It’s all over the news recently, Bill Gates and 40 billionaires will give away half of their wealth, to charity.
I have a better idea. How about instead of giving away fish, you teach people to fish. Small business and the middle class are in trouble. If you want to help, how about some low cost business loans or grants that will help people open their own shops and then hire other people to work there and then the money kinda stays in the community instead of being soaked up by the market which sits predominantly off-shore and thumbs their noses at us while we work our butts off and pay taxes while they don’t. Whew, that’s a helluva run on sentence, glad to get it off my chest. Oh, and keep the net neutral, while you’re at it. I wouldn’t stand for people telling me which roads I can drive on, so I have no interest in letting it slide on the “information superhighway”.
You can start by sending me a check for $100K to open a coffee/geek/hosting biz. Or, you can go ahead and put that on your charge card by hitting “Custom Deal” over here, just make the quantity 100,000.
The scenario:
You set up a new website and are excited for the client to kick the tires. You check logs regularly, and see someone from the correct town hitting the site. But, it looks like they aren’t really sure what’s going on, and then send something that resembles someone fishing for an old exploit.
You talk to the client and mention it to them in passing, and it turns out they haven’t hit the site. So you email an abuse notification to the registration, and what comes back? A canned reply, it turns out to be the cyveillance bot “protecting and serving” by masquerading as a person. Hrrm. That earns a ban. Get some couth, cyveillance.
I registered over there today and looked through the listings. Here are a couple of things that I think would be good ideas:
Add captcha to try and stop all the scripted autobids from Bulgaria. How in the world can anyone posting a project take any of the bids seriously with that going on? Much less give any kind of server access to actually fix problems. Yeah, I’m sure I’d let one of those guys in…
Get rid of the captcha monkeys. Good lord. No wonder spam is so bad. They even have an executable to download on one of them. Seriously?
Get rid of the “Buy 5000 fans on Facebook” contracts.
Ban the Craigslist spammers.
The site is a good idea, but good lord, it’s almost like wading through crack or keygen sites, kind of cesspoolish.
Seriously folks, he has turned into a serious hand-wringer. “Emergency Powers” to take control of civilian networks? What in the world is he thinking? If we get attacked, I say we just issue /b/ carte blanche to respond. I have more faith in those guys than I do in turning networks over to the government. /b/ would probably wreak some havoc on those they are defending, but with the gov’t we’d probably never get the networks back.
Why in god’s name do Real Estate Agents find it sooo difficult to keep the aspect ratio of a picture when putting it into MLS? And 10 pictures only on the consumer sites? Bah.
I caught up on cycling news this weekend (again against my better judgement). Not much has changed on the doping front. People get caught and then say, “oh yeah, it’s easy to beat the system.” A blast from the past re-appeared, Simeoni.
I really like this guy. Simeoni could possibly be a tool, he could be a jerk, he could be a drama queen. But he gave the Italian National Champion’s Jersey back! Was he supposed to kiss Armstrong’s ring to be allowed in the Giro? That is one helluva refusal. Panache, that’s what this guy has.
If you are looking for history on the Armstrong/Simeoni feud, here’s a little bit from the Village Voice, and a bit from the archives here.
Given the current state of pro cycling, Simeoni looks like a bright spot.
Tony Ortega of the Village Voice asked a question about this year’s Giro and Le Tour:
Am I the only one who wonders what the hell this comeback was about if Armstrong isn’t going to try winning (sic) any of the big races?
Could it be the scrutiny being applied and his “full access” having been shown to be a bit farcical? Bundle that up with Kohl’s admission of how easy it is to dope, and maybe the chance of getting caught red-handed is the answer.
So, Simeoni, I’m glad to see you are still around, still not taking shit from anyone, and doing it in a grandiose manner. My suggestion still stands, write that book! I still like my idea for a title: No, Really, It’s About the Bike.
