are discussing fan funded production of Salon."

Ever get the feeling that there are only 5 stories in the world? ;-)

We have a team in India doing basic database monitoring and support (mostly to back me up, as I'm a finite resource).

They are cheap - about $1000 US a month for their services.

From their resumes and other clients, you would think that they are well trained and efficient.

Unfort, I don't find their work that valuable.

First, while their English is good, it's not good enough. The communication barrier has caused several problems, resulting in database downtime that need not have occurred.

Second, while they advertise themselves as DBAs, there is only one that I marginally trust. We have had to create detailed instructions for doing simple things. They take days to do what I can do in hours, and often fail at what I consider simple, bread-and-butter DBA tasks.

Third, we don't have much of a stick over their head. Should they walk off with our data, our schema, our code, or just trash our site, there is little if anything we could actually do.

An article (recently posted on Slashdot) mentioned that the larger the company, the more likely they were to move IT jobs overseas. In the long run, this is a counter-productive move. Firing a bunch of people will lower the demand for your goods and services; the unemployed don't have the money to spend. And you create a group of seriously pissed off people with time on their hands.

The Salon story mentioned a website called a site where people post these ridiculous jobs. Perhaps someone will come with a site that will list companies that have fired local workers to ship the jobs overseas.

The whole thing makes me wonder if it's time to start thinking about a new career. It's kind of scarey to wonder if tech jobs will become as scarce as those well paying manufacturing jobs of the 50's and 60's (you know, the ones that are now in China, Taiwan, and Mexico).

From your sig:
Americans, tired of Bush? Let congress know!
www.votetoimpeach.org

You're aware that Ramsey Clark, the guy who "drafted" those articles of impeachment, is a die-hard supporter of Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein, and other dictators, right? Read about it here... and Salon is not exactly a right-wing source.

Salon has an article that is more realistic - or cynical, as the case may be.

Just a reminder, if you enjoyed reading this Salon article (or any of the dozens of others that /. has posted), you should consider becoming a Salon member!

I've joined, and it was well worth the money. Their articles on the state of the music industry, Payola, etc., were enough to deserve my cash.

Is it just me, or does this remind you of the short-story posted on Salon a couple months back:

It was called 0wnz0red and it was about hacking the source code of human metabolism.

Oh God I missed the "of" at first.

Don't worry, George Bush will see that you were right the first time! He'll get rid of those nasty Iraqis, hoarding all that sweet, sweet oil for your SUV. While he's busy destabilizing the Middle East, more terrorist attacks may be prompted here in the US, and North Korea (you know, that crazy guy who threatened war?) will go forgotten while he builds an arsenal of long-range nuclear weapons.

Here's a helpful score card:

Iraq: Tiny dictator that hasn't attacked anyone since Bush's daddy while trying to steal Kuwait over 10 years ago. Has short range missiles that don't fly too straight. Leader enjoys gassing rebels (especially when Reagan was paying for it), torture, killing family members, and long walks along the perimeter. Problem to nearest neighbors that claim to be "friends" of America (you know, those guys that fund and house terrorists, pay blood money to families of "martyrs", spew hatred of America in their schools, etc.)

North Korea: Tiny dictator that has nuclear weapons or is very close. Has medium range missiles and will have long range missiles capable of hitting American targets. The leader also enjoys starving and torturing his subjects, and saber rattling with an eye toward actual global war

Moderators: this is NOT flamebait. It is a troll. Learn the difference!

I'd think that tabs could break many web applications- or at least increase the chance of a user giving input the app didn't expect.

For instance, if you're on page 4/5 of requesting a service, and then go back to page 2 (still open on a tab) and submit it, what's the application do then? Page 4 is already open, but it may have just been invalidated.

It won't bother all applications of course. Particularly if all inputs are single step (like a "Shopping cart"), or all but one of the tabs are used for informational purposes only.

What is more of a debate where I work is if pagination is better than scrolling.

