http://alt-tag.com/blog Thoughts on everything from education and politics to internet usability, and programming. Mon, 29 Jun 2009 18:00:59 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en The Trib has an editorial decrying Utah's campaign finance laws. I happen to agree with their position, but I don't feel like the public has reacted with anything beyond apathy. During the last election cycle, a handful of candidate were accused (some, rightfully so, IMNSHO) of being a bit too cozy ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2009/06/utah-campaign-finance/ I'm working in a research paper we hope to get submitted to an Information Systems conference. I was going through the references when EndNote X2 stopped working together with Word 2008. Every attempt to change a citation resulted in the error "COM Exception: Command not found." (I'm running OS X ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2009/06/endnote-com-exception/ A few days ago, District Court Judge Dever granted the defendant's (AG's office) motion to dismiss the first two counts of the lawsuit questioning the constitutionality of last year's (2008) SB2 (2nd substitute). After listening to the Judge ask both parties questions in court (back on March 26th), frankly I'm ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2009/05/trib-supports-lawsuit-against-omnibus/ I'm stuck in Atlanta. I booked on Priceline.com. I needed to be in Atlanta for a day, so flew in late last night via Frontier Airlines. On the first leg of the trip (with Frontier partner, United), the flight left 20 minutes late because a computer failure required all baggage to ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2009/03/dont-use-frontier-airlines-pricelinecom/ It's probably not as much of a hot topic since the State Board of Ed, in an effort to protect other parts of the education budget during these lean times, held back money for district performance pay programs pushed by our peerless legislature, but I suspect the conversation hasn't wholly ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2009/02/textbook-wisdom-on-performance-pay/ (Apologies for the language.) FYI: a $24 B bailout spread across 218 M adults (2003) is about $110 per person, not including the cost of paying back interest on the change in national debt. If someone knows the original source of this, please let me know so I can give proper ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2008/12/on-bailouts/ Via daringfireball.net: Philip Greenspun: ‘Let G.M. Go Bankrupt’ America seems to have an irrational soft spot for its auto industry. It’s a shame that these once-great companies have fallen so far, but the simple truth is that Ford and G.M. make ugly, inefficient cars that few people want to buy.John Gruber, ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2008/11/let-gm-go-bankrupt/ Although public education was putatively held harmless during the budget cuts coming out of the recent special legislative session, the Minimum School Program (MSP) budget was reduced for fiscal year 2010 by $73,979,500. The State Board of Education was asked by the legislature to propose ways to achieve this ... http://alt-tag.com/blog/archives/2008/11/proposed-budget-reductions-in-public-education/