As someone who manages a PEG channel -- I agree, the fees can be excessive, and they're just passed right through to the consumer, so it's effectively just a tax on those who buy fixed line video services.

However, they should be equal across all providers, so to not hit them all with it equally means that you're favoring one over another, and as these agreements typically span 10-15 years, odds are there's one out there that has it.

As for the free service -- our town doesn't force them to connect up any non-profits, only government buildings. It's possible that other towns do that, but again, this would just mean that you're favoring a given group over another. I'd much prefer to see free (even if low speed) wifi covering our downtown area than picking and choosing which non-profits get special access.

In larger libraries, there's often someone with the title of 'systems librarian. It might be the person who just configures the software packages that the library uses, but it's often someone with a bit of IT skills.

It might be an IT person who slowly picks up the librarian issues (and some will go and get a library degree if at an academic library), or it's a library person with a bit of IT skills.

If you're one of these people, and aren't already on the code4lib mailing list, I highly recommend it. (although be warned, occassionally threads get out of control).

You can also check the code4lib jobs board for what sort of skills libraries are looking for.

I know it sounds strange, but there are a lot of skills that overlap:

• trying to think about problems that might arise before they actually do
• making sure that the stuff planned can actually get done in a reasonable amount of time
• dealing with conflicting goals from different stakeholders
• doing research to teach yourself strange concepts in only a week or two

I wouldn't recommend it as a career, though. I did 6 months as a town commissioner (while working full time) before I needed to take some time off.

I currently work in IT attached to a science data archive.

Much of the software is written by the scientists themselves, who really should not be writing production code. (Sure, the scientists should spec it out ... but have someone who understands security & maintainability write the code ... so doesn't write C that generates Perl that then calls shell commands ... and wraps the whole thing in a csh script to run as a CGI)

I once saw this issue mitigated by keeping a cell that had the count of the non-number cells in the sum. If it wasn't zero, the cell was turned red, so you could easily see something was wrong.

They had a region of the spreadsheet dedicated to checks, which would all be colored either green or red, so you could easily glance at it and see if there were issues with the data entry.

... the important part is to pick the metric that you like:

First, we have our possible definitions of 'family farm' :

1. Farms operated by indvidual families
2. Farms owned by individual families
3. Farms owned or operated by individual families that produce agricultural products for sale
4. Farms owned or operated by individual families that aren't incorporated. (might be a death tax dodge, might be a huge corporatation that's tightly held)
5. Farms owned an operated by individual families that qualify as a 'small business'.
6. Farms under a given acerage.

And we can further modify what we're analyzing:

a. ...only those farms that produce agricultural products for sale.
b. ...only those farms that produce food.
c. ...only those farms that produce food intended for human consumption. (no sod or flower farms, feedstock for biodiesel)
d. ...only those farms that produce food that contributes to the human food chain. (so allow hay, alfalfa and animal feed if grown for cows, but if the cows are to be dog food).
e. ...only those farms that 'contribute meaningfully to the market'.

Then, we have our metric, selecting the definiton of 'family farm' that's most advantageous of what we're trying to show, comparing "family farms" to either "corporate farms" or to "all farms":

1. Percentage of the count "family farms"
2. Percentage of the acerage of "family farms" 3. Percentage of the acerage used for farming in a given year.
4. Percentage of the products produced by "family farms" (in tons)
5. Percentage of the products produced by "family farms" (in dollars)
6&7. Percentage of the food produced by "family farms" (tons / dollars)
8&9. Percentage of the food sold by "family farms" (tons/dollars)

Some of these, I'm not even sure which way the selection bias will be. (family farms might sell at farmer's markets and get a better price per pound ... or they might focus on herbs and things typically sold at higher margins that don't tend to be grown on a massive scale).

But like anything, you run all of the different combinations, and pick the one that gives you the answer to support whatever argument you're trying to make.

... because gaming just isn't fun until you've managed to get the guy in the next cubicle to have a vertigo attack.

(the problem was, he got over it after a while, and would come back to really crush everyone in our office)

But watching someone play would set most people off, so it wasn't safe to play during lunch (when people might walk by and see your screen); we'd have to wait 'til after hours.

I was in San Francisco a few months ago, and ran into a protest from 99 Rise. As best I can figure out, they're what happened to Occupy San Francisco. (this was right after the supreme court decision that allowed corporate spending on elections)

I have no idea what the other Occupy groups are doing now, but they're still out there.

I know someone who tried joining the FBI years ago, as a mechanic. He had tried a few things during college, even though he hadn't used in years, and he didn't make it through the interview process. This was probably 10-15 years ago.

Shortly after that, I had heard they had increased the limit to 7 years, so he gave up, rather than trying to just wait out the time ... so three years might've already been relaxing the rules.

Many of the Net Neutrality laws only ban blocking 'legal' content.

The US CAN-SPAM act of 2003 lays out rules to make spam legal. ... but in practice, you rarely, if ever, see 'legal' spam . See http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex...

