Recent comments

  • The promote/demote widget (the thing with the arrows on the bottom left of posts) should now not be displayed at all in preview mode.

    So, it shouldn't have been displayed on preview and I added a function so now it won't!

    So, all this debate about arrow confusion should now cease.

    ;)

    (you people are picks! Happy blogging!)

    more site details:

    For all folks, again the promote/demote voting system on this site is extremely powerful. It gives you all the ability to remove other people's posts as well as put content onto the front page.

    I think most of us could care less about "ratings" or "TR status" etc. but this is a way to control what is displayed on the site and if move people use it, I can write up more features for it. Right now it's your "troll control" and when I say troll, I mean true blue economic fiction, spammer, advertiser versus someone wrote something you disagree with.

    the comment ratings also can "hide" troll level comments but we've had almost nil troll comments on EP because one must be a registered user, I have so many other things to stop the spammers and I think those focused on statistics, economics well, it doesn't lend itself to your more typical psycho troll.

    On the promote/demote system, it's truly hacked together from a non-functioning Drupal module that truly, truly was buggy as hell and when it comes to moving content around in a database through AJAX, well, I had to rewrite and add to it from scratch.

    So, things like preview mode bugs I didn't check those and now it has a function to check for the mode of a node
    (which is not ala mode). I'll shut up now. I'm sure everyone here cares about geek chat.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'm all for cross posting but please do change the title slightly and it really helps to give a cross link to EP (mentioned in the user guide) so more people who are economics people learn about the site and then change a few, even just the first sentence of the post.

    All of this is due to Google and other aggregators punishing sites for duplicate content. The reason they punish sites is because there are out there on the Internets, evil doers just lift (steal) content and repost it to get traffic and generate ad revenue. They have the reposts sometimes on automatic and have like 100 blogs, each earning a buck a day or whatever.

    On Soapblox, DK (Scoop) everything you post there should (if you switch to the rich text editor, literally you can copy and paste and it will retain the formatting of your displayed post) work great over here.

    The only issue is their two box system but you shouldn't see the underlying code that makes it different, esp. if you cut and paste the actual HTML. I think this is true for pure copy and paste of the displayed post too.

    EP allows way more formatting options. If you can create it and it's valid XHTML, it will work here. I have some certain secret things that are changed for security purposes but styles, all of that good stuff, you can do it on EP.

    So anybody writing on other blogs, including Wordpress, should be able to use EP without a lot of hassle.

    Although on EP, for media, I do have custom players on the site and a couple of areas still lacking are statistics, tables, graphs, and LaTex. Nobody is even using the image zoom so I'm kind of like, "oh well" and if I need it, I'll add it for me.

    Tables though are a real hassle and bummer, any site and I'm looking around for ways to allow people to have an easier time creating tables generally.

    Whew! Now bear in mind everyone I have to do a complete upgrade and this is going to be a real big huge workload bitch for me. I have hacked Drupal to death and have code changes throughout.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • and after a little investigation shows that Ford is idling the Camaçari plant.

    My knowledge of Portugese is based on its similiarity to Spanish, but Google auto-translate tells me.

    Three days after the return period of collective holidays, employees of the Northeast Industrial Complex Ford in Camaçari, received on Wednesday (7) the news that the factory will paralyze some shifts of production during the month of January.

    The measure, called preventive, it is nothing more than a way of trying to avoid layoffs, since 20% of the workforce is idle because the automobile sector has not yet recovered from the impacts caused by the crisis.

    Through a statement, Ford said that the parades will be equivalent to four days of production. Taking into account that the plant produces 912 cars a day, this means that 3,648 cars will no longer be manufactured. "Given the reaction of the automotive market in the month of December, only minor adjustments will be needed to bring production to market demand, which has not yet returned to previous levels," says the note.

    Ok, obviously things aren't going well there either. This is a global crisis, and it's only through shared sacrifice that we are going to get out of it. That means that before we even touch pay for line workers, management needs to be called to account.

    Reply to: GM Using Bail Out Money to Invest in Brazil?   15 years 10 months ago
  • ... like the famous "failure to communicate" ... its not a matter of fault, its just something that will happen when people shift between different paradigms.

    Since I both write and comment at Docudharma, ProgressiveBlue and MLW, I'm unlikely to shed Soapblox habits of thought. It took me long enough to get into the habit of using rec buttons, after more than a decade on mailing lists where there is no such thing.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Be sure to watch the video that is linked from that article:

    http://info.detnews.com/video/index.cfm?id=1189

    Reply to: GM Using Bail Out Money to Invest in Brazil?   15 years 10 months ago
  • Trust me, I'm working on this. I took a look myself and I'm working on it but if you saw the source code on this site, folks might realize what a pain it is to find these issues and modify the core code. So give me some times.

