I don't actually have anything to say. Kathleen is due any day, and I'm looking forward to a few weeks of staying home, getting poor sleep, and changing diapers.
But mostly I'm testing to see if journal saving works properly.

Anyone have any preferences for a b/g/n router? I'd like one so that I can put my nice, modern Apple stuff on the N side of things, and the shitty, legacy crap over on the b/g side. Already have an older Time Capsule that isn't full, so I'm not going that route. (Oh, and I'll probably not give my brother access to the N, cause he pisses me off too much).

Thinking to bridge the connection from that to the Time Capsule, and let the Time Capsule handle the rest of it.

I don't care about off the wall firmware. That doesn't interest me in any way, shape or form. Unless I have to deal with that kind of malarkey to get either my Time Capsule or my tons of BT stuff to work nicely.

First, read my comment, now look around at the other comments.

This is what happened:
* The guv'mint hands over development of this service to private parties.
* Those private parties rip off the guv'mint, it's extremely wasteful.
* People at a public institution (part of the guv'mint) pointed out that this could've been done way cheaper, by the guv'mint without private parties involvement.

  This is what everyone says which gets modded as insightful:
* The guv'mint is wasteful!
* We should let private parties handle stuff instead, they're more efficient.

  You have a large group of people who are so blinded by their "Capitalist" ideology that even events *directly contrary* to their thesis are interpreted as validation of it, instead. This would be like saying that the fall of the Soviet Union proved the soundness of state socialism - which even advocates of state socialism do not say! It's off the end of the crazy spectrum.

We've made some significant updates to the submission/journal system. Visiting Submissions and Journals yields a new form that allows stuff like tags to the data types. There are a number of annoying bugs, but for the most part the dust is starting to settle. More notes will be coming, but this journal entry is really just me putting the final test on the new Journal form.

I've lurked at /. without posting for ages, mostly because I just don't have the time to interact like I used to.

But I've been clicking through the old RSS feed more and more lately, and when I saw the PAX Plague thread today, I came over to comment, since I'm kind of affected by the whole damn thing. I thought I'd take a look around since I haven't been here in awhile, and I saw that there are freaking ACHIEVEMENTS associated with our accounts. It's silly, and I'm sure it's been here forever, but I thought it was awesome and I was delighted when I read it.

I didn't realize how much I missed Slashdot until I spent some time here today, and I bet that anyone who joined in the last 2 years doesn't even give a shit about my stupid comments or anything, but it felt good to come back here, and feel safely among my people again.

Modpoints for sale. If you have a good one tomorrow (TT) that isn't getting the love, let me know.

Okay, let's briefly review how the whole AIG thing blew up. When fire-breathing right wingers started talking about it, the major news media noticed, and it becamse a real political liability. So getting mention only on dailykos (or elsewhere on "our side") is not sufficient to achieve something here.

  This means there are *two* benefits to having Dems in power - the filthy pachyderms have it together to function as an opposition, at least some of the time. So how do we get them to do it, in this case?

  The Obama administration's sec. of education is Arne Duncan. Eli Broad (a "philanthropist") has been going around bragging about how he now controls the department of education. I have all kinds of left-wing-flavored objections to "public-private partnerships" (including stuff like privatized prisons,) but let's start here: "crooked self dealing" is not popular, so the crooked and corrupt rebranded their policies as public-private partnerships or as venture philanthropy. My Mom goes into it in some detail: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/3/20/710776/-Who-is-Running-Our-Schools

  Republicans have been, historically, as bad or worse than the Dems on this - but I don't care! *I* just want the system cleaned up, I want these scum thrown out. If this means that the Republicans can score political points, fine - better that than tolerating people like Arne Duncan.

  A lot of the more libertarian wing of Republicans, with whom I ordinarily have more in common, like privatization or market-incentive based systems for delivering public services. I think it's crazy for a dozen reasons, but I don't want to get into that: there's pretty well universal agreement that outright corruption, that business and other ties between those who actually get the public money and those in government, are not acceptable. That's what we have here.

  So, do any of my fellow slashdotters have any advice on how to get the right wing blogosphere (pudge specifically for all I care) to notice this as an issue and take it up? The whole thing could be a major embarassment for Obama, which it damn well should be. OTOH, it's a family of policies that Republicans have historically supported, so does this have a chance of changing those? Any way we can add provisions requiring transparency and accountability (not of the teachers, but of the *people who actually get the money*) to the education stimulus?

  I can also discuss the underlying issue of government-services privitization, if anyone wants.

