ABC Lies About "Bush Abortion Rule", Needs Ad Revenue
Posted 3:24 AM

Some headlines read "White House set to reverse health care conscience clause", but at ABC, it's "Obama to Rescind Bush Abortion Rule". Ouch! Did he really do that?


No, there is no "Bush Abortion Rule". It was a horribly worded, vague "provider conscience rule", as properly worded by responsible news agencies that aren't out to garner ad revenues by stirring up controversy. Times are tough, we know, and ABC's revenues are being hit hard.

Under Bush's rule, you could refuse treatment to someone for being Mexican. Or you could refuse treatment to someone who had a drug addiction problem, because they were "icky". Or you could refuse to give a girl a subscription to a contraceptive pill because your uncle has plans for her. It was a bad, bad law.

Under Obama's new plan, providers will still be able to refuse abortions and other "morally difficult" procedures. However, specifically, *providing contraception* will not be optional. There are also provisions for no refusal based on the lifestyle choice, race and sex of the patient. In other words, if a girl wants to go on the pill, a doctor can't say "no" or lie to her and say it will make her sick.

Calling it the "Bush Abortion Rule" speaks to ABC's intention to stir up controversy. Are revenues hurting that bad?
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

IPC::Lite
Posted 9:50 AM

Made a new perl module that creates persistent or are "shared" variables in perl.

Born out of a frustration with my previous "lexical variable" fiasco.

The module prevents that sort of bug by "globbing" all declarations in one easy syntax. While this is a bad idea for big complex projects (I provide a more standard "tie" for those), it is perfect for little CGI scripts.

One line of code...

use IPC::Lite qw(%shared);

And that %shared hash becomes persistent, shared across processes and even thread-safe.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Why Nationalize Banks
Posted 7:28 PM

If any company is "too big to fail", it should be *immediately* nationalized. That being said, I don't think Citicorp *is* too big to fail. But *if* it is, it must not be a private company.

I have said this before, but now the big guys are talking about it, so I'm saying it again? Was Bernake reading my Facebook again?
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Easier than Recaptcha, until they steal my code
Posted 11:45 AM

Looking at the logs, it's clear my site captcha.cc is being "scoped" by the folks over at recaptcha (no link on purpose). Mostly because it's faster, better and cleaner than the junk they peddle. I'm serious, they really overblow their solution, they even managed to get their flim-flam published in a science journal, which really devalues the journal IMHO.

So now, burdened with a ridiculous API, they are sniffing up our solution and going "oh! signatures, digests, why didn't we think of that!".

I may not have a PHD, but I'm a better coder than that whole tank full of idea-stealers put together.

Busy muddling over at the USPTO right now, but hey, where did I put that extra $1000 for a lawyer? Hmm.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

mod_perl and file-scoped lexicals don't work
Posted 6:42 AM

After months of debugging, and rewriting my code and not understanding what was going on, I discovered a horrible, sneaky bug in mod_perl.

File-scoped lexicals, when used in subroutines, are bound to the first-occurrence of the variable. Because of the way mod_perl works, this means that the first time you run a CGI program *within a given Apache process* it will work as expected.

The second time and thereafter, those file-scoped lexicals will be bound to previous instances, and will contain previous values.

OUCH! So code like this won't work:


my $var = CGI::param('var');

sub x {
print $var;
}


Note to self: NEVER use file-scoped lexicals in mod_perl unless you want to risk suicide and sleepless nights.

Labels: programming

[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs
Posted 3:50 AM

On Tax Cuts:

All tax cuts do is increase retail spending at places like Wal-Mart. We are not a Wal-Mart economy. We are a CISCO, Dow Chemical and Goldman Sachs economy.

We are a country whose GDP is diverse, but is mostly built on high-value and high-quality services.

Do we want to change that? FOX, CNN and NPR all want us to believe that our economy is predicated on "buying crap at stores". This is false. Our economy is based on "people working". Our strong economy is built on hard work, with the some of the highest quality labor-per-hour anywhere on the planet.

The last thing we need is to sacrifice financial stability to boost retail sales or to squeeze a few Senate votes out of the same Republicans whose fiscal policies wrecked our economy in the first place.

The Obama administration, by allowing Republican old-school "borrow and spend" economics to influence the current stimulus bill, is continuing the polices of the Bush administration.

We need a 180-degree reversal of that kind of bad government.


If the private sector is unable to create jobs, then it is incumbent upon the government to create jobs. The U.S. government can and should continue to hire people until the unemployment rate is down to an acceptable level, say 4%.

If that means half the country is working for the government, then so be it. If private companies can do better... let them. If they can't, then capitalism needs to take a back-burner until it catches up.

On Banking:

The government should get into the "business" of banking, ASAP. FCU's should be expanded. If Citicorp can't provide more security and lending options than the U.S. goverment, then Citicorp is obsolete.

Republicans pundits want to "scare" us about big government. They have been doing this for 8 years and led us to financial ruin.

The truth is that our government has always competed for services. Look at the Post Office and Federal Express. FEDEX can manage to profit very well, right along side government supplied services, but only if they work hard and run a tight ship.

Our banks clearly need the same competition. They are unable, in the current climate, to operate responsibly. Maybe with a little honest competition, they would have to clean up their act. And meanwhile, I already moved my money to a Federal credit union. No way I'm risking it with some nearly-out-of business company that is busy buying yacht after yacht while they still can.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]

Time Warner Attacks Internet Phone Users
Posted 10:09 AM

Based on some tests that both me and my friend in NY ran, it looks like Time Warner may have added "internet phone" protocols, such as SIP and RTP to the list of protocols that cause a user to be "dropped" on their network.

When they did it to Shareaza... I didn't care. Shareaza can flood a connection senselessly.

But IP telephony is an entirely legitimate and fairly prudent use of an internet connection.... albeit competitive with Verizon/Time Warner's own products.

On the heels of my "anti net neutrality" post, Time Warner is possibly abusing power HEAVILY to prevent competition.

So, I take it all back. Time Warner should be slapped with fines and prevented from this, if it's true. Ignore my last post. Please go ahead and pass all the laws you want.
[View/Post Comments] [Digg] [Del.icio.us] [Stumble]