    This is a little offtopic I try to make sure it's easy to cross post but please change post titles and first paragraphs because straight cross posting punishes some sites with lower ranking in aggregators. I cannot do anything about other sites limiting XHTML tags or how they are set up. But if you use just what is listed in the user guide, it should all cross post no problem. Even more on EP, if one switches to the rich text editor, one can just do "copy and paste" while in that mode. You don't have to reformat at all.

    Secondly, the base of this site is Drupal, which is buggy as hell and has a lot of problems and why it is not so common.

    Soapblox gives no admin control, you must pay for their servers and cannot make custom modifications or host the site yourself. I devote my time on this but I'm unwilling to pay someone else money to do a blog, especially since I'm an engineer. I also do not like the idea of not having control over the source code and the server itself.

    Scoop on the other hand, requires a dedicated server and that is expensive. If one notices the few sites in Scoop are using paid sys. admins and paid web developers.

    Thirdly, for me to add features on EP, I must modify the code.

    Finally we don't have the same system as those other sites. The reason for the Promotion/demotion system is multi-fold on EP. Number #1 is it gives all registered users control on what is on the front page and what is not. If you notice on the other sites a few "chosen ones"
    only have access to the front page. It doesn't matter if better expertise, better writers, better information is in other posts....only the "select few" get access to the front page and that is only unless the site owner "decides" to manually put someone else's post on their front page.

    That's not what EP is about. The idea here is to give anyone who writes good, sane, based in economic reality, the ability to get on the front page, thus more visibility and the site is much more Democratic, community based.

    the second reason is...because it's set up for anyone to post on the front page, well, there are armies and legions of spammers out there. Hundreds of thousands and they will try to write posts promoting their "product" as well as to destroy the site and this ability to move content around the site on EP gives all registered users the ability to remove those posts of the spammers by voting content down.

    I have other things on the site to combat the spammers and believe me they attack this site, as they attack every site, about every minute at least.

    Only on EP can registered users literally move content around the site. Other sites do not have that feature. Only an admin can move content around a site on other blogs.

    So, while you guys are getting obsessed on the arrow box may I point out you have the ability to move any Instapopulist to the front page and you also have the ability to move posts off of the front page AND have the ability to unpublish posts so they go to the trash can of cyberspace. It requires consensus to do this, one person alone cannot but I spent a hell of a lot of time getting this system to even work and it was all about trying to give everyone a say is what posts/writers are on the front page versus having it "dedicated on high" from one or two people.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • ... arrows are part of the prologue ... for people used to Soapblox / dKos style blogs, the post recommend is a button with "Recommend" on it and is only visible in the full post, so its a mode-shift to have the recommend be graphic and have it visible above the fold. And since what you are thinking when looking at the preview is, "does the fold lie in the right place?", thinking that the arrow is an editing tool is kind of a natural mistake ... its pretty much like what a fold moving tool would look like, and pretty much where it would be found.

    Indeed, before this discussion, I never knew there was a recommend function, because it is not there in the mode that I would have been looking for it.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • The corporate press kits and lobbyists swarming the hill.

    Yes, that is correct, while Microsoft is rumored to be laying off 16,000, we know that Intel's profits dropped 90%,
    they are actively lobbying for H-1B Visas.

    Read my Fictional Employment Theory post. I go through their just brazen falsehoods on their new strategy to get their corporate labor arbitrage agenda.

    Isakson is a Republican. The Republicans who are "on" this issue need to pressure him to no end! Georgia too has lost many jobs due to labor arbitrage.

    Reply to: DOL Labor Secretary Solis on H-1B Guest Worker Visas   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • During a DEPRESSION?!?!?!?

    How stupid does he think we are?

    Reply to: DOL Labor Secretary Solis on H-1B Guest Worker Visas   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Below is the thread on the "preview" features of EP.

    Again, the arrow boxes is the content promotion/demotion system and I'm now looking into how to change this.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • One of us (I guess the one who points it out is the writer ;)) needs to write up the possibility for effectiveness of current stimulus legislation for only with that could I see a potential pull out of the wage-deflation nose dive you're trying to estimate.

    BruceMF has already gotten the transportation/infrastructure aspects and it looks pathetic!.

