Disqus - Latest Comments for PaulDing

Re: Let’s Talk Lost 5.03 “Jughead”

Knownhuman — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:30:14 -0000

You got me on most of those. I knew the word origin. I've never read L'Amour as I'm not typically a fan of the romanticized ideas of the west, and I only knew of Gopher tangentially.

Re: Let’s Talk Lost 5.03 “Jughead”

PaulDing — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 18:23:14 -0000

I'm not sure if thinking as Jughead as a comic character really dates you. Forsythe Pendleton "Jughead" Jones III first appeared in Archie comics about 1941, and they're still publishing them, aren't they?

In the 1920s, "jughead" was a fairly common insult for a stupid or foolish person. In one of the Louis L'Amour novels, set in the 1800s, there's a character who refers to his jughead horse, although I was never sure whether he was referring to a physical characteristic or the horse's addle-pated behavior.

And, of course, to SOME of us, Jughead is a tool for Gopher administrators. THAT probably would date you. Gopher threatened to become a popular internet protocol but was cut off at the pass by HTTP. Most web browsers understand the Gopher protocol.

Re: On Genre – Confessions of a Fantasy Nerd

PaulDing — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:44:57 -0000

Perhaps the biggest benefit of adhering to a niche is that it helps you focus.

Yes, there are marketing consequences. A niche makes it easier to get noticed within that niche, at the same time that it makes it difficult to escape the niche. If Janet Daily were to write science fiction, or a hardboiled detective novel, or (heaven forbid) a mainstream novel, the first impression that critics, booksellers, and the general reading audience is going to have as, "oh - but she's just a romance novelist, so how can it be any good?" Anne Rice's "Sleeping Beauty" novels are rather good porn, yet she's not recognized for her accomplishments, because everybody thinks of Anne Rice in terms of vampire stories.

Never the less, the odds of making it in mainstream fiction are abysmal, while a good writer can quickly obtain recognition, and perhaps even make a living in a niche fiction. I surely wouldn't sneeze at what Louis L'Amour, Tom Clancey, and John Grisham have achieved in their niches.

Re: It’s In the Cards

Harl Delos — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:04:02 -0000

The average order for business cards is 1000. On average, about 50 are used before the information on them becomes obsolete.

Never the less, they serve a vital function in business. When someone is trying to sell you something, you cut off their spiel, asking them if they have a business card. When they hand you the card, you say "Thanks. We'll be in touch if we have a need" and show the salesman out.

I'm told the recipient is more likely to use a business card to pick his teeth than for any other purpose.

People who sell cars and homes tend to have really gaudy business cards. They want to stand out. It may be just my impression, but I think the salesmen with gaudier cards are the ones who think they're supposed to make you buy, and the ones with plainer cards figure their job is to help you buy.

Re: Proposition 8 - It’s Not Exactly Cut and Dry

Sidney — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:56:44 -0000

I always find it funny when one christian group clings to the 1st Amendment and their rights but then denigrates other religions rights.

Re: Proposition 8 - It’s Not Exactly Cut and Dry

PaulDing — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:03:44 -0000

"At the same time, my religion teaches me “that God has commanded that the sacred powers of procreation are to be employed only between man and woman, lawfully wedded as husband and wife.”

If a homosexual couple promises not to procreate children, would it be OK with you if they form a family unit that is legally recognized?

In the 1960s, 37 states found it illegal for Sammy Davis, Jr. to marry his wife, and if they attempted to share a room when he was on tour, they were at risk of being arrested. What do you believe God's position to be on a marriage that's 26% lawful, 74% unlawful?

I believe that marriage is a religious rite, and that government should not recognize it at all. I don't expect all to agree, or perhaps any to agree, but I would eliminate the joint income tax return, would allow any group of two or more adults to form a community of property, and would register an adult's paternity of a child, granting both paternal rights and responsibilities, with any evidence of parentage (which could either be DNA evidence, or sworn statement of acknowledged parent.)

Note that this would allow for a child to have 15 people claiming to be the parents, but the more love a kid has, the better off the kid is, right?

We have an unfortunate example on this page of what happens children have inadequate parenting.

From the standpoint of a mainline protestant, it's pretty clear that LDS fully qualifies as a religion. The LDS professes to be Christian, and only the churl would argue that point. A "cult"? That term is normally reserved for a false religion. I just talked with God, and am assured that most adherents to LDS are sincere, same as other recognized religions.

All of us seem to have some hatred in them, but when one can't keep it from spewing, it suggests that they are being overwhelmed. Such individuals may be unpleasant, but they deserve our sympathy, and need our prayers.

