August 23, 2009 at 6:22 pm
You know you’re behind the times when Mexico does something in the “Drug War” before you do.
Mexico enacted a controversial law Thursday decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs while encouraging free government treatment for drug dependency.
The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution when the law goes into effect Friday.
The U.S. needs to follow Mexco’s lead on this. The “Drug War” is a failure that has helped corrupt our police forces, filled our prisons with non-violent offenders, and created a self-sustaining prison industrial complex that now lobbies to maintain and increase their “industry” at any cost.
Categories: Politics
Tags: crime, drug war
July 17, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Sometime recently I noticed a change int he way the ‘Mark all as read’ button works in Google Reader. I used to be able to press it, have all the articles in the listing marked as read, and then go back and hit ‘m’ to set one or a few of them back to ‘unread’ mode so I could catch them later.
Yesterday, I tried to do that only to find that the ‘m’ key stopped working on all those articles and the ‘keep unread’ check box was gone from the bottom of each article so there is no way to make a ‘Mark all as read’ article ‘unread’ anymore. How frustrating.
I don’t know why Google added this behaviour, but it sure is annoying and I’d like them to fix it.
Categories: Computing, Miscellaneous
Tags: annoyances, google reader
July 12, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Yesterday, in a speech in Ghana, President Obama said (emphasis mine):
America has a responsibility to work with you as a partner to advance this vision, not just with words, but with support that strengthens African capacity. When there’s a genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems — they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response.
And that’s why we stand ready to partner through diplomacy and technical assistance and logistical support, and we will stand behind efforts to hold war criminals accountable. And let me be clear: Our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world.
In Moscow, I spoke of the need for an international system where the universal rights of human beings are respected, and violations of those rights are opposed. And that must include a commitment to support those who resolve conflicts peacefully, to sanction and stop those who don’t, and to help those who have suffered. But ultimately, it will be vibrant democracies like Botswana and Ghana which roll back the causes of conflict and advance the frontiers of peace and prosperity.
President Obama, you say America stands ready to help African nations hold their war criminals accountable, but you aren’t willing to investigate the war criminals we have here in the United States. I speak of former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney. Pres. Obama, your administration has shamefully pursued the same extravegant powers of detention and surveillance that Pres. Bush and V.P. Cheney instituted during their administration and continues to obstruct all attempts in our courts and in Congresss to investigate these illegal programs and bring them into the light. You’ve failed to uphold your promises for increased transparency in and bring changes to the Federal government.
Now, we’ve learned there are more secret programs under operation by the CIA. What will you do with these? Will you bring them into the light and help reform them, or will you let them stay in the dark?
I was so hopeful whenyou took office that we would see a real change in our government. I’m deeply saddened and frustrated by your continued support of Bush-era policies and government positions. I believed you were a better man than you’ve shown yourself to be.
Edit: Updated spelling in title
Categories: Politics
Tags: obama, war criminals
June 27, 2009 at 5:20 pm
Well, I have a few minutes downtime when I’m not totally exhausted so I can write something here, finally. I had plans to do a daily post sharing my impressions of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into delivering all the GA website reporting and video streaming. That plan crumbled upon contact with GA. I actually did write an outline draft for the first day, but haven’t gone back to it and haven’t jotted anything down since.
GA, as usual, has been a wonderful, energizing, stressful, joyful, fun, event. I need to fine a way to do my job and have enough time/energy left over to write about it.
I’m very pleased with how the live streaming is going. We are getting lots of comments back about it and most are good. Some folks are having problems and we are trying to fix things for them. The file capture for later on-demand viewing is having some problems and we are working through them as well. My team of videographers are doing a bang up job of taping workshops and other events, ripping the tapes, and getting them ready for upload. I’m very proud of them.
More later!
Categories: Miscellaneous
June 21, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I’m about to go offline and pack up my laptop for the trip to Salt Lake City. My flight is at 6:30AM Monday morning so I need to be up around 4AM and heading out at 4:45 or so. Ugh. I’ll arrive in SLC at 8:50AM SLC time and have a full day ahead of me still. I plan on sleeping during the flight. We’ll see how well that works.
