The Design and Implementation of laffer1

I just finished my Zen flowerpot pages. I still need to write the essay and also do some peer review work for 328. That will be a job in the morning I suppose. I've got loads of wiki entries to write too.

I actually watched ocean's eleven while making those sites. I think they came out pretty well. Had a little photoshop and illustrator action. I might play with them some more and use them for jj themes later if i get time.

LiveJournal decided to cave to pressure from an extreme christian group to delete all blogs related to incest or people talking about abuse they had as children!  Don't ask, don't tell?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/0329200

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/31/1629259

The Germans are in the process of making hacking tools illegal.  This will not improve security in any fashion. Why?  Network Administrators must use hacking and scanning tools to audit their own networks for security breaches.  By making these tools illegal, Germans will no longer be able to secure their networks legally.  Like most computer technologies, there are good uses as well as bad.  Its similar to the media targeting sites like MySpace and LiveJournal because 1 sexual predator was found on the site.  How many thousands of legit users are there?  Someone can use a laptop to do harm to a hospital, bank or something else.  Should all laptops be banned?  Why not ban the hardware that runs the hacker tools?  No need for computers right? 

This will halt the movement toward open source and alternative operating systems in Germany.  Most include basic "hacker tools".  MidnightBSD, Linux, and maybe even Mac OS X will be banned.  Why?  OS X has included nmap and tcpdump in the past.  We might be able to look at packets... oh no! 

This is the weirdest comparison ever.  This was on slashdot.   A performance comparison was done for common tasks like starting up the computer and running some basic apps.  The idea is that computers have not improved productivity since the 80s.  This is not true.  Additional tasks like surfing are now possible on modern hardware.  Gaming has advanced dramatically.

In order to prove the authors point, he would need to conduct usability testing.  Put regular people in front of both computers and see what they can do.

Here is a link to a video with bill and steve on stage. Its rather funny.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid910498365/bctid958634947

I actually caught someone trying to pass off a wiki entry as their own that I wrote tonight.  I edited the page to correct the "problem".  It looked like that person was doing the same thing to other people in the class.  The funny thing is that I and most other people have been using the author box properly so there is an audit trail to see who created the original work. Plus at least in my case, I have static IP addresses at home so that can also validate my edits.  70.91.226.201-206 are mine.
I just can't believe someone would do that.  At first I thought that person confused author and edit but that is not the case.   The wiki entry assignment isn't very fun and I could see how it would be difficult for some people.  I also arguably grabbed some of the easier entries since I started on it promptly.  I also found it interesting that most people don't have their wiki entries done yet.  I saw two or three people other than myself that had started working on it seriously.  I'm having trouble keeping up with them as well.  Two classes will do that to you. 

In my case, I'm behind on the flowerpot essay.  I have to write that tomorrow.  I just don't have the energy tonight.  On the upside, I'm caught up with eng328 and I've got wiki stuff current for 444.