Letter to the Editor
FBI agent Mark Felt, who today revealed he was "Deep Throat" did the right thing more than 30 years ago when he leaked information that brought down a corrupt president. Some people will say that what he did was unethical, but that depends on where your loyalties are. We are a nation of the People, by the People and for the People. The first duty of all government employees is to the people, and not to the government or its institutions. It is the duty of all officials to reveal corruption and to protect the integrity of America.
Would something like this happen today? Unfortunately not. Today we have a level of corruption that far exceeds anything that was going on when Nixon was president. Today people put the government ahead of the people. Even if they did leak corruption the corporate press would never print it. And under the "Patriot" Act what Nixon did would probably be legal. Nonetheless I want to thank Mark Felt for being loyal to the people of this great country.
I've finally after almost 2 years made it to the top of the pile for IRS not for profit status for the Church of Reality. I have a ton of work to do to get them new information and to answer the questions they sent me, but I am optimistic that they are going to "bless" reality with a religion.
I've been doing a LOT of work on the Church of Reality Web Site and it's really looking good. If you haven't been there in a while you will see a lot of new material to read. And - I even got a guy who is fixing the spelling and grammer errors.
Letter to the Editor
The Bush Administration is blaming the news media for violence by Muslims who are upset with news reports about the brutal torture of prisoners at American prison camps. They say these news reports are getting people killed. But it's not the news reports that are getting people killed, it's the news. The torture at Abu Ghraib really did happen. The Gonzales memo approving the torture really did happen. And the abuse at Gitmo as reported by Amnesty International really did happen. It's not the job of the news media to cover up for the presidents war crimes. If the Bush administration wants to stop the news reports I suggest that he stop doing the things that the news media is reporting on.
Letter to the Editor
As it turns out and FBI memo has revealed that American jailers at Guantanamo Bay actually did flush the Koran down the toilet. This was on top of International Amnesty's report calling Guantanamo the "gulag of our time" comparing it to communist prisons. Makes me wonder if all those corporate media apologists are going to apologize to Newsweek for being right all along?
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Have you noticed that the corporate news media is barely mentioning it? These two stories both about America's torture camps isn't getting near the attention that the getting near the attention that Paris Hilton is getting over her hamburger commercial.
Here's an idea that I think would work out well. Why don't we get colleges who are training tech writers together with the open source community and have them work together?
The problem as you know is that a lot of open source software is great - but the documentation and user interfaces suck. That's because people are doing this work for free and the documentation and program polishing isn't as much fun as new features are.
These writers in training can be assigned open source projects and work with the developers to create good documentation. It would be part of their training requirements to take the project to documentation perfection. This would not only involve writing the docs - but also working with the developers to request better screen prompts and features that make sense. Often the developers don't understand what the end user needs. And the developer never had to actually learn the software.
Additionally the student(s) could conduct software usability tests where they round up a bunch of new users and sit them down in front of computers and watch them learn the software, encouraging them to verbalize their struggles and frustrations as they work. Additionally students would also moderate tech support message boards and interact with end users who are struggling for answers so that they can fully understand the problems people are having implementing the software. This feedback is then used to correct the documentation and polish the software till it gets to the point that new users say, "This is great - it just works!"
After a student takes a project to the "It just works!" stage they are ready for the job market with the open source project as part of their resume and a reputation already developed. These people would be instantly employable having real world experiences and accomplishments to show. And - they would be developing a broader skill set than just a writing class would teach. They would learn how to interact with developers and end users on a personal level and develop the real world skills needed for getting real work done in the real world.
And of course - the developers get a big boost too in that someone else - a professional writer - does the documentation and assists the developers in ways that they might otherwise miss. This frees the developers to develop and to be creative knowing that the grunt work is taken care of. Their software will be more accepted and more widely used because it just works which will attract donations, other developers, and a community around their project. And good free open source software saves many hours of time which benefits everyone in the long run.
Even proprietary software vendors get a boost in that they can hire these writers right out of school and they are ready to be productive from day one. This makes them more profitable because good writers who can work with developers to get the product perfected allows support staff to be cut. If the software "Just Works" then you don't need a lot of people to support it.
This is an idea where everyone wins and it makes me wonder what someone has to do to make it happen.
I really don't think so in spite of all the self criticism and the rest of the corporate media chiming in to denounce the "mistake" that the military is flushing the qaran down the toilet. I believe the store is true because it is consitent with the storied that prisioners are telling and the Anu Ghraib torture scandal.
