4. February, 2004 - dug out
- In spite of all the talk of how the latest Snowfall strained plowing resources and how the governor’s cutbacks are hurting plowing times, I managed to drive at my usual speed up to mom’s yesterday to drop off her birthday present a couple days late. It’s pretty amazing to me when I stop to think about it, rather than taking it for granted: when I was a kid, school might have been delayed on the day after a big snowfall like the one we had on Sunday and Monday. Now, the roads – all the way out into gravel-road-country where my mom lives – were plowed all the way to the ditches. It’s not that snow-plowing technology has advanced a ton during the intervening years (it has advanced, but not that much), but that cities, counties and states are richer (your tax-dollars at work, for once) and have more snow-plowing equipment (and people to operate it) available (crews around here get a lot more practice, too). On the other hand, I’m still sore from the shovelling I did yesterday. Good thing there’s ibuprofen.
- How public should public records be? You can get ’em by going to the courthouse, but should they be available on the internet? In many cases, they already are, whether officially or not. I don’t like having all that information available, but if it’s going to be online, it should be equally accessible to everyone. [strib]
- Bruce Schneier has a new essay asking How We Are Fighting the War on Terrorism: IDs and the illusion of security. It’s about identification and security, and why the former has so little to do with the latter – the same sort of thing he talks about in Beyond Fear (which I haven’t read yet, but is on the list). The real problem is that trying to ID or profile people at the airport or immigration doesn't help much if you don't know in advance who the bad guys are. It's not as though terrorists carry a special “terrorist” ID card.
- Computer Solitaire Patented: Patently Ridiculous. The earliest filing date of any of the patents? 1996. I remember playing canfield on my Stearns PC which got gutted in 1991 or so. There just might be some prior art out there that the patent office seems to have missed. [fark!]
- MABS can claim huge numbers; repeal effort can’t. Minnesotans Against Being Shot claims large numbers of members (after all, who really wants to get shot?), but how many actually want to repeal the concealed-carry law here? Weren’t these the folks who could only get thirty people show up at the capitol on Monday for a rally? [press-patch]
Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek.
Last updated on Wed, 04 Feb 2004 07:35:20.