text:
Welcome another blogger
We've got another community blogger here - Sean Malloy. Subscribe to his feed here. Sean's just learning VisualWorks, and I look forward to hearing about what's easy and what's hard from the perspective of a new Smalltalker.
We've got another community blogger here - Sean Malloy. Subscribe to his feed here. Sean's just learning VisualWorks, and I look forward to hearing about what's easy and what's hard from the perspective of a new Smalltalker.
This accident happened maybe 15 miles from where I live. Sounds like a tanker trailer carrying gas fell off an overpass, onto I 95, and then blew up when a truck on 95 plowed into it at highway speeds. Video footage from the scene showed the highway had melted. Matt Croyden has a picture on his site
So what if Nicole Ritchie were a developer?. Heh
Dave Winer says that users care about things like feed quality:
Greg Reinacker says his aggregator will continue to accept bad feeds. This may make his competitors look like idealistic dreamers for thinking it would serve users' interests if they spend more time designing and coding new features and less time working around bugs in content. With all due respect, I think Greg is wrong about users. They do care about quality.
That all depends on the user in question. Technical users - like, say, the ones involved in this discussion - care. Non-technical users might well care, but not in the way you might think. I think of my neighbors, in sales and teaching. They use computers, but are not the least bit technical. Last year, after they got a PC back from their vendor support, it couldn't print. They had no idea how to fix the problem. Likewise, if they start using an aggregator, and it throws some error message at them for a feed, they won't have any idea what it means, nor will they care. They may stop using the feed; the may try another aggregator; they may get turned off on the whole notion of news aggregators. Rest assured, notifying the producer of the bad content will not be something they would do.
Now, consider - are most software users like us, or like my neighbors? I think the answer is clear, unless you aren't thinking very hard. This explains why non-technical users like Windows and Mac, and don't really like Linux - because it's too hard. End users want software that works like their TiVo or their ReplayTV. Minimal setup, easy to interact with, and - outside of absolutely critical errors - doesn't bother them with trivia. To an end user, having a non-compliant character in a feed item is trivia. Ask yourself this - would you want your stereo to inform you explicitly everytime it comes across a flaw on the CD you are trying to play? or do you want it to compensate and move on?
This is the look of momentum - Ted Neward - author of a forthcoming book called "Effective Java" - is going to be the editor of a community site called TheServerSide.Net.
I'll be speaking to the NY STUG in New York City on January 28th:
James Robertson, lead developer for the BottomFeeder project and whom has an uncanny resemblance to the Cincom Smalltalk Product mananger, will be demonstrating BottomFeeder and discussing technical issues such as the use of Web services, http based communications and so forth. BottomFeeder is an open source RSS viewer which provides for viewing of BLOGS. BottomFeeder is built using VisualWorks Smalltalk.
Date Jan 28th, 2004 Location Suite LLC offices Address 440 9th Avenue, 8th Floor Time 6:30pm to 7:00pm -- Open house Time 7:00 to 8:30 pm -- BottomFeeder presentation. Directions:
Take E or C train to 34th (Penn Station) walk to corner of 34th and 8th. Walk up one block to 9th. RSVP is requested. Please send mail to: email@example.com with subject line of: NYC Smalltalk Jan 28, 2004. Our meetings are opened to the general public. Invite a friend !
To join our mailing list simply send mail to email@example.com. Joining our list will give members access to all of the presentations and articles maintained on our site.
Any questions send mail to email@example.com
See you there!
There's a mailing list for Squeak Smalltalkers in China: email@example.com. They list Liang Peng as an additional contact point. Go Smalltalk!
Dare Obasanjo talks about products that are so good that communities organize around them and advocate - without the help of the vendor's marketing department:
The interesting thing is that I find myself to be one of these people. Whenever I start talking to someone who doesn't have a TiVo about owning one the conversation eventually a sales pitch. I've found that talking to people about the iPod to be the same way. Halfway through the conversation there's the frustration that washes over me because I can't seem to find the words to truly express to the person I'm talking to about how much the iPod or TiVo would change that aspect of their lives.
To some extent, the Smalltalk community is like that - but that isn't enough. At least in the IT world, you need some level of backup from the vendor(s) in order to convince your management...
Charles Miller writes on a topic I've touched on more than once, and makes a lot of sense in the process. Go read the whole thing.
It seems that MS gets it on blogging. In a post describing a meeting with various bloggers at MS, and with a marketing manager, Chris Sells relates this story:
And then Adam Sohn from marketing talked about the need to police ourselves, describing some of the downsides in regards to blowing some group's launch plans or unconstructively criticizing another group. He preached caution when approaching the line between what was good for the customer and what was good for Microsoft. After listening to what I began to interpret as a message of self-censorship, I asked Adam a warm up, "Isn't it true that a lot of the stuff close to the 'line' is what our customers find most valuable?" He agreed that it was. And then I asked Adam my real question, "So, when we get close to that line, do we err on the side of our customer or ourselves?"
Now, you have to remember that I've been a contributing member of the Windows development community for a lot of years. I've seen how aggressive Microsoft is in everything it does to always be on top. So when I asked on what side of the line I should come down, I fully expected to be told to keep the shareholders in mind.
I think there's a simple reason that MS understands how and why blogging works - above all else, MS is a marketing machine. They are all about getting the message out to customers and prospects. They seem to have realized that blogging is (or can be) another marketing channel. Sure, a less controlled, more chaotic one - but a channel for information nevertheless. Additionally, they seem to have figured out that a lot of developers and IT managers are tired of the perfectly processed messages they get fed every day from vendor marketing machines. Blogging allows them to get that same message out, but in a more authentic voice.
This is the point where you should be asking yourself how many bloggers your company has...
Blaine Buxton hears the sound of lost productivity, and doesn't fall for it again.
And this is why I don't miss Java: Joy Of Java. While you're at it, read the rest of the blog for a lot of fun reads. This guy knows what he's talking about and is very entertaining to read. But, I remember pain like this when I was doing Java. I tell ya I don't miss the 10 minute start-up time of a Tomcat servlet so I could find out in less than 2 seconds that I had to restart it because I found my problem. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. It's nice not to have to restart the web server everytime you want to debug new code (yeah, I know about hot swap, but it only works on simple method changes....). Lots of languages can keep their web services up and running while you're programming in them though (think scripting, lisp, smalltalk, etc)...
That sound you hear? It's the rest of us busy being productive while you restart your services....
CNN is reporting on steak gone wrong:
SEATTLE, Washington (Reuters) -- The city that spawned America's obsession with strong, dark coffee is giving locals a popular new coffee-flavored steak, even while the mad cow scare that started in Washington state is putting some people off beef.
Rippe's, a local waterfront steak and seafood restaurant, began serving filet mignon steaks dusted with Starbucks Corp.'s dark espresso blend a few weeks ago and now has a runaway hit on its hands.
The authors of Feed Demon and of NetNewsWire say that they will reject malformed xml out of hand:
NetNewsWire creator Brent Simmons recently announced that NetNewsWire's future support for Atom will require Atom feeds to be well-formed. Some people aren't too happy about this, claiming that he's applying a double standard that will make Atom appear less useful than RSS.
So, I'll add to the stink by stating that my plan is the same as Brent's. FeedDemon will also support Atom, but if an Atom feed isn't well-formed XML, FeedDemon will display an error rather than try to parse it. In fairness I have to consider this decision open to input from my customers, but I want to explain why I believe this is important.
I'm already off the reservation with BottomFeeder. It doesn't handle anything thrown at it, but it does ignore as many problems as it can. I use the standard VisualWorks XML Parser, but I do intercept and ignore a bunch of the error conditions. Why? Because it's an end user tool, and many of the end users are never going to report the problem as malformed xml - not to me, and not to the author of the bad feed. What they'll actually do is hunt around for a replacement aggregator that will handle the bad feed. That's the reality of it, and all the hand waving in the world isn't going to change it.
I'm not about to use a different set of code to deal with Atom than I do with RSS either - especially since Atom is the same blasted thing, with slightly different tag names.
Charles Miller is tired of stupidity. With regards to the silly "theory" that the moon landings were faked:
So after going through the usual gang of of objections 14the stars and shadows, and so on 14and extracting grudging admissions that the chance of a conspiracy that big and with that many people involved staying secret so long is incredibly low, we ended up back at the same old place. It's just my opinion that it never happened. Opinions can't be false, right?
People believe they have some right, some moral imperative to hold any stupid opinion they want. I'm sure in the USA, it's even Constitutionally protected. You have the God-given right to hold any damn opinion you want, even if it runs counter to every single fact you've encountered.
Where's my God-given right not to be subjected to stupidity?
I'm with him on this :)
Smalltalkers, get your browsers revved up:
ESUG Innovation Technology Awards
The European Smalltalk Users Group (ESUG) is proud to announce its first Innovation Technology Awards. The top 3 teams with the most innovative software will receive, respectively, 500 Euros, 300 Euros and 200 Euros during an awards ceremony at the next ESUG conference (6-10 september 2004, Köthen, Germany). Developpers of any Smalltalk-based software are welcome to compete.Eligibility
- Any Smalltalker can apply (students, companies, ...)
- The presented piece of code/software should be written in Smalltalk or directly support Smalltalk (e.g. Smalltalk VM)
- All Smalltalk dialects are accepted
- The applicant should own the copyright/copyleft of presented code or at least be the official representative of the copyright/copyleft owner
- The presented software should be recent. It should have been finished after the 1st january 2002.
- The software should be free for non commercial use.
How to apply?
Applicants should provide :
- a short paper (in PDF format) up to 3 A4 pages in 12pt font with :
- keywords for the entry, and
- Smalltalk platforms it runs on, and
- whether it is a free or shareware, or a professional piece of software,
- names and affiliation of developers, and
- description of their software, and
- one or more screenshots of their software, if possible, and
- a runnable demo (available for download or on a CD).
- Descriptions and demo location should be sent to firstname.lastname@example.com
- Winners will be selected by votes of the conference attendees.
