antipaucity

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was a juror on a trial. That trial was the State of North Carolina vs Shannon Crawley in the unlawful death of Denita Smith on 04-Jan-2007.

Miss Smith’s fiancee, Jermier Stroud, was implicated by the defendant. Mr Stroud is a police officer in Greensboro. Under oath, and in his previously-sworn statements, he showed himself to be a scuz-ball. Simultaneously dating Denita (for 7 years) and Shannon (for 1.5 years in the middle of the time he was “with” Denita, and culminating in a pregnancy). Under oath he admitted that he never planned to tell either girl about the other. Under oath he showed himself to be untrustworthy, a “player”, a liar, and just a general “bad guy”.

He also said that within a couple months of Denita’s murder he was dating again.

However, as bad an individual as we all believe Mr Stroud to be, he could not have been at Denita’s apartment on either 03-Jan or 04-Jan, as Miss Crawley claimed – whereas she was at the apartment the day before (I think to “scope it out”), and admits to being there on the morning of 04-Jan. She claimed that Jermier had kidnapped her to Durham both days – but multiple incoming and outgoing cell phone calls place him in or near Greensboro on the third. With those, and many other, holes in her story, we found Miss Crawley to be guilty of murder in the first degree of Miss Smith.

None of us wanted to find her guilty. I believe we all wanted to believe her: we wanted someone like Mr Stroud to be punished for what he had contributed. However, as the evidence was presented and reviewed, that conclusion was not possible.

I personally think that he’s responsible for the death of his fiancee – he did several things that I think should disqualify him at least as a police officer (reliability, lying, trustworthiness) – I do not believe he was the one who pulled the trigger. I think he was the causative factor in Miss Crawley’s crime, but causative factors do not alleviate her of guilt in the actual crime.

I’m sure this will be appealed.

I hope Mr Stroud is brought out of his place of service to the community for having acted in such ways. However, regardless of his contributions to the crime, Miss Crawley still had a choice until the moment she pulled the trigger – and did not opt to stop.

N&O report.

Have any of you seen end6.org?

Apparently some web sites choose to redirect their viewers to end6.org rather than render in IE6.

Yes – IE6 is old. Very old. But hundreds of thousands of us are stuck using it while at work due to bad IT policies, or upgrade paranoia.

Taking me to end6 instead of your content doesn’t make me ever want to go see it at another time … say when I get home and can use a modern browser.

I’m all for pushing folks to get rid of IE6 in favor of, well, pretty much anything else. But telling me to get rid of IE6 when I have no control over it doesn’t inspire confidence in the service or content that is being offered.

And as for the end6.org site? Why is not promoting Google’s Chrome along with Firefox, Opera, Safari, and IE8?

I generally like reading Seth Godin’s blog. However, this post on the digital music economy isn’t very helpful, in my opinion.

“A study last year conducted by members of PRS for Music, a nonprofit royalty collection agency, found that of the 13 million songs for sale online last year, 10 million never got a single buyer and 80 percent of all revenue came from about 52,000 songs. That’s less than one percent of the songs.”

Yes – 0% of a large number is still 0. But 0.5% of a large number.. is a big number, too.

What I think that article is telling us is that people are only willing to pay for .5% of music available online.

It speaks nothing to the relative popularity of said music – just to it’s profitability. I legally obtain lots of music. I buy CDs, use iTunes, stream radio, etc.

I also find freely-available songs from artists, and download them from their websites.

Also note – of the 13,000,000 songs available, 10,000,000 never had any purchases made. That means that 3,000,000 of them did – which means there was at least enough interest on some folks’ parts to give it a shot.

I think that means that most people won’t pay for the crap that’s shoved out the doors, and only want the good stuff.

You used to be stuck with 10 songs you didn’t want along with the 2-4 you did off a given album – the article says this means the bad songs were financing the good ones. That’s backwards: it was/is the good ones financing the bad ones. Now that people can get just the ones they want (ie, the good ones), we’re seeing how much of what is produced is really just junk.

Along with the /. post mentioned by Jason, is Bob Cringely’s discussion on outsourcing education.

What is the emphasis on in-person education from specific professors? I’ve been asked for my transcript professionally once – and that’s because my current employer pays more attention to grades than technical aptitude.

I can recall only a small handful of professors I would want to take classes with, and almost none who I actually got one-on-one time with while in school. (I think there was only ever one, Dale Bryant @ HVCC.)

MIT, Berkeley, and myriad other schools are making their lectures available online for free. Hundreds of schools have podcasts of classes and special events.

So, why DO we insist on graduating from “the school” – and not learning what we can and want, when and where we can and are able?

A list apart has a nice write-up of the forthcoming HTML 5 standard.

If you are like most designers, you probably don’t write all your markup by hand. But until the tools you use catch up to the new elements in (X)HTML 5, you will be doing some markup by hand while you learn. There’s been a bit of confusion (and controversy!) about the relationship between HTML 5, XHTML 1.0/1.1, and XHTML 5. Let’s clear that up right now.

HTML 4.0 (the markup language we all know and love) is based on a “rulebook” called SGML. In the SGML rulebook, element names are not case sensitive, you can have elements with optional closing tags (like <p>), and you can have attribute values without quotation marks. XHTML 1.0 and 1.1 are based on a rulebook called XML. In the XML rulebook, element and attribute names are case sensitive, every opening tag must have a closing tag, and attribute values must be quoted.

HTML 5 defines a markup language that isn’t based on either rulebook, but that can be written in either “HTML form” (or serialization, as the spec calls it) or “XHTML form”.

