I have yet to meet someone who declares, "Obama is a socialist," and can give the classic definition of socialism and give an example of an Obama policy which meets that definition.

Socialism: A system which advocates public ownership and control of the means of production and allocation of resources.

What is it that they think Obama wants the public (i.e. the citizens of the USA) to own?
What would be wrong with the citizens of the USA owning it?

One place where the conservatives and I agree is that we'd both like to see a 'flat tax' replace the current federal tax scheme. It turns out there is a way to gradually implement a flat tax, beginning with the highest income taxpayers, and all Congress has to do is... nothing.

If Congress simply leaves the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) where it is today, gradually, as inflation takes its toll, we will all become covered by the AMT. In effect, we could all file an AMT short form. No more schedules A and B, or the long form 1040.

What would you guess is the average federal income tax rate in the USA? 20%? 30%? 50%?

What would you say would be a good target tax rate? Would 20% be a fair price to pay for:

• The interstate highway system
• Airports and the air traffic control system which prevents (most) planes from smashing into each other
• Armed forces, including Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard
• Not having the elderly begging for alms in the streets (i.e. Social Security)
• Someone to foot the bill when your elderly mother needs heart surgery
  

"The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935." (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/opinion/28rich.html)

Wow. Astonishing. The article goes on to observe that the demographic shift in the U.S. (i.e. the increasing percentage of the population composed of "minorities") represents a threat to those who were comfortable with a white, mostly male leadership.

If your model of America resembles Leave It to Beaver, you're going to find each of the following a threat (individually):

• I pushed a Python starter app to GAE, and I confirmed that it worked. Then I pushed a Java starter app to the same GAE application. I was getting the "Gwt module 'modulenamehere' may need to be (re)compiled" error.
  

On the PC:

Digsby - can be made semi-portable via http://www.mcsoft.online.fr/madcow/?Ninja-Digsby.html

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Trillian - I didn't see a portable

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I've got a web page that works just fine in Firefox but not in IE 8.  It includes HTML that looks like this:

<a href="#" onclick="myFunc(0);">Call myFunc</a>

and in my JavaScript, it includes something like this:

function myFunc(num) {
alert("got here");
}

In Firefox, clicking on the link displays the alert.  In Internet Explorer, it produces an "Object expected" error.

I did a little poking around and I learned that myFunc is not defined in IE.

I really don't like the implementation of Documentum at my current employer.

Today, Documentum doesn't like me either.  When I click on the name of a file that I used to be able to view, it shows me a blank Internet Explorer page.  Bummer.

UPDATED RESOLUTION:

I wanted my iTunes to synch (or 'sync' if you prefer) with my iPhone at 7:20 each morning.  NPR updates its A.M. news podcast at 7:15, and I leave for work at 7:30.  Since I take the subway, I can't listen to the news via radio, so I wanted to get my news via podcast.

I couldn't find a way to do this without programming, so I wrote a little Windows program to start iTunes, and tell iTunes to start synchronizing.

I've been pondering the merits of the iPad, and I've had a tough time coming up with a compelling use for it. Until now...

I (and several hundred thousand others) work for a large corporation, that has a highly restrictive firewall and "locks down" the software on its laptops and PCs. Fair enough. The LAN and the computers belong to it.