Re: What if our political process became conscious? (Scripting News)

Reign — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 09:06:30 -0000

Good response. Thank you. I like that

Re: This Utah Texan’s Voting for Obama

PaulDing — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:11:59 -0000

Allow?

If your daughter is old enough to become pregnant, it's not a matter of you allowing her to make that decision. It's a matter of her allowing you to express an opinion in the matter.

If you've done a good job of parenting, she will turn to you for your opinion and approval, of course, but thinking in terms of what we will "allow" our children to do is counterproductive. Think in terms of encouragement and support. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. The best we can do is to salt the oats....

(And isn't "don't mess with Texas" an anti-litter campaign?)

Re: Gawker Should See Consequences For The Palin Email Post

PaulDing — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:54:36 -0000

If you trespass on someone's yard, it doesn't matter if they have an 80-acre yard, or a postage stamp, it's illegal.

Online, though, there are "protected" computers and there is the vast majority. Access of a "protected" computer that exceeds your authority is a violation of federal law. If you trespass most computers, though, it's not.

What makes one computer "protected" and another not? It's the amount of interstate commerce that occurs on that computer. That's not exactly how it's defined, but that's the gist of it.

Email is incredibly insecure. If you do a traceroute to a server, it probably passes through 10-12 routers, and between two servers, mail typically passes through 6-8 routers. Routers are simply computers running a special program. Every router can grab the contents of email that it handles; every router can grab email passwords, too, because they are normally passed in plaintext. That's why people are constantly advised NOT to send ecommerce information such as credit card numbers, etc., in email.

And that's why email servers are going to fall in the category of "unprotected" computers, under federal law. Now, if this had been her gubernatorial email account on state computers, rather than the personal accounts she uses to mail pics to Mama Heath, it might well be a "protected" computer, because it'd probably be used for other purposes than just mail.

Should it be that way? No. I think every computer online should be "protected".

And although federal law only protects privacy if you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, which doesn't exist with email, I think the person who did this is incredibly rude. I wouldn't want anyone rummaging through my email any more than I'd want someone rummaging through my underwear drawer. Nothing to be ashamed of in either place, but it's still personal.

I don't think anyone used a password-snatcher, though. I'll bet that it was an easily-guessed password, sometime like Heath61 or trigmama or moosehunter or prolife. It's time that the GOP leadership take Governor Palin aside and give them a kindergarten-level computer-education class, so that they know how to keep themselves safe. And it wouldn't hurt to do the same with Senator McCain, either; he may have invented the Blackberry, but that doesn't mean he practices safe computing. After all, these people need to be able to safeguard state secrets!

Re: Does Making Money With Your Blog Make It Not a Blog Anymore?

PaulDing — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:02:50 -0000

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money." - Samuel Johnson

Re: Fairness Doctrine Apply To Bloggers?

PaulDing — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:20:15 -0000

The "Fairness Doctrine" is imposed on those who have A MONOPOLY to broadcast using PUBLIC AIRWAVES.

It has NEVER applied to print publications, even though they may be distributed through the US Mail, because there is no limit to the number of different publications that may use the US Mail for distribution.

It has never applied to the telephone company, even though they have a monopoly on that utility, because the telephone company is not a content provider.

Because a cable system is distributed on wires that utilize public right-of-way, and because they are acting as a content provider, it is reasonable that they be required to obey the fairness doctrine.

If they provide TCP/IP connectivity allowing for multiple ISPs to provide services such as DNS, POP3, SMTP, then there's no reason their internet service should be required to meet the fairness doctrine. If they provide a bundled service including not just connectivity but services such as the protocols mentioned, then they can reasonably be required to meet the fairness doctrine.

The fairness doctrine is NOT a "colossally bad idea". They are a "patch" that ameliorates the damage wrought when public monopolies are created and allowed to persist. A far better idea than the fairness doctrine, of course, would separate the TCP/IP connectivity function and the content-provider function, so that monopolies aren't in a position to allow or disallow any particular content, and so that content-providers are not allowed a monopoly on connectivity.

Re: Using Ad Blockers: Is It Stealing?

PaulDing — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 00:21:19 -0000

David, you said:
"Using an ad blocker might be advantageous for the end user, but keep in mind that you are basically using the fruits of somebody’s else’s labor while going out of your way to make sure they see nothing in return. In the dictionary, that’s the definition of stealing. Look it up if you don’t believe me."

If the definition of stealing wasn't relevant, why did you challenge your readers to look it up? I took you up on your challenge, and I looked it up. I don't believe it's stealing in ANY state to refuse to waste your time, waiting for images you don't want to download.

