Don't Back Down

It seems that the state of South Carolina - rarely at the forefront of anything - may be proposing something fairly interesting: An electronic license plate.

There is no telling if these plates would ever see the light of day. For one, they are potentially expensive - the inventor is trying to get the cost under $100 per plate (which means that they are over that point now). There does not appear to be a reliable source for the cost of the metal plates, but since they are often rumored to be stamped out in stacks by prisoners, you have to assume they are awfully cheap.

Which makes the question: Why switch?

Continue reading "How about an electronic license plate?" »

It was only a matter of time before someone actually put one of these on the menu somewhere, and leave it up to Dunkin' Donuts to be the ones to do it.

Now I'm really more of a fan of Krispy Kreme when it comes to doughnuts - but since they do not have breakfast sandwiches, they missed the boat here (though they did have free doughnuts on National Doughnut Day, no purchase required - you had to buy a drink at DD).

Continue reading "Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich (with Bacon!)" »

With all the hubbub from the announcement that the government can snoop on pretty much anything they like - first Verizon calls, then later almost anything on the internet via a program named Prism (save Twitter, because that's so important), it leaves me wondering why there is such an issue.

The issue is that there was no transparency in the program. It was announced that the current administration took steps to figure out who leaked the documents - and later that person could get years in prison. But why is this? They shouldn't get prison time. They should get a parade.

Continue reading "Prism Needed to be Transparent" »

It seems like just about each time I drive down some street or another, I end up stuck behind a row of buses. Yes, a row of buses. Okay, two may not actually qualify as "a row", but just how many do you need? One would surely do in most cases, and two is definitely more than enough, especially when it seems like they stop every hundred yards or so. Surely people can walk a hundred yards to the next stop rather than having the buses stop as often as they do, right?

Before being accused of saying the government should exist at all, I actually think that there is a place for the government - I just think that the government - especially at the federal level - should be really small, and I don't get why once something is enacted it is so difficult to get rid of it.

Continue reading "Cut Down Government Services Already" »

I recently had a client where everything was working fine - but they were unable to link to any secure (https) sites when creating entries in Movable Type. Unfortunately, there were no messages to be found, and everything worked just fine - as long as there were no https links in the entry.

To make matters worse, just changing the https link to http made it work just fine - which at first seemed to make no sense whatsoever. It's like that one character put the database over some sort of size limit or something. Alas, even that wasn't it - bunches of (other) characters would work fine, just not those particular characters, making it seem like that site itself was the issue, and that is what eventually led to the answer.

Continue reading "Cannot Link to Secure Site in Movable Type" »

I generally don't read the terms of service. I rarely read the end user license agreement on software I use either. I don't think most people do. Which is why it's interesting when I do, to find out what is in there.

With the announcement that Google is discontinuing their Reader product, I figured I would revisit Bloglines, a site I used regularly before Reader, and also a site that contains a bit that most people never would think is in their Terms of Service.

Continue reading "Do you really read the terms of service?" »