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I love this panoramic series of photos of Matthew Good's workshop. He
describes the contents:
Ohm's Law Medicine Man balsa wood glider (half finished) Make:Electronics book, Maker's
Notebook Woolly Mammoth clone guitar pedal, nearly done 2.5 gallon fishtank, testing out
temperature logging via LM34 and Arduino There are no less than five computers on/around my desk.
Not all are visible. Small cheap telescope Printing plate of some old ship Guitars More guitars The
mess? Oh, that just means I'm getting work done.
I can't believe he didn't mention the X-Files poster!
(Note: Click on the image for a larger version of the panorama.)
We
know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the
outlet to do so. This week's Ask Engadget question is coming
to us from Steven, who needs to hit a Spring Cleaning streak in the worst possible way. If you're
looking to send in an inquiry of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt]
com. "I am overwhelmed by power cords and travel chargers and am looking for a good way to organize
them until I need them. The top drawer of my desk is no longer cutting it. I've got too many power
cables and AC adapters to count. I can't be the only one with this problem. Is there a solution?
Thanks in advance!" Anyone got a great mechanism for keeping these adapters and cables in some
sort of order? We're certain the neat-freaks in attendance would love to hear your input in
comments below.
McKesson is a global health care leader that has 26 operating companies. The
centrial IT group had the vision to automate "the last mile" of IT planning, the budget approval
process. We think of it as the budget approval dance, and when containing costs, it's a ritual
that can leave scars. This company has evolved to the point of improving the cost of budgeting,
and making it faster and smarter by understanding the assets, services, and service delivery of
IT.
Budgeting can be painful because it can be in slow-motion. Contrast this with the real-time
controls of such as VMware V-Motion and Amazon's web service console and we see a great linkup for driving
process change through budgeting. And driving budgeting by cloud and virtualization. We took a
look at McKesson's journey and the service catalog functions of NewScale, an IT services catalog company.
Sponsor
McKesson: Let's Start with Less Meetings and Less 5mb Spreadsheets
NewScale has customers like McKesson and Charles Schwab and competitors like HP, IBM, Tivoli. The
company has been growing its customer base and helping stable-state enterprises to leverage
Service Management. And that leads directly into cloud procurement.
We see a lot of benefit in this approach, where if successful, it would mean that the advantages
to go with commodity pre-approved services dramatically improves the timing and effort of
procurement. This is a lever that gives Finance a significant hand in the IT spend. Since cloud
and virtualization offerings can be spun-up with service call, the cloud is well positioned to be
there as budgeting and approval processes are automated.
In phase one, the company reported significant progress in moving processes towards the service
catalog.
One click vs. Fill Out the Form
In the end, the move towards enterprise standards may be won over simplicity. Is it less clicks
to provision. This means connecting the dots between processes, systems, software, teams, and
policy.
To EC2, or to EC2 through Official Channels: That is the Question
IT services management comes into the picture and could make a difference in how the business and
technical contributors of organizations are rewarded for moving to a standard platform.
Information Technology Infrastructure
Library is tool set that has been given to IT managers to try to wrap standard language
around IT service management. It gives the enterprise a common way to manage processes for IT and
track the changes involved in building and operating systems.
Services platforms like Amazon and Salesforce can be considered IT disinter-mediation. We all
know a IT leader out there somewhere who is funding their project by credit card out in the
cloud. IT, of course, knows this also (especially since they are likely watching your network
traffic). One part of the service management offering is making it even easier than Amazon.
Carrot, vs. stick.
Service catalog management has the promise when it wraps things like Amazon's EC2, or VMwares
offerings, gives the enterprise a way to get the same service from the web. And, with budget
approval and IT approval baked in, the carrot is there.
All of IT moves towards transparency and IT processes as being measured as processes. In the ITIL
community, there is discussion of the next layer of the library moving towards service delivery
in the move towards ITIL Version 3. It's easy to see that "provision server" becomes fully
automated. Soon, all the IT functions below it become invisible. We see this as a future cloud
inflection point, where instead of there "cloud services", we are all in one.
Zen Mashup
What has been your experience in mashing ITIL, ITIL Service Delivery in your environment? Do your
IT services flow like water?