- Pieces of software will be downloadable from the ESUG website 2 weeks before the conference to give people the chance to evaluate it.
- Every applicant can give a 10min talk/demo during the conference.
- Then, conference attendees do vote.
A vote consists in providing a sorted list of 3 prefered pieces of software. Voters should provide such a list based on their preception of software's:
- Innovation and Creativity
- Stability and Performance
- Successfull use
Winners are softwares which ranks top the most often.
- Applications (see requirements) should be sent by july 1st
- Notification of eligibility will be sent by july 31st
- Demos, votes and the Awards Ceremony will take place during the ESUG Conference, 6-10 september 2004, Köthen, Germany.
I'm curious about the "finish date" - January 2002?
The Queen Mary 2 sails - looking for all the world like a 1920's or 1930's era luxury liner.
I agree with this post - anonymous content is valuable. There's a long history of anonymous content in the US; Benjamin Franklin published anonymous screeds after the Constitution was ratified. If a person thinks it's safer/better/easier to publish anonymously, then who am I to argue? Heck, I host an anonymous blogger here.
I guess we have to support Windows 98 for a long while yet - with days until the announced end of life, MS just back-pedaled - it's supported through June 30, 2006 now. DOS lives....
I'm just about to release the 3.3 release of BottomFeeder. This release is based on VW 7.2, so upgrading will require replacing the base image and VM (non windows) or base executable (Windows). Your saved files will all be handled just fine by the upgrade; there's been no change to the formats. What's new?
There's a number of other "under the hood" changes that won't be immediately noticeable, but will result in a better application. We are working to get the doc updated, and expect to have 3.3 out shortly. Stay tuned!
This CNN article is kind of sad:
The Walt Disney Co. is expected to close a feature-animation studio in Orlando, Fla., on Monday, jeopardizing the jobs of nearly 260 animators, the Orlando Sentinel reported Saturday.
There's plenty of good animation happening outside of Disney these days -- it's just kind of a surprise to me that Disney couldn't keep up...
I just found out that the SciFi channel has a news feed. The cool thing is how I found it - the Feedster "feed of the day" feed. Keeping up with the doings of the SciFi channel should be easier now.
I've been meaning to comment on this piece from Dare Obasanjo for awhile. In the meantime, go read it.
Don't like the way VisualWorks formats things in the browser? Try this:
FormatterConfigurationTool open
Danny Ayers shows us how the Atom effort is stuck on how many angels fit on the head of a pin type discussions. These guys need to realize that "good enough" solutions beat "perfect" every day of the week....
Dave Winer points to a developing RSS Module for "The Sims". There's a use case I wouldn't have guessed in advance.
Ted Leung points out one of the reasons MS keeps winning - they understand marketing, and they glom onto new directions in marketing very, very quickly:
Sara Williams of Microsoft announced the Microsoft is doing a Planet MSDN. Of course, theirs is called blogs.msdn.com, which makes total sense. They are using the weblogs.asp.net infrastructure, and I have to give a lot of credit, because these folks were among the earliest to aggregate blogs for a development community. Maybe they'll fix their infrastructure to do 304 and Gzip.
This led me to think about other commercial development communities, which led immediately to Java. So of course, there is java.blogs, which has been out for a while. weblogs.asp.net is to javablogs.com as blogs.msdn.com is to part of java.net. And indeed java.net is aggregating bloggers. Unfortunately, the blogging activity at java.net is very, very low. If I was a Java engineer, I would be begging my management to let me put some content up on java.net. Among the early adopters, Sun looks distinctly unclueful on this.
I have some sympathy for Sun on this - I've put together a Smalltalk blogging community, and there's no way to force content - all you can do is get interesting people blogging, and hope that the content comes along. On the other hand, Microsoft has done that - they have a very large community of bloggers, both internal and external. They have people like Scoble cheerleading both internally and externally, they have lots of their product managers and project leads blogging - and they've got a growing community of users blogging, mostly about MS stuff (take a look at Sam Gentile's excellent blog, for example). Now go back and look at Sun - as Ted says, it looks pathetic
The Smalltalk community's efforts are as big as I can manage on my own - I created the blog server for this site, I'm writing BottomFeeder - it's fulltime work. With that said, anyone that wants a Smalltalk oriented blog should contact me. I can get you set up quickly, and I'm on the lookout for more community bloggers.
Last year, I spent a fair bit of money on a 51" Sony TV (stupid me, buying it right after the Super Bowl). It was very nice, and I've spent many happy hours watching DVD's on it. Lately, we've noticed that the colors are off - it's been flashing a lot of green. Well, this takes me back to the warranty information - yes, less than a year old, should be covered. Thus began another saga of "offshore and clueless support staff" lotto.
Day one
I call Best Buy, where I bought it. This, at least, was efficient. No extended warranty, I have to call Sony. Off the phone quickly, look up the Sony phone numbers, and call. After way too long navigating an automated system who's "options had just changed" (do any options ever stay static? For any automated system?) I get a real person. This is where the trouble starts
I explain the problem, give the tv's serial number and model number. He asks for the purchase date, I give him that. He tells me that I should get a call or email back within a few days with information. I grab his call center ID so that I have some evidence of the call.
Day 2, three days later
I call support again, wandering through the automated system again. Finally I get a person. After re-explaining the problem in depth, I'm told that I have to haul the 51" tv off to a service center. I explain that
This gets me nowehere, as this guy is clearly just following a script. I ask for a superviser. His response to this is interesting - he marks my case critical and says I'll get a response in 24 hours by phone or email. I grab his call center ID as the call ends
Day 3, next day
I get a call from Andy at Sony. He actually sounds like he wants to solve my problem - after I start explaining that I don't think I should haul my tv to a service center, he tells me there's no need - this tv qualifies for in-home service. Remembering that I have someone helpful, I don't explode. He gives me the names and phone numbers for 3 local service centers which will be able to help me out, so long as I have a receipt to show them. Having that, I thank him - but I also point out that the call centers I got did not even hint at the possibility of in-home service. He tells me that he'll follow up on that, and the call ends.
I immediately call the first place on the list - and they tell me that no, they only service TV's sold by them directly, and that they will be calling Sony to remind them of this. Gritting my teeth now, I call the second place on the list. Finally - a place that wants to help. They take the purchase date, model number and serial number - and tell me oh, that's a known problem - we'll order parts, and call back with a service date. I thank them, thinking - known problem??
With a car, a known problem gets me a recall. I would be much more disposed towards another Sony purchase if I'd been notified of this known problem. I'd also be more disposed to buy Sony again if the call centers I'd gotten had had accurate information - instead of lots of go away so we can close this call information
And there's the problem, I'd warrant - Sony sent their call centers offshore to save money - the first two I spoke to had those hard to place accents typical of the genre. These call centers likely have some incentive to close cases quickly - probably as part of their basic contract. Now here comes the kicker - do those policies and contracts lead to better service for the customer? No, not at all. I went through the same exact crap with ReplayTV last year. The problem with outsourcing support is not that the function goes overseas - it's that the function goes to an outside vendor who's incentives are all set by the contract you sign with them - and not by actual care or concern about the actual problems of the customer. This becomes abundantly clear whenever you have to be the end consumer of outsourced support - you have to push up at least one (sometimes two) levels before you can get anything that resembles support. Sometimes, as with Sony above - you don't even get accurate data. What you do get is an attempted brush off, as quickly as possible.
I'm going to start asking more support questions when I buy higher end products. I'll happily pay extra if support is provided by the same company that sells the product. Why? Because the employees will have a stake in the customer's problem. I understand outsourced phone support from a business perspective - it looks like it saves money. The question to ask is, just how many future customers are you ticking off and losing that way? Sony, take note - you'll be last in line next time I look into an audio-visual component.
Roy Osherove is just blown away by IntelliJ, especially by edit and continue. Maybe someone could show him a Smalltalk system and see what he thinks of the real thing.
Brad Abrams explains the concept of Managed code to the curly brace crowd. Smalltalkers and Lispers have been using a managed environment for decades now - nice to see MS catching up...
Joseph Pelrine explains some of the thinking behind the XP adage "Do the simplest thing that could possibly work". In a nutshell, he describes it as a "call to action" for thinking about the problem. It's a good read.
Dave Winer has been building an interesting site showing off voluntarily submitted feed lists. Now he's interested in subscrbing to them; BottomFeeder can already subscribe to OPML feedlists. I just added the top 100 to mine...
Lambda the Ultimate points this presentation by David N Smith (of IBM) on class behavior in Smalltalk.
I remember years ago, when ParcPlace started up a consulting group - I went to the Austin TX office for a meeting. A few of the guys who had just started with Smalltalk had a wheteboard covered with a hierarchy diagram, complete with the "wrap around" that occurs at Object. They were scratching their heads, trying to make sense of it all. Too bad they didn't have this paper! It's a bit dated (referring to ST/V on OS/2) - but the concepts explained are still current
I'm noticing that developers are reporting an "out of memory" exception in VW 7.2, with no idea how they are getting it (typically at image start). Here's the likely cause - Loading the VisualWave (Web Toolkit) server and not resetting ObjectMemory policies. In 7.2, loading the server resets the memory settings in a way that is appropriate to a server with lots of memory - but not necessarily for a client. Try this:
You'll see something like this: #(10.0 10.0 250.0 1.0 1.0 5.0 1.0). Look carefully at that third value - 250.0. What these numbers represent are multipliers - how much bigger to make a specific segment of VW's Object Memory at startup. That third one is LargeSpace. The reason it's been expanded has to do with appropriate sizes of socket buffers in a web application system. If you save your image in this state, it will try to allocate 250X of the third value returned by ObjectMemory defaultSizesAtStartup (204,800 bytes on my Windows box). That means that your system is going to ask for a lot of RAM (51MB on my system) for LargeSpace at startup. The exception means that the OS wouldn't yield up that much RAM to your process.