Excellent – so now we all have an easier standard to work with that is more flexible, less demanding, and .. oh yeah: is only supported in the absolute newest of browsers.

I recently found out about Hizook – a robotics news aggregator.

I found out from this story that was posted to Hacker News. It seems that Google thought their traffic spike was anomalous, and disabled their Adsense account without warning.

Thankfully it was re-enabled a few days later, but it does undermine some confidence in Google’s claim to “Do no evil”.

I’ve been enjoying a small restaurant near my apartment in Singapore. It’s a cash-only operation called Little Vietnam. They’re located at 511 Guillemard Road S.

They open at 1700, and close at 0100 Tuesday through Sunday.

I’ve now been there several times, trying different pho options, the spring rolls, and some other specialties that jump off the menu at me.

But what’s kept me going back is not merely the low prices on food (you can get full for ~S$6), but how polite and friendly the staff is. I have trouble pronouncing their names, and so far have only gotten one down: Thanh.

The staff is from all over Vietnam, and has been interested in talking to me – partially because I’m an American, but also because I go in by myself, and am willing to chat with them. And I don’t treat them like they’re servants or slaves the way a lot of waitstaff are treated here in Singapore.

Another benefit of the restaurant is they do not have a built-in service charge – so I can leave a tip for what I think the meal and service is worth rather than being forced to leave 10-15%.

This has definitely become my favorite restaurant in Singapore to go to.

We’re driving down I-86. Where? Near the town of Cuba New York. Time? About 1945. Date? 25 July.

Due to some unavoidable delays earlier, we got a later start to our trip to Oshkosh for the EAA AirVenture week. As the sun is getting lower in the sky, we realize that we haven’t eaten in several hours, and this looks like a good area to take a stretch break anyway.

We’ve been looking for a place to stop for about 20 minutes when on the blue sign for the upcoming exit we see “Moonwinks”. That sounds different. I make the executive decision from the backseat that this is where we’re going to try for dinner. If it looks sketchy of uppity when we get there, there’s something random fast food joint a couple miles further we can go to instead.

As we head the mile or so north on Route 305, we see this rather normal-looking building at the crux of a Y intersection, with a large sign reading “Moonwinks” in the roof. This must be the place.

The parking “lot” (ie, the packed dirt and gravel around the building) is packed. This is a Good Sign™. It means either a) they’re really good, or b) there’s no place else to go. I’m choosing option ‘a’, because it’s more optimistic.

We park and look for a door. There’s some kind of party going on in the front of the place, so we go in the side. Turns out this is actually the front door. We’re seated almost immediately.

The dining area we’re ushered-to has seating for about 60 people. The wedding reception out front is in another dining area which could hold as many as 150, I think.

The menu is pretty simple – classic American choices: some pasta dishes, seafood, steak, chicken… they all look good. I opt for the lemon whitefish with capers. Mom got an industrial-sized salad with a grilled chicken breast on top to share with my sister. I don’t remember what dad ordered – I’m too fixated on the huge fish fillet that came out.

I barely got myself around the dinner I ordered. I would have been better-off leaving a little.. but it was addicting! Mom and Josie’s salad lasted past one meal, too. Dad didn’t make it all the way through his plate of food – but bringing that with us wasn’t a good idea – wouldn’t keep well, or reheat at all.

The only thing I have against Moonwinks is that it’s too far from where my parents live to go just for dinner. Anything up to maybe 2.5-3 hours may be worth the ride, but clear 4 hours, and it’s just a long ways to go for a meal

However, if I were going through anyways, or had a reason to be in the Finger Lakes region (airshows, vacation, whatever) – it’s definitely worth going to.

4.5 stars of 5.

This week I have the pleasure of working in Jersey City.

No, that’s not sarcasm. Getting the PATH from my hotel in Manhattan to work is a cinch, and cheaper than taking the subway anywhere (fares on the subway are $2.25; the PATH is $1.75).

It would’ve been nice to be at the hotel across from work rather than having to take a train, but it’s not a big deal.

However, I am discovering that while cities offer a great deal of convenience, I have to agree with my fiancee that it’s nice to have space. Something that is sadly lacking in Manhattan, Jersey City, and Singapore (to name a few).

Being able to walk to everything is fantastic – certainly it’s cheaper than driving. But being all squished-up with everybody else isn’t really my speed. Maybe in a smaller city, like the one I grew up in, but not a big one.

As reported here, authorities in Sydney claim that by having the “blacklist” leaked, it will ‘”the concerned parent’s worst nightmare” as curious children would inevitably seek it out.’.

Oh come on! Kids can find anything they want anyways. I certainly could when I was younger – and it didn’t require the internet. Encyclopedias, libraries, talking to people. The list goes on and on.

Back to the article, ” half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist.”

Fortunately there is [some] sanity in Australia, though – ‘”The Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun. This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks.”‘

For such an otherwise [mostly] pro-democracy nation, Australia really bolloxed it up here.

‘”Adult supervision is the most effective way of keeping children safe online and people shouldn’t be led into believing by Labor that expanded blacklists or mandatory filters are a substitute for that.”‘ Right. That makes sense, and always applies.

On a related note, it’s funny that they compare the blacklist to a loaded gun, since fireams are [effectively] banned in the country, too. And like banning information, banning guns hasn’t dropped the crime rate – criminals still have them.

The piece de resistance, though, is this quote, “No one interested in cyber safety would condone the leaking of this list.” Huh? The list has nothing to do with “cyber safety”. It’s an attempt to control information, and a poor one at that. Blocking 2500 sites does nothing to the other 38 million “unsavory” ones out there.

Remind me to not move to Australia.