Recon Suite... In an increasingly compliance-driven world, immediate access to
accurate information is critical to driving down costs and maintaining obligations. The Recon
Suite provides a simple, low-cost way to inventory your network devices and computers, including
Mac OS 9, iPhone, Mac OS X, and Windows machines. Every application, font, plug-in and computer
on the network communicates with, and is documented to, the JAMF Software Server (JSS).
Key Features:
Inventory of OS X and OS 9 Clients
Inventory of Windows Computers
Inventory of iPhones
Recon Mobile App for iPhone
LDAP Lookups
Track Purchase Information
Web-based Reporting
Email Notifications on Changes
Custom Reporting Framework
Create Change Reports
S.M.A.R.T. Status
Battery Capacity Reporting
Remotely Aquire OS X Workstations
Export to .txt, .csv, xml
PDF Report Generation
Font Inventory
Plug-in Inventory
Licensed Software Tracking
Licensed Software Templates
Active Directory Status
File Vault Status
GSX Integration for Apple Computers and iPhones
CMDB/syslog Compliant
Contract Management
Running Services
Web Help Desk Integration
Key Differentiators:
GSX Integration for Apple Computers and iPhones
CMDB Compliant
Contract Management
Automated Notifications
Report Generation
Web Enabled
REQUIREMENTSServer
Although it is possible to install the JAMF Software Server (JSS) on any platform that supports
Tomcat and MySQL, the JSS Setup Utility only supports Mac OS X Server 10.4 or 10.5.
Inventory
Recon can gather inventory information for computers running the following operating systems:
Mac OS X 10.3.
Mac OS X 10.4.x
Mac OS X 10.5.x
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows 2003 Server
Windows Vista
Older versions of Recon (available by contacting JAMF Software Support) can submit inventory
information for computers running the following operating systems:
THE OTHERS ARE A FAKE'S xD
---------------------------------------
Put your video screen as favourites and get your desktop animated ;)
########
#INSTALL
########
INSTALLATION TUTORIAL ENGLISH:
IS SO EASY:
1:INSTALL ZENITY & MPLAYER & UNRAR & RAR
apt-get install zenity mplayer unrar rar
2:DECOMPRESS a-desk
WITH YOUR FAVORITE DECOMPRESSOR
3:INSTALL XWINWRAP
Enter into zip a-desk and execute xwinwrapcvs.deb or xwinwrap64.deb (2 clicks or execute by
terminal by -> dpkg -i xwinwrapcvs.deb or xwinwrap64.deb
4:EXECUTE A-DESK.INSTALLER
2 CLICK'S on "a-desk-installer"
ENJOY IT
INSTALACION EN CASTELLANO:
ES MUY FACIL:
1:INSTALAR ZENITY & MPLAYER
apt-get install zenity mplayer
2:DESCOMPRIMIR a-desk
CON TU DESCOMPRESOR FAVORITO
3:INSTALAR XWINWRAP
ENTRA EN EL DIRECTORIO DE a-desk Y EJECUTA xwinwrapcvs.deb o xwinwrap64.deb (2 clicks o ejecutalo
desde terminal asi -> dpkg -i xwinwrapcvs.deb o xwinwrap64.deb)
---------------------------------------
REJECT A IMITATIONS
changelog:
v0.1
a-desk and video tren.avi
v0.2
a-desk and more videos
change source a-desk add explanations
v0.3
a-desk and more, more videos
change source a-desk add new explanations and source new videos
v1.0
a-desk and new videos
change completly sorce a-desk and adding menu
v2.0
a-desk and correct errors.
v3.0
a-desk and correct errors.
separate a-desk and a-desk.installer to the videos.