The solution? For development, do something like this before saving your image: ObjectMemory sizesAtStartup: #(10.0 10.0 10.0 1.0 1.0 5.0 1.0). Save your image, and you'll have more reasonable defaults for a development system. For a deployed server, the 250x may be more appropriate, but that depends on the specific configuration (RAM, swap space, etc) of your server - check the class comment and class side documentation of ObjectMemory for details
Linux today reports that SCO fooled itself. According to Novell:
On June 26, LaSala wrote: "SCO's statements are simply wrong. We acknowledge, as noted in our June 6 public statement, that Amendment No. 2 to the Asset Purchase Agreement appears to support a claim that Santa Cruz Operation had the right to acquire some copyrights from Novell. Upon closer scrutiny, however, Amendment No. 2 raises as many questions about copyright transfers as it answers. Indeed, what is most certainly not the case is that "any question of whether UNIX copyrights were transferred to SCO as part of the Asset Purchase Agreement was clarified in Amendment No. 2 (as SCO stated in its June 6 press release). And there is no indication whatsoever that SCO owns all the patents associated with UNIX or UnixWare."
The rest of the article is well worth perusing. It's starting to look like SCO's management team convinced itself that it had the goods - without actually verifying that fact. The SCO responses to these assertions look an awful lot like hand waving and "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" theatrics. This whole thing may well end with nothing more than an epic destruction of shareholder value - SCO's.
The Cincom Smalltalk blogs now have accurate referer links. I hadn't looked at the code for that in a long time - in fact, not since I was the only one blogging here. The upshot of that was, the referer links that had been on this blog were actually for all the blogs here. That's no longer the case; the lists are now accurate for each blog (modulo referer spam, which I'm still seeing).
To start this new year full of smalltalk we propose you to attend the following talk by Joseph Pelrine on Tuesday the 13th (January) at 17h15 at the iam room 107
Breaking down the dialect barrier
New techniques for cross-Smalltalk interaction
"Smalltalkers are friends separated by a common language". One of the unfortunate side-effects of Smalltalk's popularity in the 90's is the plethora of more-or-less incompatible dialects. The ANSI standard and Camp Smalltalk notwithstanding, it still happens too often that high quality, existing code does not get reused because it's only available in one dialect or version, and the pain of porting often outweighs the benefits.
This talk will describe a number of state-of-the-art techniques being used in Camp Smalltalk and other projects to increase cross-dialect compatibility and assist migration between existing Smalltalk implementations. Demos will include moving code from VisualAge to S#, and using ENVY/Developer with VisualWorks 7 and Squeak.
An apero will be given after sponsored by our sponsors:
Sounds like an interesting talk
The European Smalltalk User Group is proud to announce that it will organize an academic track for the 12th year of existence of the ESUG Conference with an excellent program committee.
The goal of the academic track is to have a forum for publications related to Smalltalk and dynamically-typed languages. We encourage authors to submit excellent quality papers as we plan to produce proceedings. The organizing committee strongly discourages the submission of product presentations and other marketing related material. The academic track is about research!
A non exhaustive list of topics is
The best papers will be published in a special issue of the Elsevier international journal "Computer Languages"
Program Chair:
Dr. Noury Bouraqadi (Ecole des Mines de Douai, France) | firstname.lastname@example.com |
Prof. Stephane Ducasse (University of Berne) | firstname.lastname@example.com |
Prof. Roel Wuyts (Université Libre de Bruxelle, Belgium) | firstname.lastname@example.com |
Program Committee:
Important Dates:
Format information:
Preferred format: PDF
Maximum paper length 15 pages
How to submit a paper:
Send your paper in pdf format to Noury Bouraqadi, Roel Wuyts, and Stephane Ducasse.
Joseph Pelrine points to a great quote:
Humphrey's Requirements Uncertainty Principle "for a new software system, the requirements will not be completely known until after the users have used it".
How true that is, and - according to Joseph - it comes from a co-inventor of CMM!
Patrick Logan comments on this piece. At issue is why vthe big language vendors - Sun and MS in particular) - don't offer much in the way of dynamic language support. Patrick asserts that in fact, they are moving that way - just very slowly:
I think an answer to the question above has more to do with the psychology and sociology of programming than it does with anything else. The big companies are almost by definition the ones whose value chain ends with giving the majority what they want. What they want is not always what works good in laboratories, nor is it necessarily what is "best for them".
Looking at language evolution in the long run, especially as plotted against a graph of Moore's Law, clearly the trend is to become more dynamic. A good indicator is a major industry journalist writing about such things.
True enough. In the meantime, people interested in productivity can take a look at Smalltalk.
Derek points out more "how to irritate the people who pay the bills" behavior - this time from the TV networks:
NBC started playing games with ER's start time, ensuring that my TiVo season pass for CSI would always get kicked to the curb by the higher priority ER, because they changed the start time from 10pm to 9:59, creating a conflict.
With the move of "Ed" to Friday nights, they're now doing the same thing with "Ed", starting it at 8:59, so that it will now conflict with "Boston Public".
This is just stupid. Time-shifting is the new reality; the networks simply have to deal with it. This happens in all businesses; sometimes, a fundamental change rolls through. The outfits that rage against the darkness die, and the ones that figure out how to adapt to the change make it through. It looks to me like NBC is in full-on "rage against the darkness" mode...
Someone hand Michael Nascimento Santos a Smalltalk system, and show him how exceptions predate Java. Since he's just seeing that CheckedExceptions can be a problem, this could be enlightening:
I would like to point out, though, that it is very easy to speak about something that was conceived almost 10 years ago, after many years have passed and after using it and seeing others using it; it's a huge advantage the original creators couldn't have. James Gosling and all the other folks at Sun have made a great job designing Java and its API and, after nearly a decade, it is obvious there are things that could be better. I'll write more about other things - some far more critical than the way exceptions work - soon. Stay tuned!
The thing is, they weren't 'conceived' 10 years ago; they were badly copied....
The Cincom Smalltalk online tutorials have been updated to reflect changes in VisualWorks 7.2. Check them out today, and download the NC
The trade rags are confused by the proliferation of Java related "standards" bodies:
Developers, not to mention journalists, must have their heads spinning trying to decipher the differences between these three outfits. Evidence of the confusion was witnessed during a press conference call Tuesday, when it was noted that a perception exists, incorrectly, that Eclipse is working on its own variation of Java.
reminds me of the old army axiom - "Any order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood"
Jon Udell notes that the Enterprise players - Sun, MS, etc. - still aren't paying attention to dynamic languages:
We hoped 2003 would bring a rapprochement between the dominant enterprise VMs, Java and .Net, and the dynamic-language VMs that are still in many ways well-kept secrets. That mostly didn't happen. At the JavaOne 2003 technical keynote in June there was a nod in the direction of JSR (Java Specification Request) 223, which would enable languages such as PHP to be used in the Java Web tier. But the stewards of the enterprise VMs still aren't pushing to integrate them with the popular and productive dynamic-language VMs.
Jython, the Java/Python hybrid, has a growing cult following, but isn't on Sun's radar screen. Microsoft has yet to deliver on its early promises to make dynamic languages first-class citizens of the CLR. Here's hoping that the many VMs that flourished in 2003 will work better together in 2004. (Full story at InfoWorld.com - part of 2004 Technology of the Year)
The big boys are still trapped in group-think mode, where of course we need static typing....
Charles Miller finds seven different StringUtil classes in his Java project - as opposed to the one String class in my Smalltalk project. Why? Because I can directly extend String. Here's the part I find interesting:
Today, I found myself wanting to do a pretty basic String operation that wasn't on the main class, so I sent IDEA ooff hunting and there were seven classes in my Classpath called either StringUtil or StringUtils, all of them from different projects.
So I wrote the method myself. Finding the one I should have been using amongst that lot was just too much effort :)
Just one more reason why there tends to be less duplication in Smalltalk; things go where they belong...
Ted Leung looks at conditional get. The blog server we use here is mine, with some (slightly dated) information here. Now, the interesting thing is that Ted shows my RSS feed as not producing 304 (not changed). Hmm. This server simply drops a new version of the feeds whenever there are additions or updates, so the files in question are served by Apache. Here's the relevant header info (before this post went live):
last-modified | Wed, 7 Jan 2004 00:50:55 -0500 |
etag | "2e2a75-ace1-3ffb9e3f" |
server | Apache-AdvancedExtranetServer/1.3.23..... |
The html part of the page is served by Smalltalk, and the feeds are created by Smalltalk - but they are simply static pages served up by Apache. I just ran a test using the libraries BottomFeeder uses for Http access, and sure enough - I get back a 304 on successive queries. I suspect that NetNewsWire isn't actually making use of conditional-get, at least not in Ted's tests
As if it's not enough that the RIAA wants to make it impossible to listen to music in any way other than over-priced CD's, now they are creating referer spam. Like I'd ever want to know what those bozos have to say...
Via Ted Neward comes this lovely bit from the Shark Tank. Read it and weep :)
Dan Ingalls has an embedded Squeak system available:
Fellow Smalltalkers -
I have a fledgeling company that sells a weather station I designed in Squeak. To make it a real product, I had to come up with a low-cost processor that runs Squeak acceptably. Finally last year I found one based on the Mini-ITX board that looked promising. I engaged Michael Rueger and Ian Piumarta to come up with a compact Linux capable of supporting Squeak, and that could be booted from Compact Flash, and we now have what is effectively an embedded Squeak machine. I've negotiated with my supplier (for weather stations) for a "Squeak Box" configuration at a special price. Since it's a cool thing, I thought I'd let people know in the wider Smalltalk community.
The price is $250 (I get none of this). After unwrapping you get...
