Jim Flowers' Radio Weblog

	Thursday, October 10, 2002

Ah, Politics in Georgia and it is Republicans leading the way to embarrass us!

Schrenko sends profanity-laced e-mail to reporter
By Channel 2 Action News

Linda Schrenko

Bill Nigut

Bill Nigut

• Full text of the email
• POLL: Does this change your opinion of her?

October 10, 2002 -- In an e-mail laced with profanity, State Schools Superintendent Linda Schrenko accuses the school board of stealing money from school children and admits that she's hidden funds from the board's eyes.

Follow the links and read the email. This woman actually wanted everyone to believe that she was the darling of the religious right. From my days in Sunday School, I would be surprised if the preacher wasn't at her house washing her mouth (or her keyboard) out with soap!

I drafted the section of law that holds someone like her responsible for expending funds without necessary approval. She's in the wrong with this and needs to be made an example!

comment [] 9:42:44 PM

Political Spam!

US Senate Candidate Elizabeth Dole is sued under a new NC law regulating unsolicited email. Settling price $80. But, it's the message that counts.

comment [] 2:26:04 PM

California's loss is Georgia's re-gain

Former HP CTO moves to academia. Rich DeMillo, who lost his position as Hewlett-Packard's chief technology officer when the company merged with Compaq Computer, returns to Georgia Tech. [CNET News.com]

This move is appropriate since the state is investing much money in attracting past graduates to return to Georgia (it's cheaper, the power doesn't go out, and we don't have a $45 billion deficit.)

comment [] 2:16:35 PM

Busy day for articles on Hactivism...

From Doc Searl's

Calling to mind the choice between shitting and going blind

First Monday: Hactivists or Cyberterrorists: The Changing Media Discourse on Hacking, by Sandor Vegh. The abstract:

This paper scrutinizes the language of government reports and news media sources to shed light on their role in forming a negative image of politically motivated hacking in general, and online political activism, in particular. It is argued that the mass media's portrayal of hacking conveniently fits the elite's strategy to form a popular consensus in a way that supports the elite's crusade under different pretexts to eradicate hacking, an activity that may potentially threaten the dominant order.

There's a lefty-paranoid cast to the piece, but it has plenty of astute stuff. Such as:

...the number of articles in the print media that actually defends the Internet - and argues on the side of privacy and the protection of civil liberties against the building momentum to label it as a threat, a safe haven for terrorists - is scarce.

And, a piece in the NYTimes Circuits

comment [] 10:17:00 AM

Integration or obfuscation?

While learning about blogs, I keep drifting into thoughts about merging all the information I have into one easily managed interface. I have played with ZOOT!, Outlook, and other information managers attempting to find that one magical way to access, manipulate and basically remember information that I come across. Merging the utilities of these packages would seem to be the way to go.

Ozzie's notes on Groove and the experiements being conducted to use blogs and Groove to manage communication of ideas is interesting. Looking at my blog calendar, I wonder how useful it would be to merge my Outlook calendar into my blog calendar creating a true "daily diary" that would document my meetings and create a record of what I did every day, whether or not I had time to annotate those meetings in my blog. Hypertext linking to individuals involved in the meeting and listed in my contact file could be useful. Having links between meetings, people and tasks could help me sort my thoughts by working topic, as well as by date.

I must admit, my trials with ZOOT! are far from conclusive, but I am interested in ZOOT!'s ability to "clip" web pages and sort into appropriate files for later use. The search function is pretty decent as well. Friends are using AskSam and I see Jerry Pournelle is investigating ZOOT!, AskSam and Info Select as well. The ability to sort and search email seems to be a factor here.

But, I am also concerned with loading any one package with so many features that the package collapses under its own weight. The promise of XML to link disparate packages would seem to be the answer, but who has time to do the coding necessary to make such connections seamless?

I must remind myself that according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the answer is 43. But, who remembers the question?

comment [] 8:03:07 AM

A list of ideas from Dan Bricklin ...

in his essay he lists several ways blogs can be useful to small businesses. Need to read more on how to use these types of blogs to build community, thus increasing the usefulness of these applications

comment [] 7:49:00 AM