Anonymous at Blogcritics:

The pain! The pain!

CNN.com - 'Lost in Space' villain Jonathan Harris dies at 87 - Nov. 4, 2002.

Bummer. Lost in Space (the TV show, not the silly movie) was one of my favorite shows when I was growing up. I remember, once, when there was smoke pouring under the door to our apartment because the basement furnace caught fire, I got mad at my mother for making me leave the burning building. "But, mom! It's Lost in Space!"

Danger, Will Robinson!

Goodbye, Dr. Zachary Smith. imdb

[a klog apart Obituaries a la Blog]

51 or 49, Some Things Stay The Same. You may take the House, or the Senate. But you'll have to pry Britney from my cold, dead hands

Drafted in the spirit of motor voter and other civil rights laws, Californians spiked this version of Election Day Voter Registration. The opponents raised fears of fraud, even getting that word into Proposition 52's title. The con arguments are specious.

I think the three real reasons it died:  

1. Race discrimination. Don't want those darned immigrants voting.
2. Class discrimination.  
3. Procrastinator discrimination. We managed to get our registration in on time.

The Green, Libertarian, and other small parties siphon votes from the big two.

Did the small parties affect the House and Senate election results? Change the balance of power? Put control of the Presidency, House, Senate, and Judiciary in one party's hands for the first time in U.S. history?

The Independence Party seems earned votes equal to the margin of victory in Minnesota (but I have no idea if they come from the left or the right). Missouri is very close, and the Libertarian and Green parties drew the margin of victory there too. South Dakota's Libertarian vote is also equal to the margin of victory. 

I'm starting to appreciate the value of parliamentary politics. More inclusion for the little parties; they can throw their votes to the big party of their choice. Votes for the small party aren't thrown away, just invested. And the interests of the fractional parties are represented. Greens + Dems forming a voting block, Reform + Republicans form another, Libertarians swing both ways (depending). More voices in congress, maybe better problem solving.  

 [a klog apart public policy]

Would you pay $45 a year to address:

• Employer snooping into email, chat, shopping, file storage, music downloads.
• Fear of vague Internet risks (identity theft, hackers, cookies, profiling, viruses)
• Inconvenience (banners and pop-up ads)

Primedius offers three products to make you personally "cyber secure." From their site:

• WebTunnel (protecting your browser experience)
• Private anonymous surfing anytime, anywhere.
• Encrypted Traffic: Encrypts all traffic between your
  computer and the Primedius servers using SSL.  
• Works in Corporate Environments: Surf/Chat at
  work without your boss tracking you.
• Disable Censorship: Surf any website without being
  blocked by Corporate and ISP Proxies.
• Prevent monitoring: ISPs and network administrators
  cannot monitor or log your surfing.
• Download Media: Download mpeg, avi, jpeg, gif,
  mp3 and other files anonymously and securely.
• Hide IP: Shield your computer and prevents websites
  from 'harvesting' your computer's IP address.
• Kill Popups: Stop annoying popup windows.
• Ad blocking: Saves bandwidth by preventing
  advertisements from being downloaded.
• Control Cookies: Restrict life cycle or completely
  delete profiling cookies.
• SOCKS support: Use chat applications like MSN,
  Yahoo from work privately and securely. Also supports
  some other applications that can connect using SOCKS.
• Shop Online: Shop online sites with added privacy.
• Prevent Snooping: Prevent hackers from snooping
  on your browsing session.
   
• Primedius Email. Highly secure spam-free, virus protection, and user-specified filter options, simple to use
   
• InforSafe. X-Drive with encryption on high availability and redundant storage.

Competitor, sort of, is Anonymizer.com.

Is there a market?

Does Radio work with this type of security system?

[a klog apart technology]

David Fletcher wrote:

Governor Leavitt just introduced the new rollout of jobs.utah.gov, a website designed to reduce unemployment throughout the state.  The rollout was done at UPS where 200 new seasonal jobs are available, all online through the website.  Not only can people get online to search and apply for jobs, but employers have all kinds of functionality to view the applicant pool.  The Department of Workforce Services has also created online services for managing unemployment insurance for both employers and unemployed workers.

My questions re: jobs.utah.gov. 

• Do you automatically sign up everyone receiving unemployment insurance?
• The private sector duplicates the job order and resume bank features of your site. You don't charge for your site's basic services. Have you had feedback from industry about the competition?
   
• Do you accept cross posts from other job boards?
• Do you have to be living or doing business in Utah to use your board?
• Like most sites that ask users to fill out forms, I'd expect dropouts, a substantial failure-to-complete rate.What's your rate? What lessons have you learned?   
   
• Are your resumes reposted to America's Job Bank?
• Do you support HR-XML and automated job submission? The SIDES protocol?
• Do you expose search results as RSS for inclusion in other web sites? For example, the Alcoholic Beverage Control Department could list their openings on their home page without typing them twice. 
   
• Did you build your job board from scratch? What tools and sources did you use?
• Have you made your system open source, so other organizations can use your code?
• Do you see DWS being rebranded as jobs.utah.gov? 
   
• What have you done to make your system attractive and competitive with Monster and HotJobs?
• Given your quick start, what do you know about your early users? How many are in greater SLC vs. the rest of the state? Do they fit any particular age groups, occupational categories? 
   
• Other states have done this. What have you learned from their experience?
• How long did it take you to build? 
   
• What features that you really wanted didn't make it into Release 1?
• What user and usability testing did you do?
• How do you plan to market your site to draw job seekers? How will you draw employers? 
   
• What do you mean by job matching? How is it different than search?
• What database software are you using? What kind of hardware platform?
• Which office gave you the federal grant to build it?
• Did you build it in-house? 
   
• This being government, who signed off on final release?
• The fact sheet says jobs.utah.gov. is "part of a larger case management and employment exchange operating system." Can you describe the what it hooks up with and the integration?

[a klog apart staffing]