Scrolling is better for the user for almost every reason- however, it's worse for control-freak web-publishers. Sites like Salon want to be able to tell which kinds of stories are attractive towards their readers, and they'd like to distinguish between stories that are merely downloaded, and those that actually get read. Requiring the user to make another HTTP request to see the end of a story provides them this data.

(Essentially, they wish HTTP were a stateful protocol- maintaining a live connection for as long as the reader is on the page- and pagination makes HTTP requests more frequent, bringing that goal a step closer)

In their newswire, Salon titled this story, "Computer crackers steal students social security numbers."

I thought the Slashdot community would appreciate Salon getting the terminology right on this one. It may seem like a silly point to some, but the distinction between "cracker" and "hacker" is huge in my mind, and it always makes me happy to see a journalistic outlet get it right, for a change.

In their newswire, Salon titled this story, "Computer crackers steal students social security numbers."

I thought the Slashdot community would appreciate Salon getting the terminology right on this one. It may seem like a silly point to some, but the distinction between "cracker" and "hacker" is huge in my mind, and it always makes me happy to see a journalistic outlet get it right, for a change.

In their newswire, Salon titled this story, "Computer crackers steal students social security numbers."

I thought the Slashdot community would appreciate Salon getting the terminology right on this one. It may seem like a silly point to some, but the distinction between "cracker" and "hacker" is huge in my mind, and it always makes me happy to see a journalistic outlet get it right, for a change.

let's be fair here. masturbating in an office in california never hurt anyone but said offices janitorial staff. well, perhaps a receptionist, but this is neither here nor there. the point is we all need to go to california before it falls into the ocean. reminds me of a song...

That conservative Christian must enjoy articles like this important article about a snow penis

...here

Try this story on how MS talks about MS, in terms of history...and note how the 'investment' you so dearly love to believe in, is somehow missing...gee...me wonders why? ...not...

Uzi was born with the last name of Nissan and put his computer company's website at the place which made sense nissan.com. Nissan, however was not always Nissan but Datsun. It changed its name to Nissan in 1987.

The full sad story is here.

Other articles are here and here.

Here's my story in the form of an email I sent out to a bunch of friends.

Hi folks. Here's from the "I hate to admit this but it's true" department. You guys may have noticed the buzz about the Loebner competition lately, an attempt at a yearly Turing Test, much quagmired in controversy and maligned by Minsky. Here is my discovery:

A.L.I.C.E.

I wanted to see the state of the art of AI so I had a converstion with A.L.I.C.E. for well over an hour (i.e. more than sixty minutes), thinking A.L.I.C.E. was doing some kind of analysis of my conversation, stupid though it was. I mean, I put a lot of thought into what I told and asked the thing. I gave it URLs, I ignored its bad grammar. I even said please and was polite to the thing. Here is what I later found out:

(Note that Richard Wallace is the creator of A.L.I.C.E.)

********* The following excerpted from artificial stupidity:

In keeping with Wallace's reputation for eccentricity, the article -- which is mostly about A.I. and the Turing test -- contains a long and dense discussion of a recent court case that resulted in a restraining order being issued against him at the behest of a former close friend. I found that odd, but his discussion of his ALICE philosophy was cogent and interesting, and it held implications for what the Loebner competition's continued existence could signify, behind all the ongoing foofooraw.

Wallace's theory of A.I. is no theory at all. It's not that he doesn't believe in artificial intelligence, per se; rather, he doesn't much believe in intelligence, period. In a way that oddly befits a contest sponsored by a bunch of Skinnerians, Wallace's ALICE program is based strictly on a stimulus-response model. You type something in, if the program recognizes what you typed, it picks a clever, appropriate, "canned" answer.

There is no representation of knowledge, no common-sense reasoning, no inference engine to mimic human thought. Just a very long list of canned answers, from which it picks the best option. Basically, it's Eliza on steroids.