See you all in SLC!
Categories: General Assembly
Tags: uuaga09
June 18, 2009 at 10:53 am
This just came across one of the mailing lists I’m on:
Jesus and Satan have a discussion as to who is the better programmer. This goes on for a few hours until they come to an agreement to hold a contest, with God as the judge.
They sit themselves at their computers and begin. They type furiously, lines of code streaming up the screen, for several hours straight. Seconds before the end of the competition, a bolt of lightning strikes, taking out the electricity. Moments later, the power is restored, and God announces that the contest is over.
He asks Satan to show what he has come up with. Satan is visibly upset, and cries, “I have nothing. I lost it all when the power went out.”
“Very well, then,” says God, “let us see if Jesus fared any better.”
Jesus enters a command, and the screen comes to life in vivid display, the voices of an angelic choir pour forth from the speakers. Satan is
astonished.
He stutters, “B-b-but how? I lost everything, yet Jesus’ program is intact.
How did he do it?”
God smiled all-knowingly, “Jesus saves.”
Categories: Computing, Religion
Tags: joke
June 5, 2009 at 11:02 am
I just unsubscribed from the CGI::Application mailing list. I no longer use CGI::App and the mails were just cluttering my inbox. My first Perl CGi script was written using plain ol’ CGI.pm many years ago. I ran across it again recently and winced when I read the code. I saw messes of nested function calls to generate the HTML, manually processing form data, etc. Scary stuff, but it worked. Then I found CGI::Application and HTML::Template and gleefully jumped on board. It made my life much easier. About 2 years ago I encountered Catalyst and started learning it. The applications I was writing were growing more complex and CGI::Application was becoming part of the problem instead of the solution, so Catalyst was attractive to me and offered a very flexible, powerful platform for developing web applications. I’ve been using it ever since and have deployed several large application using it. So, with a fond farewell, I signed off the CGI::Application mailing list.
Categories: Perl
Tags: Catalyst
June 2, 2009 at 11:28 pm
One of the things I’ve always loved about my ThinkPad and Lenovo notebooks is the System Update feature. I’d just run it and get all the latest updates from lenovo. They also notified users of critical updates via the Message Center facility. Very nice, until Lenovo terminated System Update. Around the beginning of March, SU started reporting that updates were no longer available and a new, better, service would replace it beginning in May. Well, that didn’t happen. May 1st came and went and the only solution offered by Lenovo was to check the support website for updates. I was not a happy camper along with lots of other angry Lenovo owners.
Yesterday, Message Center popped up with a notice that several updates were available. I was thrilled! I didn’t have time then to run the updates, but let it run tonite and everything updated just fine. A quick Google search revealed that Lenovo has reinstated System Update. A very smart move on their part, in my opinion. I don’t know if Lenovo users can run their current version of System Update to get the new install or what. Might be worth a try.
Categories: Computing
Tags: lenovo
June 1, 2009 at 9:50 pm
I’m pleased to see more transparency coming to the Guantanamo Bay proceedings. It’s about time. The unclassified evidence used to justify continued incarceration of over 100 detainees at Guantanamo Bay must be filed with the court within one month and the U.S. government has to apply for court approval to keep specific information secret.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled the government cannot keep the documents known as factual returns from public disclosure and must seek court approval to keep specific information secret.
“Public interest in Guantanamo Bay generally and these proceedings specifically has been unwavering,” Hogan wrote. “Publicly disclosing the factual returns would enlighten the citizenry and improve perceptions of the proceedings’ fairness.”
Categories: Politics
Tags: courts, Gauntanamo Bay
May 31, 2009 at 2:52 pm
My heart goes out to Dr. Tiller’s family in their time of loss. I’m glad that a suspect has already been arrested. I worry what demented justification he/she will provide for their violence.
Categories: Politics, Religion
Tags: abortion, crime
