I love ninite.com for helping windows users get their computers sorted. I recommend it a lot and I wanted a screenshot I could point people to, so this is it.
Ninite.com
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HP Compaq 6910p
I just got one of these. My plan is to install Linux on it and use it whenever I’m upstairs. I’ll let you know how things turn out.
Earthquake Map of Anchorage
Here’s an interesting map, showing where the areas of Anchorage most susceptible to seismic activity are located. (I live in one of the green areas, yay!)
(Via Twitter, like so many good things online.)
Legal Research
In the course of preparing for a sermon on the command in Micah 6:8 to “do justice” I came across these stories:
Aaron Swartz: read the Wired article and the Politico obit by Lawrence Lessig, and view a brief interview with Lawrence Lessig here.
The Attorney General for the District of Columbia’s treatment of David Gregory for possessing high-capacity magazines as compared with their treatment of James Brinkley.
Randy Balko has written articles at HuffPo about the unchecked charging power of Prosecutors, and at Reason about prosecutors’ immunity from lawsuits.
Glenn Reynolds blogs about everything, including prosecutorial misconduct, jury trials, and plea bargains.
O, Oh, Oh!
I’m amazed at how many people — even people in the trade, who publish hymnals and other church materials — can’t seem to distinguish between “Oh” and “O.” Here’s the rule: don’t use “O” unless you know why.
Spam Countermeasures
I just implemented a bunch of spam countermeasures. Send me email if you got caught in the crossfire.
Never Rest
I like Walmart. (There: I said it!) I do a lot of shopping there. Nobody else stocks some of the things I want, and when I get them at Walmart, I know the price won’t be lower anywhere else.
I also like Amazon. But from this article, I’m guessing that Walmart doesn’t.
The country’s largest retailer, which for years didn’t blink at would-be competitors, is now under such a threat from Amazon that it is frantically playing catch-up by learning the technology business, including starting @WalmartLabs at Walmart Global E-Commerce, its dot-com division.
Walmart is right to be concerned about how to have an effective online business. (Walmart.com is to Amazon.com as Walmart is to Nordstroms.)
Still, it’s interesting to see a company that’s trying to catch up instead of just flailing helplessly.
The lesson: never give up, never surrender. Never rest on your laurels. The beauty of the capitalist system is that it rewards the Amazon’s of the world that take on the Walmarts and beat them, not by complaining, but by delivering superior value.
Jury Nullification in Washington DC
I bet it does: Billboard advocating jury nullification concerns local prosecutors.
“People are going to jail for weed,†Babb said. “Things are getting so weird. There needs to be this final safeguard to protect us from a tyrannical government.â€
The story also includes this: “In New York last year, an 80-year-old man was charged with jury tampering after passing out fliers about jury nullification to courthouse visitors; the case was later dismissed by a federal judge.”
Pages 5
Well, this sucks.
This sucks too.
Problems with ObamaCare
Quite apart from the wisdom of interfering with great swaths of the economy to create new entitlements, there is the practical matter of making it work. And that’s proving to be a problem for people working on the Obamacare web site at HealthCare.gov:
The better way to do things is a school of software development called Agile — it’s been around since the 1950s, was basically codified in the early 2000s, now has a whole non-profit devoted to it, and is the dominant form of software design in teams. Rather than moving from one static stage to the next, it emphasizes constant iteration and testing, with prototypes building on prototypes so the endpoint is something that works. The only problem, from a government perspective, is that you need to be comfortable with not knowing exactly that they will look like.
Yes. Just because a type of software development got us to the moon (back when 1K of RAM was a lot) doesn’t mean it’s the right approach to use in the 1990s. Or especially the 2010’s.
That’s one lesson from software development. Here are some others:
1) avoid building centralized systems. The mainframe has given way to minicomputers and PCs then a client-server world and now a web of devices, browsers, and various types of service providers. Web 2.0, baby.
Where does a centralized “Five Year Plan” approach to governing fit in a world of decentralized independent actors?
2) have the right type of abstraction. A spinning metal disk has nothing in common with a USB stick nor with an internet connection, but I can save a file on any one of them with the same program. That’s because there is an abstraction called a file system, and my word processor doesn’t really care what the hardware looks like: it can be silicon, magnetic disks, or something in the cloud. Software drivers for each type of hardware present a common interface that makes them all look the same to the word processor.
A centralized approach to governing doesn’t permit there to be appropriate abstractions. A mix of federal, state, and local governments, with large and small commercial and nonprofit organizations, allows you to have abstraction. Each one does what it needs to do and only that.