User Blogs

A recent Slashdot story on RSS prompted me to comment on Drupal's RSS capabilities; This site has RSS because Drupal makes it trivial. But what most people don't know, because Google apparently doesn't want you to know, is that Youtube has RSS feeds. Using them permits you to build your own chronological subscriptions list without having to use Youtube's lousy interface. But how do you actually find them?

I recently found myself looking at school buses, for potential conversion into an RV. While there are many relevant criteria to be satisfied when making such a purchase, probably the most important is "will I be able to drive it?" I am not so concerned about physically being able to operate a bus, only legally. Most school buses in which I am interested have a GVWR over 26,000 pounds, which normally requires an upgraded, "Class B" license in California (and similar licensing in most other states.) But as it turns out, this is simpler than it seems at first.

The internet runs on Open Source Software. But what does "Open Source" mean, and where did the term come from? It's still unclear what the actual origin was, but one thing is certain: the term predates claims by members of the Open Source Initiative. I reached out to Lyle Ball, CEO of NetEndeavor and former head of public relations at Caldera for his opinion on the subject, and he was kind enough to provide a substantial and informative response.

Uber is in the news right now for allegedly paying drivers a median profit $3.37 per hour. Even if this is not true (as claimed by Uber — though in an argument over math, I'm going to go ahead and bet MIT) it's difficult to argue that Uber drivers are making anything like a fair wage. But this is not a situation of Uber's making, it is a sign of the ongoing American economic collapse.

Authoritarianism is a form of government characterized by strong central power and limited political freedoms." Check. But what if we examine the question in (slightly) more detail?