Cleetus

Matt, having worked in the Senate as a technology dork (for lack of a better phrase), I think you’re being a bit unfair. Consider the following:

1. The web, in the Senate, and especially in the committees, is an afterthought of the member’s or committee’s communications department. With the exception of a few forward-looking members, this is just a sad fact of life. The web is just underfunded, both in terms of mindshare and budget. I was lucky–my member recognized the value of having a developer on staff and gave me leeway to do some forward-looking stuff while I was there.

2. The procurement process is inane and insane. As a corruption-fighting scheme, only “product” can be bought–never services, which essentially prohibits the hiring of consultants or the use of 3rd party web-based services to augment the members’ websites. New software on the web infrastructure? Don’t hold your breath (see below).

3. The technology platform of the Senate web infrastructure is oriented towards stability, intrusion prevention (it’s a constant target), and surge capacity. The admins who run that infrastructure are extremely talented and do a fantastic job, but their mandate can often be in opposition to innovation by eager members tech staffs (to the degree those tech staffs are not just tech support but technology development). Case in point: PHP is an afterthought on that infrastructure. They are, and have been, a ColdFusion+MSSQL shop for probably 12+ years. MySQL? Not that I know of.

4. Senate rules (as sent down by the Rules Committee) are fairly strict on what can be put on websites–they were drafted in 1996, and were clearly a child of the web-as-franking perspective. I worked to get some of these changed, but it was a glacial process. I’m glad to see they can use youtube now.

5. Judging from their career paths, these guys had some web chops, but one has moved on within the committee to a non-technical role, and the other has moved on to the Sergeant-at-Arms.

http://www.legistorm.com/person/Mark_C_Blair/8077.html

http://www.legistorm.com/person/Geoffrey_T_Burrell_Sahl/8013.html

Bottom line: what you see in that graphic is a symptom of a culture. Taking a knock at the two staffers is a bit unfair given the context in which they were working when they had a mandate and time to redesign the site. If you really care about improving the web presence of members and their committees, and want to share in the good-government transparency that would hopefully come from it, I’d shine a light at the creaky bits of the institutional culture and see where progress can be made from that. ... See all content Hide content

2 weeks, 4 days ago onWordpress in yglesias.thinkprogress.org

Rob Mac, I guess my beef was with Matt making it personal–I don’t think there was any constructive reason to single out those two guys. The problem is institutional. If there were particularly obvious targets who are standing in the way of common-sense reforms that would make things better, then by all means, name names. This really isn’t the case here. That’s all.

2 weeks, 4 days ago onWordpress in yglesias.thinkprogress.org

@Brautigan: RealAudio was definitely not their choice. Due to some old contract from the 90s, RA was they only way to stream audio or video from Senate servers for ages. Third party services like YouTube weren’t allowed, and there was probably alot of procedural inertia

E.g.: Staffer: “Hey intern, get the videos on the website. Here’s how you do it–follow this procedure exactly. Don’t mess up.”

Intern: “What about MP3 and flash, they are the new hottness?”

Staffer: “No one gets in trouble if you follow the procedure. Don’t get the sysadmins mad at me.” ... See all content Hide content

2 weeks, 4 days ago onWordpress in yglesias.thinkprogress.org

The Hacker News comment noted that Netsol is 4chan’s domain name registrar. According to Netcraft (http://toolbar.netcraft.com/netblock?q=oc3-networks2,204.152.192.0,204.152.223.255), OC3 Networks (http://www.oc3networks.com/) is 4chan’s ISP.

3 weeks, 2 days ago onWordpress in www.geekosystem.com

After 16 years of 3D rubbish, finally we get a proper Sonic game.

1 month, 1 week ago onWordpress in popwatch.ew.com

As far as I’m aware, Robotnik will still be called Eggman. With all due respect to Japanese gamers, “Eggman” is a rubbish name for a villain. “Robotnik” sounds much better.

1 month, 1 week ago onWordpress in popwatch.ew.com

I agree with just about everything Thomas says. I think producers shouldn’t lie, and that non-purists deserve to compete in the marketplace and shouldn’t be excluded.

This presents at least one problem for which I don’t have an answer. How should the non-purists be allowed to label themselves? For instance, should there be such a thing as “‘Almost’ Buffalo Mozzarella”? Does that necessarily beget “‘Almost sort-of’ Buffalo Mozzarella” further downmarket?

Good problems to have, I suppose. ... See all content Hide content

1 month ago onWordpress in blindtaste.com

My king is a Jewish carpente

1 month, 3 weeks ago onWordpress in www.turnbacktogod.com

Being on the radio for a long time doesn’t invalidate her opinion that Stern is clueless about the music industry, in addition to being a tiresome shock jock who will destroy American Idol’s “safe family viewing” image.

1 month, 1 week ago onWordpress in news-briefs.ew.com

Danny Glover did not say that earthquakes are the result of no agreement on climate change. He said that the Caribbean region is at risk from many things including earthquakes and climate change and the international community either acts too slowly or not at all to do anything about those risks.

2 months ago onWordpress in popwatch.ew.com