A followup to last night’s rant on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. BarackObama.com has posted a form to send a letter to your local rep. It can’t hurt…
22
Jan 10
It’s time to abandon the filibuster
The Dems aren’t the ones refusing to compromise. In fact, they’re bending over backwards to try to compromise with each other and get ANY, even one or two Republican votes. No one is budging. The stakes have gotten way too high to hold to a non-legislated procedural rule.
22
Jan 10
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: SciFi Dystopian Disasters Set to Come True
For awhile there, it looked like all the paranoid cyberpunk fiction of the 80s and early 90s was just silly. The US had elected its first black president, we were on the verge of getting some kind of major health care reform and things were finally starting to move on reforming banking and finance.
Then came MA special election and Pelosi announcing she didn’t have the HCR votes in the House. That was bad. That was disappointing. It’s nothing compared to the unmitigated disaster that is the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling.
Since it’s not getting anywhere near the [...] Continue Reading…
05
Jan 10
The 00s in review, part 1, possibly of 1
Well, since everyone is doing lists…
Best moment
The US electing Obama.
Worst moment
Katrina. Yes, it was worse than 9/11. Sorry, it just was. 9/11 may have had a more profound impact on world events and American politics, but ultimately Katrina was a far more horrifying event. (note: I realize this is a profoundly American view. The worst moment for humanity was by far the Indonesia tsunami.)
Douche of the decade
Wow, it was a spectacular decade for douchebaggery. On the list of obvious choices you have Bush or anyone in his administration, Osama bin Laden, Brownie, credit card companies, all the neocon leadership, [...] Continue Reading…
15
Oct 09
Google Wave Reminds Me of Microsoft
I got a Google Wave invite (thanks nick) and I am remarkably unimpressed. Essentially it’s a threaded discussion system with the ability to insert different kinds of media and it works in realtime. For one thing, this is not actually new. Calling it “wave” and making it easier to include non-textual media does not make what you are doing new or radical. Sure, Wave is trying to get us to a better kind of email collaboration and email is certainly a technology that is overdue for either some much better client-side functionality or to be retired completely (but that’s [...] Continue Reading…
02
Sep 09
Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage | Backblaze Blog
Backblaze built their own crazy 67TB 4U servers made up of 45 1.5TB drives configured in 3 RAID6 pods of 15 drives each. All I can say is WOW, when are they getting into selling these things? I’m thinking of this setup combined with my hope that Oracle GPLs ZFS and I’m having a home network storagasm.
Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage | Backblaze Blog.
03
Aug 09
How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night | Wise Bread
So this is pretty cool. Harvard Med School did a study that says that fasting during sleep deprivation helps to reset your clock (and let’s face it, Harvard Med School probably knows about sleep deprivation).
My only flaw with the suggestions is that trips are pretty much the only time I can plan to fast. The other times that I end up staying awake for a long time tend to be random, work, parties, etc…
How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night | Wise Bread.
28
Jul 09
Is it me, or are monitor and hdtv aesthetics backwards?
I’ve been poking around looking at 24 and 30 inch monitors. A few things jump out quickly in this kind of search, the first is that there aren’t actually very many 2560 res monitors out there (because really, what’s the point of a 1920 res 30″ monitor?) I have no idea what’s up with that, but there’s basically five or six choices and none of them are particularly new.
The second point that just baffles me is the disparity between the new HDTVs and large monitors. You basically have the really good Dell 24 and 30 inch screens, the Apple [...] Continue Reading…
23
Jul 09
Where Jesse tries a new way of explaining DNS
Summary of a conversation at work…
Me: “Okay, you know how in the real world every building has an address?”
PersonNotGettingDNS: “Yea”
Me: “Okay, the internet is like that, but on the internet you only need to know the name of a place to get to the address. So, DNS is like a cabbie. All you have to say is ‘Empire State Building’ and the Empire State Building could have moved to Brooklyn and the cabbie would still get you to the Empire State Building. And it doesn’t matter at all that it has a whole new address. So when we say [...] Continue Reading…