A black box that is just the right size for an LCD display stand (1.75"x9"x11.5"). Also a 12v power supply that plugs into the wall. Inside is a 533MHz VIA Mini-ITX motherboard with 64M of memory installed. There are no fans in the box, and it still stays cool. On the front is a slot that accepts a compact flash card, which appears to the processor as an IDE disk drive. The Squeak PC is shipped with a 96M flash card installed which includes
- A compact Linux 2.4 boot system,
- A full Squeak 3.6 (plus OSProcess and Games) with Linux VM, and
- about 60MB of free space
On the back is a host of connectors that include stereo audio in and out, network, 2 USB, RS232, mouse, keyboard, display, video and printer port.
The unit is complete and ready to boot. All you add is keyboard, mouse and display. With no fans and no disk, the only moving parts are the boot button and the electrons -- it is *silent*. The 12v setup is nice, since you can get UPS for the price of a battery, or power it straight from your car (it draws about 1 amp).
The supplier is SolarPC.com. They make a specialty of Mini-ITX products. Check out their web site at http://www.SolarPC.com and motherboard details at http://www.solarpc.com/bepia.htm.
There is an order page at http://188.8.131.52/store/commerce.cgi?product=SolarPC. The Squeak configuration is at the bottom of the page.
The Flash is set up for Squeak but, of course, it could be anything else that is happy with this Linux. Other squeak images should run fine (you can import them via FTP, or a USB memory stick), and other compact Linux-compatible systems should run fine as well. Of course you can put in more memory, and use bigger Flash or even a hard drive, but we wanted to make the Squeak Box simple and cheap. We have started a Swiki area on this (see http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3502), and presumably it will grow as people think of more things to do with the box.
Happy New Year
Sun is trying to create a "standard" tools framework for Java - IBM (maker's of Eclipse) is not interested. Here's the clueless part:
"Eclipse wants to be the framework for all tools. Oracle disagrees with that," said Ted Farrell, chief architect and director of strategy for Oracle's tools division. "There should be a common API (application programming interface) so people can plug into all frameworks easily."
A common API "for all frameworks"? What the heck is he smoking? Maybe Sun and Oracle will find the OMG as they search - the OMG was last seen creating CORBA extensions that no one cared about....
Over the last twelve to eighteen months, a new kind of website has emerged - the web log (or blog, as they are often called). If blogging has a father, it would be Dave Winer, of Scripting News. Dave started Scripting News back in'97, before anyone had really coined the term blog. Over the next few years, blog syndication (RSS), news aggregation tools, and blog servers were born. This field is still in its early days - there are lots of small companies (such as Six Apart) creating tools, but no offerings (yet) from any of the large vendors, such as Microsoft, Oracle, etc. The questions I'll try to answer here are:
Briefly, a weblog is an online journal, typically focused on some topic. Most weblogs are authored by one person, although there are collaborative efforts. Most weblogs focus on a topic or set of topics - i.e., politics, some aspect of technology, marketing, etc. The main visible difference between a web log and a "normal" website is that the web log will get updated much more regularly - often more than once per day. Additionally, most web logs use an XML format (either RSS or Atom, or both) to syndicate their content. What does that mean? It means that you can use a news aggregator (there's a nice list of available ones at http://www.hebig.org/blogs/archives/main/000877.php) to subscribe to the content being produced. The aggregator will check for new updates in the background, allowing you to keep track of content you care about without having to keep an enormous list of bookmarks in your browser. Ultimately, a web log is like a journal, and there are tools that allow you to subscribe to the journal. Some web logs are interactive (allowing comments from readers) - but an up tick in spam comments is shutting a lot of that down.
That gives you an idea of what a web log is. The question then becomes, why should you care? I'm going to limit my answer to the realm of product and services companies here - blogging on politics, religion, philosophy (any non-business topic) is outside the scope of this article. With that in mind, why you should care is fairly simple - marketing and outreach. It's nearly always the case that you could stand more interest in, and more knowledge of, your products and services. As the Product Manager for Cincom Smalltalk, I'm certainly in that position. I'm responsible for a niche product in a fairly crowded space (application development and delivery platforms), and getting more awareness of Cincom Smalltalk out is clearly a good thing. There are standard marketing answers for some of that - advertising, speaking at trade shows, customer success stories, etc. You still need to do all of those things, but everyone else is doing them as well, and many of your competitors - like mine - have bigger budgets for these things. Having a web log presence is one way to route around that.
How does creating a public blog help in that regard? Well, that depends on how you run the blog. Simply creating a thing that looks like a blog and filling it with marketing press releases isn't going to cut it. Blog readers are looking for authentic voices - they can find pre-processed marketing fluff anywhere. There are also (literally) millions of blogs; I subscribe to over 200 of them myself. When I look at new content to subscribe to, I'm not interested in press releases; I'm interested in actual viewpoints from real people. As it turns out, there are many to choose from - some in (seemingly) the least likely places. Microsoft has taken to blogging in a big way, and many of their project managers and product managers are online now - have a look here:
It's instructive as well to look at Robert Scoble's blog
Scoble was hired by Microsoft as a marketing evangelist - and a large part of his pull that way is his blog. While he doesn't limit himself to MS topics, he posts about MS a lot. The impact of that (and of his fellow MS bloggers) is huge - it's placing a human face on the borg image of Microsoft.
Now, not all (or even most) companies have a need to modify parts of their public image to the same extent as Microsoft does. On the other hand, getting the word out to an interested audience is something we could all use. Let's go to my blog as an example. I started running the blog in the summer of 2002. At the time, I had no idea whether it would lead to anything useful. Over the first few months, I was getting on the order of a dozen visits a day - in other words, it was having no impact. Now, in January of 2004, I'm getting between 1000 and 3000 visitors a day - how did I manage that without any marketing budget?
Those two things alone started driving the number of visitors up tremendously. That's a good thing, but - how is it helping the Cincom Smalltalk business? Well, we offer Cincom Smalltalk as a free download (for non-commercial purposes). I've promoted that fact on my blog, and have promoted the free BottomFeeder tool as an example of a Cincom Smalltalk application. I've been receiving a steady (and increasing) number of inquiries about Cincom Smalltalk in my email as a result, as well as an increase in the number of downloads of the product. There have been a few sales of the product that I can trace back to conversations started on my blog. In other words, my blog has become a low cost marketing channel for the product.
It's important to keep in mind that this requires work. Coming up with interesting content on a regular basis is not easy. It's part of my job as product manager - blogging (and reading other blogs and journals) helps keep me current, and gives me plenty of fodder for posting. Creating original content to post is hard work, and it's something you need to do on an ongoing basis. Another important thing is focus - your blog should not wander over too wide a stream of topics. What you are looking for is an audience that will be interested in what you have to say - and as a side effect - interested in your products and/or services. That doesn't mean that every post needs to be specifically about your product, but it does mean that you should limit yourself to a few areas. I avoid politics and religion, for instance - it's hard enough to evangelize a product without trying to be a spokesman for a political point of view. Not to mention the fact that some of your customers are likely to have different political views than you - their money will still pay the bills.
Should you start a blog, or allow employees to run them? I think you want to jump into the water on this one soon. It's easy to get started - blog serving software can be had free or cheap (take a look at Blogger or at MovableType), for example. You can either host a blog, or start out with a free Blogger account. There's something to keep in mind though:
This is already true, of course - a document on your website will be cached by Google (et. al.) eventually. The difference with a blog is the notification. If you use the various notification schemes (like the weblogs.com one that I alluded to above) in order to increase awareness of your blog, the caching will be immediate. The upside of this is that your words will spread far and wide quickly. Yes, you have to be careful - but there's no reward without risk. Can you afford to have everyone else blabbing about their products while you keep yours in the shadows?
Joi Ito has an idealistic (and wrong) set of ideas about blogging:
To finally tie it into the discussion about technological determinism vs social constructivism, I think we need to be aware that we have an active effect on how the architecture of this technology evolves. I don't think we can yet "show the blogging world to be a just institutional structure", but rather we can try to determine what is just and strive to make the blogging world into something we feel is just. This requires us to dive into some of the questions that even Aristotle didn't answer. What is right? What is just? Hopefully the tools themselves will help guide this discussion, but rather than be nihilistic or deterministic, I think we should be actively involved in a dialog that best represents a consensus of our views. In order for this to be just, we must try be as inclusive as possible of everyone and on this I agree with danah. The tool is not yet inclusive. I think that blogs are right in many ways, but are far from right in many others. How can we try to make blogs as right and just as possible. I think that this is the question that faces us today.
Blogging and justice? Good gosh, this is the same ridiculous elevation that journalists give themselves. Blogging just is - whether a given blog is "right" or "just" depends on the author, not on the technology. The only thing to worry about is free expression - and there's not much on the technological side of things to deal with there. Sure, technology can be applied for good or ill. But that's the point - the application. It's the voices that matter, not how they got there.
Joseph Pelrine will be giving a talk in Berne, Switzerland on cross-dialect Smalltalk work on Tuesday January 13th at 5:15 pm:
"Smalltalkers are friends separated by a common language". One of the unfortunate side-effects of Smalltalk's popularity in the 90's is the plethora of more-or-less incompatible dialects. The ANSI standard and Camp Smalltalk notwithstanding, it still happens too often that high quality, existing code does not get reused because it's only available in one dialect or version, and the pain of porting often outweighs the benefits.
This talk will describe a number of state-of-the-art techniques being used in Camp Smalltalk and other projects to increase cross-dialect compatibility and assist migration between existing Smalltalk implementations. Demos will include moving code from VisualAge to S#, and using ENVY/Developer with VisualWorks 7 and Squeak.
