I was recently reminded of the University of Wisconsin's relatively new policy of doing criminal background checks on new hires. This article summarizes the reasoning. (Backup link) These people served their time. But apparently their punishment includes being forever barred from a huge number of jobs. Because after spending years in prison, isolated from normal society, upon reintroducing them to society, we proceed to isolate them and limit them to very low end jobs. They cannot ever hope to better themselves. They have no buy in to society. We are encouraging them to turn (back) to a life of crime! For someone to be truly rehabilitated, we need to get them to buy back into the idea of society. If someone cannot be rehabilitated, then we shouldn't be releasing them in the first place.

There are reasonable limitation. Barring someone convicted of molesting a child from working with children is reasonable. Want to bar someone convicted of financial fraud from financial work? Seems reasonable. But a blanket ban on felons? There is only one benefit: fear mongering legislators convince the short-sighted voters feel like something good is being done, thus earning those legislators re-election. It may seem like it makes the business or government safer in the short term, but in the long run it makes everyone less safe. Any legislator brave enough to vote against such a thing will be giving his opponent ammunition in the next election.

*sigh*

Anti-video game lawyer, media whore, and general nutjob Jack Thompson has been disbarred for life by the Florida Supreme Court.

I'm unable to verify, but it looks like the Florida Bar is a private organization, like many Bars are. I'm deeply uncomfortable with a private organization being involved so intimately with our judicial system. Indeed, the general idea that you need to be certified to practice law is worrisome. However, I'm not so mature that I can't appreciate having this nutjob lose a bit of credibility.

(Via Slashdot.)

McCain committed to appearing on Letterman. He called to beg off, saying he needed to race back to Washington to help with the economic crisis. Instead, he went three blocks away and recorded a interview with Katie Couric. What the hell was he thinking?

John McCain.
He keeps his word.
Unless a better option comes along.

China's totally trustworthy official news agent reported on their glorious, successful space launch. Unfortunately the launch hadn't happened yet.

Knowing a good idea when they see it, McCain's election team started running ad declaring "McCain won the debate-- hands down." several hours before the debate.

I was originally just going to post the China story, but the coincidence is too excellent.

John McCain on healthcare, from this article he wrote (backup link):

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

I was just looking at our banking system and thinking how successful our new innovative, less regulated banking system is. (backup link)

(Added 2008-09-22: This is via Mark Evanier's news from me.)

I hate copyright abusers. For some reason the Jericho Historical Society (backup link) annoys the heck out of me. Their copyright claims are simply, absolutely, and completely wrong. These idiots claim:

Copyright/Public domain works

Wilson Bentley did not copyright his photographs and thus they are in the public domain and free to use for any purpose.
HOWEVER
No materials or images from this (or any other) website may be resold in any form (print or electronic). The Public Domain status does not give you the right to resell material unless you have access to the original source and permission from the owner to reproduce the material. Any published works of Public Domain material is only "Royalty free" if explicitly stated.

Bentley's works are in the public domain. Great. That means I can make all the copies I want, including for sale. Period. I can take their images off their web site and immediately resell them to anyone foolish enough to offer me some money. The JHS has no claim to stop me. "Unless you have access to the original source" is complete nonsense. There is no basis in law for this claim. Simply scanning the photographs and putting them online, even with a bit of cleanup, fails to meet the creative standards necessary to make a new claim of copyright. Public domain is the public domain; I can make and sell all the copies I want. By their insane claims only owner of the original folios can reprint Shakespeare's works.

Twits.

(To be clear, the logos, text, and any other original work they did is under copyright, and excepting fair use, copies are not allowed under copyright law.)

Yahoo Answers is a good idea. You post a question, and people with free time and knowledge answer. But in practice it's a wasteland of stupid. There are lots of people with plenty of opinion and little practical knowledge. There are people who apparently can't even be arsed to read the question. What motivates these people? It probably wouldn't bother me so much, but it's starting to dominate many real-world-practical queries I turn to Google for.

