James's space

Evernote security???

jrpurcellsr — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:33:18 +0000

Image via CrunchBase

I was eating lunch with an IT exec from Perry Ellis who posed a very pertinent question,

“If Evernote is free then certainly they are mining the notes that your save in their app for data. So, if you are taking notes at an event (i.e. Garter, Google, Microsoft) and you are under NDA then what if Evernote mines that note and gets the NDA information and sells or publishes it?”

Like most people I haven’t fully studied their EULA for this kind of security information, but it is certainly a compelling question. If they aren’t mining our note data, then why is it free?

Dirt bike update

jrpurcellsr — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 12:52:37 +0000

The first trip for James out to a dirt bike park ended with a call from him later that day saying he was headed to Children’s hospital. This was quickly followed with “it isn’t me dad, it’s my friend.” OK, my heart can resume beating. His friend had a crash that sent him over the handlebars and then the bike landed back on him dislocating his hip and severely bruising his arm. He spent 2 days of his spring break in Children’s hospital and he will be in a wheelchair and walker for 6 weeks. His baseball season is ruined, not to mention his spring break. It really makes you think about whether I should allow this to go on any further.

Later in the week we took the dirt bike to the lake and he rode around down there a lot. I still wonder if this will continue. We keep pointing out that we are not a dirt bike family and we don’t live in a neighborhood where we can ride and we don’t own a farm where there is tons of room to cut loose. Baseball is kicking in full speed next week as is golf team season for him. I don’t think the dirt bike will be out of the garage for a while.

Oh, and by the way, we did buy the little guy one too. What the hell are we doing?

New hobby comes to the Purcells

jrpurcellsr — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:12:43 +0000

OK, I am not sure I am or was ready for this hobby. This is going to be expensive, I can tell. Our oldest son, James, Jr., has been pushing since he was about 6 to get a dirt bike. We have been resisting up until this past week. There are numerous problems with the Purcell family getting into dirt bikes and not the least of which is the fact that we live in a neighborhood with a strict neighborhood association. He can’t ride on the neighborhood trails, he can’t legally ride on the streets, none of the neighbors are going to like the noise, and he will be perceived as a troublemaker for getting one. Of course all of that is lost on a 14 year old who is dreaming of the freedom of the open trail.

He has been looking on Craigslist and eBay and CycleTrader for years and has been somewhat saving his money. I have reiterated the fact that he is a year and a half from needing to spend that money on a car. Not to be detered, he found a good buy on a 2003 Yamaha YZ-450F.

He found the bike on Craigslist about 60 miles north of town. He and I rode up there to look at it and talk to the owner. He had done his homework, spoken to the owner numerous times and schemed multiple scenarios for coming home with his prize. The owner was a very nice 17 year old and had taken meticulous care of this bike. He explained all of its issues and history. I couldn’t ask for a better example of a situation to get started in this hobby. The owner said that a 450 will last him well into adulthood, but may be a little much for starting out on. I decided that he could make the purchase and home we went with our new toy. Notice I said “our” there.

Mom is not excited by this at all for all of the reasons above, plus the fact that we have many other hobbies. One of which already occupies a large space in the garage, but that is another story all together. Several heated discussions (read: fights) ensued but she has come to see the light finally (read: capitulated). James has ridden in the neighborhood behind us with his friend who has many dirt bikes and has been safe, smart and improving. Today he is travelling with another dirt bike friend to Clanton to ride for the day on dirt bike trails with his friends family who all ride.

So, yesterday this neighbor behind us that has been riding for a long time decides he wants to sell his old 2001 50cc Beta mini dirt bike to my youngest son who is empowered by the success of his older brother in the entry to this new hobby. Now Mom is not happy about this at all, but the price is right and it is a very well cared for Italian dirt bike with a single speed transmission and both brakes on the handle bars. My bet is that we will end up with this one as well. We will see.

PBS Host Travis Smiley Bizarrely Claims ‘You Lie’ Comment to Obama Our ‘Greatest Moment of Incivility’

jrpurcellsr — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 01:55:00 +0000

Apparently the leftist host on PBS has a very narrow view of history. He has completely forgotten about cane beatings and shootings in the house. Here is the link to the Newsbusters article.

Newsbusters.org blog entry

Using ToodleDo on Android Browsers: Pick the right Browser Software

jrpurcellsr — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 21:21:00 +0000

Michael Linenberger’s Blog

I found this article on his great blog about a software that will sync to-do lists the way he teaches in the book Total Workday Control. The book is based on using Outlook and Exchange for the management tools, but what if you don’t have access to an Exchange infrastructure or what if, like in my example, you want to be more mobile and you use the Android environment. Android does a good job of synchronizing mail, contacts and calendar, but hasn’t done anything about the task list in Outlook. I am looking into ToodleDo now and will update this with my findings. It sounds good so far, and Linenberger even recorded a video to go over what the app does.

-Update 1/13/11

I have converted all of my tasks from Outlook over to ToodleDo and I upgraded to the Pro version so that I could have attachments saved with the tasks. I really like ToodleDo. I like the ability to add duration to the tasks which Linenberger doesn’t mention in his article. This allows you to use the Schedule function. You can say I have 1 hour until my next meeting and it will find the most effective collection of tasks to perform in that hour based on duration, priority, start and due date. It is pretty cool function and I had a very productive hour today following this method. More updates to come.