First of all, I don't want this published to the frontpage...
Having said that, I have a quick question. I'm a Java guy that manages a few younger java guys. I have been asked to tech a .net guy that (according to his resume) has managed over 30 developers. How do I tech a guy like that? Do I just stick with OO/patterns questions? I know how to tech a java guy, but one that has more experience than me is a daunting task...

WTF am I supposed to do with 15 mod points? I have enough trouble spending 5, chrissakes.

  Anyway, I regard down-modding this as mod-abuse:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1079987&cid=26322341

  He's expressing a (clearly unpopular) opinion with which I disagree. I'd certainly up-mod the person arguing with him. But is this flamebait because most people disagree with it? He seems sincere to me.

  Later on he could legitimately be called a troll since he starts insulting people.

fyi - can't multiply cause of work, so I've become a twitter man... that's where I do my updating... if you twitter, my id is my last name...

I know that I've put together something good when people mod me underrated.

Not only do I have excellent Karma, but it seems that /. revived my previously deleted journals.

Assume with me, at least for the moment, that it is possible to build a just society through gradual progressive initiatives, rather than through revolution, and that enough cultural progress has been made that increases in democracy will translate into increases in social justice. Also, let us accept what I'll call the populist democratic thesis - regardless of leadership, even overtly democratic institutions will only function in a democratic way under orchestrated popular pressure.

  Given these assumptions, what should our policy priorities be?

Point 000504: (that's the inverse of 1984) This contrasts notably "worse is better" doctrine promulgated by certain types of revolutionary Trotskyist. In reference to the policies of the Party in 1984, which used general economic strangulation to keep the population quiescent and disorganized. Policies which will increase employment and economic growth, stimulate demand, and generally improve the economic situation of the populace tend to provide ordinary people with the time and energy they need to organize.

Democracy and Education: Republicans generally, and the Bush administration in particular, have orchestrated a major attack on the system of public education. In addition to defending this institution and reversing most of NCLB, we need to reduce class sizes and cycle younger teachers into the system. In addition to the economic benefits, John Dewey (in Democracy and Education) generally held that certain educational practices (diametrically opposed to those promoted by NCLB) can be radicalizing - with younger (and, socially at least, more liberal) teachers, motivated teachers with the resources and training to improve their students welfare, it will be. It's very nice that Obama *talks* about such a program, but: talk is cheap.

The Employee Free Choice Act: Labor unions are a major vehicle for reform, and, especially in the post-Reagan American political realignment, a platform to build longterm, broad based vehicles for coordinated popular action. The Reagan, Bush II (and to an extent, Clinton) administrations gutted union organizer protections in executive ways that will be difficult for Obama to reverse (assuming he even tries to do so - unfortunately not a given.) The employee free choice act would largely circumvent these, and effectively restore the right to form a union in this country. And now a brief plug: my aunt, who is a major supporter of the Employee Free Choice Act, is possibly-about to engage in a series of legal battles with her Republican opponent in US House OH-15. She's down by ~150 votes, but 2 years ago she gained 1,500 votes when the provisional ballots were counted, so when that happens, we expect her to take the lead, but the Repubs are trying to block the secretary of state from counting the ballots. Given that the employee free choice act is going to be a major battle, you should give her some money: http://www.actblue.com/page/kilroycountsvotes

  What are our other progressive priorities?

  We might also discuss Obama himself (who I think is more progressive than some of his rhetoric would indicate - but this doesn't matter) and the means by which activists can best exert pressure on their elected officials to execute a progressive agenda.

Pudge made a cool change in discussions- if you link to a comment deep inside a thread and click 'More' the sytem is much more intelligent about crawling down and retrieving children, and then parents and grandparents and so forth up the ancestry. So odds are you'll get more related comments sooner.

We now abbreviate journals in the firehose... so they are more like slashdot stories with a Read More link to the full text.

The big user facing change this week was structural: historically we had 2 different "skeletons" on Slashdot, but with this refresh we unified to a single one. This change simplifies maintenance for us quite a bit (maintaining the idle section and the firehose views of the same data was a royal pain).

You also will see some changes to the firehose.pl layout. We're playing with the tab layout a bit, moving some menus around and better integrating the core functions into the site chrome. It's a bit buggy atm, so feel free to email me if you see something wonky. We're extinguishing a few minor brush fires but there's no forest fires that we're aware of.

Zach knows the wind now. I saw him look at the window and see the leaves rustle. He then started making blowing noises. We blow the mobile over his crib whenever we change his diaper, so he knows the blowing noises move objects. But he's translated that to leaves hundreds of feet away through a window. Now I'm not saying he's a genius, but he's pretty awesome.