A recent gem. The asker clearly asks, "I asked my local vet and they said just to clean them out with warm water and its not distemper but what is it ????" So a vet has seen the cat and determined that it's not something to worry about. At least one person was bold and stupid enough to respond, "it is probably an eye infection and he needs antibiotics. take him to see the vet" Right, already done. Now shut your pie hole and go away.

I've seen worse, this just happens to be one I ran into today.

(I'll also childishly call out an answer here, which features the line, "Cats need vet care just like children." To be, I understood her intent, it's the sort of goof everyone sometimes does.)

So I took the time to log in and set up a Yahoo Answers account just to flag a few painfully stupid answers as bad. And was told I couldn't. I wasn't "level 2". The hell? Thankfully the link explained everything: Yahoo has a page helpfully explaining why Yahoo Answers sucks so much. There are experience points and levels. This is profoundly stupid. Like forum level systems, this encourages people to game the system. Answering a question, no matter how badly, is worth points. Voting for a "best answer" is worth points, but voting, "all the answers suck" isn't. They try to limit abuse with the system, but the system ironically rewards the worst abusers! It's a feedback loop of dumb.

I miss Google Answers. Answers put money up for a good answer, creating a market for actual relevant answers. I have no idea why it was shut down.

(Later) I couldn't help myself; it was like a train wreck, I had to keep looking. No only are the answers stupid, many of the questions are stupid. People are asking for help infringing copyright. They have completely useless titles. People are posting in wildly wrong locations. (There is, naturally, no proper way to report this. The "Report Abuse" option doesn't include "wrong category" as an option.)

(2008-07-20) Typo fixes.

The May issue is being published only two months after Sharper Image agreed to pay Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, $525,000 in legal costs after a federal judge dismissed a libel lawsuit alleging the publisher printed false information in an October 2003 article about the Ionic Breeze's ability to reduce airborne particles.

"It is astonishing that Consumers Union would continue its misguided efforts to attack the judgment and experience of millions of Americans who are satisfied with the performance of the Ionic Breeze products," Sharper Image's lawyer E. Robert Wallach said in a statement.

That's real chutzpah.

I keep running across ads for Wowio, offering free comics. Sure, I'm always interested in new web comics. So off I go and... a shopping cart system? Well... okay. I'll add it and try to check out, except now I've got to register an account. Fine, except they want me to "confirm my identity." I can apparently scan my driver's license, which is too much work and gives them more information than I'm willing to share. I can give them my credit card number, but why should I trust them with that? Finally, I can somehow register by email.

Well, maybe I'll try the email thing. But let's quick check the license agreement.

This eText is protected by trade secret laws, copyright laws and international copyright treaties, as well as other intellectual property laws and treaties. The eText is licensed, not sold. You agree to keep this eText confidential and hold it and the related methods and techniques in confidence and trust for WOWIO.

Trade secret law? I don't think you get to claim trade secrets on a mass market product you're shipping to random people on the internet. Even assuming this a reasonable, what sort of secrets could a freaking comic book have? Furthermore, I have to "keep this eText confidential." The hell? Again, you're offering this for free on the internet, I think that's the opposite of "confidential."

That's pretty much a deal breaker right there. They're obviously insane. But let's hypothetically go on. Why do they need to authenticate me? "Signing up for a WOWIO account requires that you authenticate your identity. This is necessary to protect the content of our publishing partners and provide readers with free ebooks." Welcome to nonsequitor land. You can give me free ebooks without my identity; I promise you.

So, authenticating by email, huh? Not if your only account is Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or just about any other major webmail provider. You know, like huge numbers of people use?

Wowio, the hell? What is your bizzare ass business model? Giving stuff away doesn't make a lot of money. I'm not seeing any ads. Assuming that giving stuff away is part of your business model, you're sure making it as hard as possible.

How's airline security doing?