New York City’s No-Show SEIU Snow Jobs – Big Government

jrpurcellsr — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 13:15:17 +0000

» New York City’s No-Show SEIU Snow Jobs – Big Government.

Converting all my content to this new home

jrpurcellsr — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 06:17:01 +0000

I am in the process of converting all of the various content places I used to update to this new home. You can link to everything I do from my family website. I like the WordPress format and the tools to link to the other content places is very well done.

The main site is still being converted from self hosted over to iPage. If you are interested in hosting a site, I highly recommend them. If you follow the link here and sign up, I will get a pittance as a referal fee, but every little bit helps.

Windows Live and the new update

jrpurcellsr — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 14:36:23 +0000

I love the new update from Windows live. They have finally succeeded in making it the best tool to link all of my social media accounts and activities. I have though all along that the best use of their technology isn’t to compete with Facebook and Flickr, but just to link them all together while adding access to chatting across platforms with my original MSN Hotmail account. Pretty cool update. I am still wading through all the settings. I have now imported my Live Space blog to a Word Press site and will see how this goes.

Climate Gate Scandal being ignored by the media

jrpurcellsr — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:47:00 +0000

Media Research Center has a great piece on the mainstream media ignoring the climate gate scandal.

http://www.mrc.org/realitycheck/uploads/fax1203.pdf

Climate change scandal

jrpurcellsr — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:11:00 +0000

By Gary Palmer

For those of us who have had doubts about the so-called scientific consensus supporting global climate change, our skepticism may prove to be well-founded and now well-documented.

On November 17^th a file containing 1,079 emails and approximately 3,500 other files from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia in England was posted on the Internet. These emails and files, which were obtained and posted either by a hacker or a whistleblower inside the CRU, expose what appears to be serious scientific fraud and the attempted cover up of the manipulation of critical global temperature data which serves as the primary basis for the push for an international policy on climate change.

For years there has been growing skepticism among highly reputable scientists and experts in statistics about the validity of the climate change science, particularly the computer models on which so many of the global climate change policies depend. There is little question that global climate change occurs; the real question is whether or not climate change is caused by human activity (anthropogenic) or is part of a natural cycle which human activity can do little to significantly influence.

Based on information contained in the emails from the CRU, some leading scientists sounding the alarm over anthropogenic global warming were publishing inaccurate data while at the same time, actively working to manipulate or suppress data which disputed their belief in human-caused climate change. More specifically, they suppressed evidence of historical warming and cooling cycles and of the declining temperatures over the last decade. In addition, they worked together to oppose publication of studies which contradicted their findings that human activity is influencing changes in global temperature, even going so far as strategizing how to have editors of scientific journals removed for allowing the publication of such studies.

These emails also reveal violations of the British Freedom of Information laws. The CRU scientists conspired to withhold or delete raw data on which their own studies have been based. In fact, they admitted that they threw away much of the raw data. The discarding of the original data should be a scandal even among climate change believers because a substantial amount of data that forms the basis of what is known about the world’s climate is no longer available for review.

This is not the first evidence that the science behind the push for an international climate change treaty is at best unsettled or at worst corrupted. But nothing clearly exposing the data manipulation, suppression of scientific dissent, deliberate destruction of data and collaborative efforts to violate Freedom of Information laws had been revealed prior to disclosure of these emails. As Australian geologist Ian Plimer put it, “… data was massaged, numbers were fudged, diagrams were biased, there was destruction of data after freedom of information requests, and there was refusal to submit taxpayer-funded data for independent examination.”

In addition to the aforementioned issues, other emails indicate that the CRU’s work is further undermined because it is based on faulty computer codes that can no longer be replicated and the data sets on which their models are based have been so manipulated with fudged data that they cannot be considered reliable.

What makes this disclosure so important is that CRU reports predicting catastrophic consequences due to anthropogenic global warming are a major basis of the United Nations climate change report and a major justification for the Copenhagen climate summit that will convene on December 7^th.

The goal of the summit is get participating nations to agree to major reductions in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions which can only be achieved by major reductions in energy usage. Enacting these policies will result in significant economic losses for the United States and other industrialized nations. Now that the CRU data has been questioned, a substantial part of the scientific basis for the belief that the world faces grave dangers from human-induced global climate change now appears to be based on rigged data.

Professor Plimer said that all the data in question must now be rejected. He bluntly called this the behavior of criminals saying, “These crooks perpetrated these crimes at the expense of the British and U.S. taxpayers.” He added that these same “crooks” will be meeting in Copenhagen to push through an agreement based on fraudulent science which will do further harm to the world’s economy.

In Professor Plimer’s view, we should be very angry. If not angry, at least even more skeptical.

December 3, 2009

Gary Palmer is president of the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.

Note: This column is a copyrighted feature distributed free of charge by the Alabama Policy Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and API are properly cited. For information or comments, contact Gary Palmer, Alabama Policy Institute, 402 Office Park Drive, Suite 300, Birmingham, Alabama 35223, (205) 870-9900, or email garyp@alabamapolicy.org. To subscribe or unsubscribe to this column, please email joannl@alabamapolicy.org.