jccalhoun

Recent Actions

• Commented on Sarah Palin Parking Lot
  Obama is a socialsit and he has not proven he is a cizizen Define socialsit. or Socialism for that matter. Prove that any previous president is a cizizen or a citizen. Where is the birth certificate of any of the...
• Commented on Ebook license "agreements" are a ripoff
  Wait, are they saying that something with drm on it screws consumers? No way! Who would have thought that drm would limit what paying consumers could do?...
• Commented on Parish leader denies marriage license to interracial couple
  I like his assumption that only married people have kids... Another newspaper has this detail: He said the state attorney general told him years ago that he would eventually get into trouble for not performing interracial marriages. “I told him...
• Commented on Irate Chinese gamers block re-launch of classic game by blockading the gates to its cities
  What amazes me is how the people in question are paying for this game just to protest it in-game. Ilovechocolatemilk, I don't know anything about this particular game but the vast majority of MMOs in Asia are free to play....
• Commented on Jenna Bush, NBC <s>White House</s> correspondent -- the American Meritocracy
  Jenna's current job is also pretty suspect. She's fresh out of college and gets a teaching job at a charter school? Unless the job market has changed dramatically since I was an English teacher looking for a job, it seems...
• Commented on David Byrne: Kindle DRM means "you are f*cked"
  Also, it's trivially easy to strip the Amazon DRM from the files and end up with an unencumbered MOBI that is useful on a wide variety of platforms. Really? Because I can't find anything online about it. If the kindle...
• Commented on Girls Gone Wild scumbag pretends to have brain damage in court
  MOJAVE those things aren't mutually exclusive. I would say his legal history pretty well document him being a scumbag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Francis#Legal_problems...
• Commented on Dan Clowes interviewed by Mike Sacks: "Sylvester P. Smythe is the most unappealing character of all time"
  I subscribed to Cracked. I rarely read Mad. I loved and still do love Severin's art. Then for a while Cracked got Don Martin too when Martin wanted Mad to return his art once it was published....
• Commented on Britain will subject everyone who works with kids to multiple, repeated police-checks
  Aren't there cameras everywhere in the UK already that are supposed to be preventing crimes already? I watched the program "Who's Watching You?" and one town in the UK even had loudspeakers on the cameras so that if you were...
• Commented on Dozens of US Military personnel spotted on Nazi networking site
  Racists and bigots of all kind are horrible angry people. However, is there some rule against racists in the military? In a perfect world they would be kicked out but is there any justification for it in the regulations?...
• Commented on Weather Channel: no more smooth jazz
  Why does the Weather Channel have shows? Sure, "Storm Stories" is weather related but wouldn't that be better suited for the Discovery Channel or something? I want to turn on the Weather Channel and see the current weather not someone...
• Commented on Chris Anderson responds to plagiarism blog-storm over "Free"
  He fully admits it and seems to have a decent explanation for it so it isn't that big of a deal. ...except in one area... Anderson wrote In my drafts, I had intended to blockquote Wikipedia passages, footnoting their URL....
• Commented on Daily Show visits the New York Times
  @moriarty So in-depth coverage has no value because you personally aren't interested in it, and newspapers shouldn't feature any local content for places where you personally don't live? Is that the gist of what you're saying? What I'm saying is...
• Commented on Daily Show visits the New York Times
  When people talk about why newspapers are great and why they should survive they always bring out the NYTimes. When my university started giving out free copies I read them and I can't figure out what is so great about...
• Commented on Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course
  I think the solution to "oh noes! Now they can plagiarize!" is similar to what we do in the humanities which is to make the assignments more plagiarism-proof. It takes more creativity but it is worth it. Of course it...
• Commented on Student challenges prof, wins right to post source code he wrote for course
  A lot of colleges claim ownership over their students and faculty's work. This is mostly in case someone discovers a cure for cancer so the school can make money off it. It is similar to the idea that if you...
• Commented on Dave Hill's Chihuahua Dance
  I'm guessing fans of Tim and Eric find this awesome....
• Commented on Bullshit about newspapers' future, dissected
  #20 I am saying, however, that it's in our interest to think about how to reward journos for the good work that they do. I'm saying that I don't think they are doing a very good job. The signal to...
• Commented on Bullshit about newspapers' future, dissected
  The problem of dying newspapers won't be saved by making people pay. It will be solved by making the content of newspapers worth paying for. There is very, very little in a newspaper that I think is worth paying for....
• Commented on The "super-villain transparencies" brain-teaser
  Multiple layers was my first thought. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any difinitive answer on the site http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=riddles_cs;action=display;num=1029437951;start=...
• Commented on Wolfram|Alpha is Live
  I think it is an interesting coincidence that this came out relatively soon after microsoft announced they were killing encarta. Just as Encarta was an attempt at a digital encyclopedia, this is an attempt at a digital almanac....
• Commented on Wolfram|Alpha is Live
  If it isn't about numbers then wolfram alpha doesn't do it. Even if it is about number it might not do it. The biggest weakness is that there's no way that I can see to correct it. It doesn't think...
• Commented on BA getting rid of first class in new planes
  Air travel is as close as most people get to corporate farming. The day an airline starts catering to tall people or assigning seats based on height will be a happy day for me....
• Commented on English schoolkids go on strike until CCTVs are removed from classes
  That's great that the students did this but what about the teachers? They were all fine with it? As a former high school teacher I wouldn't put up with cameras in my classroom. I would have put a coat over...
• Commented on SF movies from bygone days were inflation-adjusted blockbusters
  Isn't this kind of obvious? There were tons and tons of sci-fi movies in the 50s. They didn't make them out of the goodness of their heart. It was obviously making them money....
• Commented on Lessig reviews Helprin's embarrassing infinite copyright, bloggers-are-stupid, Creative Commons is evil book
  I'm kind of amazed how this guy can be so "strict constitutionalist" that he is heavily involved in the Claremont Institute whose mission is "to restore the principles of the American founding fathers to their rightful, preeminent authority in our...
• Commented on LSATs are a rip-off
  All these standardized tests are scams. Not only do they overcharge for taking the test they also charge you insane fees to get your scores again if you have lost them, to send them to more than a certain number...
• Commented on MPAA to teachers: don't rip DVDs, just record your television with a camcorder
  I wonder how they could do this with a straight face. Why didn't they at least show how to use a camcorder with a line-in jack and directly record the video since they didn't seem to mind directly recording the...
• Commented on Mia Farrow nine days into three week hunger strike for Darfur
  how successful is it if the first I've heard of it is 9 days into it?...
• Commented on Scalia Scoffs at Calls for More Data Privacy Protection, Students Surprise Him With Dossier of His Own Data.
  I have to respect Scalia for his consistency. I think he's been wrong in just about every Supreme Court case in the last few years so I shouldn't be surprised that I disagree with him on this issue either......