The talk will be held at the IAM, room 107
Interesting topic


text:
- May 18:
- Postmus' attorney urges San Bernardino County to drop civil lawsuit against ex-assessor, others
- Jan 5:
- Court orders Uffer to return documents
- Nov 19:
- Assessor's Office defendant loses attorney
- Perjury counts stand in Erwin case
- Nov 3:
- Testimony ends in Postmus, Eyler hearing
- Nov 2:
- Daily activity of Eyler, Gutierrez examined
- Oct 29:
- Investigator: Aleman recorded conversations before plea bargain
- Oct 15:
- Testimony resumes in Postmus preliminary hearing
- Oct 8:
- Testimony: Postmus created jobs with political clout
- Sep 30:
- Aleman: Postmus devised scheme to bilk taxpayers
- Aug 13:
- Judge allows conspiracy charge against Gutierrez
- Aug 12:
- Postmus arrested in court; suspected of being under the influence of drugs
- Aug 6:
- Prosecutors move closer to obtaining information on Colonies settlement negotiations
- Jul 23:
- Erwin claims statute of limitations for alleged charges has expired
- Feb 11:
- Conspiracy case hopes to show how easy PACs can launder payoffs
- Feb 10:
- D.A. calls for return of $102 million from Colonies Partners
- May 13:
- Report: Staff used county money to run political blog
- May 12:
- County sues Postmus
- Feb 6:
- Assessor Postmus' political career likely done after he resigns
- San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus resigns
- Jan 27:
- County hires Enron prosecutor to investigate Postmus
- Jan 15:
- San Bernardino County Assessor Postmus arrested
- San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus arrested on drug charges
- San Bernardino County Assessor Bill Postmus arrested
- Jan 6:
- Postmus admits substance abuse, says he will not seek re-election
- Oct 10:
- San Bernardino County Assessor Postmus returns to work
- Aug 8:
- An addicted assessor
- Nov 9:
- A new post for Postmus
- Sep 13:
- Postmus rips assessor over selection for post
Even as money appeared to be depleted to fight such a battle, according to Gutierrez.
He said he used his retirement money and borrowed from family members to pay for his legal representation.
"I can't afford to appeal. I have no money," Gutierrez said Thursday. "This broke us. We spent all the money on the first two trials."
Nevertheless, defense investigators on Thursday talked with jurors in Gutierrez's trial and an analysis of the San Bernardino Superior Court proceedings was under way. But a decision had not yet been made, said Gutierrez's lawyer, James Reiss.
"There's a lot of review going on by appellate lawyers, and that determination will be made shortly," Reiss said.
The jury found Gutierrez guilty Wednesday of four felonies - two counts of grand theft and one count each of conspiracy to commit a crime and filing a fraudulent claim. He faces between 18 months and three years in state prison on each count when sentenced Dec.15, prosecutors said.
"Right now, we're exploring different avenues," Gutierrez said of any legal challenges. "There needs to be a solid ground to appeal. We need to put our heads together. We may feel we were right in this case, but we simply have to explore the
Bob Stern, president of the Los Angeles-based Center for Governmental Studies, said he would absolutely expect Gutierrez to appeal in light of the defendant's assertion he was innocent.
"If you have the resources and you think you're innocent, obviously you appeal," Stern said.
Reiss said he thinks three things affected the trial: the sour political climate, the jury's attention on the paper trail, and the jury's reluctance to interpret his client as having an exempt status and schedule while working for the Assessor's Office under former Assessor Bill Postmus.
"I think they felt the need for Rex to be there 8 to 5," Reiss said.
The defense lawyer said Gutierrez was put under a microscope and jurors did not concede he was allowed to work at night or on weekends as a salaried employee would be allowed to do.
Deputy District Attorney John Goritz said he had not received any word as of Thursday afternoon of a possible appeal or attempt by the defense to seek a new trial.
Reiss said it was his understanding that jurors were hung 9-3 in favor of guilt on the conspiracy count as of Tuesday evening. But on Wednesday, the logjam broke, and the jury reached a unanimous verdict.
The defense is not sure what cracked the jury.
Juror Bryan Estrada said the 9-3 count was a pre-vote, and he was one of the three.
"I couldn't convince myself that Rex was part of the whole Postmus thing," Estrada said.
In the end, the juror said he found Gutierrez to be a heck of an employee for Rancho Cucamonga but a lousy employee for the Assessor's Office.
The case against Gutierrez is part of an ongoing investigation into alleged corruption in San Bernardino County in which state and local prosecutors have charged four other former public officials, including Postmus, in connection with scandals in the Assessor's Office and the county's landmark $102million settlement with developer Colonies Partners LP in 2006.
Prosecutors argued that Postmus hired Gutierrez as intergovernmental affairs officer in the Assessor's Office at the behest of Colonies co-managing partner Jeff Burum and that Gutierrez seldom showed up for work, spending his time instead on matters related to Rancho Cucamonga while on the county clock.
Reiss said prosecutors had not approached him, and likely would not, to negotiate a possible lesser sentence for Gutierrez.
"I think they have their position, and we have ours," Reiss said.
Gutierrez said he had not been approached by anyone at the District Attorney's Office.
Goritz declined to say whether attempts were made to negotiate a lighter sentence for Gutierrez in exchange for information about other defendants in related cases.
"I wouldn't comment on anything like that," Goritz said.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
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This has been the Year of Percentages. It started off with the Occupy movement, which declared "we are the 99 percent," as they railed against the 1 percent. Then, at a private fundraiser, Mitt Romney bad-mouthed the 47 percent who don't pay federal income taxes. Then Romney lost to President Obama, who campaigned on a pledge to raise taxes on the top 2 percent — individuals earning more than $200,000 a year or couples earning more than $250,000 — while leaving the rest of us alone.
As the year draws to a close, Republicans are fighting that plan. Obama is at an impasse. If they fail to reach a deal, taxes will automatically go up for everyone. Which brings me to perhaps the most important — and least talked about — group of all: the 20 percent.
we will all pay higher taxes, no other choice. Of course when the economy recovers, we could be here for a very long time, save your money.
That is simply not true -- that 50% are freeloaders -- and I am surprised anyone keeps parroting it. People may not be paying FEDERAL INCOME TAXES but that is only one part of the U.S. tax burden. If people have jobs, they are paying payroll taxes. They are paying sales taxes even if they don't have jobs. They may be paying state income taxes and real estate taxes. Heck, if they have cars, they are paying gasoline taxes.
There's a reason that your "20 percent" don't feel so rich in Massachusetts. That's because the cost of living is so much higher than elsewhere. In a state where the median income is over $80K - and the costs are there to match, taxing $100K earners puts another burden on areas with higher costs of living. Not saying that $100K is anything to shake a stick at... but around here, $100K doesn't make you rich. It makes you someone with enough income to do OK without any handouts from the government. And isn't that what we are trying to encourage?
Muddying the waters with additional percentages of people to tax only makes clear thinking worse. Congressional Republicans are not even close to understanding their fellow citizen's lifestyles. They even think people making over $250,000 taxable income(what is left after taking out deductions) is a disincentive to investing or job growth. If a taxpayer has a taxable income of $300,000 then the extra $50,000 under the President's proposal pays a tax of $19500 instead of $17000 under present rates. For someone in this bracket this is hardly a make or break moment. It is less than 1% of the total taxable income. So let's stick with the present discussed percentages to demonstrate that there is no economic crisis or hardship to stymy growth. History tells us that proper taxation to pay government bills has occurred during our most prosperous periods. The only other percentage fact to play with is that 80% of the population must live very careful lives to survive. Only 25% of households make $85,000 or more. We do not have a tax problem or a spending problem. We have a living wage problem. Somehow the value of a livable life has not become part of mainstream American thought.
There is no advantage that I can see to Republicans striking any kind of deal prior to the first of the year. After we go "off the cliff" then they can come out with proposals to lower taxes on as many Americans as they can and they will give some small, small concession to Obama on raising rates on the very rich. That way, they will turn around and say that Obama is being stubborn and unreasonable if he doesn't sign. Like it was their idea all along. They get to frame the narrative in their own way. Politicians playing games with the American people. What else is new?
You don't seem to understand the situation. That's exactly what the Democrats should do. The rates rise automactically Jan. 1. Obama doesn't need any "small concession" from the Repubs. Then Obama offers to cut taxes for the lower 98% and the Repubs are even harder pressed to disagree, since now it is a tax cut.
I understand it perfectly well. I'm just saying you have to treat Republicans like babies because that's where they are right now. Absolute babies. When the Republican electorate sees a situation where Democrats are offering to lower taxes on almost everyone in the country and House Republicans are holding things up to specifically protect the one percent, well even a five-year-old can figure that out.
The whole system needs reform - both individual and corproate. The system is already too skewed to the top - that is unsustainable as is the liberal spending machine. What is lost a bit in this argument is the coming tax increases (real and pass thru) from PPACA.
Here is a good article w/ CBO numbers: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444873204577537250318931044.html
I am tired of the Dems class warfare and pay your fair share. That is BS.
"Raising taxes on them would help a lot."
Farah, you dont know what you arte talking about.
The Federal deficit this past year was $1.1 trillion dollars. Obama's proposed tax rate increases for the top 1% promises additional re4venue of approximately $80 billion a year, unfortuantely a drop in ther bucket against a deficit 12 times as large. Obama's focus on this tac increase is just changing the subject form the spedning problem the Federal govenment has had for many years, which has gone into turbo mode under Obama.
$80 billion a year is noise. The Obama tax rate increase argument is noise. He still plans to run annual deficits of $ trillion dollars forever...or until the Chinese decide that the USA has become another Greece.
The Federal goivernment needs to cut its psending hard and big, knowck off a full trillion the "would help a lot".
Dear LifeLibertyPOH,
Many of the experts I spoke to say debt is not a problem in the shorter-term. Interest rates are at the lowest in our lifetime. Just from a business perspective, this is a great time to borrow money, if you can invest it in something that will pay down the road. But over time, let's say in a few years, or if Europe gets its act together and people stop wanting to buy US bonds, the debt issue will absolutely be a problem. Several people told me we need about 2 trillion over 10 years to address that. Obama's plan gets us to $1.6 trillion - much of the way there, but not enough. Somewhere down the line, people will have to agree to delay retirement, or take less money when they retire, for starters. That is just the reality of the math. That is also part of "paying our fair share" to keep the system alive. So when you talk about spending cuts, that is an important piece of it: each of us saving more for our own retirement, and taking less out of the system. And the ones who are most able to do that are those who make $200,000 a year now.