v4.0
create gui a-desk and change source
v5.0
add icon and new explanations in README
correct some errors
new videos
PATCH a-desk upgrade a new videos
a-desk.installer for a install PATCH and new videos
v6.0
Create GUI of install and unistall executables
and correct source a-desk
v7.0
Create GUI based on bash&zenity by Gnome desktops
Create script install and script a-desk
Select tops animated desktop
v8.0
Add "YOUR VIDEO" in select video wall
Regenerated all source code a-desk
v10.0
correct some errors
change source a-desk
v11.0-gnome
correct some errors
change source a-desk
only for gnome
v12.0-gnome
correct some errors
change all sources on a-desk and a-desk.installer
only for gnome
v13.1-gnome
correct some errors
change all sources on a-desk and a-desk.installer
add new videos
only for gnome
v14.1-gnome
correct some errors
change all sources on a-desk and a-desk.installer
add new videos
only for gnome
convert to gnome-script
v15-1-gnome
correct some errors
change all sources on a-desk and a-desk.installer
only for gnome
convert to gnome-script
new options languaje
v16-final
correct some errors
change all sources on a-desk and a-desk.installer
only for gnome
convert to gnome-script
new options languaje
separate source and one only video to all code
prepared tutorials to add new videos on sourcecode
In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more
conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a
trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but
once you do, and incorporate them into your workflow, you'll wonder how you ever lived without
them. And, in the spirit of the times, we pay close attention to tools that you can get on the
cheap, make yourself, or refurbish.
In 1994, I wrote a book called Mosaic Quick Tour: Accessing and Navigating the World Wide
Web. It was, arguably, the first book dedicated the the World Wide Web. The publisher,
Ventana, wanted it to be the first, so they wanted it fast, really fast. I wrote it in 30 days. I
did literally nothing but eat, sleep, and write that book for a month, all in a very crappy,
bottomed-out, office store "task chair." I like to tell people that I sacrificed my right hip to
that book. I have bad arthritis and my hip was already shot, but I had a hip before the book, and
it was pretty much history by the time I was done. I had to have a replacement. It was stupid to
not get a better chair during the writing marathon, but I had tight deadlines every day and
didn't feel like I ever had the time to go shopping. But literally the day the book was finished,
I went to a "bed and back" story and blew about $1300 of my book advance on an amazing chair with
crazy amounts of adjustability and lumbar and neck support. From then on, I've never skimped on
my seating. And neither should you.
We asked a bunch of our readers and staff, through mailing lists and our Facebook page, for input on chairs and work stools.
Here's some of what they had to say. Hands down, the chair-of-note is still the Herman Miller
Aeron. But there were a few others. And one suggestion for no sitting at all.
Chairs
For the past ten years or so, I've had a Herman Miller Aeron Chair ($920) for desk
work and I love it. I'm not alone. Lots of people responded with enthusiastic thumbs-up for the
Aeron. Andrew Righter, of Q Labs, said: "I'm a simple man.
And there's nothing better than this chair." ChopSey, of HacDC,
adds: "it's all about the air flow, configurability, and easing of any pressure points." Dorkbot DC Overlord Alberto Gaitán says: I concur.
I've used an Aeron for almost 15 years and wouldn't buy another chair that isn't fully and
adjustable, with lumbar support, and a mesh seat so one doesn't eventually end up bottoming out."
MAKE contributor Alden Hart writes: "In the tech bubble days, we used an "Aeron Count" as a
predictive indicator of startup failure. The more Aerons, the greater the likelihood of failure.
That said, I love my Aeron, and so does my wife. Got cheap from a failed startup!" HacDC member
Ben Stanfield writes: "As the token fat geek, it might be good to include a couple of options for
those of us who are, euphemistically speaking, "big boned." Of course, that would require
actually finding a decent chair for us, something I've yet to come across. The Aeron is probably
the closest in terms of comfort."
Lon S. Cohen is a freelance writer and is @obilon on Twitter. He’s also the Director
of Communications at @ALSofGNY. This
post was co-authored by Steve Cohen, who is the Founder of Baywood Consulting Group and the
former CIO of M&T Bank. He can be contacted at baywoodconsultinggroup@gmail.com.
From felons on Facebook to tips through Twitter, social media is being used more and more by law
enforcement agencies, and not just to fight Internet-related crimes. We’re talking about
solving crimes that are happening on the street and in your community.
According to Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications and organizer of the SMILE (Social Media In Law Enforcement)
Conference being held in Washington D.C. this April, adoption of social media is still in the
“very, very, early stages,” but she sees it making an upward turn. “I expect
2010 will be a monumental year,” she said.
But many police departments that have embraced social media are still trying to figure it out.
“Most agencies … are not significantly proactive with keeping up with content and
updates,” said Terry Halsch from CitizenObserver.com, developers of the tip411 system for police agencies.