    Reply to: The -In- DEflation Outlook for 2009   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • I'll see what I can do but I find Soapblox (which is what you are talking about and that's a paid for blogging package) or Scoop, which the divides in the boxes to be irritating. If one wants to move the break on Drupal, you just need to change one line of code versus when the boxes are like that, you must cut and paste.

    Also, the Promote/Demote box is on both previews and what is missing are the other links, icons that will be with the final post so I am wrong on this in that preview shows exactly what it will look like, not quite, but the preview is still better that dailykos/Soapblox because there you can preview something, especially dailykos and when you hit submit, it will be rejected with all sorts of errors.

    He doesn't have the full error check in the drafts, it's in the submit. Also, all of those sites limit what kind of XHTML you can use....extensively.

    the only issue here is that your errors might not be caught by the auto-correction script and interact with the front page but it's a little closer.

    If people want some feature, or are confused, post in the admin forum. I'm going to cut this thread and move it there.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • They need me to balance out- many workers at my company are H-1bs though for good reason, it's a small consulting company that specializes in internationalization. I can only think of three workers here who are English-only speakers- but that should be EXPECTED, due to the work we do.

    I think that's the reason why, when my contract dried up, I got put on a project to revamp their HR databases.....

    Reply to: Obama Chief Technology Officer Picks - Does Obama want to promote Outsourcing, H-1B & labor arbitrage of U.S. workers?   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Take a native people, nationalize 90% of their land, and then take bribes to ignore raising the most profitable crop. Add to that a willing black market with at least 100 million consumers directly to the north. Then elect a top level government that won't take the bribes.

    The result can be entirely predicted with economics.

    Reply to: Trouble at the Mexican Border   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • That's where the misunderstanding comes from.

    I can think of two possible solutions to this:

    1. Move the control in the preview so that it is after the full article rather than being *between* the article and the teaser. This would indicate that the control is for something other than moving the break between teaser and full article, which is what the position suggests it is for.

    2. Do Bruce Peren's solution on the now defunct Technocrat- and simply provide separate editing boxes for the teaser and the full article to begin with (he even, at one point, put out a style guide for blog posts which indicated that the links should be in the full article and not in the teaser- because his RSS feed included the teaser but not the full article, and this would force the user to click through the site to get to the links).

    Just a thought- given that two people at least have been confused by this. I suspect the first solution would be easier to code.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • shows the teaser and then the full article, both are preview with the edit body below those as finally displayed. If you notice the teaser on the front page has the arrows box. So, I suspect the issue is not understanding there is a preview and within that preview it shows both the teaser or what would be displayed on the front page and then what would also be displaced if one hit "read more".

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • Is to make deals with mutual aid societies such as the Odd Fellows, Knights of Columbus, and Masons to provide Employment-independent dental insurance.

    Far too many small companies cut dental out of their health plans to save money. And with nearly 10% of the labor force moving into unemployment or self-employment over the next year, there's a huge untapped market for a new type of group insurance out there.

    Reply to: You Are a God Damn, *%$$%&*()!!* PROTECTIONIST!   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • It's an interesting barometer to be sure. During the Great Depression, the one industry that actually succeeded was Hollywood- movie making. Entertainment for the depressed masses who had nothing better to do with their time, sold at a reasonable cost (back when going to the theater WAS reasonable- 5 cents admission, 5 cent popcorn, 5 cent coke, and for 15 cents you could forget that society was falling apart around you for a couple of hours).

    However, NASCAR, unlike Hollywood, runs on a sponsorship model. The attendance in the seats & TV deals mean almost nothing- the pot for the winner and maybe a small profit for the track owner. The teams themselves are just a fancy form of advertising.

    And in a downturn, advertising gets looked at first as a place to cut- especially a high ratio dollars-to-eyeballs advertising like NASCAR.

    Reply to: No, this graph is NOT reassuring!   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • When I first started- in the "preview" editor it appears in a position that makes it appear to adjust the page break between preview and full article.

    Reply to: On Posts   15 years 10 months ago
    EPer:
  • You exactly have a point there Robert. As Blueneck would say "If its protectionist to want to make sure your neighbor, your relative, yourself has an opportunity for a gainful job, if its protectionist to want a vital domestic industrial base, if its protectionist to want strong national defense, if its protectionist to want non poisonous toothpaste or safe toys, if its protectionist to want fair and sustainable trade then sign me up - I am proud to be a protectionist." It seems to be the other way around.

    Reply to: You Are a God Damn, *%$$%&*()!!* PROTECTIONIST!   15 years 10 months ago

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