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User: Howl

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  1. Buring flags in private will be ok. on The Privacy Candidate · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is very odd - this is the same politician who signed on as a sponsor of a flag burning amendment (thus proving she doesn't understand the 1st amendment, it's the unpopular speech that needs protecting). I guess that means we can burn flags in private ...

  2. He should move to Sausalito on Teenager Wins Email Suit Against City of Kokomo · · Score: 1

    Here in Sausalito CA the city routinely sends out mails to large groups of people with the while address list in the To: or CC: field - I now have an almost complete list of the politically important folks in town thanks to the incompetence of our city government (and yes I did tell them repeatedly to use Bcc: or get mailing lit software)

  3. Huh? They can already do this .. on BellSouth Wants to Rig the Internet · · Score: 1

    If Google or yahoo or some other big site wants to load faster it can simply buy connectivity from that ISP. Presto faster load times. Or am I missing something?

  4. 90/90 rule applies on 95% of IT Projects Not Delivered On Time · · Score: 1

    The first 90% of the works take the first 90% of the time and the last 10% takes the other 90% of the time. This rule applies even when you try to take it into accountat the planning stage.

    [taken from a very old "Mrphy's laws of computing" poster"]

  5. Re:I dropped out... on How Important is a Well-Known CS Degree? · · Score: 1

    I dropped out too. Started my first company at not quite 19 and retired at 37 after two IPO's. This is not typical and your results may vary :)

    However my experience is that CS grads and particularly MS and PhD can be less flexible in a dynamic environment (*). When I was hiring (I've hired several hundered developers over the years) a degree meant very little other than it demonstrated an ability to learn. A sharp mind, ability to work in the team and good experience were the key factors.

    (*) CS grads are not as bad as MBA's who need at least 5 years post MBA experience to knock some real world sense into them (this told to me by a Harvard MBA and confirmed by hiring several Stanford MBA's)

  6. Factor in vehicle size to encourage small cars on California Considers Tracking Your Car · · Score: 1

    If we step back and look at the impact of the gas tax it's two fold: First to pay for roads and second it has the happy side effect of encouraging socially responsible behavior by favoring smaller more efficient cars.

    The same effect could be achieved with a mileage based tax by including a weight factor in the tax calculation. Heavy vehicles (which do more damage to the road) pay more. This improves the fairness of the system (which is the stated reason for move to a mileage based system) and preserves the incentive to drive smaller cars.

    [As an aside some California cities impose a road tax on construction projects based on the amount of concrete pored and dirt hauled away to cover the wear and tear caused by heavy trucks]

    That said it's not going to fly because the state is simply not capable of maintaining the technology infrastructure needed to make it work.

  7. Not like skydiving at all on Zero Gravity Flights for the Rest of Us · · Score: 1

    No - in skydiving you rapidly reach terminal velocity where your speed matches the wind resistance - you feel the air pressure against you.

    In a parabolic flight the air and everyting in your frame of reference is "falling" with you so you don't have that resistance and you feel weightless. Very different experience.

    As for the segway I think the answer to your question is as close to zero as makes no difference.

  8. Re:Democracy.. on Using Copyright To Suppress Political Speech · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This whole toipic is a troll. Get real. In neither case is the candidate doing to copyright enforcment it's the owners of the IP that are enforcing their rights.

    I was the staff photographer for Howard Dean's campaign and if anybody were to use one of my images without permission I'd be writing a DMCA letter too (they, even republicans, would however be free to buy an image and if I agreed with the cause I might donate it but I want the option to donate my work not have it stolen).

    It's not about suppressing speech it's about paying people for their creative talent.

    Copyright law is about balancing ownership rights and public interest. It's gone too far with the whole music thing but the examples cited here seem like reasonable enforcement of ownership rights.

  9. Re:Why bother? on Craigslist Eyed for Possible Future IPO · · Score: 1

    I agree - why bother. I've done two IPO's and they are over rated. As a founder you don't get to sell much stock and whenever you do sell more everybody else panics. If he's doing $25MM in revenue (and proably making $10MM on that) he should either a) shut up and be happy or b) sell the whole thing for ca$h (done that too).

    The only reasons to IPO are a) you need to raise more $$ to expand or b you need to give minority sharholders an exit route. IPO's are not the best bet for big insider shareholders.

    Of the three companies I started that had made it to exit strategy the cash sale was bar far the least complex in the end.

  10. Re:Who are the two vendors? on Is the Dean Campaign Spamming? · · Score: 1

    I don't expect the campaign will engage in a public dialog about this so asking questions proably isn't usefull - however they do get points for replying to a salshdot post leas than 90 mins after it appeared.

  11. Severability clause on Non-Competes Might Mean Loss Of Benefits · · Score: 1

    Typicaly if a contract doesn't have a serverability clause then if one part of it is thrown out it all goes out. Which is why pretty much every contract you'll see has a clause that says if one part is thrown out the rest stands. As I recall this applies in most countries that trace their legal system from English common law. [IANAL but I've signed a lot of contract in a lot of countries]

  12. Zoning issues on Starting a Home-Based Software Company? · · Score: 1

    It just happens that I am Vice Chair of the planning commison for my city, and we just re-wrote the zoning regs so I actually know quite a lot about this subject.