A few years ago, presidential candidate Gary Hart issued a challenge to the press, saying "Follow me around. I don't care. I'm serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They'll be very bored." So they followed him around, and sure enough, they found out that he was engaged in monkey business with Donna Rice aboard a boat named the Monkey Business.

I don't have time to make every mistake myself - I have to learn from the mistakes of others. Apparently, you expect to live a few more centuries than I expect to live.... But if you issue a challenge, you should expect that SOMEBODY may take you up on it.

Re: Using Ad Blockers: Is It Stealing?

drisley — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:05:48 -0000

I fail to see how the legal definition of theft in the state of Ohio is really relevant to the discussion.

And, yes, any ad that messes with the user's computer is VERY bad and unacceptable. But, that does not constitute the majority of banner ads you see on the Internet. Most ads are simply JPEG images.

Re: Using Ad Blockers: Is It Stealing?

Harl Delos — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:01:40 -0000

Maybe YOU ought to look up the definition of stealing. It says "given to or characterized by theft" in the Random House Unabridged Dictionary.

In Ohio, theft occurs when a person, with purpose to deprive the owner of property or services, knowingly obtains or exerts control over either the property or services in any of the following ways through deception, threat, or intimidation.

I don't see any deception.
I don't see any threat.
I don't see any intimidation.

The bottom line? You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink; you need to salt the oats. I fast-forward through some ads on television; others, I back up and play a second time.

And I don't have any problem with you putting unblockable ads on your pages. What I DO object to is Internet Solutions, popping up a window on my screen when I do a WHOIS that gives a "not a recognized protocol" message, and every time I try to close it, up pops another window with the same message, That's taking control of my computer beyond authorization, which would be a federal crime if I did it to them....

Re: MonsterCable.com Oblivious to SEO

jessestay — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:28:05 -0000

Does SeaMonkey check Google for the malware? That's all Firefox 3 is
checking, which is why it's blocked. The odd thing is that according to
Google, this has been happening for months and Monster cable hasn't noticed
at all.

Re: MonsterCable.com Oblivious to SEO

Harl Delos — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 02:20:57 -0000

When I ran a hosting company, I had customers whose sites had similar problems. In all cases, users had uploaded malware scripts embedded in comments, to bulletin boards, or blogs. When they found those posts and removed them, and asked Google to re-spider their site, the warnings disappeared.

The newest (1.1.10) version of SeaMonkey, which is the full-suite flavor ot the Mozilla browser, doesn't seem to have any problem at MonsterCable.com It's actually a little newer than Foxfire 3....

Re: Barack Obama for President (Scripting News)

Sue Taylor — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 13:23:13 -0000

Huh??? Who are you kidding? Obama is part of a racist church and has a background
(however down-played) in Islam. It's now policitically incorrect to state the obvious. Oprah,
who supported the Clintons, now supports Obama. Come on now... No one can safely say
"It's a black thing" without sounding racist. But...... Read his church's statement of faith and
tell me who divides what. These people are all about division, they just don't come out with it.

Re: Northeast-style racism (Scripting News)

PaulDing — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:13:53 -0000

Dave, I'm not a Southern knocking the north; I'm a northerner who took a very long time learning. My assumption is that most don't know, but every individual will have his own reason for doing what he does.

It isn't my intention to start a flame war, and if you think the post was "just plain nasty", then you should remove it. It's your right, obviously, and some might even argue that being hospitable to your other guests here requires it.

My apologies to anyone I've "boxed into a defensive corner". I'm not sure who they would be, but that's probably because I haven't enough distance to see clearly.

Re: Northeast-style racism (Scripting News)

PaulDing — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:09:35 -0000

McCain has featured Bridget in his campaign literature, pointing out to evangelicals that his support for adoption isn't just talk. When it's time for the convention, and he accepts the nomination, it's reasonable for him to be hugged by his wife and daughter - which should put him in fairly good position with those who are concerned about race relations. Now, all he needs to do is to select a woman as a running mate - and Meg Whitman has just joined his campaign.

Mitt Romney tells people that he's a businessman, but most people have no idea what business he was in, even after they hear the name of the business. Everybody's heard of eBay, though. Nobody will claim she's just a token; eBay grew rapidly under her leadership. Because she doesn't come from the world of politics, she doesn't have a history of known positions on a lot of a whole raft of issues, so there would be fewer potential skeletons in the closet to be discovered. And while eBay is full of scammers, the general public generally has a favorable opinion of eBay.

It helps consolidate the GOP base, and erodes the Democratic base.

