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Sunday, June 23, 2002

Why Software is so bad Via InstaPundit, this MIT Technology Review piece discsses why software is so bad. And bad it is, or a lot of it. 10:53:12 PM  Permalink  comment []

Don't Like Paying Your Taxes? This reminds me that my estimated taxes are due. It makes them easier to pay. Next time you hear someone whining about paying their taxes, this list should be a good counter argument. 8:15:28 PM  Permalink  comment []

Stopping Smoking Dave Winer has quit smoking, after quite a scare, it looks like. I just passed by 7th anniversary of life without tobacco. I quit after a health crisis, the worse I ever had until I came up with diabetes a year and a half ago. In April 95, I came down with some very strange flu. It knocked me out of commission for about two weeks directly, and it took me another two or three weeks to recover. The flu turned into a pneumonia, and there was a time during that disease where I almost couldn't walk from my living room to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I was really scared. I remember going to my Doctor, for about the fourth time during the course of this illness, after I was on the mend, and saying, how about givng me a prescription for the patch, and I'll quit "in a couple weeks." (Classic way to put it off all together, of course.) He said, well, why not do it today.On the way home, I got the patches. I had four or five smokes in my last pack, and I finished them off and that was that. It was tough, yeah, very tough. I remember, as the link above shows, that the newsgroup alt.support.stop-smoking was a big help; I read hundreds of messages there in the early days, to help keep my mind right. The patches were necessary. I was like what Dave says, when you get to  a point where you need to stop and think about something, well, you just have a smoke. Though of course I knew intellectually, I had never had my mind right about quitting. Indeed I had never gone more than a day without smokes in something like 22 years. It took me a couple months before I was able to feel like I had actually put them behind me; I remember going to a Dylan concert, and being worried because people would be smoking there, and feeling good that I had that behind me. So 7 years later: it's a part of my past, and doesn't bother me. I still dream about it from time to time, but not really. I would very much like to be able to smoke. I know there are some people who can have one or two, and that's OK, or who can smoke cigars. I can't. My doctor said to me at the time, if you have 1 today, you'll have 40 tomorrow, and he was right (he was a former smoker himself). Starting smoking was, by a long shot, the stupidest thing I ever did in my life; I really loved it. Stopping was, in a different sense, a no-brainer; I mean it's pretty clear how awful this is for you. Stopping was the best present I could give to my older self. Congratulations, Dave, and good luck. 7:19:37 PM  Permalink  comment []

You're the cream in my coffee I thought about not posting this one, but I can't resist my own headline. [Obscure Store] 10:50:41 AM  Permalink  comment []

Department of Thought Crimes Is it the government's business what you're reading? The so-called "U.S.A.Patriot Act" (the last refuge of scoundrels) authorized the FBI to visit public libraries and bookstores to keep tabs on the reading habits of some people "the govrernment" considers dangerous. This article from today's San Francisco Chronicle is chilling: Unlike other search warrants, the FBI need not show that evidence of wrongdoing is likely to be found or that the target of its investigation is actually involved is terrorism or spying. Targets can include U.S. citizens. Nearly everything about the procedure is secret. The court that authorizes the searches meets in secret; the search warrants carried by the agents cannot mention the underlying investigation; and librarians and booksellers are prohibited, under threat of prosecution, from revealing an FBI visit to anyone, including the patron whose records were seized. How much of the Constitution can we tample on at once? The First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendmetns for starters. The only limitation in the law is that the investigation cannot be entirely based -- though it can be partly based -- on activities protected by the First Amendment, like speech or political organizing. For example, campus radicals, the subject of FBI surveillance in the past, could be targeted under the new law only if the government alleged they had some connection to terrorism or espionage. The Chronicle has already shown what happens when the FBI takes it upon itself to wage war on those whose politics it doesn't agree with. In the guise of this undeclared war, how much more are we going to give up? The good news is that libraries seem to be working together to protect records of our reading: The American Library Association, in guidelines adopted in January, advised the nation's librarians to "avoid creating unnecessary records" and to record information identifying patrons only "when necessary for the efficient operation of the library." "They can't find what we don't have," said Anne M. Turner, president of the California Library Association and director of the Santa Cruz library. I know, a few months ago, when I asked the librarian at my local library if she had some records of a book I'd check out a few years ago, but couldn't remember the title of, I was told (and glad to hear it, when I thought of it), that they didn't keep the records. I'm comfortable with my local bookstores: I know they don't keep records of what I buy. But how about Amazon and other online stores? I know they do keep records (I used some of those facilities to help me get tax deductions last year). Do the willingly cooperate with the FBI in these requests? Do they let me know that they've done so? One of my senators, Dianne Feinstein is asking questions of the FBI about its activities in the 60s; will she ask about what's going on now? 9:20:26 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.