    Most zoning regulations provide for some home based occupations, when you dig into the specifics of the code there will probably be restictions on having employees, number of visitors and on types of businesses that are noisy or intrusive. You'll need a business license and probably an occupancy permit or the local equivilent.

    My suggestion is call or go and see the city planning staff, tell them you know nothing and need help- they are normally quite helpful (if you don't come in with an attitude) and will tell you if what you want to do is legal.

    Many cities have the zoning code on the web so you can look it up but I still advise asking as interpretation of code can be a black art.

    Home owners / Condo Associations and the CC&Rs that come with them are a whole other game - your milage may vary on that one.

    As a last resort if you're not having visitors the PO Box will work fine (and maybe a good idea anyway to maintain your privacy)

    I suggest creating a LLC (modern form of a partnership) to run the business - this is mostly as a liability shield al;thouhg if you have no real assets then youcan just file a DBA (city hall will be able to tell you how to do this).

    Lastly get a good CPA, the home office rightoff is hard to get and equipment depreciation is a complex - a good CPA will save you a lot in the long run.

    John (who runs a photography business, a property company and a private foundation from his home)

    P.S. quickbooks is really good value for money for small businesses.

  13. If the DNS is right it still works on AOL Bans Mail From DSL-Hosted Servers · · Score: 1
    Mail from my server (SBC 6 mbit DSL connection) is getting through just fine. Probably because my reverse DNS resolves correctly.

  14. Prior art next door on Interwoven Patents Code Versioning · · Score: 1

    Too funny. Interwoven were our neighbours when I was at Beyond.com - when they filed their patent in 1999 we'd been using CVS to do everything they claim for more than a year. If they'd bothered to cross the hallway we could have shown them prior art.

  15. Why bother? on Politicians Seek Spam Loophole · · Score: 1
    All this challenge and whitelist business is simply not needed.

    Use bogofilter - it uses Beyesian statistics to filter spam it's it very good. See also A plan for SPAM by Paul Graham.

  16. Political priesthood on Politicians Seek Spam Loophole · · Score: 1
    Have you looked at the Catholic church lately? Politicians kiss babies and screw over adults, where as priests ...

    A political priesthood is a monumentally bad idea.

  17. Re:McIntyre vs Ohio on Politicians Seek Spam Loophole · · Score: 1
    Yes but the point of the McIntyre decison is that anonymous political speech (in that case leaflets) is legal.

    It's no more onerous to clear up trash leaflets off your yard than it is to hit delete and every lawyer I've talked to (and I've discussed this issue with several) agrees that political email, solicited or otherwise, is protected.

  18. Re:Fair's fair. on Politicians Seek Spam Loophole · · Score: 1
    Good - tell me which district you're in and I'll fake up some mail from your local Republicans.

    Unless campaign mail is digitally signed you have no idea who it came from so taking your anger ount on the supposed sender won't help much.

  19. Re:Slippery slope on Politicians Seek Spam Loophole · · Score: 1

    All of those exceptions already exist in the form of the 1st ammendment. Free speech doesn't just protect geeks publishing crypto code - it protects all speech - particularly unpopular speech.

  20. McIntyre vs Ohio on Politicians Seek Spam Loophole · · Score: 3, Informative
    McINTYRE v. OHIO ELECTIONS COMM'N, U.S. (1995) pretty much says it all when it comes to political spam - it's 1st ammendment protected.

    Free speech cuts both ways - it protects crypto code publication and it also protects political SPAM. That's the point about the 1st ammendment it's there to protect unpopular speech because the popular variety doesn't need protection!

    That said I've been involved in a couple of campaigns and we only used email to keep in touch with our people and to see what the other side was saying to theirs (on the internet nobody knows you're a Democrat :-)

  21. NetBackup Professional works well on Making Users Back Up Important Data? · · Score: 1
    NetBackup Pro from Veritas works well - it backs up to a central file server and keeps deltas of files allowing individual version recovery. It's smart enough not to back up OS files for every machine and it works over DSL lines.


    Backups are automated, users can restore their own files (if you choose to let them) and it will do bare metal disaster recovery.


    More info www.veritas.com


    [I have no connection with Veritas other than as a happy customer]

  22. E6B on The Sliderule As Paleo-Geek Artifact · · Score: 1

    My watch has an E6B built in! See Navitimer image

  23. screen meet digital camerra, camera meet screen on The Read-Once, Write-Never Web · · Score: 2
    Wake me up when they find a way of stopping me from making photos of the screen.

    Yawn.

  24. "The Bill of Rights is a local odinance" - Barlow on Remembering Our Roots · · Score: 1
    Odd this article should come up - I ran into Stewart Brand a couple of weeks back and we were talking about the Yahoo vs the french free speech case. Stewart quoted Barlow as saying: "The Bill of Rights is a local ordinance" .

  25. Am I missing something here ... on Why Are SSL Certificates So Expensive? · · Score: 1
    $125 doesn't sound bad for an SSL cert given that you gan generate a user signed one free - you are paying for some minimal investigation that you really are who you claim to be (that's the point of the certificate - duh).

    More to the point if you have a site that would benifit from SSL and you can't run to $125 you've got bigger problems top solve.