Katie Couric recently stated “I think she (Palin) should keep her head down, work really hard and learn about governing. But I’m not anyone to give advice to anyone about anything,” On the latter, I couldn’t agree more Katie.

Sadly 99% of everyone that needed to hear that and have someone who’s been there and “done that” reach out to them, will never hear a word about it. Perhaps that’s the very root of the problem.

If you haven’t visited one of their stores recently (and no I’m not a stockholder, no sales pitch here) drop in one and take a quick look around, yes they still have the requisite honey-baked spiral hams and turkeys to take away for dinner, but they also offer some rather tasty sandwiches (sorry vegans)  to-boot.

See it’s simple really, when the needs of your market change, change right along with them, but it doesn’t necessarily have to equate to Henry Ford putting horse-buggy whip manufacturers out of business; it could be something as simple as making ham sandwiches out of hams.

“Privacy groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology and small business organizations like the NFIB sharply criticized this idea when it first appeared earlier this year. What is the federal government’s purpose with this kind of detailed data? How will this database be secured, and who will have access? Many small proprietors use their Social Security number as their tax ID. How will their privacy be protected? What compliance costs will this impose on businesses? Why is Sen. Chris Dodd putting this provision in a housing bailout bill? The bill also includes the creation of a new national fingerprint registry for mortgage brokers.”

And from Slashdot: “The Senate mortgage bill proposed by Sen. Chris Dodd (who was the recipient of a sweetheart deal on his mortgage from Countrywide, one of the beneficiaries of the bill) includes an attempt to sneak into law a requirement that all electronic payment processors send detailed transaction data to the federal government.”

I can’t really improve upon what FreedomWorks has already said on the issue but I can say that I’m appalled, we all need to take a step back and examine what we’re sending out elected officials to Washington to accomplish, this certainly isn’t what I’d call fair and proper representation.

I’m getting ahead of myself though, first a little background. The sites I run are tech related, not heavy-tech mind you but it is a factor, most of the commenter’s are thoughtful, (seemingly) intelligent and even when disagreeing, polite. A few on the other hand are just downright nasty, I have to admit I’m somewhat interested in what would make someone leave vile and nasty comments on a technology based home entertainment site, I mean we’re not denying anyone a cure for cancer, not even close.

I suppose all the basement dwellers with no lives analogies are too easy and probably not entirely accurate anyway but again, I’m just baffled at some of these comments. I may be really old fashioned but when I see something posted somewhere that’s (1) incorrect, (2) ignorant, (3) rude I just… keep on trucking, no flame wars, no insults, no see I told you so’s, I just leave. If only there were a Wordpress plug-in that could track these guys from site to site and give you the heads up that a known A-hole has just entered a comment. Ah yeah that’d be nice.

Adama for President 2008
“For a Stronger Fleet, a Stronger Nation, and Because He Kicks Ass….” adamaforpresident.org

Yahoo came out with the most data collection points in a month on its own sites — about 110 billion collections, or 811 for the average user. In addition, Yahoo has about 1,700 other opportunities to collect data about the average person on partner sites like eBay, where Yahoo sells the ads.

Like I tell anyone that’ll listen, for all intents and purposes privacy doesn’t exist inside a browser.