“There are some limitations because of uncertainty of how secure information is, how can it
be efficiently maintained, [and] the risks and liabilities of entering the world of social
media.”
Below are six different ways law enforcement is utilizing social media and real-time search to
enhance tactics, disseminate public information, and ultimately prevent criminal activity.
1. Police Blotter Blogs
A police blotter is the record of events at a police station. Traditionally, a desk sergeant kept
a register of these events. Nowadays, Twitter feeds, blogs, YouTube, and Facebook Fan Pages are being used by captains and
chiefs to put out the digital equivalent of the police blotter in real-time.
Publishing a register of crimes and arrests in an area has been an online activity for a while
now, especially through local newspaper websites. But social media is allowing many police
officers on the scene to report the publicly available details of a crime for themselves.
Reporters are getting their facts directly from a stream of real time-data and blog posts coming
from the department.
Individual cops aren’t about to turn into citizen journalists anytime soon, but the police
are able, through social media and real-time updates, to provide essential information that the
public and news gathering agencies need to know. Journalists today often use the web for their
first line of research, and rely on web-based police reports for many of the details they need
for a story.
“We don’t just release the police report; we write our own story and post it to our
website,” said Mark Economou, the Public Information Manager for the Boca Raton Police
Department in Boca Raton, Florida in a post on ConnectedCops.com. “Even more interesting, we are finding the media is
just cutting and pasting our stories to their sites, both in television and print.”
The Boca Raton Police Department has developed their own branded web platform that they call
Viper. Social media is a very important
part of their strategy, and like anyone adopting social media into a plan, they use it to support
and enhance the work they already do.
2. The Digital “Wanted Poster”
In the vein of an Old West “Wanted” poster, displayed in the most trafficked area of
town, modern-day law enforcement agencies are posting descriptions of criminals on today’s
most trafficked spots — namely the social web.
With millions of users, extraordinary reach, and the lightning-fast exchange of text, photos, and
video, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are ideal for getting the word out about
wanted persons with up-to-the-minute updates.
The Boynton Beach Police Department is a good example. On their Facebook Fan Page, the department put up a post with the
headline, “Police need help identifying motorcyclist who robbed man at ATM.” In the
post there was a photo from the ATM machine of the crime in progress. The department also
cross-posted the information to their Twitter page.
In the UK, the Leicestershire
Constabulary is one of a number of police departments focusing on being hyper-local and
involved with the community through social media. Their website has a section titled
“Can you help?”
which is formatted like a blog, and contains posts about ongoing criminal investigations, and a
“Wanted Poster” and “Missing Persons” area with photos and requests for
residents to respond with any leads they might have.
The stories are also fed to a Facebook Page that is very interactive and updated constantly. They also maintain a
Twitter profile, a YouTube account, and the department
offers the ability to subscribe to their news feed via RSS. It’s an impressive mixture of
social media tools that seems to work fluidly and update automatically.
3. Anonymous E-Tipsters
Tips from the community have been a time-honored way that citizens have worked with the public to
fight crime.
Consulting companies are developing very sophisticated ways for the public and the police to
interact online. The tip411 program
developed by the CitizenObserver Corporation is marketed to law enforcement as a web-based
notification toolset. Citizen participation has always been a big part of fighting crime, and the
people at tip411 stress that social media “acts as a ‘force
multiplier’ by empowering your community to get involved.”
“Anonymous text tip systems are gaining significant traction because they enable young
people to provide information without fear of retribution, i.e. ‘Snitches get
Snitches,’” said CitizenObserver’s Terry Halsch.
The program allows tipsters to send information anonymously through a variety of means including
“anonymous web chat, text tips and secure social media publishing.” Filtered alerts
can then be pushed out through a police department’s central location to other web mediums.
Bundled with other offerings, tip411 can then be published with Google Maps to create a clickable, interactive crime
“heat map” of sorts where others can click on links directly to add more information
and tips based on location. This program is meant to encourage increased interaction between the
police and the community through real-time web tools.
“It doesn’t matter to us where the information comes from,” said
Detroit’s Chief of Police, Warren Evans, a tip411 user. “We just want the information
so we can act on it. I want people to know that they can feel safe using this system to
communicate with us directly.”
4. Social Media Stakeout
Social media advocates stress listening as a part of any brand’s online marketing strategy.