"Many of the experts I spoke to say debt is not a problem in the shorter-term. Interest rates are at the lowest in our lifetime..."
Sure, if by short term you mean a few months...but interest rates will be back up to 4-5% soon enoughm and annual deficits of $1 trillion eventually will bust even the US dollar.
All the hyped debt reduction schemes, like Obama's $1.6 trillion reduction that you quote, are not reductions in the debt, but in the expected INCREASE in that debt. Instead of having the debt increase $10 trillion over the next 10 years, Obama's plan reduces the INCREASE by $1.6 trillion, to only $8.4 trillion, given a planned debt level of about $25 trillion. Do the math, the interest on $25 trillion at 5% is $1.2 trillion. Where are we going to get that amont, just to stay in place, every year?
Answer: in10 years the next generation of politicans will tell babyboomers like me the government can't pay us our SS checks because our generation ran up so much debt, there's not money to spare after these interest payments and other base spending.
Obamacare taxes kicking in:
"To illustrate when the tax applies, the IRS offered an example of a taxpayer filing as a single individual who makes $180,000 in wage income plus $90,000 from investment income. The individual's modified adjusted gross income is $270,000.
The 3.8 percent tax applies to the $70,000, and the individual would pay $2,660 in surtaxes, the IRS said."
The fiscal cliff actually doesn't seem to be all that problematic. What is problematic is just that the economy is slowing and people are not coming to stores. The small retailers are saying customers are not coming into the stores. They don't have good traffic and they're losing a lot of sales to the internet.
The other thing that is actually quite disturbing is that – if I go give a speech to 400 or 500 people in a specific city, for instance a Chamber event, and it's a doom and gloom speech because I am a very big bear on the economy now – this is what has been happening: Some people will always come up and say, "Hey, you know, I agreed with this, I disagreed with that." But lately they've been adding, "But you're 100% right, this economy is much weaker than anybody in the press is letting you know or leading you to believe." And out of an audience of 400, I have recently been getting 25 to 40 people coming up to me after the event saying things like, "I didn't raise my hand because we're at an event where my competitors are sitting across the table from me and I didn't want to advertise this, but I'm folding my business after Christmas. My name is on top of the 100-year-old, four generation family business, or a 75-year-old, third-generation business, and I have to shut the doors. But I don't want to do it before Christmas because then I have to answer all these questions and I'm going to be an embarrassment to my family." That's a very powerful statement.
How is it that our federal government runs such enormous deficits year after year when tax revenue consistently rises? Our government spends too much. And all this tax revenue funds a bloated military, ill-advised and immoral wars, the counterproductive war on drugs, absurd criminal prosecutions of individuals who pose no threat to us (i.e., Martha Stewart, Roger Clemens, John Edwards), and other law enforcement efforts that undermine our civil liberties. And despite the billions the government has confiscated from us to dispense to the poor in the form of entitlements, the poor remain mired in poverty. The government, in short, accomplishes little good with our tax dollars. As these entitlements explode in cost, we will find that we cannot tax our way out of these deficits. We've got to make substantial cuts to the budget -- military, entitlements, foreign aid, etc. -- or risk an eventual economic collapse, relegating us to third world status.
Agreed on military spending.
Most entitlement spending, however, is not spent on the poor, but rather everybody in the form or SS, Medicare and Medicaid (and no, Medicaid is not just for the poor. A huge chunk of it is spent on nursing home care after the elderly have spent down their assets and it makes sure their children don't go broke paying for it. And believe me, I know from personal experience, all but the wealthy would go broke as nursing home care now runs between $110,000 and $150,000 a year. How many readers here could afford that?)
Foreign aid is a pittance, less than 1% of our budget.
I also agree we are headed for third world status if we don't turn around a system that has been making the rich richer and the rest of us poorer for over 30 years now. To do that, we need: Major tax reform (see my letter above); a complete refocus of our military to only defending the homeland and drastically cutting its budget; a committment to building up our middleclass through investments in infrastructure and education; and labor and corporate law reform, to make it easier for unions in the private sector to organize and bargain, and to give more power to shareholders rather than boards of directors.
Just focusing on budget cuts will simply get us to Third World status even quicker.
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"But there's a problem," my friend said. "Most of the money in the country is still, thankfully, in hands of the people making between $100,000 to $300,000."
yes there is a problem, this statement is simply not true.
The top 1% actually own over 90% of the nation's wealth.
Sure, if you are going to just keep this unfair tax system the way it is and only tax earned income higher, then you are going to have to hit up the people earning only $100,000. But why should they pay 39% or more while the Romney's among us pay only 14% and usually even lower (as would be revealed if Romney ever released his tax forms, which, of course, is why he never did).
We need to tax dividends and capital gains for those bringing in over say, $500,000, at the same rate as if it were earned income. And we need to add the SS and Medicare taxes to those as well. And we should consider a one-time wealth tax to really make a dent in the debt, which has been run up over the last 32 years thanks to all the tax cuts those wealthy elite got.
Where do you get you statistics about the top 1% owning 90% of the nation's wealth? My understanding is that 54% of the nation's money is in the hands of people making between $100,000 to $300,000. That is why it is called a middle class. The top 1% own about 35% of the nation's wealth. That is still a huge chunk for a group so small, but a far cry from 90%. For more information, check out this chart: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
How about talking about fixing the most abusive of fundamental tax inequities while having this debate? Address carried interest. Many wage earners in the upper slice of the 1% have what are effectively bonuses for labor performed magically converted to capital gains taxed at 15% by calling them "carried interest". If most people understood this, they would be outraged. If we're going to raise rates on the wealthiest wage earners--let's make sure we don't have a substantial group of them getting massive breaks while milking everyone else.


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Wednesday, April 18, 2012
First Anniversary
24 comments:
- Jazmine said...
Looks so romantic. Jealous!!!
- April 18, 2012 at 9:27 AM
- Ashley said...
What a sweet way to celebrate!!! Happy Anniversary!!
- April 18, 2012 at 9:34 AM
- Kristen said...
WOW what a beautiful place! Your picnic looks like it's from a postcard. Happy anniversary!! :)
- April 18, 2012 at 9:59 AM
- Carlie said...
Glad you had a nice anniversary! The desserts look so good!
- April 18, 2012 at 10:28 AM
- Lauren said...
Looks like you had an amazing + delicious 1st Anniversary! I wish you and Jake many more happy anniversaries in the future--you deserve it! <3
- April 18, 2012 at 10:46 AM
- Callie @ YouDontEvenKnow said...
It looks like a wonderful setting to reflect on your past year. I love you both and am so glad I've had the chance to see you two grow as husband and wife :)
- April 18, 2012 at 10:57 AM
- Erika @ Our Cozy Cubbyhole said...
Happy Anniversary! So glad you guys got to spend a nice day together. :)
- April 18, 2012 at 11:00 AM
- Keri said...
Happy anniversary!! What a beautiful place, and your picnic looks amazing! I love your pictures. :)
- April 18, 2012 at 11:12 AM
- Will and Tere said...
That is the most perfect picnic I have ever seen! I love it! Happy first anniversary!
- April 18, 2012 at 12:44 PM
- Will and Tere said...
That is the most perfect picnic I have ever seen! I love it! Happy first anniversary!
- April 18, 2012 at 12:45 PM
- Karla said...
How perfect.. I think I want to do something like this when the hubby and I celebrate our one year! The winery looks amazing.. if you don't mind me asking what program did you use to edit your photos I love the vintage summer color feel you have going on.
- April 18, 2012 at 2:30 PM
- kyna... said...
Looks amazing Brhea! Hope you guys had a fantastic time!
♥ Kyna - April 18, 2012 at 3:31 PM
- christine donee said...
YES. I love wineries. And picnics.
- April 18, 2012 at 3:51 PM
- Emily grapes said...
That winery looks AMAZING!!! I can't believe you packed all that for the picnic. You have some mad picnic packing skills!! So if I ever go on one, can I just call you up to have you make mine?? ;)
Happy 1 year to you both!
Emily at Amazing Grapes - April 18, 2012 at 7:14 PM
- Angie said...
What a special day! How romantic :)
- April 18, 2012 at 7:18 PM
- Vanisha @ Vanishas Life In...Australia said...
Congratulations Brhea! Your anniversary sounds super romantic and perfect. Also, congratulations on the blog award from Shauna, I've headed over here from her blog :)
- April 18, 2012 at 9:54 PM
- twiggy@thedirtlife said...
omg. your the 2nd post i've seen in the last 5 min. celebrating their 1st year.
CONGRATS!! that is so, so exciting. looks like you went all out in celebrating.
that's my kind of style. - April 18, 2012 at 11:20 PM
- Kira said...
What a fun way to celebrate, your picnic looks perfect!
- April 19, 2012 at 12:02 AM
- Mrs. Pedersen said...
What an incredibly romantic celebration! Happy anniversary!
- April 19, 2012 at 9:06 AM
- That Girl said...
What a wonderful picnic!
- April 19, 2012 at 12:28 PM
- Ashley said...
Your pictures are breathtaking! Glad you had a wonderful anniversary!
- April 21, 2012 at 7:52 PM
- Brittany said...
Sounds like a perfect day. Those strawberries and cannolis look amazing.
- April 22, 2012 at 7:20 PM
- Lauryn said...
Your photos are gorgeous. What a great way to celebrate your anniversary. I love wine tasting! Unfortunately my significant other does not share my passion for the stuff.
That cannoli looks amazing :) - April 24, 2012 at 7:58 AM
- His Little Lady said...
oh my gosh!! these images are all so beautiful! and what a way to celebrate your one year anniversary! great picnic!
xo TJ - April 26, 2012 at 5:53 PM


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Parking/traffic tickets suck. And if we knew a sure way to get out of them we would. If like us, you too are on the lookout for a good excuse just check out this story from the US...
