Results tagged “blogging”

Over the past month, I've had several friends message me on MSN Messenger with something like this:

"check out these awesome pics from the awesome party LOL
http://www.gone-wild-patry-pics.com"

When I follow the link in the message, I'm greeted with a prompt for my MSN account information. The page doesn't look reputable at all, and the "terms of service" are plastered all over the bottom.

By providing MSN account information, a visitor grants this company permission to log into the MSN account and send advertisements to everyone on the buddy list. Among other interesting clauses in the "terms of service," the company also claims the following.

• "... the right to change the terms of use / privacy policy at any time without notice."
• "... this agreement shall prevail if there is any conflict between this agreement and the terms of use you accepted when you signed up with MSN."
• "... TST Management, Inc is NOT agreeing to MSN's terms of use and therefore not bound by them."
• "You expressly consent to the exclusive venue and personal jurisdiction of the courts located in the Republic of panama for any actions arising from or relating to this agreement."

The most entertaining aspect of all this is that I know exactly which friends fell for this trick. I would encourage anyone who provided login credentials to this fradulent web site to change your MSN password immediately! Your friends will thank you.

This year-old video has been making the rounds again, most recently on Pharyngula. It asks an interesting question, "If abortion is to be illegal, what should the punishment be for women who have abortions?" Should the state impose a penalty, such as a fee or jail time? Should the woman be liable to pay damages to relatives or the father in a civil court? If no punishment is necessary, why should abortion be illegal?

I decided to enable anonymous comments, but there are a couple caveats.

1. You must provide a valid e-mail address.
2. If you want to avoid a brief moderation limbo, sign in.

Signing in has other benefits. I can mark regular contributors as "trusted," which will remove the rel="nofollow" attribute from thier links. Movable Type accepts a variety of external accounts, most notably OpenID, so you don't need a new account here.

Giles Bowkett of Ruby fame recently alleged that libertarian society is impossible because libertarianism assumes cultural conditions that can exist only with pervasive free education. And he's correct ... except in his understanding of libertarianism and education.

The libertarian position on education is simple. Greater quality and efficiency is best achieved by a wide diversity of choices. Parents should have the freedom to choose the best schools for their young children, and schools should be managed locally to promote greater accountability and involvement. Libertarianism does not mandate that parents pay all expenses for their child's education out-of-pocket, but it does require that parents have full control over the funds spent on their child's education.

Prior to the 1850's, there was no education system in the United States. Local towns and cities organized their own schools, which they funded through some combination of tuition and local taxes. There was no requirement that anyone attend school, so students spent far less time sitting in classrooms. Americans were nevertheless among the most educated thanks to a combination of apprenticeships, homeschooling, formal education, parents who understood the importance of raising productive members of society, and good old self-motivation. "Unschooled" did not imply "uneducated."

Giles Bowkett underestimates the curiosity and ambition of our children. Public schools of today resemble prisons and have many of the same problems. Compulsory public education traps children of low-income families in underachieving schools while forcing parents to pay for such schools through sales taxes.

Updated on January 12, 2009 10:50 PM to add citations.

Welcome to Vital Vector, the personal blog of Matthew Nelson, a software engineer in Los Angeles. I'll be filling these pages with my random insights into software and the internet with a few equally random tangents into politics and religion. I hope you enjoy!

In case you're curious about the older posts here, I've imported select posts from blogs I've abandoned in the past. Most are dry and outdated, but this blog looked far too empty without them!

I ran into this nytimes.com article this afternoon. Marisa L. Dudiak uses blogs as a form of expression in her second-grade class.

"It allowed them to interact with their peers more quickly than a journal," she said, "and it evened the playing field." Mrs. Dudiak said she found that those who were quiet in class usually came alive online.

The article mentions that blogs are easier to maintain than complex course web sites.

"School Web sites are labor-intensive and are left up to administrators and teachers," said Mr. Grunwald, whose consulting firm in Washington focuses on the technology link between home and school. "With blogging intended to be a vehicle for students, the labor is built in. The work that is required to refresh and maintain an interesting blog is being provided by students."

Instructors have discovered that children often put more thought and time into a blog than they would otherwise put into a journal, because their parents and peers may also read their work.

After reading the interesting API article yesterday, I've been poking around Joel Spolsky's blog. He has a number of other very interesting essays available online, including the first 9 chapters of his informative (and very funny) book on user interface design.

I just ran into a fascinating and insightful discussion about web applications and the future of computing. The article includes lots of good dialog and many links to other related articles. My favorite is an article written by Joel Spolsky earlier this month: How Microsoft Lost the API War. His article touches on such diverse topics as backwards compatibility in the Windows API, the sudden stall in Internet Explorer development a few years back, the .NET framework, Microsoft's "bad bets" in the upcoming Longhorn, and the decline in rich clients. Enjoy!