Listening to the bad guys doing bad things has always been a part of police work. It’s
important for police to search the real-time web to target particular keywords and phrases being
passed around on social media. Use of social media monitoring has a strategic, tactical and
operational application for law enforcement.
Boston Police Department Superintendent John Daly spoke about using Twitter search to monitor
chatter around the Boston area in real-time. He’s very sensitive to the implications of
engaging in this type of search, as many police departments are.
“We have to be very careful because there’s a Big Brother aspect to this,” Daly
said.
He stressed that they were not looking at “everyday messages,” as he put it, but
specific tweets that signaled something they should be looking into.
“But when people start saying, ‘What’s that smoke coming from the Hancock
Tower?’ or ‘Why is everybody running around Copley Place –- is
something going on?’ — if two or three things come in we look at patterns, trends,
something maybe we should be paying attention [to]. So it’s sort of an early warning
system.”
5. Thwarting Thugs in the Social Space
Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are popular with gang members, and police use this to their
advantage. Law enforcement has been able to infiltrate street gangs by posing as fellow gang
members online, making connections, and intercepting criminal communications as they happen.
Information like photos, videos, and friend links help law enforcement understand the dynamics of
gangs when investigating their activities.
“Investigators build phony profiles to ‘friend’ gang members either
within YouTube, Facebook or Bebo, and then may migrate that friendship to another platform and
gain trust and get their ‘friends’ to share useful information,”
said SMILE conference organizer Lauri Stevens.
According to an article in 219magazine, police in Cincinnati used Facebook and MySpace to
follow more than 20 members of a local gang, the “Northside Taliband.” The evidence
they gathered helped law enforcement connect members to a multitude of crimes, including a
possible homicide.
Other agencies have employed these tactics as well. The NYPD is using the Internet to monitor
gang activity, as well, and in a story reported in the Daily News, cops said that gangs have been
communicating on Twitter. They think that one Twitter exchange between gang members may even have
resulted in the shooting of a youth. The police seek out code words and slang used by individual
members to follow gang members online who are organizing illegal activities.
“It is another tool … just like old phone records,” a police source said in the
article.
6. Tracking and Informing with Twitter
As we all know, Twitter has plenty of uses for individuals and companies. Law enforcement also
uses the service to communicate with the public.
Stevens told us that she follows at least 700 law enforcement agencies worldwide on Twitter
alone. Not all of them are active, but some have found unique ways to incorporate Twitter into
their police tactics. “The LAPD used Twitter to monitor crowds during the Michael Jackson
funeral,” for example, said Stevens, and the Boston Police have been using Twitter to alert
followers of evolving situations in real time.
Sergeant Tim Burrows does media relations for the traffic services unit in the Toronto Police
Service. Tim saw his traffic safety messaging hampered by the mainstream media’s editing
time lines, so he started using
Twitter to talk to the local media about ongoing situations and inform the public. He
considers his tweets about traffic safety information a valuable public service.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office took
things a step further. When the police wanted to utilize social media they, like many agencies,
felt that existing public sites were too unsecured and vulnerable for a system-wide roll out
within the department. So inspired by Twitter, the department took things into their own hands.
“CyberVisor was my vision
of Broward County Sheriff’s Office’s own controlled Twitter,” said Lynne
Martzall, External Affairs Manager, who worked with webmaster Tony Petruzzi to create it.
Since it was rolled out, CyberVisor has been used to broadcast information about unfolding
situations, such as crimes in progress, to put out information after a bank robbery and when the
Sheriff’s Office was looking for an escaped convict. For now, the public can’t
respond to CyberVisor — it’s broadcast only — but it has still be effective.
In one instance, they alerted followers to someone in South Broward County impersonating an
officer. In another, they sent out a missing child alert from a local elementary school with a
detailed description of the child’s physical appearance and where the child was last seen.
Some people’s moods require different colors. When you’re in a chipper
mood you might want a bright shade or a darker one for those days after being out on the town all
night long. Well thankfully this lamp allows for you to decide how bright you want
it and which shade you’d like as well. It’ll let you mix colors or just
stick with one of the main colors.