It’s a nice Sunday morning, I seem to have defeated my riding headache from yesterday before it got a chance to really set itself up, and I’m enjoying coffee and catching up on the news. CBS Sunday morning is pretty innocuous, bubble gum news, and then Ben Stein shows up.
This is the same Ben Stein who told us the mortgage crisis was really nothing to worry about way back when:
Ben Stein, don’t worry, be happy.
Now he’s saying it should be ok for companies to be able to fully reap the benefits of their human capital and hold meetings, but they are scared it will bring the sharp light of critical review. No one is telling the companies that received bailout cash they can’t talk to their own people and benefit from their experiences. What is fairly self-evident is that they need to do it in a manner that is indicative of their financial state. No Bahamas, no charter flights, and maybe Motel 6 instead of the Waldorff-Astoria. If, when the harsh light of reality comes on, things are seen scuttling about looking for places to hide, that might be a sign of an infestation.
The question is why did shareholders not give a crap about the culture of entitlement management in these companies created. Why? These guys have lived beyond their means, are interested only in the next quarter, and will sacrifice the shareholders long term interests for their short term gains. The travel junkets are a symptom of the culture of looting. Pay me now, screw the consequences. It is not sustainable, was not sustainable, and will not be sustainable tomorrow. It’s time to extend our attention past a three month time horizon. Maybe it’s time for Reg Z and Glass-Steagall to make a comeback. Maybe it’s time to get all of our eggs out of the “too big to fail” companies and go all Teddy Roosevelt on them and break them up.
Good Sunday morning to you Mr. Stein. I was hoping you’d stay handcuffed to Shaq and out of my line of sight for at least the rest of the year.
The snow is coming down again, and my new Procurve decided I really, really needed to experience the weather. At least the texts and calls didn’t start until 8:00am, so I did get some good sleep. I waded through the dirty Slurpee conditions to reset it. Thanks HP. I was warm, now I’m freezing and I’m wet. That’s sure to improve my mood.
I’m not sure why Dunkin Donuts is so proud of their products or why they claim to be “blue collar”.
I come from a blue collar town where Dunkin could not get a foot-hold, why? Their coffee sucked and their donuts tasted like crap. The local chain blew them out of the water at every turn. So, when I hear Dunkin = Blue Collar, algebra tells me what they are actually saying is Blue Collar = Crap (and probably chuckling about it every time they say it). My home town deserved (and preferred) better than Dunkin, I think everyone else does too. A $100 million ad campaign certainly says to me they aren’t quite blue collar. And I still think their donuts suck.
You know, I can’t help myself, I keep going to Cycling News to see what’s going on, despite my better judgment. Maybe it’s the Giro and not the Tour next year for Armstrong.
Here’s a quote from Lance about him appearing in Le Tour next year:
“Everybody knows about its importance but there are the problems with the organisers, journalists and fans. This could be detracting from my main goal, the global awareness of the fight against cancer.” – Cycling News
Mr. Armstrong, the trouble isn’t with the journalists or fans. The organizers, well, I can see that. But the real trouble is that the sport that gave you a worldwide stage is dying. The sad thing is that it is dying by its own hand. What’s worse than that — all we hear from you is, “I never tested positive.” I really don’t care that you never tested positive. I’ve never been arrested for peeing in alleys. Who cares? At some point, you’ve got to stop worrying about recriminations.
How about stepping up to the plate, along with that guy you seem to loathe, Greg LeMond, and help get some real changes made? The two greatest American riders and the bankroll and press that follow would be hard to ignore. It would be like Superman and the Batman working together. Hell, you can even be Superman since we know for a fact that Greg isn’t bulletproof.
Are you going to tell me that the two of you and all the resources you could bring together couldn’t put together a plan (between kicking each other in the sack) that would make it infinitely harder to dope? He seems to be stepping up, in his Dark Knight fashion. You seem to be backing off. Don’t leave Batman alone while he tries FTW. Hell, bring back all the old Posties to get it done and turn it into the Justice League, just not this Justice League.
