I opted out, then they opted out. -
izs:
By now, if you haven’t heard the outrage at the TSA’s “enhanced” pat-down procedures, then you don’t use the internet, and you’re not reading this blog.
They grope children. They touch your junk. The procedures are ludicrously ineffective and harmful from a security point of view. And the…
30 minutes ago I submitted this complaint to the Georgia SOS office via the form on their website:
The wording of amendment 1 was disgustingly misleading and it was created that way with the intent to fool people into voting against their own best interest.
There is no way that was a fair way of representing the issue to the people of Georgia.
Admittedly, it was a short complaint. :)
I was pleased to receive this prompt reply from them:
Mr. Watson-
Thank you for your email.
The Georgia General Assembly drafted and approved the legislation governing how the question appears on the ballot. Our office does not have the authority to revise the question or the amendment in any manner.
The Office of Legislative Council may be able to answer questions about the interpretation of the amendments.
If I may be of further assistance, please let me know.
Constitutional Amendments are governed by O.C.G.A. § 21-2-4. A link to the Georgia Election Code can be found at http://www.sos.state.ga.us/elections/laws_rules_regs.htm.
Thanks,
Thomas Culligan
Constituent Services
Claims Advisory Board Liaison
Office of Secretary of State
214 State Capitol
Atlanta, GA 30334
404-656-2881
tculligan@sos.ga.gov
Kudos to them for their prompt and non-formulaic reply!
So what’s the lesson here? Elections have consequences! All the races for state legislature seats actually matter because those are the idiots that created this bill, passed it and then changed the wording of it in conference committee!
Pay attention! Find out more about the people running for state positions and VOTE.
UPDATE: Apparently other people got the same reply, so it is a cut-and-paste job. Also, as Tejus pointed out in the comments, the wording was approved by 12 representatives and 1 senator. Maybe a new PAC needs to be formed with the express intention of driving those 13 people out of office… just sayin.
In a footnote on a PDF that I found on Lance Weatherby’s excellent blog I discovered an interesting tidbit of information about Fairchild Semiconductor.
Fairchild was a spin-out of a company called Shockley. What’s a spinout?
A “spin-out” is a new firm founded by employees of an incumbent firm in the same industry. Unlike a “spin-off” the choice to form the firm in a spin-out is made by the employee, not the employer.
Robert Noyce, the founder of Fairchild, is credited with being the co-inventor of the integrated circuit. Maybe if he hadn’t been able to spin-out from Shockley the IC would have been invented later, maybe not. It’s no in-consequential matter. The IC shaped the course of human history in the second half of the 20th century.
So the question is, would a spin-out like this be possible in Georgia if Amendment One passes? The short answer is… NO. The research linked to in the PDF above is robust and a good read. Their conclusion is unmistakable.
Compare the growth of the technology industry in Massachusetts and California over the past 40 years and ask yourself if this Amendment will truly make Georgia more competitive. It won’t.
Protect yourself and your liberty to pursue a career of your choosing. Protect your rights as a worker in a state where you have almost no rights at all.
Vote No On Amendment 1.
I wanted to like OneTrueFan. It’s the Foursquare of websites and at first the novelty of seeing other people’s avatars in the toolbar was interesting. I especially thought it was interesting when browsing my company’s site (coffeecup.com) because I immediately wanted to know more about them.
That’s when it hit me. I’m not paying for this app… therefore I’m not the subscriber -
I’m the content.
I’ve seen it said before that these “free apps” where the users provide all the content and trade away reasonably private information are ultimately doomed unless they start providing tangible value to the users that keep shoveling coal into the furnaces.
So far I don’t see the new subscriber rate at Foursquare tailing off but it’s going to reach a saturation point and we’ve already seen multiple meme-waves of “Fuck this Foursquare thing - I Quit!” now. (followed by some smaller meme-waves of “ok I’ll try it again…”)
So I’m not using OneTrueFan for now. If there were tangible rewards for accumulating “points” then I might change my mind.
Keep in mind, they are working on deploying a page where you can see all the information they’ve gathered about you. You can’t delete your profile (yet?) but you can stop sending in data by removing the plugin.
Wow! Check me out! (Scroll down…)
I’m hugely honored! The Twilio team and the Twilio API have been great fun to work with since I founded OtherNum back in early 2009.
The new API is HUGE and has TONS of features. You can search for new numbers that contain strings or are in certain LATA, zip codes or regions. You can say find me a number near this number and you can combine all these parameters together!
So now you can say… I need a number in the 405 area code that contains “BEEF” or I need a number within 5 miles of 37.787328, -122.394381 and it has to end in 7.
The Twilio team never stops iterating. If you aren’t using their APIs to do telephony, you need your head examined.
eyeslice asked: do you eat ramen?
I love Ramen! I drain the extra water out so it’s just noodles instead of soup and add some Tobasco sauce! YUM!
So I tried out the much hyped Google Voice / GMail integration tonight with mixed success. I was able to place outgoing phone calls fine and it largely worked.
Making calls in to my GV account though didn’t work. I quickly found a new setting in my GV account where my Chat identity had been added to the list of phones tied to my GV account.
So I thought I had it licked. I checked the box next to Google Chat and pressed “Save”…
Only it didn’t work. Now when I place calls into my GV number it goes straight to VoiceMail.
Leave a comment below if this actually works for you. I find it hard to believe Google would launch this service if it didn’t work for them either. Then again, they’re not always the most careful people when it comes to launching services.
saw USC vs. Cal on TV. Then saw Pete Carroll on the sidelines. It’s a replay from 2003.
relieved.
Ever since I developed a FourSquare plugin (well, 2 actually) for OpenVBX from Twilio I’ve been thinking about this idea that social application might actually be useful. It’s time somebody made one of my ideas a reality!
Imagine this: you’re a Busy Person™ in a big city. You have lots of appointments and social entanglements. You lead a hectic life.
You use Google Calendar to manage your schedule.
You checkin on FourSquare a lot.
You allow people to Tungle you.
You have Glympse installed on your trendy smart phone.
Scenario 1:
Somebody who wants to meet with you (we’ll call him Joe) manages to Tungle you. It gets put on your calendar for 5pm, you get an alarm at 4pm. You get in a cab and get stuck in traffic.
Joe gets to the destination at 4:50pm (eager beaver!) and checks in on FourSquare. You’re not there yet.
Your phone starts a Glympse tracker because it notices you’re not at your destination (no checkin yet and it’s already 4:58!) and sends it to Joe so he can see that you’re stuck in traffic.
Scenario 2:
You’re attending a new meetup for the first time and you don’t know many (or any) of the people there. You put the meetup on your calendar, it gets published on Plancast because you tagged it and the morning of the event you get an email with a list of other people planning to attend and more info about the presenters.
When you get there you checkin on FourSquare and you get added to a list of people who attended and maybe get entered into a drawing for an iPod or a Zune. (they still make those, right?)
You get a DM from @backnoise with a link to the backnoise.com discussion about the event that’s going on right now and maybe an email with links to archives of previous twitter traffic from TwapperKeeper.
The pictures you take while you check in are uploaded to Flickr, Tumblr or Picasa and tagged and then tweeted out and posted on FaceBook.
When you leave (check out) you have the chance to write up a quick review of the time you spent there (Yelp?) or write about it (Tumblr). You get a follow up email with suggestions about similar events coming up in the places you plan to be in or travel too.
So?
A lot of these things can be done now but they aren’t integrated together into a common fabric. It’s not easy to follow people from Twitter to PlanCast to FourSquare to Yelp to Tumblr because they are all (mostly) separate networks. The next class of “social” applications will stitch these networks together.