The scary part is how the corporate media jumps through hoops for Bush as the Whitehouse controls them like puppets. I'm still waiting for them to apologize to Clinton for all the false reports they manufactured on him.
Does anyone really believe that this sort of think didn't happen? I don't think so. At Abu Ghraib this was cmmon. Part of the torture was religious humiliation. They just were too stupid to understand the consequences of it.
The other bizzare aspect of this is that these muslims go nuts over the treatment of a book and not over the the treatment of people. That's why the religiously insane scare me.
Letter to the Editor
The United Airlines bankruptcy is a preview of what is going to happen to the Social Security system if Bush gets his way. All these years United was supposed to be paying into the retirement fund for its workers, but now is defaulting on its obligations. The same thing is happening with Social Security. For the last 30 years the baby boomers have been paying in excess Social Security into what is called a "Trust Fund" that Bush jokes is nothing more than an IOU. Our money we paid in is being doled out in tax breaks for the super rich.
Now Bush wants to take our Social Security money and give it away to his crooked stock broker buddies who are going to invest it for us and we are going to trust that it's going to be there when we retire. But as you see more companies dumping their obligations on the tax payers while protecting the investor class it's clear that putting Social Security in Bush's hands would be a huge mistake. The Republican Party is looting the retirement system.
I've been testing out a new piece of software called Mambo. it's a very highly rated content management system allowing you to crate a whole web site from a web based user interface. I'm still learning it and it looks great but like most open source applications ikt's far harder to learn than it needs to be. I left the following message on their support board and wanted to publish it here so it wouldn't get lost. There are actually at least 3 official web sites for this project. One is in australia who invented it and has a commercial version, and then there's an free open source version, and yet another site for developers.
I am a new user and I want to write this before I forget it and while I am still in the learning process.
First - at this point I can say that I am going to LOVE this product and I want you all to know that because I'm about to say some critical things for the purpose - hopefully - that those who are designing and documenting this will improve Mambo.
And - I still don't fully understand this sotware - and what I'm about to say reflects that. Again - I have gotten to the point of loving it - but almost gave up several times before I got there.
The admin interface is very much not intuitive. What I finally figured out is that the front page middle section is what you call a "blog", and it is a blog that is very powerful - but it starts out as 1 column and then forks into two column leaving a person totally confused as to why this is and how to control it. There needs to be some sort of explanation of this concept of blog that is really lacking in the interface.
The menu called the "Frontpage Manager" doesn't seem to actually manage the front page. It seems that what's in the front page is related to creating front page menus which I haven't entirely figured out yet.
Basically - the entire admin interface should be rewritten from scratch and done in a way that is intuitive. My learning experience is like it is with most Linux applications - a very steep learning curve and much harder than it needs to be.
I will admit that my meeds are somewhat different than that standard install. If the standard install is close to what you need then it would be easier than to do what I'm trying to do - create a magazine with sections as blog volumes.
If I may make a suggestion to the powers who control this. Gather up your developers and documentation people and host an event where you call on people who would be users of this product - or maybe college students - maybe 10 or so - and wire them up with a recording device and sit then down in front of 10 computers and have them install and learn the software. Encourage them to comment and curse as they learn and pay attention to their struggle. Video taping would also be good.
Then - go back want watch it and redesign the interface to eliminate the confusion and try again.
Like I said - this is a great product and it would be much more widely accepted if you fixed what I consider to be the weakest part - the admin interface. Please take this feedback to the right folks and looking forward to this software growing and becoming better in the future.
Letter to the Editor
The Republican budget makes huge cuts in Medicare and gives huge tax breaks to oil companies who are already rolling in money from their record profits. But these Medicare cuts hit the middle class the hardest because when poor people get sick and go to the hospital - someone has to pay for it. And when the government pays less then those costs are passed on to those of us who do pay as increases in insurance premiums and higher out of pocket expenses. As insurance goes up more companies are telling employees that they have to pay more of their own medical costs. Some companies are dropping medical coverage entirely. In cutting Medicare the Republicans are really taxing the rest of us.
Letter to the Editor
It's amusing to hear Bush talk about an energy plan with his record. Bush gives huge tax breaks for buying Hummers. Oil companies who are making record profits are getting huge tax breaks. Now he wants to give away military bases to oil companies to build refineries. I don't think corporate fascism is the right solution to bringing down the price of gas and make life better for the people of America.