There's a 25% probability that any vice-president will end up in the oval office, and given John McCain's age, the odds are even higher. I really, really, really don't want Meg Whitman running the US. I'd even prefer Carly Fiorino to Meg Whitman. But I'd sure rather have Meg than Hillary.

Re: Northeast-style racism (Scripting News)

dave — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:00:15 -0000

paul, you're so smart and write so well, but this is just plain nasty and where I stopped reading: "a fact that most northern white liberals either don't know or choose to ignore"

You want to make broad general statements that box people into defensive corners (ie flamebait) do it in your own space. Next time you do it here I'll moderate it out.

Re: Northeast-style racism (Scripting News)

PaulDing — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 09:40:21 -0000

You're not ignorant of the situation because you're European; many people in the US, perhaps most, are unaware of this.

Face it: the north didn't want to end slavery because they gave a damn about the slaves. They just wanted an end to competition that (they thought) had an economic advantage over them because slave labor was cheap. In fact, slave labor *isn't* cheap. For the most part, the slave owners provided pretty crappy living conditions, but the folks that worked as "wage slaves" in the north couldn't afford much better. What's more, the northern businesses could lay off workers in downturns, while a slaveowner's costs continue. If a worker in the north breaks a leg, he is on his own; a slaveowner can't afford to "discard" a slave for a disability that lasts several months. What's more, slaves don't worry about getting fired, so they are not very productive. (Yes, you can beat them, but do you think *injuring* workers improves productivity?) So it's not clear that there's much economic advantage to owning slaves over having "wage slaves". There may not be any advantage at all. But the north thought there was.

And when Lincoln freed the slaves, that sucked capital out of the southern economy, just like the collapse of the housing market is doing right now to most of the US. Oh, well, that provided plenty of opportunity for northerners who weren't affected - and combined with the opening of the west (the transcontinental railroad, and the last of the indian massacres occurred about a decage after emancipation), it set the stage for economic good times in the north.

In fact, times were so good that by the end of the century, factory owners were starting to pay relatively high wages. The fact was, you have to pay more if workers avoid your jobs because they are dangerous or unpleasant, to attract enough workers - and that's what factory owners ended up doing. They even started building housing near their factories, and rented it cheaply to their workers. If you lost your job for any reason, you had to find a new home as well as a new job, so it was a smart move for factory owners.

So in the first decade or two of the 20th century, many slaves moved north to accept what looked like high-paying factory jobs. This was a disruptive force in the economy, and the people they competed with for jobs really resented it, unlike in the South, where they were an established presence. This was a really nasty period, apparently, for the US; we pretty much closed our borders to immigrants at that time. People complain about illegal immigrants today, but the US only allowed 5000 Mexicans to legally immigrate last year, so it's not like the Mexicans coming in are simply ignoring the law; we refuse to let them follow it. And even if all the illegal immigrants were legal, we wouldn't have half the rate of immigration that we had in 1900.

So while racial *discrimination* may have existed in the South, but racial *hatred* was - and apparently is - far more acute in the north, a fact that most northern white liberals either don't know or choose to ignore. The Ku Klux Klan was born in Indiana. There was a lynching of three black men in Indiana in 1940, which was one of the last racially-motivated lynchings until the civil rights marches of the 1960s, when northerner activists went down south as if that's where the real problem lie. The worst race riots of the 1960s were in Detroit; it's still a hollow city that's never recovered, forty years later. Governor George Wallace may have stood in the door of the university to prevent integration, but in Boston, they blew up school busses.

In rural NW Ohio, there was the Great Black Swamp - and I don't know if they made good on the "mule" part of "forty acres and a mule", but the forty acres in many cases came out of the Black Swamp. Because of that, the first settlers were black, and because the blacks didn't disrupt the local economy, having been there first, there's a relative lack of hatred. They never needed to integrate the schools in the 1960s; they were integrated from the start, because it was cheaper, and nobody objected. But most blacks in the north live in cities, not in rural areas. Indianapolis is 25.5% black, while rural Whitley county is 0.2% black - that's about 65 people in a county of 32,556.

And yeah, I thought it was crazy when I was in college, and kids from southern states, both black and white, said that race relations were much better in the south than in the north, but over the decades, I've learned that they weren't just blowing smoke up my, uh, perspective.

Re: Hillary for Republican Veep? (Scripting News)

Dave — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 12:53:07 -0000

You are obviously naive about the political reality of Pennsylvania. Obama may close the the gap some, but as I write this the polls have Clinton at 58% and Obama at 36%. (March 16, 2008)

Surrogates on both sides are increasingly getting off message - and are leaving "official" posts within both campaigns. I personally think that the acrimony within the Democratic party is a good thing. It is better to vet the issues and candidates now - instead of the short 2-3 months run-up to the general election in November.