Physicist Dmitri Krioukov, from University of California, recently challenged a traffic ticket for failing to sufficiently stop at a stop sign with a bit of good old maths. Simple? No. But believable – yes. The equation he used (pictured above) will easily make sense to some. To others, like myself, it requires a little extra explanation. So here it goes... Krioukov explained the officer was mistaken, having confused his car's real space-time trajectory.
Ultimately Krioukov's car, because of its length, seemed in the officer's view as though it hadn't sufficiently stopped at the stop sign. Meaning, the officer's perception of reality did not adequately reflect what was reality.
Next time you're faced with a ticket just explain to the officer the 'significance of space-time trajectory'. They'll be so confused they'll have to believe you!


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Hotels in Boston
Hilton Boston Back Bay
Hilton Boston Back Bay
Hotel Guest Reviews of the Hilton Boston Back Bay
Our hotel ratings and reviews are from real hotel guests. Priceline.com ensures that its reviews are guests-only by proactively sending hotel surveys to customers after they've completed their hotel stays. In the post-stay surveys, priceline.com hotel customers are asked a number of questions about their stay and the hotel. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the best, the survey asks guests to rate their overall experience and specifically rate the hotel's cleanliness, staff and location. Priceline.com does not allow site visitors to post unsolicited hotel reviews.Sort by: All Travelers | Business Traveler(21) | Solo Traveler(31) | Traveling as Couple(42) | Family with Young Children(8) | Family with Teens(11) | Senior Traveler(1) | Group Traveler(6)
Verified Hotel Guest from Windsor, CT
May 8, 2013
Family Traveling with Young Children
May 8, 2013
Family Traveling with Young Children
Cost of parking was a little outrageous especially with the cost of the room. Also, free wi-GI not being available was a first for me at a Hilton location.
Aside from the location, I wouldn't recommend staying here to anyone. I feel you can get more for your money at other locations.
Andres from Great Neck, NY
May 7, 2013
Family Traveling with Teens
May 7, 2013
Family Traveling with Teens
Great room in a top floor with great views. Great fitness room and pool.
Breakfast buffet was very very bad.
Helen from Washington, CT
May 2, 2013
Group Traveler
May 2, 2013
Group Traveler
The location was perfect for our visit to Boston. We could walk to Newbury Street and Bolyston Street to grab a bite to eat and to shop. The hotel was very accommodating to let us check in early.
John from Tempe, AZ
April 30, 2013
Family Traveling with Young Children
April 30, 2013
Family Traveling with Young Children
Location was great.
Mini bar was empty, but still on.
Verified Hotel Guest from Fairfax, VA
April 18, 2013
Family Traveling with Young Children
April 18, 2013
Family Traveling with Young Children
Excellent location, very helpful staff, good restaurant
Don from Wilton Manors, FL
April 4, 2013
Solo Traveler
April 4, 2013
Solo Traveler
Easy location, great rooms and beds
They charge $45.00 for overnight parking. This is so unfair. These charges should be barred or at least revealed before purchase. This is NOT an "incidental" charge. It's a racket.
Cheryl from Macedonia, NY
March 25, 2013
Business Traveler
March 25, 2013
Business Traveler
The location is great. The Prudential Center is a very short walk as well as other attractions. The hotel staff was very friendly.
This hotel does not have free wi-fi in your room. However, it does have a nice business center with wi-fi & at least 4 computers with printers in the lobby.
The hotel address is 40 Dalton St. However, the main entrance is around the corner on Belvedere St.
Verified Hotel Guest from Portland, OR
March 18, 2013
Business Traveler
March 18, 2013
Business Traveler
I really appreciated the help offered by Josephine at the Concierge desk. The front desk was also helpful and very accommodating. Everything was clean and comfortable.
It didn't seem like there was enough staff in the bar/restaurant and they were slightly less friendly.
This was very convenient for visiting colleges. The concierge (Josephine) was especially helpful with explaining the local transportation system. The hotel was clean, convenient and comfortable.
Cheryl from Middlesex, VT
March 5, 2013
March 5, 2013
The room was great. The bed was so comfortable. The staff was very helpful and friendly.
The room was fine but parking was expensive ($41/day). There was a garage around the corner that charged less ($32/24 hour).
Verified Hotel Guest from Medford, MA
February 26, 2013
February 26, 2013
Good location, very clean, nice staff.
We got switched from a king size room to two queens, and the queen beds were tiny! Barely even full size, truly.
Reviews of Hilton Boston Back Bay
(1 - 10 of 123 reviews)
(1 - 10 of 123 reviews)
- Sheraton Boston Hotel from $179 (0mi)
- Colonnade Hotel from $251 (0.2mi)
- Commonwealth Court Guest House from $140 (0.2mi)
- Hostelling International Boston (0.2mi)
- Midtown Hotel from $99 (0.2mi)
- Bukowski Tavern (0mi)
- Jasper White's Summer Shack (0mi)
- Kings Restaurant (0mi)
- Bangkok City (0.1mi)
- Dillon's (0.1mi)
- Fenway Park (0.7mi)
- Museum of Fine Arts (0.7mi)
- Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum (0.9mi)
- Freedom Trail (1.3mi)
- Granite/Milton (1.5mi)
- Charlestown, MA (2.2 mi)
- Cambridge, MA (3.7 mi)
- Chelsea, MA (3.8 mi)
- Somerville, MA (3.8 mi)
- Brookline, MA (4.9 mi)
- Allston, MA (5.1 mi)
- Revere, MA (5.7 mi)
- Jamaica Plain, MA (5.8 mi)
- Malden, MA (5.8 mi)
- Medford, MA (5.9 mi)
- Brighton, MA (6.9 mi)
- Winthrop, MA (7.9 mi)
- Watertown, MA (9.1 mi)
- Quincy, MA (9.6 mi)
- Saugus, MA (9.9 mi)
- Newton, MA (10.8 mi)
- Woburn, MA (11.7 mi)
- Braintree, MA (11.7 mi)
- Dedham, MA (11.7 mi)
- Wakefield, MA (11.8 mi)
- Newton, MA (12.0 mi)
- Waltham, MA (12.7 mi)
- Auburndale, MA (13.4 mi)
- Lexington, MA (13.8 mi)
- Waltham, MA (14.0 mi)
- Needham, MA (14.6 mi)
- Randolph, MA (14.7 mi)
- Weymouth, MA (15.0 mi)
- Woburn, MA (15.0 mi)
- Lexington, MA (16.0 mi)
- Wakefield, MA (16.0 mi)
- Burlington, MA (19.0 mi)
- Peabody, MA (21.0 mi)
- Natick, MA (25.0 mi)
- Concord, MA (26.0 mi)
- Danvers, MA (26.0 mi)


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Your Health Archive
Shannon Jones, clinic director Washington Regional Wound Care
Shannon Jones, A.P.N., N.P.-C., C.W.S. clinic director Washington Regional Wound Care
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Your Health: Wound Care with Washington Regional
Today's Your Health with Washington Regional's the topic is Wound Care
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Ronald J. Bertram, MD
Dr. Bertram is a family practice physician at the Washington Regional Diagnostic Clinic in Bentonville, AR.
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Your Health: Huntington's Disease
People with Huntington's disease have several treatment options.
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Your Health - Skin Cancer App
It's another edition of Washington Regional's "Your Health", and since May 1 marks the beginning of "Skin Cancer Awarenes Week", Dr. Chris Schach, a
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Page 1 of 25
Why Little Cheeks Get Bright Red
It is the time of year for cold temperatures, low humidity and dry skin. It is funny, every year as the temperatures drop, I start...
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Baby Food in a Pouch?
I have a lot of patients who have been coming to my office bringing along these new pouches of food for their babies. Somehow, pureed...
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Media Exposure is Everywhere
It's funny how many new topics there are to discuss during a child's check up. I am sure that 10-15 years ago, I was not spending...
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Winter Dry Skin
It's winter and that means cold dry air, heat on in the house and dry and chapped skin as a consequence.
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Kid's Backpacks: Lighten the Load!
Backpacks can make carrying a lot of items easier and kids often use them to haul their schoolbooks to and from home and classes. They...
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The Dangers of Using Baby Aspirin
During a recent office visit, I saw a 4 year old child who is not one of my routine patients. He had a fever and...
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Weekend Fevers
Monday's in the office are always busy and one of the most predictable visits will be for a child who has had a fever over...
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Lactose Intolerance
A parent emailed me via our iPhone App and asked if her childs constipation, which started as he was transitioning from formula to whole milk,...
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Teaching A Child Boundaries & Limits
"Boundaries" and "limits" are two words that every parent needs to have in their vocabulary, just the same way that every child knows the words...
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Spit Up vs. Reflux
One of the best parts of my practice is continuing to see newborns and young families. The one thing that never changes are some of...
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Page 32 of 42
Doctor Bios
Meet Dr. Randall D. Hightower, MD, FACOG, SGO
Dr. Randall D. Hightower, from Her Health by Washington Regional, specializes in Gynecologic Oncology with Her Health by Washington Regional
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Meet Dr. Adam Childs - Urologist
Dr Childs completed his residency in urology at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., where he trained in robotic-assisted laparoscopic surgery.
Read More» -
Meet Carla Rider, RN, MBA
Carla Rider is director of women's services at Washington Regional Medical Center
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Meet Gillian Woods, Ph.D
Gillian Woods is the Education Manager with WRMC Pat Walker Center for Seniors and co-director of the CTC.
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Meet Dr. Jessica Short Rheumatologist
Dr. Short is devoted to the diagnosis and treatment of conditions and diseases affecting joints, muscle and bones.
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Thu August 23, 2012
Federal Reserve May Move To Boost Economy
By John Ydstie
Fed policymakers appeared to move closer to a decision to add more stimulus to the economy. That's according to minutes released of the Federal Open Market Committee's meeting. The minutes didn't say what the Fed is likely to do next, but indicated many officials supported keeping the federal funds rate at "exceptionally low levels" at least through late 2014.


