Archive: August 16, 2003

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Saturday,  08/16/03  10:46 PM

Columnist Dan Gillmor: Why I Might Vote for Schwarzenegger.  Apparently there are rumors that if elected Arnold is considering overturning Proposition 13.  That would be great!  This deserves a separate post, stay tuned... before blackout after blackout (click for larger pics) There are some amazing pictures up on the net from "the great blackout"; here's 20 hours before (normal lighting pattern), and 7 hours after (blackout in effect).  Pretty darn cool. CamWorld is a nice site which has lots of pictures of the blackout, taken at somewhat closer range... India will send a mission to the moon by 2008, according to Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.  So be it. Ever heard of an induction range?  I never had, either.  Apparently it uses a magnetic field to cook food without heat.  According to this article in EPRI, it looks like a very "cool" technology.  Coming to a range top near you...  [ via John Robb ] A little while ago some friends and I were trying to figure out what great personal electronics would be developed in the next ten years (the last ten years featured cell phones, PDAs, MP3 players, etc.).  I suggested perhaps a personal medical monitor.  Computerworld reports this is closer than I thought; a company called CardioNet has developed a handheld wireless heart monitor.  Excellent! Dann Sheridan says bye bye VCR.  "We finally retired our VCR today.  We haven't used it in months.  It has been replaced by our DVD player and Tivo."  Same story in our house.  We still have a bunch of old Disney movies on VHS, but as the kids grow older they'll be used less and less... Scoble reports Jeffrey Randow is writing down his wishes for Longhorn.  I thought about this for while, if I had three wishes for the next version of Windows, what would they be? Don't reinvent the wheel and change "everything".  I have a feeling based on what I've read that I won't get this one. Networking that works.  Why is it so much harder to hook PCs together than Macs?  Or than Unix boxes?  It shouldn't be...  The whole domain master thing needs to go. Paging that works.  Why can Unix boxes and (to a lessor extent) Macs easily run working sets larger than physical memory, whereas on a PC as soon as you start paging, the machine turns to crap? Let's keep track of these and see how they do... Happy Birthday to Gizmodo!  They're the online equivalent of Fry's, my toy store...

 

Arnold and Proposition 13

Saturday,  08/16/03  11:30 PM

Earlier I reported that columnist Dan Gillmor wrote  Why I Might Vote for Schwarzenegger.  Apparently Warren Buffet, an advisor to Arnold in his gubernatorial campaign, mentioned that if elected Arnold might consider overturning Proposition 13.  This has caused a stir, with many people feeling it would be political suicide to mention during the campaign.  And maybe it is...  but, Proposition 13 has been a horrible thing for the state of California, and overturning it would be a great good thing. It is interesting that Arnold would even consider this move, since Prop 13 is generally regarded as a Republican initiative.  Lower taxes and all that.  It just shows that although he is a Republican, you can't really peg him that way.  He is also pro-choice and pro-gay rights. [ Later: Here's an article about Warren Buffet's comments.  Reading the comparison of his house in Omaha to his house in Laguna Beach, how could Prop 13 not be wrong?  And not coincidentally the schools in Omaha are much better than the schools in Laguna Beach... ] As a concerned parent who has participated as a board member in several community fund raising organizations, I can tell you Prop 13 is a disaster.  Many of my fellow parents are people who live in expensive properties, who would be most affected by a property tax increase, and we would all gladly pay more property tax so we could have better schools. The tragedy of Prop 13 is that in affluent neighborhoods there are parents like me who are willing and able to raise additional funds to support local schools, and in consequence our kids get things like music teachers and librarians.  Meanwhile in poor areas where people don't pay much property tax anyway, the schools have no money, the kids don't participate as much, and bad things happen.  California has some of the worst schools in the nation. California also has one of the largest prison populations anywhere.  Keeping prisoners is an expensive business.  It would be far more efficient to invest in better schools, perhaps improving the prospects of our children and redirecting them away from crime, and reducing the prison population.  Pay now or pay later.  Don't think for a moment there isn't a tangible cost to the property tax reductions mandated by Proposition 13. So - I don't know about voting for Arnold; I need to learn more about where he stands, but I strongly feel almost anyone could do better than Gray Davis - but I think repealing Prop 13 and gradually raising property taxes is right on.

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