Each control represents a color, there’s one for red, green and blue.Â
I’m a little puzzled why they didn’t stick with prime colors and do yellow instead of
green, but this works too. Just slide the individual colors to mix the red and blue
to get purple. It’s pretty basic stuff, but it gives you a whole lot more
control over the colors. The lamp itself has a wooden base that can be customized to
a finish of your choosing. The whole thing stands about 30cm tall. You
can purchase it for $225 through Etsy.
This series is supported by Rackspace, the better way to do hosting. Learn more about Rackspace’s
hosting solutions here.
Contrary to popular belief, web developers do sometimes
leave their desks, and when they do, that’s always when clients seem to call or disaster
seems to strike.
We’ve highlighted some iPhone apps here that will help you out in those situations, and a
few others that will stash several neat tricks up your proverbial sleeve for when you’re
away from the office.
Have a look, and if you’re an iPhone-owning web dev, let us know which apps you find useful
for your work in the comments below.
Concentric Sky offers a range of code “cheat sheets” ideal for when your mind just
goes blank and you’re away from your usual reference material. Priced at $0.99 each, there
are apps available for CSS, mySQL, JavaScript, php, RegEx, jQuery and HTML — the last three
of which let you write and test code inside the app. Searchable, and clearly laid out, the info
in the apps is available offline, unlike other options that link out to external references.
Whether you want to brush up on the bus, or need to code on-the-go, these will be a useful weapon
in your web design arsenal. Another great alternative is jQuery 1.4.
A little bit like Adobe’s Kuler on
your handset, Color Stream is an app that will help you narrow down the correct color, or palette
of colors, for a project. The Lite version of the app is available for free, and lets you create
a palette of five colors side-by-side using a slider bar in either RGB or CMYK modes. You can
then identify your chosen shades by their hexadecimal values for use on the web. This is handy
enough, but the paid-for option (priced at $2.99) offers even more functionality, such as the
ability to save palettes, use the built-in color schemes, or even match colors perfectly by
creating a palette based on elements from an image or photo.
If you need to be able to securely log-in to a server away from your desk, then this app —
which emulates desktop FTP clients on your mobile — might well be the answer. As well as
offering the ability to edit text on the fly and make those changes live quickly, there’s
the option to view common file types, download them to your iPhone, e-mail them, and upload
videos and correctly-sized pics from your mobile device too. Meanwhile, cleverly getting around
the iPhone’s multi-tasking issues, there’s a built-in web browser so you can see
changes without leaving the app, allowing for speedy work — which as far as we know, no
client has ever complained about.
If you don’t need access to your FTP server, don’t forget about Dropbox for the iPhone, which will let
you view your Dropbox folder while on the go.
For an on-the-go, at-a-glance look at you site’s stats, either for your own consumption, or
to keep a customer satisfied, Ego is a one-stop-shop for such data. This app does not go into
extreme detail, but it will summarize data from Ember, Feedburner, Google Analytics, Mint (with an additional download), Squarespace, Twitter and Vimeo. Data such as how many Twitter followers an account has
racked up, feed subscription totals, and visitor numbers are all at your fingertips in an
easy-to-use app that saves you logging into to a plethora of individual services. The developer,
Garrett Murray, says Ego offers a flexible framework for adding support for other services, and
welcomes suggestions on adding other stat-tracking options.
In addition to offering a full-screen browser (as opposed to the iPhone’s Safari window),
this app allows you to make notes on, or copy and paste text from, web pages. Whether
you’re browsing around for inspiration or assessing a site for changes/improvements, being
able to easily annotate the web with a mobile app is simply brilliant. Other functionality
includes the ability to upload .txt .doc .pdf .ppt .xls .rtf .jpg files, bookmark sites, and
share uploaded documents over Wi-Fi to any web-enabled computer.
Cost: $1.99
Series supported by Rackspace
Rackspace is the better way to do hosting. No more worrying about web hosting
uptime. No more spending your time, energy and resources trying to stay on top of things like
patching, updating, monitoring, backing up data and the like. Learn why.
On March 16, Fox News anchors during their self-described daytime "news hours" repeatedly
forwarded the false suggestion that, by using a legislative procedure known as the
"self-executing rule" to finalize health care reform in the House, Democrats would be passing
health care reform "without actually voting for it." In fact, implementing the proposed procedure
requires a majority vote.
