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User: tburke

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Comments · 23

  1. Re:Ray Ozzie on Ray Ozzie Calls Google Wave "Anti-Web" · · Score: 1

    Ozzie blows his credibility, again, when he starts praising SharePoint.

  2. President is already tracked in real time on The Real Risks of Obama's BlackBerry · · Score: 2, Informative

    When I last worked in the White House in the '90s certain senior staff had a little device that constantly updated with the President's location from WHCA.

  3. Re:Contradiction? on US Attorney General Questions Habeas Corpus · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't know, Amendments IX and X in the bill of rights explicitly reserve rights to the people:

                                    Amendment IX.
    The enumeration in the Constitution of certain
    rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage
    others retained by the people.

                                    Amendment X.
    The powers not delegated to the United States
    by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
    States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
    to the people.

    Hard to see how Gonzalez wrigles around those and the writ.

  4. Voting is your duty as a citizen on Is An Uninformed Vote Better Than No Vote? · · Score: 1

    You probably know more than you think about the merits of most candidates and issues on the ballot. And the intellectual shortcut of voting for a party will be a pretty reliable expression of your interests. Take a little time, think about what is important to you, and vote.

  5. Re:Interesting. on Humans First Arose in Asia? · · Score: 1

    The russo-alaskan bridge theory is apparently pretty shaky anyway, archeologists are convinced some South American civilizations were around before the land bridge. The book 1491 has a good summary of current knowledge.

  6. Re: please learn to read on The Future of Tech And NSA Wiretaps · · Score: 1

    Interesting, notice the phrase "but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section." in both the Carter and Clinton executive orders? Where the section is in the FISA law.

    I think we all have a pretty good idea of CATO's reading comprehension, and now we can judge yours. Or perhaps only your judgment, in chosing to site a source as reliable as CATO.

  7. Re:Most biased Slashdot article ever? on Another Victim Countersues RIAA Under RICO Act · · Score: 1

    As you point out the artist does not want to 'personally' deal with thousands or millions of transactions. The artist has not 'personally' asked me to do anything, they just want money from the undifferentiated mass of fans. It is more profitable for the artist if I personally send them money, since they don't have to pay a vig to the record company, just the significantly smaller fee to a caging and cashiering company.

  8. Re:Groklaw is about as close to the middle as Nept on The Truth About Linux and Windows · · Score: 4, Informative

    I don't get your point, since the article is from BusinessWeek.

    Unless you believe that BusinessWeek has no consideration for corporate interests.

  9. Re:Would somebody please refute the numbers on Microsoft Silently Backs Favorable Presentation at RSA · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Faith, from Latin fides, trust or loyalty, need not be blind. The authors of this study seemed to be keeping faith with the principles of honest analysis, they worked with universities and stated their biases (one Windows practitioner and the other a Linux expert) up front. I have a Linux bias, so an apparently honest analysis that challenged my presumption was intriguing.

    They neglected to mention that they were funded by Microsoft, which betrayed the faith I had put in their honesty. I do not have time to carry out a rigorous analysis comparing Linux and Windows security, I have to rely on shortcuts of reputation and apparent honesty. Studies that show Linux is more secure generally state their biases up front, studies showing a Microsoft advantage go against my experience and unfailingly turn out to have been covertly funded by Microsoft. So my standard of proof is much higher for studies that support Microsoft.

  10. Re:Program vs. XSLT on Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL · · Score: 1

    Funny, I do the opposite. I use lots of perl to control the flow of XML streams but I always fall back to XSLT for the actual transformations.

    I find I have to write much more perl code to handle namespaces and all the other XML infrastructure that I get for free in a screen-full of XSLT. Small changes in a particular XML stream's structure are much more likely to expose shortsightedness in my large chunks of perl code.

  11. Re:Republicans comdemn this on Disenfranchised In Nevada · · Score: 2, Informative
    Hmmm, your Dem examples are:
    • One guy was 15 minutes late filing voter reg forms in FL
    • a legal fight over requiring ID for provisional ballots
    • 25 forms where the address MIGHT be invalid, in a county with 500k registered voters
    • A county commissioner claiming fraud because he is unable to cope with the flood of new registrants
    • A legitimate complaint about duplicate registrations in Denver
    One out of five isn't so bad, I guess. But I am not sure how some duplicate registrations in Denver are even in the same league as an RNC funded company with a misleading name shredding hundreds or thousands of Democratic voter registration forms in Nevada and possibly Oregon, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
  12. Re:re-check your figures on 2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes · · Score: 1

    damn, I skipped Nader in AK (gee, how did that happen?) your AK numbers look close.