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Tag Archives: The Rolling Stones satanic majesties request
taking a trip with granny
by Art Chantry: back in 1966-67, just as the whole "swinging london" scene that peaked with the carnaby sleek mod/fashion scene, the whole thing began to shift. in amercia, teenage pop fashion had started to go psychedelic very quickly. you … Continue reading
Posted in Feature Article, Ideas/Opinion, Madame Pickwick Weekend
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Wall Solutions Frame and Ledge Set - Black
Decorate your wall with these functional frame and ledge sets. Template included for easy hanging. Put all the included frames on ledges or just a few and hang additional frames on the wall to create a magnificent centerpiece to a hall or room. Set includes metal hanging rods with decorative ends, hanging hardware, full-size hanging template, and six wood frames (one 11" W x 14" L frame matted to 8" W x 10" L, two 8" W x 10" L frames matted to 5" W x 7" L, and three 8" W x 10" L frames matted to 4" W x 6" L). Imported.
Wall Solutions Frame and Ledge Set - Black
Not bad
We received this set for Christmas, and I love how they look. Our apartment walls were BARE so these are great for filling up wall space. The template is off, so DO NOT USE IT, just measure and you'll be fine. There was a small chip in one shelf, which i'm sure happened during shipping, but it can't be seen when hung. Otherwise I really like the variety of frames, and I love that I can rearrange them with ease.
May 13, 2013
Horribly Cheap Ledge & Frame Set
This set is not worth the money I spent! Some of the frames had chipped black paint and can not be used as I intended.
My suggestion is to just buy shelves similar to these (and probably at a much smaller price), and add your own frames. Anything you can find has to be of better quality!
November 29, 2012
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ShagThai December 5, 2012
after she took that piss at 8:22 I wanted to fuck her so badly!
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UpsetJoe December 4, 2012
"Chinese Babe...." Forth character is Japanese. NOPE
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The Simplest Path to Personal and Planetary Awakening: Free Your Mind
by Vincent Casspriano, Jr.
Price: $4.99 USD. 60430 words.
Published by New Paradigm Press on February 23, 2010. .
"Carl Sagan meets Carlos Castaneda meets Richard Dawkins meets the Buddha... Vincent Casspriano, Jr.'s THE SIMPLEST PATH cuts through all the Traditional religious and New Age mystic mumbo jumbo to reveal a simple step by step path anyone can follow to the attainment of personal enlightenment and the positive transformation of our world." - Esra Free, author of Wicca 404: Advanced Goddess Thealogy


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Most Recent
Thoughts on Presidents' Day
The author reflects on the courage of Abe Lincoln and James Garfield.
by Jaime O'Neill, Feb 14, 2013 -
In the Northwest, innovative projects use trees to cool streams
A program pays for ecosystem services to keep rivers at the right temperature for wildlife.
by Leslie Rutberg, Feb 13, 2013 -
When frontier socialism thrived in Wyoming
Collective politics thrived more than a century ago in a frontier town.
by Paul Krza, Feb 12, 2013 -
Will the Badlands become the first tribal national park?
Oglala Lakota leaders hope to transform their bombed-out Badlands and help lift the tribe out of poverty, but it won't be easy.
by Brendan Borrell, Feb 11, 2013 -
In a rural Colorado valley, old-fashioned print news lives on
The Saguache Crescent prints on an ancient letterpress machine, no computers necessary.
by Jonathan Thompson, Feb 08, 2013 -
Living in a caboose, supporting the railroad
A man who lives in a train urges us to advocate for a robust regional rail network.
by Forrest Whitman, Feb 08, 2013 -
Never underestimate the power of prejudice
Prejudice 100 years ago delayed the admission of New Mexico and Arizona to the union.
by Andrew Gulliford, Feb 07, 2013 -
How to clean up abandoned mines -- without landing in court
Anyone who tries to fix a draining mine may become liable for its water pollution. But Good Samaritans are finding ways to avoid getting sued for their good deeds.
by Emily Guerin, Feb 06, 2013 -
Killing wolves is part of the bargain
We ought not to react so emotionally to the death of a Yellowstone wolf, killed by a Wyoming hunter.
by Michael J. Dax, Feb 05, 2013 -
A world of plague and hope: A review of The Bird Saviors
In William J. Cobb's lyrical novel The Bird Saviors, a mysterious virus strikes the residents of Pueblo, Colo.
by Jenny Shank, Feb 04, 2013 -
Love wins
After 22 years, a couple gets the first same-sex marriage in their rural Washington county.
by Ana Maria Spagna, Feb 04, 2013 -
A review of An Atlas of Historic New Mexico Maps
Archaeologist and historian Peter L. Eidenbach presents the Land of Enchantment as seen by early conquerors, naturalists, surveyors, and railroaders.
by Staff, Feb 04, 2013 -
Whose land is this?
The country's first tribal national park could lead the way toward more tribal control over lands that were once theirs.
by Jodi Peterson, Feb 04, 2013 -
A new normal for snow
The dry 2000s means snow trackers have to adjust "normal" downward.
by Sarah Jane Keller, Feb 04, 2013 -
Water is (still) for fightin': A review of Durango
Gary Hart's seventh novel takes us to another front in the water wars, the decades-long dispute over damming southern Colorado's Animas- La Plata rivers to provide more water for the growing town of Durango.
by Annie Dawid, Feb 04, 2013 -
Welcome, new interns!
Meet Sarah Jane Keller and Marshall Swearingen, a correction
by Jodi Peterson , Feb 04, 2013 -
Which way will the West go on guns?
Pro-gun Western Democrats are in the spotlight as the nation debates non-traditional firearms.
by Jonathan Thompson, Feb 04, 2013 -
Art finds a place alongside science at New Mexico research station
The nation's network of Long Term Ecological Research Stations are increasingly embracing art and writing in hopes of broadening their impact and public reach.
by Amelia Apfel, Feb 01, 2013 -
Letting go of the comfortable
A visit to his family's homestead reminds the author that we all hold on to the past, even if it is unnecessary.
by Jim Gearhart, Feb 01, 2013 -
Miguel Luna gives young Los Angelenos a beaker and a job
Agua University trains young people in Los Angeles County to work as water samplers, employing them and also teaching about the importance of clean water.
by Judith Lewis Mernit, Jan 30, 2013


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[Solved] can't figure out how to get the select url working in http://css-tricks.com/convert-menu-to-dropdown
I'm trying to figure this out, but it doesn't seem to be working. How should I have my urls in here in order for navigation to work:
<select> <option value="" selected="selected">Menu</option> <option value="/index.html">Home</option> <option value="/spwl.html">Single Payment Whole Life</option> <option value="/wl.html">Whole Life</option> <option value="/term.html">Term</option> <option value="/annuities.html">Annuities</option> <option value="/contact.html">Contact Us</option> <option value="/about.html">About Us</option> </select>
Have you looked all the way through the steps?
The dropdown menu is 'activated' using JS/JQuery.


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Cyclical Investing's Countercyclical Payoff: Street Whispers
NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Private equity giant Apollo Global Management's(APO) investment success in chemicals conglomerate LyondellBasell(LYB) shows what big money private equity has discovered and what retail investors have yet to realize: Cyclical stocks can tell you the direction of earnings but that doesn't mean they say anything about valuations.
By looking at chemical giant LyondellBasell's continued recovery from bankruptcy -- and its sharp share gains since an October 2010 initial public offering -- gains made by the private equity and hedge fund investors who are its top shareholders illustrate that confusion may abound about cyclical stock valuations.
Be it steel manufacturer Alcoa(AA) , chemicals giant DuPont(DD) or equipment maker Caterpillar(CAT) , cyclical's are rightfully seen by investors as leading indicators for corporate earnings and the economy.
But as a read on the direction of stock market valuations those stocks may be the exact opposite. In fact, a look at the private equity and hedge fund score in LyondellBasell stands as proof of a crucial, but counterintuitive investing dynamic. The key is that while Apollo invested in LyondellBasell at peak valuation multiples, it also entered the company as it neared cyclical earnings lows after the onset of the Great Recession.
Now, many expect that the opposite. In fact, after a string of blockbuster earnings quarters in a shaky economy, continued optimism on LyondellBasell's shares hinge on whether its multiple rises as earnings peak.
The counterintuitive interplay between earnings and valuations is the key, after LyondellBasell reported better than expected second quarter earnings in late July. "


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A local Shriners' club is celebrating its new building a year and a half after fire destroyed their former meeting place.
Commencement ceremonies for seniors in the Knox County school district started Wednesday evening at Thompson-Boling Arena.
Investigators will be in Walden's Creek on Thursday to see if arson caused the fire that claimed the two homes on top of Bluff Mountain.
The prosecution is still building its case, outlining for the jury what happened the night and days after Channon Christian and Chris Newsom were carjacked, raped, and murdered.
Lady Vols Head Coach Holly Warlick has held many titles-- "All American," "Olympian," "Hall of Famer" and most recently "Coach of the Year." She's HomeGrown and enjoying home court advantage.
Three months after the Knox County Schools superintendent ordered a review of school security, 10News has obtained the reports for the first 28 schools audited.
Pictures submitted to WBIR by a student show a dead raccoon hanging by its feet from a tree, another shows one strung up on the school's flagpole.
Mayors Madeline Rogero and Tim Burchett announced Wednesday how money will be spent as part of their Competitive Airfare Partnership plan.
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The Info Hub is about easy access to information about what is going on in Aberdeen, including activities, services, events and support options.
What's it all about?
The 4th of July marked the opening of The Info Hub in Aberdeen.
The info hub is a place where you will be able to find information on events and services in Aberdeen with an emphasis on inclusion.
Where is it?
As well as the website, you can visit us at:
The Info Hub,
Units 8-10,
Aberdeen Indoor Market,
Market Street,
Contact - 01224 595685
Get involved
We are developing the website at the moment, and you can have your say.
Get involved and let us know what information you would like to see on the website.
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