The New York Times
reported on October 11, 2009, that Fox News claims its news hours are objective and defined
as "9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays." Those weekday hours include America's
Newsroom, Happening Now,and America Live, which replaced Live
Desk in early 2010.
America's Newsroom: Procedure "actually pretty simple," but not for Fox's
Hemmer
Hemmer: The self-executing rule "does not require a single
vote." On Fox News' America's Newsroom, co-host Bill Hemmer
blog post, The Washington
Post's Ezra Klein explained that the legislative process Democrats are considering
using, theself-executing vote "functions as a vote on the Senate bill" because "the House will
pass the fixes under a rule that says the House 'deems' the Senate bill passed after the House
passes the fixes." Klein wrote:
Here's how that will work: Rather than passing the Senate bill and then passing the fixes, the
House will pass the fixes under a rule that says the House "deems" the Senate bill passed after
the House passes the fixes.
The virtue of this, for Pelosi's members, is that they don't actually vote on the Senate bill.
They only vote on the reconciliation package. But their vote on the reconciliation package
functions as a vote on the Senate bill. The difference is semantic, but the
bottom line is this: When the House votes on the reconciliation fixes, the Senate bill is passed,
even if the Senate hasn't voted on the reconciliation fixes, and even though the House never
specifically voted on the Senate bill.
It's a circuitous strategy born of necessity. Pelosi doesn't have votes for the Senate bill
without the reconciliation package. But the Senate parliamentarian said that the Senate bill must
be signed into law before the reconciliation package can be signed into law. That removed
Pelosi's favored option of passing the reconciliation fixes before passing the Senate bill. So
now the House will vote on reconciliation explicitly and the Senate bill implicitly, which is
politically easier, even though the effect is not any different than if Congress were to pass the
Senate bill first and pass the reconciliation fixes after.
CRS: Self-executing rule requires House's approval. A 2006
Congressional Research Service (CRS) report
makes clear that passage of a rule by the House is required for the "self-executing" rule to be
adopted. From CRS:
Definition of "Self-Executing" Rule. One of the newer types is
called a "self-executing" rule; it embodies a "two-for-one" procedure. This means that when the
House adopts a rule it also simultaneously agrees to dispose of a separate matter, which is
specified in the rule itself. For instance, self-executing rules may stipulate that a discrete
policy proposal is deemed to have passed the House and been incorporated in the bill to be taken
up. The effect: neither in the House nor in the Committee of the Whole will lawmakers have an
opportunity to amend or to vote separately on the "self-executed" provision. It was automatically
agreed to when the House passed the rule. Rules of this sort contain customary, or "boilerplate,"
language, such as: "The amendment printed in [section 2 of this resolution or in part 1 of the
report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution] shall be considered as adopted in
the House and in the Committee of the Whole."
Don Wolfensberger, former
chief of staff for the House Rules Committee under Republicans, stated in a 2006 Roll
Call
column:
Almost every major bill must obtain a special rule, or resolution, from the Rules Committee
permitting immediate floor consideration. The resolution also specifies the amount of general
debate time and what amendments will be allowed. A special rule also may contain other bells,
whistles, gizmos and gadgets.One of these optional attachments is a self-executing provision,
which decrees a specified amendment to have been adopted upon the rule's
passage [emphasis added]. In other words, once the House adopts the special
rule it effectively has adopted the amendment before the bill has even been called up
for consideration [emphasis added].
Fox News previously misled over budget reconciliation process
Fox News repeatedly falsely labels reconciliation as "nuclear
option."FoxNewshosts and guests have repeatedly pushed the falsehood that
the "nuclear option" refers to the budget reconciliation process. The Fox Nation and Fox News
personalities like Hannity, Van Susteren, Dick Morris, Bret Baier, and Bill Sammon have all falsely compared reconciliation to the
"nuclear option," and the Fox Nation has previouslycoupled its headlines with images of a
mushroom cloud from a nuclear bomb:
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McKesson is a global health care leader that has 26 operating companies. The
centrial IT group had the vision to automate "the last mile" of IT planning, the budget approval
process. We think of it as the budget approval dance, and when containing costs, it's a ritual
that can leave scars. This company has evolved to the point of improving the cost of budgeting,
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Lon S. Cohen is a freelance writer and is 
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