Rob’s blog

I am on the far right of the political spectrum. I disagreed with reporter shield laws before I took a job in media, and after working with reporters I more strongly disagree with the laws. Reporters are mere mortals, and mainstream media is a business. I believe that neither deserve any special protections.

With that in mind, I find the recent fight between The Phoenix New Times and County very troubling. That the Government would expect to be able receive lists people that had observed free speech appears to me to be a few steps off from what could be expected from a Police state. I think it is a very dangerous precedent for the government to be interested in the viewership of any sort of speech, with the exception of those that advocate unlawful activity. It is my belief that Government tracking of those that dissent is incredibly dangerous.

Oh well…

I spent a good chunk of the day creating a ASP classic form.

1. The language is ugly. There does not seem to be power that Perl exudes, the easy of use of PHP, or the intrinsic  structural qualities of Java/Python/C#. Lame.
2. Finding tutorials that are well documented is not easy. Hell, finding documentation of any sort was non-trivial.
3. I want to meet the crackhead that came up with ODBC connection string, and kick his ass.

The reason for this work is that Authentix (actually Web Quota) is a stinking pile of dog turds. The documentation seem to be to designed to get users to buy a support contract.

Why– oh why– does Olive not work on Windows server 2003? ASP.net seems to be a decent language.

The other day I corrected my mothers French, a fairly surprising event considering I was a horrible etudiant de francais et elle was superb. I somehow managed to retain a fair amount of what I originally learned, and recently I have found myself hungry to learn the language again. At one point I liked French for a girl, but the effects of her influence have been diminished to such a degree that I think that this is coming from a real fascination.

On a work related matter I am very much a fan of English newspaper websites (The Times of London in particular). I have looked at a few French language sites and they strike me as poor copies of the English, with a bit more color. I was amused to see a pair of breasts inviting me to view a sideshow on Le Parisien. Le Parisien is five times the size of my newspaper, and much of how their pages are built looks amateurish to me.     I think Le Monde should be doing a far better job with their site.