Geraldine Farraro's comments (although inappropriate) seem tame when compared to Obama's minister's sermons and comments.

View for yourself ... http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/ March 14 "Obama minister under scrutiny".

Barrack Obama is black - and Hillary Clinton is a woman. Both these facts will have "some" effect in the primaries and the general election. We have come a long way, but as a nation and society we are certainly not beyond the issues of race and gender yet. We still have a ways to go. Both these candidates inspire me - and either will win handily in November. The Republican's only hope is a dramatic turn around in the economy this summer - which seems highly unlikely.

Re: Twitter is not a chatroom (Scripting News)

PaulDing — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 23:26:48 -0000

Dave, even *with* a decent summary, podcasts aren't worth much. I can read words a lot faster than I can listen to you talk, I can click the "print" button on text to share a post with my wife who is at the supermarket at the minute, and I can read text while I listen to Leonard Cohen or take a phone call.

I like the recordings of the conference calls you post, because the inflection of voices is often quite valuable, and if someone had a music review blog, I can see how intermixing sounds with words would be useful, but as a rule, podcasting is convenient for the one person who is podcasting, and an incredible pain to the (presumably many) people he is trying to reach.

You, of course, will do whatever you see fit to do, and your followers will, of course, do whatever they see fit to do, but every blogger is trying to sell something, even if it's just persuading someone that the blogger's 2-year-old is incredibly cute. And the customer *isn't* always right, but the customer is always the customer - until he walks away from a half-full shopping cart.

Re: Links for 03/11/2008 (Scripting News)

PaulDing — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 07:29:08 -0000

Actually, the part where she says didn't really mean it, that she was a hired whore for Faux News was pretty good, too - but how does that explain the identical bit of racism against 20 years ago against Jesse Jackson?

I'd be totally classless in responding to this, if I were on Obama's team. It'd be counterproductive, but I have little self-restraint. "Lawsy, lawsy, Miz Ferrahha, I didn'st mean to be so uppity, I promises to be good if yo offers me a crumb, maybe drive yo car fo yuz?"

In Michigan, McCain alone had the courage to tell audiences "the old jobs are not coming back' - which was no surprise to the folks of the LP - because the democrats didn't have a primary there, only a beauty contest with Hillary as the only contestant.

In Ohio, Obama wasn't saying he was against the idea of NAFTA, he was saying it was poorly crafted. Pollution crosses borders, and it doesn't make sense to allow Ford to avoid the cost of pollution control if they build their factory south of the river in Windsor instead of north of the river in Detroit. Especially now that it's incredibly difficult for Detroiters to work south of the border. Before Dubya, it was pretty easy to commute to Canada.

McCain's appeal is that he's a stand-up guy who makes his own decisions instead of falling into line. He still thinks it's an us-versus-them world, though, and still thinks that there's an enemy behind every rock. If he grew up 50 years later - hell, he's a bright guy, make that 25 years later - he would see that trade makes us all richer, and that it's a lot smarter to have customers than it is to have enemies.

Senator Clinton's a hawk, too, but not because she's afraid. She likes beating up her enemies. It's sorta like the American Legion was always more hawkish than the VFW. Politicians who actually have been involved in shooting wars are generally less eager to get involved in war than those who spent the war in the Texas Air Guard, and then skipping out early because they got bored with it all.

Re: Interview with Scoble (Scripting News)

PaulDing — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 22:58:37 -0000

> First, I'm a little offended (not by you, but in general) by the term "mob" used an adjective to describe the collective response of those in the audience.

A mob isn't an adjective, it's a collective noun. It's a herd of bison, a lodge of beavers, a flight of butterflies, a murder of crows, a charm of finches, a gaggle of geese, a wisp of larks, a tiding of magpies, a school of fish, a pod of whales, a bevy of rabbits, a drey of squirrels, a sounder of swine, a rafter of turkeys, a phalanx of storks, and a mob, yes a mob, of kangaroos.

Would you prefer that he refer to the group as a wisp, a tiding, o r a murder? The word mob has gained some use other than with kangaroos because it connotates unruliness. Can you imagine a mob of kangaroos all jumping around?

I wasn't there, and I haven't read much about that assemblage, but "mob" seems to be a perfectly appropriate collective noun, from the little I've gathered. (If Dave actually intended it to be a slur, please accept my Emily Litella "never mind" apology.)