Good comments.

> As some have already pointed out here, blogs do still rely on the
> professional journalism that comes out of newspapers and television
> networks. Amateurs can't hope to have the access or clout that
> professional organizations do, and locally we can't sit around
> and hope that someone in the community will make it to every city
> council meeting and write it up. If you've got a local journalism
> buff who likes to blog and has the time, great. If you don't, you
> need to get someone to do it, and that means paying them.

All true, but...

One problem is that many newspapers and television stations have
stopped doing professional journalism. I agree that the work
you're talking about is important; but in many markets the
media no longer bother covering council meetings or other "non-
sexy" stories.

They rely on the official record and just report on it if
someone starts a fight or something.

A few reasons several major stories were broken by amateurs
on the web in the last few years is because (a) the news
organizations are jettisoning investigative and reporting
staff in favor of "on-air personalities" and (b) they're
getting a little too cozy with the powers that be in some
very ugly areas.

During a lot of recent violent protests, the big media outlets
had people on the scene...from whom no reports were filed,
because they complied with official order to stay confined
to their hotels. The reports came in from Twitter and other
web outlets.

And the same thing holds true in the Western nations, where
they don't ask tough questions or report on abuses because
they need to protect the press passes and the sanctioned
relationships that generate revenue streams.

> If advertising doesn't work then journalism needs new
> revenue streams. Non-profits are one idea if they can get
> enough grants and donations and whatnot.

Excellent point; NPR has been covering a lot of important
stories in far greater depth than either the other radio,
television, and print news outlets the last several years.

> A government service like the BBC and CBC is also an idea,
> but probably won't go over very well in America.

Hard to say. It does feel like a relationship that can be
abused much to easily.

> But I think journalism is very important to this country,
> as important as health care and sanitation and all the
> rest, and something will have to be done.

Agreed; I just like to point out that, contrary to what big
media likes to pretend:

    newspapers != journalism
    news programming != journalism
    bigger budgets != better journalism

Journalism is defined by what you do, not the official
credentials or the official offices or the official press
passes. And a lot of the media outlets killed journalism
in their organizations years ago as an unprofitable
expense that distracts from the business of publication.

> ...women most dislike about geeks is their lack of personal style/confidence

Confidence and style; also breadth and depth.

The grandparent suggested a motorcycle, but that's just one way to appear confident. Become competent in a few areas outside computer tech; learn and practice things that will give you confidence about your abilities.

Martial arts is one; as you progress, it naturally gives you more confidence. But so does softball and playing a musical instrument. Pick something(s) non-geeky. Try several to find out what you like.

If you are weak in conversational skills, spend time learning and practicing them. Don't overlook Dale Carnegie's books.

Also shift enough of your focus away from tech to be able to converse in some depth about subjects that appeal to non-geeks. That's the depth part.

Don't substitute one obsession for another. Be able to discuss a number of subjects in fair depth. That's the breadth part.

As you acquire greater conversational skills, you learn how to listen and learn from the conversations. You learn how to participate in discussions about subjects you don't know a lot about, because you demonstrate that you are willing and able to listen and learn.

As far as style, avoid the temptation to shortcut by adopting someone else's style; don't just copy someone. Learn a bit about what works for you, and what you're comfortable with.

A portly 5'6" man won't look good in the same style as a lean 6 footer, and he wont look good in the same styles as a 300 pound body-builder.

If you adopt suits and ties but aren't comfortable in them, it shows. Being comfortable, in clothes and situations, is part of being confident.

Good tips, but a few comments:

> 1.Set your send format to Plain Text other rational humans will thank you.

In some cases, "rational" might be strectching it. The IT staff recently spent the better of a full -day- twiddling our signature files. The -content- met corporate standards completely. We got critical emails saying the spacing was off, the fonts were wrong... nitpicky little b.s., down to the level of, "you have a 12 point gap between these two lines, it's supposed to be 9 points..."

> 2.Don't use word as your mail editor.

I agree, but I'm the only one in the company, I think.

> 3.This is optional but good for your own security, set the message display type to clear text.

Same as #1. Nitpicky formatting orders and rules. I would have to spend a ridiculous amount of time explaining to people why the formatting changed...

grin ;>

Yeah; right now at work, I often need to put SQL queries copied from the query window in SQL Server into an Outlook mail message; but Outlook doesn't support "Paste As..." so I get horrendously formatted RTF.

I keep a cygwin bash terminal open anyway, so I type:

    getclip | putclip

and then paste into Outlook.

Stupid Windows tricks; gotta love 'em!

> Young people need to be able to do stupid things
> within a context of safety and forgetting in order to
> learn about themselves and the world.

I have problem with this statement: which stupid things and what context of safety?

This was a burglary. What about rape? What about felonious assault resulting in permanent damage? What about repeated drunk driving convictions?

Some parents have let underage kids drink at home becuase it's "safer". Sometimes that has backfired, resulting in fatalities. What is the "safety" part of being in a school environment, which I would argue is far less safe than a parental home environment?

> If someone's every action will be on record for the
> rest of their life, then they will feel unnecessary
> pressure to stay neatly within the lines and remain
> naive and unworldly for fear of the consequences.

That's an interesting assertion; I would want to see actual analysis of real-world data before I accept it as a proposition. But just to look at one point:

> If someone's every action will be on record for the
> rest of their life....

I would agree that not everyone's every action should be on record for the rest of their lives, but the truth is, long before public databases and the internet, people's actions tend to be remembered if they are embarassing or illegal or unethical. You've never been able to pick and choose which parts of the public memory are preserved.

Anyone who in their forties and fifties is still called by a childhood nickname, or introduced to new people by their friends as "the guy I told you about, who got drunk and stripped naked in the quad, and we duct taped him to the statue of Thomas Jefferson" will understand what I mean.