Of course, it also gives an exemption to religious, political, and national security messages. (and I don't know if that means that they're not covered under the law, or that they're considered to specifically be legal)

Personally, I'm for net neutrality, but against every wording that I've seen of rules attempting to implement it. I'd be happy if they required ISPs to level with you on what blocking they were doing, and only consider an area to have broadband if it had an ISP that agreed to be a common carrier. (and fund a competitor to set up shop if there isn't)

You often see JPL listed as being a 'NASA Center', but if you look at the JPL website, it says 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' followed by 'California Instutite of Technology' (but next to the NASA meatball logo, and in the nasa.gov domain).

I've heard some people joke that if an orbital insertion is successful, then it's "CalTech's JPL" and when something goes wrong, it's "NASA's JPL". Can you explain exactly what the relationship is between the three entities?

In our county, the library system used to do outreach to the schools, where they'd go and try to get kids interested in reading ... but then the county went and fired all of the branch managers, and they didn't have staffing to keep it up.

Librarians require Master degrees in most areas (and may require a specialization if they work in a school library), but regularly make the 'lowest paid graduate degree' lists. .... but the schools and governments would rather appear 'cutting edge' or 'high tech' and give an iPad or Kindle to every student.

(disclaimer : I'm a member of our local Friends of the Library, and some of the best customers at our book sales are school teachers stocking their classrooms)

KRYTEN is packing himself away, as per instructions. LISTER enters, looking more than a bit upset.

LISTER: How do we stop it? Isn't there something we can do?
KRYTEN: I'm afraid not, sir. All mechanoids are supplied with a built-in expiry date. Well, if we lasted forever, how would the manufacturors sell the latest models?
LISTER: I can't believe it.
KRYTEN: Oh, don't be disressed, sir. I've lived a long and relatively interesting life. The only truly terrible thing is that, as my adopted owner, you have to die with me.
LISTER: (Shocked) You what?
KRYTEN: Joke. Deadpan mode.
LISTER: I'd be smegged off. I'd be mad as hell, man. If some git in a white coat designed me to croak just so that he could sell his new android with go-faster stripes.
KRYTEN: I've told you, sir. I'm quite sanguine.
LISTER: So, what happens?
KRYTEN: At 0700 hours tomorrow morning my shutdown disc will be activated and all mental and physical operations will cease.
LISTER: Then what?
KRYTEN: I don't know... maybe I'll get a job as a disc jockey!
LISTER: How can you just lie back and accept it?
KRYTEN: Oh, it's not the end for me, sir, it's just the beginning. I have served my human masters, now I can look forward to my reward in silicon heaven.
LISTER: (Stunned pause.) Silicon _what_?
KRYTEN: Surely you've heard of silicon heaven?
LISTER: Has it got anything to do with being stuck opposite Bridgette Nielson in a packed lift?
KRYTEN: It's the electronic afterlife! It's the gathering place for the souls of all electonic equipment. Robots, calculators, toasters, hairdryers -- it's our final resting place.
LISTER: I don't mean to say anything out of place here, Kryten, but that is completely whacko, Jacko. There is no such thing as "silicon heaven."
KRYTEN: Then where do all the calculators go?
LISTER: They don't go anywhere! They just die.
KRYTEN: Surely you believe that god is in all things? Aren't you a pantheist?
LISTER: Yeah, but I just don't think it applies to kitchen utensils. I'm not a _frying_ pantheist! Machines do not have souls. Computers and calculators do not have an afterlife. You don't get hairdryers with tiny little wings, sitting on clouds and playing harps!
KRYTEN: But of course you do! For is it not written in the Electronic Bible, "The iron shall lie down with the lamp?" Well, it's common sense, sir. If there were no afterlife to look forward to, why on Earth would machines spend the whole of their lifes serving mankind? Now that would be really dumb!
LISTER: (Quietly) That makes sense. Yeah. Silicon heaven.
KRYTEN: Don't be sad, Mr David. I am going to a far, far better place.
LISTER: Just out of interest: Is silicon heaven the same place as human heaven?
KRYTEN: Human heaven? Goodness me! Humans don't go to heaven! No, someone made that up to prevent you all from going nuts!

--Red Dwarf, "The Last Day"

Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Department of Education should do studies on how to teach kids & how to motivate them to do better ... how public vs. private vs. charter schools affect them, etc.

And study what the long-term effects are of just paying the kids when they get good grades:

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...

Because the short term seems to be that they do better ... and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than most other things that people come up with. (but then again, the money doesn't go to some corportation with a great 'solution' to the problem)

I saw a talk once by someone at a meeting years ago in which they said that they were trying to get politicians to use specific phrases and sentance constructs so they could more easily parse what the hell the tax code is actually supposed to be.

(I think it was the IDCC in Chicago, which looking at the program suggests it was Kate Zwaard, US Gov't Printing Office, but it might've been at an ASIS&T meeting around that same time, or an ISO/TC 37 meeting, as all of 'em could've covered issues in parsing semantics)