We've got employees without ID wandering around. Screeners missed 20 out 22 tests to smuggle weapons and explosives past a checkpoint.

But at least we're seizing dangerous bottles of soda! And we're securing those dangerous seized liquids by carefully treating them like bombs, right? Or, we're just chucking them in a garbage barrel because they really aren't dangerous. And if you really want a bunch of liquid you can probably just grab it from the barrel.

[I find it] hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that 'shit' and 'fuck' are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.

Ah, the delicious irony. Thank goodness children never read the news.

And the battlecry of the enemies of freedom everywhere, "Who will think about the chiiiildren?!"

If we can't restrict the use (of the two obscenities) during prime time, Hollywood will be able to say anything they want, whenever they want.

Even ignoring Martin's gross misreading of the verdict, I love the implication. Heaven forbid that people have the freedom in what they say. This Speech-Freedom, or whatever you filthy liberals want to call it, is clearly un-American!

As a society, we're stupid about sex offenders. We've convinced ourselves that sex offenses are so absolutely terrible that we must ostrasize them for life, a level of punishment we don't apply to, say, people who commit fraud, deal drugs, or even some cases murder. By making their information public with public registries, we encourage people to shun them. Their records make it hard to get an honest job. Some cities use laws to force sex offenders to live under bridges. We're isolating these people, clearly telling them, "you're not part of society." If they're not part of society, why should they obey the law? Desperation is a great way to breed criminals. Stupid in every possible way. All it takes is the cry of overprotective idiots, "but think of the chiiiildren" and rational thought stops.

The recent MySpace purge of sex offenders is just another example of this idiocy. Are we really safer kicking this man off MySpace? If he's really so dangerous, why is he walking our streets? No, the reality is that to make stupid people feel safer, we're reminding him that he's not welcome and never will be.

American Players Theatre is a great theatrical group with a cool outdoor theatre. Unfortunately their web site is an embarassment. Sure, superficially is looks nice, but behind the scenes it's a wall of WTF.

First, disable cookies and visit. You're greeted with two popups that helpfully say "Contact us" on every page. Why? No idea. Now, with cookies still disabled, try a few of the links. None of the work. Apparently the designer of their web site doesn't understand the idea that a URL should be plenty to identify a page. I'm not trying (yet) to buy tickets; I just want some informatin.

Okay, turn on cookies, and turn off Javascript. Now none of the links work at all. Apparently unfamiliar with 1990's perfectly functional technology, <a href> they instead implemented everything with Javascript.

Right, so turn everything back on and try again. Notice that the links don't show the "clickable" cursor (usually a hand) when you point to them. Just sloppy.

At least everything is working now, right? Unless, of course, you want to open multiple windows at once. Try clicking a link and look for the "Open in new window" option. It's not there. Too much Javascript magic (I'm guessing forms instead of links). It doesn't work. So if you want to open a bunch of tabs, one for each play, say, it won't work.

So, what's the result of this patently insane design? It means that search engines can't find content on the site. Of the dozens of pages, Google only finds two. As a result, searching for things like driving directions is doomed to failure.

I'm completely baffled as how someone could have the technical skills to implement a system this complex, yet simultaneously be so deeply clueless about the web to implement a system this poorly thought out. For the overwhelming majority of the web site simple links would have worked fine, in the process working better, being less error prone, and allowing Google to index your site.

2007-07-29: Swapped on/off for third paragraph; got it backward. Fixed phrasing. Also...

A few days ago I got around to buying some tickets. The pain that is their website doesn't end. Because they have forms instead of plain links, you can't easily open up potential tickets for multiple performances at once so you can see which performances have the best seats available. They have a flash seating chart (Nice, but overkill. Javascript would have worked just fine), but you can only see one section at a time in a weird flattened display. To see the full chart to help you understand the layout, you'll need to start from the front page in a new window (since you can't right click and "Open link in new window/tab"), and navigate in.

A shame that such a great theatre would have such a deeply sucky web site.