> It would stifle their creativity, their adventurousness,
> and consequently their outlook on the world and everything
> affected by that.

I would suggest that neither "creativity", nor "adventurousness" is a universal good nor a universal bad. Some killers, rapists, assorted psychopaths sociopaths and assholes (the guys who created Enron, Bernie Madoff, the guys running AIG) are very creative. Any number of brutal criminals are adventurous. Those are not necessarily good things.

I would agree that creativity and adventurousness should be encouraged, within certain educational and parenting contexts. And even some business contexts.

But I would argue that indescrimate petty crimes (and serious crimes), drug and alcohol binging, and casual sex are not desirable nor should they be in these contexts.

(Got my asbestos shorts on...)

Exactly; this is their moment to shine. They've been perfecting crippled operating systems for years. They have more experience than anyone in this area.

Primarily, I believe that is useful for sites that reset the password when you request it. Some do that and send you a new password, instead of looking it up. This is mostly if they encrypted it and discarded the original password. That way some random person is less likely to unset your password unexpectedly.

My bank uses similar logic, for an authorized computer designation. They track the computer I'm logged in from, and if I change computers, I have to click to email (or text message) a secondary key for that machine, to my previously registered email/cellphone.

I don't need to provide the secondary key if I'm logging in from the same computer as last time. But when I change computers, they invalidate the secondary key for the previous computer.

> ...here in Denmark, you get to blow on a mobile device, if it shows up as drunk you are taken
> to the hospital for a blood sample and only that blood sample will be used against you.
>
> Are only the mechanical readings being used in the US?

Note: IANAL. Typically, yes. There are a number of practical reasons for this, not the least of which is the difficulty is large cities of promptly transporting a drunk to a hospital, and getting the overworked staff to take a blood sample while the suspect is still intoxicated.

>> Can't it be assumed by virtue of the ads being placed
>> on the site to begin with that the owner wishes they be shown?

> I imagine it can be so assumed. And can it not also be assumed by virtue of Adblock Plus
> being loaded into a browser that the owner does not intend to grant that wish?

> I don't see the point of this at all. Adblock Plus asks me if I want it to display ads? Well... no.
> No I don't. That's why I installed Adblock Plus in the first place. The clue's in the name.
> My answer will be no, every single time. If it was ever going to be yes, I would have
> whitelisted the site myself already.

I think that's the main thing driving this; you whitelist, so do I, so do others. Most people don't bother, -unless- the site breaks. Some sites lose revenue because people overblock.

The real problems I have with this are [1] the popup (I prefer non-instrusive notifications), and [2] the fact that there is no distinguishing the sites that show -intrusive-animated-flashy-bogus-bullshit- and those that just want you to view relatively benign ads for relatively benign products.

And certain ad providers I -always- want to block, regardless of the site displaying them. Others I don't.

> You can name a file anything you want and its content based md5 will stay the same. Also, you can rename a
> jpeg to a .doc and the first 4 bits of the file will still reveal it as a jpeg. Every piece of modern
> forensics software is capable of doing the above, and most do them automatically.

It's a bit silly, but since Word docs are OLE Compound Documents, you could write a -very- simple vbScript macro what would create a Word doc with the same name, doc extension. Then the script could embed the mp3 in the doc, save and close, and delete the mp3.

It would take a while to run, but it would make the file a true Word doc and still leave the mp3 trivially recoverable.

I would expect it would have a good, if not certain chance to prevent detecting the signatures.

> The association between Jews and money lending was formed in medieval Europe, well
> after Islamic law was written. In medieval Europe, Jews were not allowed to own land,
> or into most of the professions that were protected by guilds, so they found other
> ways to make a living

IIRC, Catholics were in a similar position in Protestant nations and turned to the same ways of making a living.

Back people into a corner and they'll do what they feel they have to.

> Maybe developing software should require a license, or at least an independent review
> before it is released.

Independent review is not something that the "intellectual property" types would tolerate. Consider how hard voting machine makers, the firms working on DRM, and all those "enterprisey" app makers fight to -prevent- any review.

As far as licensing goes, my big objection is that as things stand now, the folks granting the licenses would be the same folks I mentioned above. The lawmakers requiring licensing won't talk to the professional bodies that actually have standards; they'll grab the guy who's a friend of a friend. Someone whose knowledge of code begins and ends with a course in Dartmouth BASIC a couple of decades ago.

You bring up some real problems; I don't have the solutions, but I don't think licensing is either.

> Because they need to plug you into said basic cable system anyway. They don't have the hardware
> to filter out their "basic" channels from any box with a live cable feed, so they just make it
> part of the basic connection.

It's more than that, though. One of the big driving factors for bundles is the licensing. Nickelodeon and MTV are owned by the same company. Since revenues are ad-driven, if you want the kid's programming on Nickelodeon, you get force-fed all the garbage on the several MTV channels.

Many of the other channels also involve licensing restrictions. I once listened to a former cable company exec discuss it; it's not (entirely) that the cable firms won't sell individual channels; a big part is that the content providers won't license the content that way, at ANY cost.

> So we should break up the large banks, and replace them with an untold number of smaller,
> local banks that each follow their own strategy ?

I didn't view the recommendation that way. I took it as meaning that radical experiments (like the experiments in home mortgage valuation that triggered the financial meltdown), should be performed by smaller, redundant entities. That would prevent experiments like this from taking down key "too big to fail" parts of the structure.

It would be okay for larger entities to experiment in this way, but only to the extent that they contain the risk to a small portion of the companies core business. Probably in one, smaller division.

Anyway, that's how I read it.

Shirley; as in "Shirley you jest"