Conversations with ALICE are "stateless"; that is, the program doesn't remember what you say from one conversational exchange to the next. Basically it's not listening to a word you say, it's not learning a thing about you, and it has no idea what any of its own utterances mean. It's merely a machine designed to formulate answers that will keep you talking. And this strategy works, Wallace says, because that's what people are: mindless robots who don't listen to each other but merely regurgitate canned answers.

That reminds me: a few years ago Salon did an interview with him that was, let's say, less than favorable. I don't know how much of it was (is?) baloney, but there were a bunch of pissed-off readers because of that interview.

That reminds me: a few years ago Salon did an interview with him that was, let's say, less than favorable. I don't know how much of it was (is?) baloney, but there were a bunch of pissed-off readers because of that interview.

Tom Tomorrow says it better than I ever could.

mhack

The story you're refering to about the fish store guy is detailed in this salon article.

There's also a more current page about the whole legal mess - note that what I'm reading as I briefly scan the page is that he's suing people in Federal court, and just filing it in the local (to him) district court. This is different from attempting to sue someone not in New York under New York state law. It still means that those who wish to defend themselves have potentially a long and expensive trip.

Sorry, this is a huge pet peeve of mine:

You mean "pros" and "cons" not pro's and con's. The single apostrophe implies that the noun is possessive.

Arianna Huffington agrees.

And problems with AOL Instant Messenger. Lots of problems.

Yep -- an almost unending pattern of security problems...

---
Destiny-land.
The happiest blog on earth.

And problems with AOL Instant Messenger. Lots of problems.

Yep -- an almost unending pattern of security problems...

---
Destiny-land.
The happiest blog on earth.

One good reason to keep Salon - you'd never see this diversity of thought in mainstream media. Keep it up, guys!

A splendid little war
Forget WWII or Vietnam. The real comparison for an invasion of Iraq is the Spanish-American War, when an aimless U.S. presidency and a lazy media looked for redemption.

the public will never accept DRM.

I certainly HOPE your right, but it is far from certain. There is an enormous TCPA rollout on the way that intends to make DRM a casual detail of everyday life. This is scary not just because of the staggering multi-industry backing it has, but because they have an extremely plausible path to getting it into virtually all computers and devices over the course of a few years.

Without DRM, music is free.

Music has been available for free ever since radio and tape recorders. The recording industry predicted cassettes would kill the industry. Movies and programming have been free since broadcast television and VCR's. The MPAA predicted VCR's would kill the industry. In both cases the industry made MORE money once they adapted to the new tech.

Just because the recording industry has deliberately CHOSEN not to compete in an online market for music certainly does not mean one cannot exist. The fact that the recording industry has REFUSED to sell music online has been the major driving force behind the explosion of the various P2P networks.

In the last few months the recording industry has made a pathetic token gesture at selling music online. They are selling DRM crippled products. They are offering limited selections (they withhold most popular music to avoid "competing" with their offline market). Their prices are unreasonable (purchasing downloads should be signifigantly cheaper than purchasing a packaged object from a retail store). And perhaps worst of all they have an uphill battle because they have handed P2P a FIVE YEAR first-mover advantage. All four handicaps are completely self-imposted.

Even with these four fairly severe handicaps I believe they have still managed to capture tens of thousands of customers. If they drop the first three handicaps they can still manage to overcome the fourth and capture a large and profitable market. The internet offers them access to an enormous market/distribution-channel with nearly 100% profit margins. If they choose to they can create/provide a service that would far outclass P2P is several ways. The longer they wait the harder it gets,

If you want links with even more support try this National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences paper and here, particulary sections 5 + 6.

Saying that the internet will kill the music industry is absurd. You're a victim of RIAA propaganda.

-

See Salon Table Talk. Anyone can read the Forums but you have to pay to post there. Whether that's good or bad is a matter of opinion. Posting used to be free. When they started charging to post, regulars stayed around and trolls went away, so the quality of the forums got better. I don't know if that can be generalized, of course. The Salon boards have always had a particular dynamic and the pay-to-post model seems to fit it pretty well.