Shelley has written a passionate piece about the importance of voting. I agree with her sentiment about voting… up to a point. I believe everyone who is eligible should register and vote but I also believe that a person who votes should be an informed person. Don’t listen to those folks who say if you don’t vote you don’t have a right to complain, that right is inalienable. If you don’t know the issues and you don’t know the candidates you will do much more harm than good by voting. I encourage you to visit Vote-Smart.org prior to voting. Get to know the issues and get to know the candidates. You have one week.

One more thing, your local elections will have a much more direct impact on your day to day life. Don’t ignore those local races and learn what you can about the local candidates. If learning about the candidates is too much trouble then stay home. You’ll cause less trouble that way.

Israel says it has 175 would-be suicide bombers in custody. While it is more disturbing that 175 people would be willing to blow themselves up, what’s more disturbing is that:

Since Sept. 2000, 83 Palestinians have blown themselves up, killing 296 Israelis on buses, in malls, at gas stations and in cafes.

Palm may have a product out that will be enough to entice me to upgrade my aging Palm IIIx. Palm OS 5.0 PDAs are appearing and they appear to have enough added functionality and power to give me a reason to upgrade.

OS 5 also natively supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11b) connectivity, which used to be aftermarket add-ons. It beefs up security, too, offering 128-bit data encryption and Secure Socket Layer (SSL) technology for Internet applications.

Now to decide whether or not to wait six months for a price drop or just jump in now.

I rarely ask rhetorical questions so when I ask a question I don’t like for people to try to infer anything from my asking other than I want the information that I’m requesting. If the question makes you think then, by all means think, but first give me my answer.

Now this is exactly why I’ve stayed out of the RSS wars. I publish an RSS 0.91 format version of this journal but it is basically just a summary with enough of each article to give folks an idea of what I’m talking about and to let them see whether or not I’ve updated with new content. If someone wants to view the entire article I want them to visit my journal to read it, not in some newsreader.

Now please don’t take that to mean that I don’t support and appreciate the work people are doing on developing RSS standards and writing RSS aggregators and readers, I do support those efforts and I do appreciate their work, I just don’t see where it affects me more than making it more difficult for me to decide when and in what version I want to upgrade my own RSS feed. I personally think that allowing encoding in the description of an RSS feed was a major mistake because that seems to be what all the controversy, next to using RDF, is arising from. At this point I wonder what makes using a newsreader different from using a blogroll and a browser?

Just my 2¢ worth.

I just want to congratulate Meryl.

Well, Blogger was hacked and I didn’t even know it. I guess I ought to go change a few things.

I’ve made a change to this page. It will probably take a few reloads to notice it but I’d appreciate someone mentioning what it is when they figure it out.

I really mean no disprespect by this question, but what value?

Pissing matches are hard to understand. Sam Ruby tries to give a morality lesson but not everyone gets it. The problem is that Sam came off sounding a little "superficial and preachy". Personally I think its all a misunderstanding in the difference between receiving credit and receiving compensation. Credit doesn’t pay my mortagage payment, though it does allow me to obtain the mortgage in the first place, compensation does.

It’s nice to have my good taste affirmed.

I can’t understand the controversy. Chevrolet wants to sell cars to christians so they sponsor an event for christians. That doesn’t mean that they only want to sell cars to christians and it doesn’t mean that they find any other religion or lack of religion to be wrong. Some folks are going to see it that way, though, including some of the christians at the event they are sponsoring… but those people are wrong.

I guess, since the customer is always right, they should now also sponsor an event for jews, muslims and hindus. I wonder if they promoted a jazz festival would the rockers be offended? Folks work too hard at finding something to be offended over.

Janis Ian sees free downloads helping her bottom line. She makes a lot of sense in her article and points out why the major record labels don’t like downloadable music, free or otherwise. The only reason that a record label exists is to get recorded music from the musician to the consumer. When it music is available through downloads that empowers the musician to be their own marketeers. When a record label has an artist who generates over $200 million in sales and turns over less than 1% of that income to the artist then one has to wonder what value that label is providing the artists. If artist can promote and market themselves with free downloads and distribute their music by paid downloads what role is left for the Labels?

I’ve never been a fan of Martha Stewart. From all the rumors I’ve heard I’ve imagined her to be a very cantankerous woman. Still I wonder if the SEC is persuing her as hard as the news reports make it seem or would they persue these charges against anyone they suspect of insider trading just as hard? The publicity from this mess she is in has already cost her over $200 million in personal losses from the $12 a share drop in her own companies stock. How bad is this crime she’s accussed of that this isn’t enough punishment for her already… and she hasn’t even been found guilty of anything yet.

Also, I wonder if she had said that her friend, Sam Waksal, just appeared to her to be under stress so she sold the stock based on observation of him, if this would also be insider trading?

Vote for your favorite banner! For some reason, and I’m sure it isn’t because I’m from Tennessee, I like this one.