Year: 2005

Decide Your own Political Contributions (YES on 75)

mike 0 Comment Politics

If you haven’t yet read what proposition 75 is all about, be sure to read the actual proposition. You can find official information here.

This is another simple proposition, that should be a YES vote. The simple things it does are:

* Requires employee consent before contributing union dues toward Political purposes.
* Requires unions to maintain records to the Fair Political Practices Commission about these contributions, although the records are not subject to public disclosure.

That’s it. So, this proposition is quite simple and obviously a YES vote.

One of the problems we have in this state is that many large organizations take disproportionate control in politics due to their large contributions. Bringing that power back to the individuals is a good thing.

In reality, I doubt this proposition will have much affect at all. It means that Unions need to recognize that they are political forces, and they need to be fair. Employees who disagree with the politics of their unions *might* go against the union, but by-and-large they will not. So Unions as political beasts won’t be impacted much, and we’ll allow individuals to vote with their money as appropriate.

Don’t Let the State Retain Ineffective Employees (YES ON PROP 74)

mike 0 Comment Politics

Opponents call this the “blame teachers act”. But I have yet to hear any arguments against this proposal. It’s simple and a no-brainer. I think the reason that I haven’t heard a single coherent argument against it (other than to call it names) is because there is no valid argument against it.

Say what you will about whether this bill should be a priority for our state (I agree that it doesn’t seem like a very pressing issue), the fact is that it is on the ballot, and it’s a good measure.

Here is the link to the official Proposition 74.

The bill makes the following true:
1) Delays tenure from two years to five years.
2) Modifies the dismissal process for tenured teachers such that if a teacher gets two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations, the school board can dismiss the teacher.

Thats it.

The only thing wrong with this bill is that it doesn’t abolish tenure altogether. I don’t think our teachers need to be coddled. Despite that, the bill is solid forward progress, and protects all Californian taxpayers from having to pay ineffective employees. Now, how could Warren Beatty or any other democrat claim this is a “fire teachers” bill? The teacher needs to get back to back failing reviews in order for this to be even possible. There is no corporation in America that tolerates bad performers like this, so why should the state?

I think the Democrats are just against anything Schwarzenegger proposes – not because the bill is bad – but because they want to attack him. Politics sucks.

Vote yes on this one.

Javascript libraries and AJAX

mike 0 Comment Technology

I spent a fair amount of time searching for good javascript and ajax libraries. Here are the ones I’ve tried and like.

DOMAPI is a great JS library. Its cheap, easy to use, and very modular. Its also been around for a long time and has pretty good support. If you buy it, you get access to the upcoming versions which have improved AJAX support. The 3.0 version uses a javascript RPC library which is an earlier version of AJAX concepts. Most everything in the library works great on FireFox + IE.

prototype.js is a free toolkit for writing ajax applications. Works great on IE/Firefox. Also claims to support Safari.

Rico is an open-source javascript library that builds upon prototype.js. They’ve done some great work with visual effects here. I especially like their Accordion widget, drag/drop features, and expanded AJAX support (check out their demos!). My biggest gripe about Rico is that it distributes itself as a single js source file which is about 80KB. In practice, this is probably not unbearable, and if it helps speed development, the size issue can be conquered later. I don’t think it works with Safari yet either.

An interesting library which I haven’t experimented enough with is Behaviour. This one looks promising as a great way to specify javascript actions/behaviors in the CSS rather than in the HTML. Used effectively, this could greatly improve the maintainability and readability of your HTML/Javascript.

Lastly, I’ll mention Zimbra’s Ajax Library, which is probably worth a look if you are just getting started simply because their demos are so impressive. Because Zimbra is an applications company, the library is buried within their source code, and they don’t spend a ton of time making it easy for developers. So it will a take a little more time to get started with this one, which is the reason I have yet to try it myself.

If you are searching for ajax info, you might want to check out the Ajax Frameworks page at ajaxpatterns.org.

Windows Live

mike 0 Comment Technology

If you haven’t seen it already, Windows Live launched today. It looks pretty cool. But its all “in Beta”.

The best new part of Windows Live is the new Hotmail look. If you use hotmail, you should definitely check it out – its way better. To see it, you have to signup, however, so just login to your hotmail account here. You have to wait for approval before you’ll get the new look.

PS – the live.com site says, “Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)”

PPS – don’t forget to check out start.com. It’s a better “home page” than Yahoo or Google.

I don’t understand these people…

mike 0 Comment Editorial

Every day I come out of the building where I work, and there will be one or two people just sitting there. If its cold, they are bundled up. If its hot they might be in the shade. They are not talking to each other; they just sit and stare out into space, and do absolutely nothing except smoke.

I can’t imagine my life being lulled into such a non-existence. Even if I did smoke, being forced outside to sit in the corner and do nothing would just be intolerable, and I’d quit. How can anyone do it? I really don’t care that much about the health aspects of it; but isn’t time just too valuable to be wasted like that? Oh well; it’s not my choice.

MySpace.com Javascript Worm

mike 0 Comment Technology

Here you can read the interesting story of the guy who hacked MySpace.com with a javascript worm. Myspace.com allows you to collect “friends”. Using javscript in his own profile, he was able to make any user that viewed his profile add him as a friend in the background without them knowing! And in doing so, he was able to collect over 1M “friends” in less than 1 day. Pretty impressive! It shows how exponential worm growth can be. For kids at home, don’t do it. Demolition is easy, building is hard.

He goes on to also post the details of how he got the javascript to work, too. Those of us who are programmers, know of many of these tricks. For those of who aren’t, well, take a look and see how easy it can be for a hacker to jump over roadblocks and get past the guards…

Oh yeah – I have verified that his pages don’t contain any hazardous javascript right now. So hopefully its safe to click on these links. But don’t hold me liable! He did it once, and seems to be sincere that it was just curiousity that made this happen, but who knows what he will do next!

Richard Feynman

mike 0 Comment Entertainment

I just finished reading. “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman“. Feynman was a physicist who won the Nobel Prize, but more importantly, he was a guy that just didn’t think the same way that most of us do. They say that “Great minds think alike.” But I doubt it was a great mind that said that, for the great minds are the ones that don’t think the way the rest of us do.

You won’t find much physics or science in this book, but I still liked this light reading. Sometimes we think we’re limited to being experts in just one area of study. Feynman proves that there is nothing to stop you from being successful in many fields except yourself. Don’t believe anything they teach you in school!