  13. re-check your figures on 2000 Election with Proportional Electoral Votes · · Score: 1

    You allocated Gore's Georgia votes to Other, add 5 to Gore's total. You counted 39,158 votes for Other in Alaska, there were only 8,747 Other votes in AK. This based on a cursory look, I am sure a closer look would find other errors.

    Properly counted your method more closely mirrors the popular vote and Gore wins.

  14. Best place is the candidate's websites on Getting Accurate Political Information? · · Score: 1

    John Kerry Issue Positions
    George Bush Agenda

    Despite the naive cynicism here and in the press both candidates do stand for something. Their position papers are pretty clear, maybe some fluff but generally they are trying to tell us what they want to do. It is difficult to find their actual positions anywhere else, and if you compare them in their own words you can cut through the rhetoric and form a pretty solid opinion.

  15. Re:Chernobyl on Slashback: Fairness, Radioactivity, Recovery · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So if she just carried along a helmet, how did the motorcycle get into some of the pictures? Some other random abandoned Soviet highway? I have no idea if the site is a hoax, but Mycio's post gives me no reasons to think it is. "Motorcycles are forbidden", right, and Russian officials don't take bribes either.

  16. Re:I'm so fucking pissed on NASA Cancels Hubble Mission, and Other Space Bits · · Score: 1

    Anyone taking bets on how long before the rest of the NASA science missions are zeroed out? Kepler, New Horizons, Deep Impact?

  17. REST, Jabber, SOAP on Will BEEP Simplify Network Programming? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I looked at BEEP early on, when it was called BXXP, for doing RPC calls. At the time we decided that SOAP over HTTP was the better option for our application. I think that the world has moved on since then, today I would design using REST principles and HTTP, and take advantage of Apache. For applications requiring something more 'stateful' I would probably choose Jabber, which is reasonably well established, over BEEP. BEEP will have a hard time competeing with established extensible protocols which do, if not an excellent job, a good enough job for most applications.

  18. ActiveWire USB kit, USB reference page on Rolling Your Own USB Devices? · · Score: 5, Informative

    ActiveWire has a nice looking USB project board, and a number of add-on boards that will probably do what you want, with Linux and Windows drivers. USB Central is a good USB resource page with links to that and other USB boards.

  19. Re:Global Warming == Junk Science on Climate Change Linked to Sun's Magnetic Field · · Score: 1

    From the scientist himself: "...regarding the current global warming debate, it still needs to be examined if the role of solar activity will exacerbate the rising temperatures that result from carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere." Note the word 'exacerbate', global warming is happening far to fast to be the result of a 100,000 year cycle. If only it were happening at glacial rates.

  20. SVG on Flash and Open Source · · Score: 5, Informative

    SVG is a W3C approved vector graphic and animation XML language. Development tools for it are coming right along. There is a good series about SVG on XML.COM. The author demonstrates many flash features using SVG.

  21. Re:So what's the name of the company? on Beware Employment Contracts · · Score: 1

    Given the company name there are a number of actions, in addition to boycotting, that the /. community can take:

    1. Determine whether the company is in violation of the GPL. Any company so draconian likely has something to hide.
    2. Publicize the company's poor judgement to the press and it's shareholders.
    3. Apply direct pressure to acquaintances on the company's board, it's officers or executives and business partners.
    3. Bring the issue to the attention of local, state and federal authorities and representatives. If not to correct this particular situation, at least to push for reform in labor laws. Especially in New York.

    None of these are likely to help tilly, but they will make clear to companies the risk in attempting to enforce these contracts.

  22. Re:Dogma. Not only in Religeon on Evolution is a Myth in Kansas · · Score: 1

    The funny thing is, Catholic dogma now holds that evolution is "more than just a theory". Re: the Pope's letter to Scientists, 1996. Couldn't find the original text on vatican.va, but here is a reputable reference: USNews: pope supports evolution

  23. Hosting at Exodus vs Frontier Global Center on Best Places to Co-Locate? · · Score: 1

    I work for a fairly busy site that co-los at Frontier. They are intelligent and responsive, good connectivity, quick at diagnosing and fixing routing issues, and clear and honest about problems. We used to be at Exodus, nice lab coats but otherwise a bunch of air-heads. We regularly get queries from companies planning to leave Exodus looking for advice, it amazes me that they have not fixed the problems we were experiencing.